Sword and Scale - Episode 110

Episode Date: March 17, 2018

Part 2 of the Natalie Bollinger Murder...See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is Brevery. I remember them telling us that we should look around our unit because, you know, at least five Marines in our unit would be killed. This is heroism. The idea that people that we know are dying and they're gonna put us in jail for it. This is patriotism. You don't really think about it about the possibility of getting killed because we were just taking it one day at a time, one patrol at a time.

This is war. Premieres March 13th. Subscribe now at Apple Podcasts. Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence, and is not intended for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised. Just one thing, here's what I would like to see. And I know people are going to freak, but I want to see everybody use their real name when they post something. Hello, and welcome to Sword and Scale, Season 5, 5 episode 110 and part 2 of the Natalie Bollinger murder. On this a show that reveals that the worst monsters are real. 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc

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1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc So the missing read person's report came in at about 3 30. The last time that from anybody that we've spoken to during this investigation that anybody had heard from her was about 1 o'clock that same day. It was then reported that she was a missing person and just about 26 hours later, 23 hours later is when we found the body. When you start looking at it, I mean, it's just, there's something that's weird there

and you don't know what it is. And I think being, again, human being, we're like, we have this innate sense in us to be problem solvers. So we think we can solve anything. Oh, you see this post and you're like, this guy did it. We know he did it. And, you know, sometimes things aren't what they seem. Things aren't what they seem. A 43 year old

disheveled homeless man named Sean Schwartz has been harassing a young girl and her family. So much so that this girl takes out a restraining order against him. Two weeks later, she ends up missing. A day after that, police find her lifeless body in the field. Before police have even officially identified the body, her father, Ted Bollinger, goes on a local news station's Facebook website and proclaims that his daughter is dead, also asking for money through a GoFundMe. News outlets report on this strange murder showing the crazy ramblings of this homeless man, the man most likely responsible.

A man who continues to post Facebook live videos, rambling about politics and homeless rights and rape culture, lashing out at every injustice he perceives. Sound familiar? The videos don't stop, and neither does the interest of a small community of self-proclaimed web sleuths. So what I noticed, probably the first day that this case really good, and it blew up the first day I started following it, which I was surprised I've followed true crime pages. I think, you know, it's a big thing right now. And so for this case, I saw I just for Natalie Bollinger group and I joined it and there was only probably like, I'd say like 500 members at the time, but at the end of the day there

was 2,000 people in there. And everyone's speculating, putting their theories out there, pointing fingers and it just grew into what I would consider and have considered a shit show. Well, everybody loves a good shit show, right? Yeah. Exactly. There are theories on social media too. Sure.

Look at all of those. Yes. Yeah. Just your reaction to all that. And in today's day and age, it's kind of fascinating how much information that we can gain through that. But it's also on the other side of that, there's a lot of information that is absolutely untrue,

false accusations, claims that never were. So those are all things that just like you suggest that we look at, and then we try to collaborate that. Does that make sense? Does that fit in with what's being said? Our goal is to make sure that we're not heading down a path down a rabbit trail that we don't need to go down. So one of those rabbit holes was Ted Bollinger, Natalie's father. Well, again, this is all hearsay and speculation. This has been thrown around by some of the leading people in these groups have just been pointing fingers saying, well, he has drugs and hidden. So, you know, criminal history with drugs and cartels and the web

sleuths dig up Ted's past, which includes a series of arrests. May 28, 1999, offense, child abuse, June 10, 2001, offense, third degree assault, criminal mischief, March 5, 2013, offense receiving stolen goods under $500. August 2, 2015, offense child abuse, August 2, 2015, offense, third degree assault, simple assault dismissed. September 16, 2016 parole eligibility along with that a series of civil judgments against him and an eviction it's clear Ted Bolinger was no saint but the frenzy

of accusations against a dead girl's father reach feverish proportions on some of the Facebook groups and then spill out onto the GoFundMe page after a series of strange events related to Natalie's funeral. First, the memorial service is suddenly cancelled, and the following post is distributed within the Facebook groups following this case. Many of you are asking why Natalie's services were cancelled the day before her planned funeral. As the managing partner of the funeral home, I will tell you why. In the state of Colorado, you must have both parents agree to all funeral plans and cemetery

arrangements. They must also agree on funds coming from the District Attorney's Office. This includes funeral home, church, and cemetery arrangements. In Natalie's case, the parents were unable to reach an amicable agreement on how all of the funeral services would be conducted. We can post all night on theories on what we believe or who is responsible. At the end of the day, Federal Heights Police Department, Adams County Sheriff's Office, Thrive Church Pastures, and the management of Carol Lewell in Funeral Home decided an amicable agreement to meet Colorado Funeral Statutes was not possible.

