Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He Murdered a Woman on Live TV - The Vester Flanagan story

Episode Date: February 2, 2025

This is the story of Vester Flanagan, and how he murdered a news reporter on live tv.

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So this psychopath unalives a news reporter live on the air. Now his name is Vester, and he's a TV reporter himself. He's also just kind of an angry dude. Like, he's just mad about a lot of stuff. And at his scene, he's just... TV reporter job, bro does not get along with his coworkers. And I guess one day, one of his co-workers says something kind of homophobic to him, because Vester is gay. And that really sets him off. And later he gets into it with some other coworkers, and he starts verbally abusing them. And everyone

there basically thinks he's a diva, and there are a lot of problems and drama always surrounding Vester. So, bam, he eventually gets fired. And bro is pissed, because he feels like he's the victim here. So then, boom, he sues the TV station, for racial discrimination for some reason. And eventually, the news station settles with him out of court, and the details of that settlement have never been disclosed. But whatever, Fester moves on. He's going to go be angry at someone else. And he goes and he gets another job in another state, but the pattern of problems and drama continue. He'll get hired because he's good on the air, but ultimately something goes down with his coworkers, and he responds a bit too aggressively, and bam, he gets fired again. But whatever, eventually

he gets a job at this news station, WDBJ, and he becomes a reporter there, reporting on local stuff, and this actually seems to be a pretty good gig for him. Until, one day Bester's working on a story with this camera guy, Adam, and Adam allegedly says something that really sets Vester off, and he gets pissed. Now, I don't know. know if Adam actually said something bad to him or if this is just Vester being an angry guy again. Regardless, Vester just loses it on Adam. And Adam gets freaked out and he goes and he reports Vester to HR. And then on a different day, Vester's working around another coworker, this woman, Allison. And allegedly, she makes some comment around him that is racist or that comes across

is racist. Now, I don't know if she actually made a comment, but this has been investigated extensively and there's no evidence Allison actually said anything overtly racist to him ever. Regardless, whatever happened also pisses Vester off. And soon enough of his coworkers report him to HR for hostile behavior and the news station eventually tells him he's fired. And then he gets all aggressive and he flips out and he says, I'm not leaving. You're going to have to call the fucking police. And so the news station calls the police and the police come and they have to escort his crazy

ass out. But as angry as Vester is, he moves on again. And he's going to get a job as a reporter somewhere else. And he ends up landing an interview at a TV station in Pennsylvania. And he interviews there and this TV station likes him, but they call his references. And I guess all his references say he's difficult to work with. Like he's a lot of drama. So ultimately, Vester doesn't get the job in Pennsylvania. And this pisses him off even more. And all this anger it just keeps building and building for about a year. And then one day, boom, he files a lawsuit against WDBJ News Station for racial discrimination and sexual discrimination.

He essentially claims they were racist and homophobic towards him. But for whatever reasons, months later, this lawsuit is dismissed. And this, of course, pisses Vester off even more. And at this point, he's almost reached his limit. But then, the next year, Here, something absolutely crazy happens, something unrelated to Vester. In South Carolina, a random racist white guy walks into a black church one day, and he's got a pew-poo, and he just starts blasting.

Blam, blam! And he unalives nine people, and it's a horrible tragedy. And of course, this is a huge news story across the whole country. And Vester, he hears about this tragedy, and this finally sends him over the end. A white man unaliving a bunch of innocent black people, they're not going to get away with this. And so he decides to get revenge. But not on the racist shooter in South Carolina. He decides to get revenge on the old coworkers at WDBJ, the ones who reported him and got him fired.

So then two days after the South Carolina church massacre, Vester goes and he buys a pew-Pew. And he also starts typing up a whole ass manifesto. And as his plan comes together, he calls ABC News Station, and he's like, I'm going to have a big story for you. But he's being kind of vague, so no one at ABC takes him seriously. Then one morning, Bester gets up before dawn, and he tracks his old coworkers to their morning assignment, Allison the reporter and Adam the cameraman.

And they're with a whole news crew and they're out in the field, they're about to do an interview. And so the news crew is there setting up for this interview with this woman named Vicky. And suddenly, Vester shows up to this location, but they don't see him. And he creeps around and he watches them all from a distance. And once they start filming this interview,

Vester decides it's go time. So he moves toward them. And he pulls out his phone, and he starts filming them himself. And you can see the footage here. And if you pause it, you can see Allison right here, And you can see Adam the cameraman here, and this woman being interviewed is Vicky.

And Allison and Adam, they're focusing on the interview, so they have no idea of Vester is there. I don't think they really see him. But then, while Vester is recording them, he pulls out his Pupu, and he points it at them, point blank. And he pulls the trigger. Blam! Blam! He shoots Allison. Blam! He shoots Adam. And blam! Vicky, the woman who's getting interviewed, she gets shot too.

And as Adam falls to the ground, his camera catches a shot of Vester pointing his pew-poo for just a few frames. And so you can see he's standing here and there's his head right there. Here's the thing, though. All of this chaos is live. The news crew was filming a live segment and they caught the shooting live. Now, I obviously can't show you the footage of the people getting shot, but afterwards the feed goes to black and it cuts to the reporter back in the studio. Okay, not sure what happened there.

we will, of course, let you know as soon as we find out what those sounds were from. So anyway, Allison and Adam are unfortunately unalived on live TV. But Vicky, the woman being interviewed, luckily she survives. And Vester, he immediately flees the scene. And he goes, I don't know, somewhere, and he faxes that manifesto he wrote over to ABC News. Now, his manifesto, it's like 23 pages long and it's like a rambling, incoherent mess. I guess every psychopath has to type up a manifesto for some reason. But he also calls ABC News Station too, like,

Hey, it's me again. I just shot two people. I guess he really wants them to know it's him. And when the people at ABC News see the manifesto, they finally take him seriously, and they call the police. Meanwhile, Vester takes the graphic footage he himself filmed of the shooting, and he posts it to Facebook and Twitter for the world to see. And the whole time, he's like tweeting about it.

He's like, Allison made racist comments. Adam went to HR on me after working with me one time. I filmed the shooting. See Facebook. And people online, they see this graphic video and they're like, what the fuck? And they report it. And of course, Facebook and Twitter, they take the video down, but not before it starts trending on like other gore websites

and some news stations show it on the air too. Meanwhile, Vester knows police are going to be after him soon. So he gets in a car and he takes off. And it doesn't take long for the police to track him down. And suddenly they're after. But Vester, he refuses to pull over and he just keeps speeding away. But he knows that even though everything actually went according to his plan, this is the end for him. So as he drives running from the police, he holds his pew-pue up to his own head and he pulls

the trigger. And he unalives himself. Allegedly, while the car was still in motion. And the car runs off the road and it crashes. Wow. And a huge shout out to leonardo.aI for sponsoring this video. If you want to make really cool art for your videos or just for your life like this or like this, then sign up for leonardo.aI.