Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - I'm Happy He's in Prison Now // The Donthe Lucas Murder Story

Episode Date: August 28, 2026

Donthe Lucas was convicted of first-degree murder in 2021 and sentenced to life in prison without parole for the 2013 disappearance and death of his 21-year-old pregnant girlfriend, Kelsie Schelling. 

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Download the BetMGM app. See BetMGM.com for terms, 18 plus Alberta only, please play responsibly, subject to eligibility requirements. If gambling is affecting your mental health or well-being, 21-Alberta is here to help. Call or text 211 or visit ab.211.com. Betmg operates pursuant to an operating agreement with the Alberta Eye Gaming Corporation. Standard message and data rates may apply. So a woman may have gotten physically intimate with a guy just to spy on him and get him busted for murder. So this all starts with this guy, Dante.

And Dante is around 20 years old, living in Pueblo, Colorado, and he's a college basketball star who flunked out of junior college, and he's now unemployed. And he leans on his girlfriend for financial support. He's always asking for money, or he borrows her bank card, or he borrows her car. Now his girlfriend is this woman, Kelsey. And so one day in 2012, Kelsey hits Dante with some news that's going to change his life forever. She contacts him like, guess what? I'm pregnant. And Dante, he doesn't like this news at all.

I mean, he doesn't even really consider Kelsey to be his real girlfriend. I mean, they're kind of on again, off again. So he's not really invested in the relationship. And he feels like having a kid with his sort of not girlfriend is going to ruin. his life. So he tells her that he doesn't want to have a kid. And he tells her this over and over again multiple times and they fight about it constantly. But Kelsey, she ain't trying to hear all that. She's keeping the baby. So Dante decides that the only thing he can do to keep this from ruining his life is to take Kelsey out of the picture permanently. So a few weeks pass and we're now in 2013. And Dante

texts Kelsey and he tells her that he has a surprise for her and he asks her to drive down to Pueblo where he lives to meet him. She lives in Denver, he lives in Pueblo, about two hours away. Now at this point, Kelsey thinks, or hopes, that Dante has had a sudden change of heart about the pregnancy. Maybe now he wants to be involved. So that night, she finishes her shift at the floor and decor store and she gets in her car and she drives from Denver two hours away to Pueblo to Dante's grandma's house where he actually lives. Then Dante leads her into the house and we don't know exactly what happens next, but it's speculated that he strangles her. But we do know that Dante ends up killing her. After that, he gets rid of the body and we also don't know how he does that. But then he

takes her car and he drives to a nearby ATM and he uses her debit card to withdraw about $400. The next day, he drives her car to a Walmart parking lot, and he abandons it there. Then he gets his mom and his grandma to come pick him up, because he doesn't have his own car. Meanwhile, back in Denver, Kelsey doesn't show up to her shift at the floor and decor store, and one of her co-workers is calling her and texting her, and she asks her about how her recent prenatal doctor's appointment went, and Dante, pretending to be Kelsey, he gets Kelsey's phone and he texts this coworker saying that she had gone to the ER, and later he texts her that she's not having the baby anymore because it was growing in the wrong place. So yeah, it sounds like he's trying to

explain having a miscarriage, but that he doesn't know what he's talking about. Anyway, then I guess he realizes that abandoning Kelsey's car in the Walmart parking lot isn't going to work for his alibi. So he walks back to Walmart and he gets her car. Here's surveillance footage of him in the parking lot, and he drives this car to a local hospital, and he abandons it there. And about four days go by. And by this point, Kelsey's parents haven't heard from her at all. And they know something's up, because this isn't like her. And they've been calling and texting her, and Dante, again, pretending to be her, has been texting them back, saying, I'm fine, I'm just not feeling well. But the texts don't sound like Kelsey at all. Like the grammar and the

punctuation and the phrasing just don't sound like the way she would text things. And so Kelsey's mom starts calling and texting Dante because she knows that they're dating. And so she's contacting him like, have you seen Kelsey? And Dante just makes something up. Like, if I hear from her, I'll let you know. In fact, Kelsey's mom calls so much that he eventually gets mad at her. Like, stop leaving me voicemails. Leave me alone. Now, police have obviously been investigating all this. And they contact Dante and he gives them a bullshit alibi that she came to see him and he took her to the hospital and after she dropped him off in the Walmart parking lot and after that he never saw her again. And police are skeptical of his story and a lot of stuff he's saying

doesn't quite add up and they think that he's probably involved in her disappearance. The problem is they don't have enough evidence to charge him with anything. They don't even know if Kelsey's alive or not. Right now, she's still technically just missing, because they haven't found a body. And three more years go by, and it's now 2016. And Kelsey still hasn't been found. And her family is still looking for her. And by this point, this story has been all over the news. And while all of this is happening, Dante, he's just going about his normal life. He's still unemployed, still staying with his grandma. Meanwhile, about 45 miles away in Colorado Springs, this woman learns about the case. Her name's Lauren. And Lauren becomes extremely

interested in it, so much so that she's reading all kinds of online updates about it, and she starts following Kelsey's mom's social media posts about the case, just so she can get updates. And I guess during her reading of all this, she decides that Dante is probably responsible for Kelsey's disappearance. And so she goes on Facebook, and she finds his account, and she hits him up and she lies and says that she's new to the area and looking to make some friends. So they start chatting and they communicate back and forth through DMs and then they start texting and after a few weeks they decide to meet up in person. And from there they keep meeting up to hang out and eventually this relationship turns into something romantic. Now it's unclear to me if their

relationship was ever physical. I assume it was because they're together for about a whole year, and in a minute you'll see why I bring this up. Anyway, this relationship lasts for about a year. And by this point, Dante is totally in love with Lauren. And he's told her a lot of things. I mean, he doesn't confess to her that he murdered Kelsey, but he does admit that he's the man in the Walmart surveillance video, picking up her car, and he also admits that he moved it and abandoned it at the hospital.

So at this point, she knows he's guilty. Now, this suggests to me that she suspected that he was involved in the murder and became friends with him in order to help bust him, but then was also physically intimate with him during that time. Just to like, I don't know, get information out of him? Which, that is some crazy dedication to the investigation. Anyway, then, one night, the two of them are hanging out on his porch, and suddenly, Dante starts crying and hyperventilating, and he pulls out. a ring and he proposes to her. Now, Lauren takes this ring and she says, I'll have to think about it, and she leaves. But she knows that she can't marry this guy. I mean, he potentially killed his last girlfriend. So she eventually gives all the information she has to the Colorado Bureau of

Investigation, who is now handling the case. And using this info, they're able to build a strong enough case against him, and bam, they arrest Dante. But not for the murder. He was already wanted for an unrelated robbery charge, so they arrest him for that. But eventually he is charged with the murder. Here's his mugshot. And ultimately, he goes to trial and he's found guilty and he gets sentenced to life. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself for friends and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research.

Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca.ca. In prison.