With this said, we don't take sides of either parent or family members. It's unfortunate in a situation like this that we cannot honor Natalie's life tomorrow uh... you know i mean just because someone may have a drug charge in their past you can't just create these speculations and throw them out there like their facts when you don't really know your your stranger online thousands of miles away reading a news article where there was uh... was one of his businesses had apparently gotten hit

by a raid. But now you're throwing in, oh, cartels and all these other variables that realistically aren't correct. So that's about as much as I know about him. The GoFundMe page had mostly supportive comments, but a few people, including someone named Haley Vincent, decides to go on the attack. So the day before the service, Monday, Ted another family went to the funeral home. He was threatening everyone, including the priest. He was screaming and cussing and causing a huge scene, so the cops were called. Both parents received $5,000 each

from the victim's fund to cover these expenses. Was actually told today, the secret service that no one knew about, but her mom's side was wonderful. And Ted wasn't there due to the GoFundMe BS. He also spent all the GoFundMe money on himself. Just in FYI, he didn't pay for the cremation. I know for a fact. Haley Vincent posts the following message three times on the GoFundMe. You are a vile and filthy pig, Ted Bolinger. Let it be known, not a scent of this campaign

went to any service or to bury his daughter. He also had to be escorted from the church after flipping out and using vulgar language to the priest report this campaign he will be looking at fraud charges now have you seen a case in which someone was accused of of a horrible crime and and that's happened that literally has happened where their life has been kind of pulled apart online by

web sleuths that made a mistake well fortunately on web sleuths that made a mistake. Well fortunately on web sleuths, we don't allow people to accuse anybody of a crime unless they have been talked about as a person of interest by police. But again, we do have these safety nets in there to make sure that we don't just grab some random person and start throwing mud at them.

That is the one thing we don't want to do. I can't imagine. I can't imagine being a father and suffering probably the worst experience you could possibly suffer as a father losing your child and then being accused of murdering your child and having it be complete bullshit. There are cases out there now where the father and the mother, it's very suspicious but nothing has been conclusive, but you're right. That is the absolute, I can't, you know, I've been accused of publicly of doing things that I never did.

And that's awful enough to be accused of murdering your child. I can't imagine how awful that would be. And that is reckless. Now, if there is something that law enforcement has indicated that that person is possibly a suspect, that's where it gets to be a big gray area because people do want to discuss true crime. And this is what the police are telling us, so we'll look at the evidence. But again, you have to be responsible, Mike.

And we do our best on web-sloser when we discuss a person accused of a crime, we don't allow them to name calling and do terrible things like that. We just try and look at the evidence. But again, I'm sure we're not always successful at that. And then when you add in Facebook and other crime forms that just don't have any rules, it can get really ugly and it's very irresponsible. Just one thing, here's what I would like to see. And I know people are going to be free, but I want to see everybody use their real name

when they post something. Huffington Post went from anonymous posters to you had to have a Facebook account. Everybody said that's going to die on the vine. Nobody's going to do that. Well, they're more popular than ever. I don't see why you can't put your name up to something you say and stand by it. But to me, if you're going to accuse somebody like that, you put your name behind it. You'd be big enough, a big enough person to stand behind what you say. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

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Hello. This is Misty Evans. Hi. Much like many of the rest of us. Misty was intrigued by this case early on. I don't even know where to start. She heard about the case and decided to start a Facebook group. It started out being called Missing Nathalie Ballinger. And then the next day they found their body, so we changed it to Justice Fernando Lee Ballinger. And then a certain other admin went nuts and formed her own group and named it Justice Fernando Lee Ballinger. So we changed our name again to a series and discussion that way People could talk about what they thought without I don't know without feeling intimidated Now I want to get to that other admin

But first just tell me a little bit about what was going on in this group? What what were people posting about what you know, what was it all about? It was a lot of of course speculation and of course people posting about what, you know, what, what was it all about? It was a lot of course speculation. And of course, I would say 95% of the beginning surrounded Sean because of how public his posts were and how public Natalie's post was about the restraining order. So it was a lot of talk about Sean and could he possibly have been the one that did this or not that sort of thing.

