Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - This YouTuber Was Murdered By Her Biggest Fan - The Christina Grimmie story

Episode Date: February 1, 2025

Youtuber and singer Christina Grimmie was murdered by her own fan after a concert in Orlando Florida.

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And one day, when she's about 15, her friend convinces her to post a video of her singing a cover of a Hannah Montana song on YouTube. So she does. And to Christina's surprise, pretty quickly, the video gets a little traction, tens of thousands of views. Not bad. But most importantly, people like it, and they like her. And some of these people, they start sending her requests for her to cover other songs. And so she does. And she posts another and then another.

And soon she's posting all these cover songs on YouTube and she starts building up a decent following. And after about two months of this, her followers request that she covers Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On. And so Christina does. And she posts it and it blows the fuck up. And that is when this woman sees it. Her name's Mandy. And Mandy's like, damn, this is like, damn. girl can sing. Here's the thing about Mandy though. Mandy just happens to be Selena Gomez's mom

and her manager. So Selena Gomez's mom and her stepdad, this guy. At this time, they both manage Selena together. So stepdad, aka Selena's manager, reaches out to Christina and they offer to represent her and soon Christina's got a manager. So then she works with a big vocal coach and she releases an EP. And then, boom, Selena Gomez asks her to go on tour with her as her opening act. And they actually become really good friends. And there's Selena Gomez right there.

There's Selena. And so Christina's star just keeps rising. Her YouTube channel's blowing up. She's getting all kinds of subscribers. And she wins a YouTube singing competition. And she and her family move out to Los Angeles so she can pursue making music full time. And she goes ahead and makes a full link

album. But then, she's around 19 years old at this point, she auditions for the voice, the television show. And she gets cast in the show, and Christina comes out on stage, and she absolutely nails it. And she's clearly the fan favorite, and she comes in third place overall, which is just amazing. A few years after that, she's like 22 at this point. She goes out on tour again. And big, big, big thank you to everyone that has been coming out on tour to come see me. Okay, let me stop you right here, because we'll come back. to Christina. But now we gotta talk about this guy, Kevin James. Kevin James is 27, he's from Florida, and he doesn't really got a lot going on. He lives with his parents, he works part-time at Best Buy,

the Geek Squad. He only has one friend, so he's kind of a loner. He's overweight and balding, which there's nothing wrong with that, who cares, but Kevin James is actually really insecure about it. But then, one day, Kevin James is messing around on YouTube and he comes across a video of this singer. Christina, and he is blown away by her. She's cool, she's charming, she's charismatic, she's a really talented singer. To him, she's the perfect woman. So Kevin James watches more and more of her videos and soon enough

he's consumed everything she's ever released. Every vlog, every post, every picture, every tweet, he's seen it. So Kevin James monitors her social media and over time he slowly becomes obsessed with her. And he's never showed any interest in girls before, But now that he's discovered Christina, she's all he thinks about. He's got her pictures up all over his room. He's talking about her at work to all his coworkers, and they're like, you know, this guy's

fucking weird. So clearly he's not just a fan of her work, but he has feelings for her. And those feelings are starting to take an unhealthy turn. Because now he believes that she's his soulmate and that they're destined to be together. So what does he do? Well, he starts working on himself, thinking he's going to win her over. He changes his diet to a vegan diet and he loses 50 pounds. He gets his teeth whitened.

He gets LASic eye surgery to make his vision better. He goes and gets hair implants to fix the fact that he's balding. So bro is feeling better about his looks than he ever has. And even though he's never met her in person and she doesn't even know he exists, he still thinks that maybe all these changes will somehow get her attention. Until... One day, Kevin James goes to work at Best Buy. And suddenly, his coworkers, they start roasting him, like they're making fun of him.

Now, they all know he's obsessed with this singer because he's always talking about her, and he's always listening to her music on his shift. And so they just heard a rumor that Christina now has a boyfriend, which is true. She does. So they all start teasing Kevin James like, ah, you can't have her now, and she's already got a man, you got played, bro. And allegedly, this pisses him off real bad. Because in his twist- obsessed mind, he's already in a relationship with her. And as absurd as that sounds, to him, this feels like she's cheating on him. And Kevin James is not going to let her get away with it. She is about to get dark. Now Christina, she's still on tour, and her tour is about to come through

Orlando. In Orlando is about 100 miles from where Kevin James lives. So he buys a ticket to her concert in Orlando. Then a few days before the show, he goes and picks up two Pew Pues he previously bought for this occasion. Then he takes a taxi from St. Petersburg where he lives all the way to Orlando and he heads to her concert. Now at the concert, Christina performs, she does her show and she does great, like always. And Kevin James, he's there, he's in the crowd, he's watching her, he's planning out what he's going to do, and he's allegedly still super angry about the fact that she is seeing someone else. And so the show ends and afterwards,

they're all still at the venue. And Christina is doing a meet and greet, which she always does. She's signing autographs and taking photos and just genuinely being really awesome to her fans. And her fans love her. And Kevin James, he's there and he's in line waiting with the rest of the crowd.

And when it's finally his turn to meet her, he steps up. And he seems really quiet, like he's nervous or something. So Christina notices this and she thinks she can make him feel more at ease with a hug. So she looks at him and she opens her arms wide to give him a hug. But instead of going in for the hug,

Kevin James pulls out one of his pew-pues and he points it right at her and he pulls the trigger. Blam! Blam! Blam! Christina falls to the floor and everyone freaks out and they panic and they start running. Everyone except for this guy. His name's Marcus. Now Marcus, he's Christina's brother, and he tours with her and he helps her out and stuff. And when all this goes down, Marcus is nearby running the merch table. And he sees this pew-poo go off and immediately, boom, he jumps up from behind the merch table,

and he runs over, and bam, he tackles Kevin James, and he grabs the pew-pue and they wrestle for it. And luckily, Marcus actually overpowers him and he gets it out of his hands. But then, Kevin James stands up, and he's backed up against a wall. And he pulls out the other pew-poo that he brought, and he points it at himself, and he pulls the trigger. He unalives himself. And unfortunately, you probably already know that Christina doesn't live through this event either.

And that sucks. I mean, I've been making videos for a long time, and I remember her blowing up on YouTube and when she was starting to cross over into mainstream. And I really think she was on her way to being a big star. Like, I was a fan, my wife's a big fan, so it's really sad. 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.