Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - When Catfishing Goes Wrong - The Real Story of TallHotBlond

Episode Date: September 12, 2025

An online love triangle spirals into a deadly obsession. Thomas Montgomery, a married man in his mid-forties, pretends to be a younger Marine named “Tommy” in an internet chat room. He meets “Talhotblond,” an online persona used by an 18-year-old high schooler named Jessi.

On December 12, Disney Plus invites you to go behind the scenes with Taylor Swift in an exclusive six-episode docu-series. I wanted to give something to the fans that they didn't expect. The only thing left is to close the book. The End of an Era. And don't miss Taylor Swift, the era's tour, the final show, featuring for the first time the tortured poets department. Streaming December 12, only on Disney Plus. So this middle-aged dad is about to have an online affair with an 18-year-old girl. So the dad's name is Thomas, and Thomas is 46 when this story starts, living in New York,

and Thomas, he's a regular guy, he works in a factory, he's married, has two kids, but Thomas also has a problem. He's really bored with this regular life he lives. Not only that, he's having problems in his marriage because he can no longer get a Woody. So I'm just saying he's not doing it. well. But one day in 2005, all that changes. Because one of his co-workers at the factory, this guy, Brian, Brian is like, hey, there's this website where me and some of the other guys from work play poker together. You should come play with us. And Thomas is like,

all right. So he starts playing online poker with his coworkers and other people in a little game room, I guess you'd call it. And in that room, he ends up meeting this girl, Jesse. But her username is tall hot blonde. And so he starts messaging with her privately and he's like, are you really tall and hot and blonde? And she sends him photos of herself. And here is an actual photo of her next to her mom. And here's another photo of her. And despite the fact that he's 28 years older than she is and he's married, Thomas thinks Jesse is foin. And you know, Thomas, he doesn't want to tell her that he's some married middle-aged dad. So he starts lying to her. He's like, I'm 18 too, and I'm a Marine.

In fact, his username is actually Marine sniper. He was in the military in the past, but he's never really been a sniper. Regardless, Jesse thinks all that is kind of fine. And she's like, oh, do you have big shoulders? I like big shoulders. And Thomas is like, yeah, I do got big shoulders. And Thomas, he goes on to catfish her and create an entirely false version of himself, telling her he's a tall,

tough, muscular marine guy. And he like sends her a picture of himself when he was young. And this is actually the picture, but he's not telling her that this picture is really from 30 years ago. And so Jesse believes him. And the two of them, they hit it off and they start flirting. Then they start sending spicy messages to one another. And soon enough, they're saying, I love you to each other.

Now, when it comes to these two meeting up in real life, Thomas always makes excuses about why he can't meet up with her, like, sorry baby, I'm in the Marines. But they keep online dating, and eventually he gets way into this scheme, and he becomes addicted to talking to Jesse. He loves pretending to be a teenage war hero sniper. He even proposes to her online, and she says yes. Like what? Anyway, some time passes, and we're now in 2006. And at this point, Thomas's wife, because remember, he's married, Thomas's wife is starting to notice that he spends a lot of time on the computer

and she starts getting suspicious like, who are you talking to online? And he's like, oh, just the guys from work. And I guess she believes him, so he just keeps going. Now he knows he can never actually meet up with Jesse because then

she'll see that he's a middle-aged dad and she'll know he's a fraud and his catfish relationship will end. So he just keeps going thinking, I'll have fun with this and nothing bad will ever come from it. Until. Until one day a package is delivered to Thomas's house and Thomas's wife opens it. And she finds a love letter from Jesse, complete with spicy photos and a red thong.

Ew. And of course, Thomas's wife is shocked and disgusted. Not only is her husband having an affair, he's doing a lot of course, it with an 18 year old girl. And on top of that, he's lying to her about who he is. This guy ain't no sniper. Now, Thomas's wife, she's mad, but she doesn't want to kick her husband out of the house. I mean, they have kids together. But she does want to break up his affair. So she writes a letter to Jesse, saying, you know, the guy that you're writing is actually my husband and he's taken advantage of you. He's lying. And then she includes this photo of their family. And there is the real

Thomas. He doesn't look like a Marine sniper at all, does he? So when Jesse gets this letter, she is shocked and she's hurt. Like, how could he do this to her? How could a person on the internet tell complete lies like this? Was none of what he told her true? She wants to know the truth. And she comes up with a plan of how to find out. She remembers the username of one of Thomas's co-workers that they used to play online poker with. That guy, Brian, that I mentioned. So, she messages Brian and she's like, is Thomas really 46 years old and married? And Brian's like, yeah. And you know, he's a nice guy, so he feels bad for her, so he consoles her, and they keep talking. And they have quite a few conversations, and pretty soon they become friends. And Brian, he's

22, so he's much closer to her age. And so soon enough, bam, they start flirting, and they start sending dirty messages to each other, and Brian starts to really like Jesse. However, what Brian doesn't know is that Jesse is still mad at Thomas for lying to her, and her entire plan is to use Brian to get back at him. And so Jesse manipulates Brian into messing with Thomas, like Brian goes to work at the factory, and he tells all of Thomas's co-workers about how he catfished a girl on the internet, claiming to be an 18-year-old sniper. And of Of course, Thomas is humiliated by this. Not only that, in the online game room on the poker site,

Jesse and Brian are flirting right in front of him. And this pisses Thomas off real bad. Jesse was supposed to be his girl. So Thomas hits up Jesse, and he's like, What are you doing? And Jesse's like, Brian's close to my age and I love him. And to really rub it in his face, she reveals that she's been sending Brian spicy photos.

And this is where Thomas finally just loses it. And he vows that he's going to get rid of Brian for good. So he gets his rifle and he shows up to the factory where they work. And as Brian is leaving the building and he gets in his truck, Thomas approaches him. And he points his rifle at him and blam, blam, blam, blam, he unalives him right there in his truck. Then Thomas goes to his wife and he begs her, if the police ask, tell them that I was home all night. He's trying to create an alibi for himself. But wife is apparently still mad at him for cheating.

And so she's like, nah, and she goes and she tells police, actually officers, as a matter of fact, he wasn't home that night. And so, bam, they arrest Thomas. Here's his mugshot. Okay, but here's where the story gets really crazy. While police are interrogating Thomas about all this stuff that happened, they drop a bomb on him. They put a picture of Jesse in front of him, this picture. And Thomas is like, yeah, this is the girl I've been talking to online. And police are like, no, no, this is who you've been talking to online.

Because it turns out that Jesse isn't Jesse at all. She was also a catfish. Thomas had never been talking to the real Jesse. he was talking to Jesse's mom the whole time, a 46-year-old mother and wife. The real Jesse, the real 18-year-old girl, had no idea that her mom was pretending to be her the whole time. Not only that, her mom had been secretly taking pictures of her, sometimes including things like pictures taken up Jesse's skirt, and she'd send them to creepy guys online that she had met,

and she would pretend to be her own daughter and have, like, spicy conversations with those. guys, how fucked up is that? So Thomas was catfishing her while she was also catfishing Thomas. Brian was actually the only one of them who was telling the truth. So anyway, so Thomas, he takes a plea deal and he gets 20 years in prison while Jesse's mom, she gets no prison time because, you know, catfishing's not actually illegal.