Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - This Unpopular Gamer Got Revenge // The David Katz Murder Story

Episode Date: June 11, 2026

In August 2018 David Katz was responsible for a shooting at a Madden NFL 19 video game tournament in Jacksonville, Florida. Katz, a 24-year-old competitive gamer from Baltimore Maryland, opened fire inside the GLHF Game Bar after losing earlier in the tournament.

Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor,

free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19-speaker AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility, and Optic delivers with precision to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac Canada.ca.

Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for Calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. Remember when that professional gamer lost a video game tournament? And then he came back with a gun? Well, that really happened. And it all started with this guy, Bread. And Brad is 21 when this story begins and he's living in Maryland. And Brett, he's got some problems.

Mental health problems, to be specific. He's had mental health issues his whole life. And to make that worse, he doesn't really have a lot of friends. So he stays pretty isolated. Really the only thing that makes him. makes him feel good is playing Madden. You know, the incredibly popular series of football video games. And this game, it isn't just a hobby for him.

Like school, friends, being social, none of that ever really clicks for bread. But Madden? Madden makes sense. Because when he's playing, he's not the weird kid anymore. He's in control. Every play, every call, every win, that's all him. And it feels good. And Madden is actually where he started going by the gamer tag, Bread. And so, Brad, he's really good at this game.

So much so that at one point, he decides he wants to be the best Madden player in the world. So he keeps practicing and playing for hours and hours and hours. Sometimes he even stays up all night playing. And over time, his skill level goes way up. So much so that he gets good enough to compete in official Madden tournaments. And in 2015, he does start competing. And he does pretty well. But then, one day, he goes to compete in a Madden tournament in Las Vegas.

And there, he competes against a lot of really good players. But particularly this guy. His gamer tag is Trueboy. And so Bread and True Boy, they meet, and immediately True Boy doesn't like him. Not because they're competing, but because he thinks Bread is just a weird dude and a socially awkward person. Aside from that, True Boy ends up beating bread in the tournament. But, you know, no big deal to bread.

you can't win them all. But then afterwards, all the players are attempting to leave, and True Boy gets into a taxi, and Bread he's supposed to get in too. But before he can, boom, True Boy slams the door closed, and he leaves him standing there. And this disrespect really pisses Bread off. And from here on out, these two guys hate each other. But whatever, Bread moves on.

And it's now 2017, so he's 23 at this point. And that year, he signs up to play in this Madden tournament in Buffalo, New York. And he travels from Maryland all the way up to Buffalo, and he starts competing in this tournament against other Madden players. And lucky for him, True Boy isn't in this one. He's actually competing in a different division. And so, this is going pretty well for him. He's there, he's playing, he's kicking ass, he's dominating the other players, and he does

so well that he ends up reaching the finals. But here's the thing. Bread's mental health has always been an issue, like I said. I mean, you can only mask it so much. And during this tournament, the other players notice that his behavior is pretty abnormal. Like he completely refuses to interact or speak or make eye contact with any of his peers. During the matches, his behavior ends up being sort of robotic and eerie. And like, he doesn't appear to blink when he plays. And I don't know how much these guys really pick on him.

but Bread has always felt like an outcast among the other gamers. Regardless, he's not really focused on that. He's there to win. But here's the thing. He isn't supposed to win this, like he's the underdog, and he's playing as the seventh seed, which means six other players are ranked ahead of him and expected to win. But he keeps winning and winning,

and he claws his way all the way to the finals against the number one seed. And this match is a war. Like they play over six hours of Madden back and forth and it comes down to the final seconds. And these two guys are tied 20 to 20. But then, Bread launches a Hail Mary and the ball hangs in the air. And boom, touchdown. He wins the whole Buffalo Division Championship, shocking everyone.

This is actually a picture of him after he won. And from this win, he gets $3,500 and a free trip to Lodagh Los Angeles for the Madden Club Series Championship. And this is a really big deal and this means so much to him. And with this win, he's riding really high. In fact, he realizes he's so good at this game that he could probably make money teaching other people to play. And that is exactly what he does.

He tries to parlay this win into something more. He writes a whole e-book, a Madden NFL strategy guide. Focusing on elite strategies and highly specific competitive tactics. And he puts this book for sale online so that, you know, he can cash in a little. But then True Boy finds out about this. And he goes online and he buys the e-book and then he posts it publicly so that anyone can just read it for free. And this obviously upsets bread a lot, as it should. It's a messed up thing to do.

And so it's now 2018. And bread is still upset by this. He's upset about a lot of things. He's upset at True Boy. He's upset at the gaming community. He's upset at being picked on. And he enters this Madden tournament down in Jacksonville, Florida. And True Boy is expected to be there.

So before he leaves Maryland, he heads to a local gun store, and he buys a couple of handguns. After that, he drives 11 hours from Baltimore all the way down to Jacksonville, Florida. And when he gets there, he goes into the building, which is the good luck, have fun, game bar, which is inside a restaurant called Chicago Pizza. And there, he joins the tournament. And so Bread, he's, you know, doing his normal thing. He's playing Madden. He's competing. He's even winning some of the matches. Then he starts losing. And he loses a very important match, a match that he feels like he should have won. And he gets really frustrated. And afterwards, the players, they're supposed to shake each other's hand, like in any competition. And bread refuses to shake

to shake that guy's hand. He's just that mad. But the day ends, and so he has time to go back to his hotel room and cool off. But see, he doesn't cool off. He's still upset about all this. Not about just losing, but just upset about everything.

And so the next morning, he shows up to the venue to compete in his next match. And unfortunately for him, he loses pretty badly. And in that moment, something inside him just, snaps. He is tired of losing when he should have won. He's tired of seeing Trueboy at these tournaments making fun of him. He's just tired of all of this. So he decides it's time to punish

Trueboy. So Bread, he leaves the venue and he goes to his car and he gets his backpack, which has his guns in it. Then he goes back inside Chicago Pizza and then into the good luck have fun game bar where all the players are competing. And that is when he pulls a gun, out of his backpack and he looks around the room for one person, True Boy. And he spots him sitting in a chair deep into playing a match against someone. And Bred points the gun at him and it has a laser sight attachment on it. So he aims that red dot right on True Boy. And no one notices because everyone is too focused on the game.

And so right in that moment, Blam! Blam! Blam! He shoots True Boy and this unfortunately kills him. And of course, the gunfire causes everyone to panic and they all freak out and they run for the exit at the same time. But bread, he's not done. He was never going to stop with just Trueboy. He's going to take out as many people as he can. And so blam, blam, he keeps shooting.

And blam, he hits one guy. And then blam, he hits another guy. And he keeps going, blam, blam, blam. And by the time he's done, he shot 12 people and two of them unfortunately die. And after all this chaos, bread finally just unalives himself.