Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He's The Worst Hitman In History - The Joe Rosebrook Story

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

The Joe Rosebrook case centers on a long-simmering grudge, a murder-for-hire plot, and a catastrophic case of mistaken identity that went unsolved for nearly a decade. Rosebrook, a small-time Ohio fraudster and chop-shop operator with a habit of retaliating against people he believed had crossed him, sought revenge against a man named Daniel E. Ott- someone he blamed for exposing one of his earlier scams. The murder contract passed through several intermediaries until it reached Chad Testerman, who located the wrong Daniel Ott.

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do if you hire a hitman and he ends up killing the wrong guy. Like, do you still pay him or what? Now, this story starts with this guy, Joe. And Joe is 48 when all this begins and he's living in Ohio. And Joe is definitely not a good guy. I mean, he runs an illegal chop shop, which means he steals cars and takes them apart and then he sells the parts. Regardless, this is going well for him. In fact, his chop shop is apparently worth millions of dollars at one point. Here's the thing about Joe, though. Joe, he doesn't take shit from anyone. In fact, he's known to be pretty dangerous.

He has a reputation for pushing people around and silencing anyone who snitches on him. In the past, two people tried snitching on him, and he allegedly made one of the guys disappear, and he killed another one of the guys in a car box. So that's the kind of guy he is. The kind of guy you don't want to mess with. But one day in 2004, the worst thing happens to him. His chop shop gets raided by police. And so, bam, they arrest Joe.

Now later, he gets out on bail and he's on house arrest. And he knows right away that the police, they didn't get lucky. Someone must have ratted him out. So he starts asking around, trying to figure out who this person is. And eventually, he finds the snitch. It's one of his business associates, this guy. Curtis. And so Joe finds out that Curtis is the one who ratted him out to police, and he is super pissed, and he's determined to get revenge on him. So he decides the best thing to do is to hire

a hitman to go and assassinate him. But he doesn't necessarily know any hitman, but he does know a lot of shady dudes who might be willing to kill someone. So he reaches out to this guy, Daniel Ott. And Daniel Ott is one of Joe's car thieves who works for him. Sometimes he'll like go and steal cars for the chop shop, and Joe offers to pay Daniel $15,000 to assassinate Curtis, and he gives him a photo of him and his address. And so Daniel lot is like, all right. But here's the thing, though, Daniel Ott says aight, but he doesn't actually mean aight. Like, he doesn't really want to assassinate anyone. I don't know if he's scared of getting caught or if he just doesn't have it in him or what. So what does Daniel Ott do? He goes straight to the police and he turns

Joe in and he tells them that his boss is trying to hire him to kill someone. Now police, they can't just go on Daniel Ott's word alone, so they put their heads together and they set up a whole sting operation to bust Joe. And they have Daniel Ott wear a wire and they have him set up a meeting with Joe to go talk to him. And so later they meet up and they start chatting and eventually Joe says some incriminating things. And when the police hear that, boom, they bust in and bam, they arrest Joe again. And he ends up getting convicted for the assassination plot and he's sentenced to 10 years in prison.

But that's obviously not the end of Joe. Because by now you could probably guess that he's not the kind of guy who just lets things slide. And this time is no different. While he's in prison, he's super pissed at Daniel Ott. Like how dare he set him up like that. In fact, I guess he forgets all about wanting to have Curtis assassinated. Now he wants Daniel Ott assassinated. So while he's in prison, he starts looking to hire a hitman.

Like he's asking around to other inmates like, hey, can any of you kill someone for me? And I guess none of them are willing. Until this guy hears about it. His name is Chad. And Chad, he's a fellow inmate who is in there for burglary and some other property crimes. But he hears Joe is looking for a hitman and I guess he's like, well, I can do it. And Chad, he has no hitman experience. I guess he just really needs the money.

Now, Chad is about to leave prison. Like, his sentence is nearly up. That's partly why he's offering to do it because, you know, he'll be on the outside soon. So then, Joe reaches out to his brother to have him wire Chad some money when he gets out of prison to make sure that he gets paid and that everything is squared away. So then a bit of time passes. And we're in, like, 2006 now. And Chad is finally released.

And Joe's brother wires him the money for the hit. So now it's time to get the job done. and kill Daniel Ott. Now, Chad's instructions were to assassinate a man named Daniel Ott who lives in Ohio. So I guess he looks it up and he finds a Daniel Ott living in Ohio. And one night he puts on a mask and camouflage and he grabs a shotgun and he drives all the way to Burton Township to the house at the address he was given. Then, boom, he breaks into the house. And there he sees the target, Daniel Ott.

Here's the crazy thing though. This guy's name is Daniel Ott. But he's actually not the Danielot that Chad is supposed to be looking for. He's just a random guy who coincidentally has the same name. And Chad, he looks at this guy and he thinks, this Daniel guy looks a lot younger than the Daniel Joe told me about. He looks like he's like 30 years younger. And now he assumes that he probably got the wrong Daniel,

but he doesn't know what to do. So while he's trying to figure out his next move, he binds this wrong Daniel with duct tape, and he orders wrong Daniel's girlfriend to lie down on the floor. And it's at this moment that wrong Daniel realizes that he can probably take Chad. And that if he doesn't do something right now, Chad's probably going to murder both him and his girlfriend.

And so, bam, he manages to break free from the duct tape, and pow, he lunges at Chad, and they both start struggling. Now, Chad sees everything getting out of control, and he can't let this get out of control. So, blam, he feels. fires at wrong Daniel, and he unfortunately unalives him. And now that the job is technically done, he gets back into his car and he flees. Later, police arrive on the scene, and they start investigating all this.

But they keep running into the same problem. They can't seem to find a reason why anyone would want to kill this Daniel Ott guy. I mean, he's an easygoing person, he's got a good reputation, he didn't have any enemies. who would want to kill someone like that? So they keep investigating. And six months go by. And that is when they finally figure it out. There's actually another guy in Ohio named Daniel Ott,

a much older guy. And they start thinking, well, maybe he was the one who was supposed to be assassinated. Maybe Daniel's death was some sort of mistake and the wrong Daniel Ott was killed. So the longer they investigate, the more they start linking Chad and Joe to the crime. But they don't have enough evidence to accuse either of them.

So they start looking around for witnesses. People willing to speak against Joe. But they can't find anyone. I guess nobody's willing to say anything bad about Joe because he tends to try and assassinate people who snitch on him. So because of this, police hit a roadblock, and they can't move forward, and the case goes cold. So it seems like no one will ever snitch on Joe

and he's just going to end up getting away with this. Until... Nine years go by. And it's now 2015. And Joe, he's out of prison by this point. He's been out of prison for like a year. And police finally managed to get enough evidence against him. I guess they get some people in his old network to flip on him.

And so, bam, they arrest him. Here's his mugshot. Also, bam, they arrest Chad. Here's his mugshot. And bam, they arrest Joe's brother, too, for his involvement. Here's his mugshot. And so ultimately, Chad gets sentenced to 28 years to life in prison, while Joe's brother takes a plea deal and he just has to pay a fine,

while Joe, he gets sentenced to life in prison.