Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - This Evil Pastor Murdered His Wife - The Timothy Tillman story

Episode Date: February 1, 2025

Timothy Tillman was a pastor who was leading a double life, eventually leading to him murdering his wife.

Ryan Reynolds here for MintMobil. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities, so do like I did and have one of your assistants' assistants assistants switch you to MintMobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch. Up front payment of $45 for three-month plan equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available.

Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at MintMobile.com. An all-new season of the secret lives of Mormon wives is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus. Mom Talk has just been blowing up. Whitney and Jen are dancing with the stars. Taylor is a bachelorette. Saying that out loud is crazy.

That is huge. But all the cool opportunities could pull us apart. It's causing issues in everyone's marriage. My whole world is falling apart right now. It's chaos. Watch the Hulu original series. The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bonus subscribers.

Terms apply. So this may be the worst, most evil pastor I've ever seen. So let's just call him Pastor Tim. And Pastor Tim has a problem. He keeps getting fired. He keeps losing his job at church after church because he's constantly involved in some scandal. Like he gets fired from one church

because they catch him leaving a strip club one night. I'm like, hey, isn't that our preacher? He gets fired from another church because they catch him having an affair with one of the members of his congregation. Bro is just a menace. But eventually, he can't be a pastor anymore. So he has to get a regular job working out a county jail in Minnesota.

And of course, that goes horribly wrong too. Because one time, there's this prostitute leaving the jail. And Pastor Tim, he starts creeping on her. And he offers her a ride home. And on that ride home, he then proceeds to essay her. And later, she presses charges against him. And so, bam, police arrest Pastor Tim. and they sentence him to six months in jail.

Wow, that's a really light sentence. Okay, but here's the other thing about Pastor Tim, though. He actually has a wife and daughters. So his wife, her name's Janet, and Janet learns about what her husband did to the prostitute, and she's like, fuck all this, and she leaves him, and she takes her daughters, and she moves from Minnesota all the way to Alabama.

And months later, Pastor Tim actually gets out of jail, and he moves straight from Minnesota, Minnesota down to Alabama to be closer to Janet and his daughters. And somehow he convinces Janet that he is a changed man. And unfortunately, Janet takes him back. And so there, in Alabama, Tim gets a job at a local Pentecostal church as a pastor. Now, he obviously doesn't tell them that he's been fired from a bunch of other churches or that he just got out of jail for essaying a prostitute because then they'd never hire him. No, no. Instead, he lies on his resume like the rest of us, and Pastor Tim gets this job, and he starts preaching at this church every week,

and the people at the church love him. They're like, oh, he's so Christ-like. But unfortunately, Pastor Tim is not, in fact, Christ-like. Because at some point during all this, he starts chatting with this woman online. Her name's Molly. And even though they haven't met in person, Molly thinks Pastor Tim is foin. And so they keep chatting, and they're hitting it off, and they're flirting and over time they develop a pretty serious relationship. But of course, Pastor Tim doesn't tell her who he really is. He gives her a fake name and he doesn't tell her that he's married. He tells her that he's a Navy SEAL or some shit. And for the record, he is not in fact a Navy SEAL. But anyway, at some point, Pastor Tim starts telling his wife Janet that he has to go out of town

on official church business. But of course, there is no official church business. He's just using that as an excuse to sneak away and meet up with Molly. And that's when he flies from Alabama over to Washington State and he starts smashing with Molly on the side. And so this affair with Molly continues, and over time things get more and more serious between the two. And Pastor Tim, he ends up leading this double life. He's spending part time in Alabama with his wife Janet

and part time in Washington smashing with Molly. And this seems to be working pretty well for him, I guess. Until. Eventually, Pastor Tim has been cheating on his wife Janet with Molly for like over a decade now. And that's when he decides to propose to Molly, even though he's still married to Janet. And of course she has no idea he's been sneaking off to see this other woman the whole time. So after the proposal, Tim heads back to Alabama and he keeps pretending to be a good husband and he keeps pretending to be a good pastor. But unfortunately, Pastor Tim can't keep up with this. lie. So he comes up with an idea to get rid of his wife Janet for good. And so at the Pentecostal

Church, Pastor Tim preaches at, they have a charity event sometimes. And at this charity event, they all shoot pew-pues for some reason. Welcome to America. And one of the times the church holds one of these events, once the event is over, Pastor Tim takes three of the rifles they're using home with him. And when he and Janet get home, Pastor Tim asks her to help him carry the rifles into their house and he hands her one and then he takes the other two and he follows her through the front door and into their bedroom and as Tim walks through the doorway he lifts up one of the rifles and he aims it at Janet's back and he pulls the trigger. Blam! And she falls to the ground and their daughters are home so the daughters come in and they're all screaming and it's this

whole horrible scene. And unfortunately Janet doesn't survive the shot. And so later police get there and they asked Pastor Tim what happened, and I guess he tells them, oh, it was all an accident. The Pew Pew accidentally knocked against something, and it just suddenly went off. And so I guess police believe him, and they just rule the whole thing an accident. And so this is a horrible situation, and everyone is devastated, and they're trying to figure out exactly what happened. How did this rifle accidentally go off?

And one woman who really wants to know the truth is this woman, Janet's sister. And Janet's sister hears that Pastor Tim accidentally shot, Janet, and she gets suspicious. She always thought Pastor Tim was kind of a shady dude. So Janet's sister sends an email to the local district attorney, and boom, district attorney gets a detective on the case. Now, the detective starts investigating, and he finds out almost immediately that Pastor Tim has two driver's license for some reason, one with his real name on it and one with a

completely different last name on it, like he has two identities. And so detective keeps digging, and he checks Pastor Tim's phone. records and he sees all these late night phone calls to a number in Washington state. So he tracks the phone number back to a woman, a woman named Molly. And around this same time, Janet's sister, she's still trying to figure out this case too. And she hits up detective and she tells him about this rumor she had heard that Pastor Tim may have had a girlfriend on the side. A girlfriend named Molly. And so, kapow, everything starts clicking into place for the detective. He feels like he knows the truth, that Pastor Tim unalive Janet so that he could be with his side girlfriend, Molly.

But unfortunately, there's not enough evidence to charge Pastor Tim with a murder. Until again. One day, Pastor Tim goes and does something really stupid. Three months after Janet had died, Pastor Tim goes and he forges Janet's name and he takes out a loan for $5,000 in her. her name. And of course, this gets flagged as suspicious because dead people can't apply for loans. And so detective, he's able to use this information to bring Pastor Tim in and question him about this mysterious loan. And while he's interviewing him about this forgery, he starts asking him about the murder. And he keeps pressing him on it and pressing him. And Pastor Tim's all nervous

and he's angry and he keeps changing his story of exactly how it went down and how the pew-poo went off. And around this same time, some other officers working on the case, they track down Molly. And they tell her who Pastor Tim really is. That he's not, in fact, a Navy SEAL. He's a pastor living in Alabama, who they suspect unalived his own wife. And they tell her he's been using a fake name and a fake ID to fool her about who he is. That's why he has two driver's licenses. And Molly is like, oh, snap!

and she gets pissed and she flips on him real quick. She starts handing over emails and correspondence with him. She's like, I'll give you whatever information you need. Anyway, eventually police do gather enough evidence against him, and so bam, they arrest him. Here's his mugshot. And ultimately, Pastor Tim goes to trial twice, and he's found guilty of unaliving his wife

and he's sentenced to life in prison. Good.