Yeah, what did you think of Sean? I have a hard time with Sean. I just have a hard time with him not respecting her boundaries. She said no, she said stop it, she got her serenimordor and he continued. Even after her death, he was throwing all of her skeletons out for the world to see, and that wasn't his place to do so. So I have a really hard time with him. I have a nephew that is autistic, full spectrum autistic, nothing like Sean.

I know that there's a whole array. I just have a hard time with him. I honestly don't believe his autism has even been fully diagnosed by a doctor. He does seem to throw that out there quite a bit along with the panic attacks he says he has for just about everything. Right. And people that usually, I mean, I have a husband that suffers panic attacks on the regular and he doesn't talk about them. Like he doesn't make a Facebook post thing. You guys are giving me panic attacks or I had 20,000 panic attacks today. So it's hard for me to see somebody using it as a crutch when I don't really think that that's using it. Let's face it, Sean Schwartz looked suspicious as hell.

Immediately if you looked for Natalie on Facebook and social media takes things in such a different direction, but if you immediately looked for Natalie, you saw her last, very last public post, which is unfortunate that it had to be that, but it pointed right to him. So, of course, everybody's going to go look for Trump's shorts. And, you know, went to his page and there were, I mean, there's dozens of public videos. So it was hard not to be pointed to him. I think that social media made it very easy to point to him. And Natalie's last post was almost like she was writing a warning. Like, hey, watch out, this guy's going to kill me almost. And then you go to his videos and you see what he says about her.

Like, he wants to shoot himself in front of her so that she could feel his warm blood. Like, that's not anybody with half of a brain would think, holy crap, what did I just see? And honestly, the media didn't even pick up on it right away. It took a bit. How did you come to interview Sean? I mean, initially, I was like, oh man, it's got this hatch to be the guy who had something to do with her disappearance with her murder. And I wanted to come at it with a non-biased judge. I just wanted to hear his side of the story. I wanted to see what he thought without any outside interference, without hearing what

this person said about him. I just wanted to hear from him his story along this journey. I mean, it looks bad. And, you know, like I said, you have thousands of strangers online sending him messages, telling him that they're going to come kill him. And do all this stuff. And I think that when you step back and look at it like that, it's not fair. We're turning into a... It's not even a justice system as well.

I would say it's you're more guilty by your peers than you are being tried in a court of law. It's torches and pitchforks. Exactly. Within the 10-day two-week mark, he had made a post that he was going to an adress. I believe it was a church, but on the back side of the church there was a shelter and he wanted somebody to come kill him. On January 6th of 2018, Sean Schwartz posted this at 6.31pm on his page. I'm on my way to John's church in Boulder on 15th and Spruce.

Come out me in the ground, you fucking cowards. Then at 7.49 p.m. I am waiting. Come put me in the ground. Been here a while. Come put me in the ground, you fucking cowards. Then at 10.43 p.m. Fucking god damn cowards.

That night Sean ends up getting arrested for assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest. So what happened is some friends in mind because all the people threatened to kill me and my family and my friends at a side I was going to just let them have me. So nobody cares

that's pretty much the gist of it. That's the way it always is. When I'm having a fear panic attack, and more people do the make sense, just scare them to shit at me. And I'm already scared to shitless because my family is in danger. Despite Sean's insistence that nobody cares and nobody helps, it seems that a lot of people, strangers really, on the internet, tried to come to this man's assistance. But it wasn't the kind of assistance he wanted and it wasn't in the way that he wanted it. So people publicly saw that and I know that several people made a welfare check phone call.

Some people were trying to help me with a take out of their belief. This is what led up to the events and they haven't found it checked. We didn't listen to the events and they have an panic attack to begin with in the church. I, uh, there were dropping a couple of names and they kind of scared me. Also, I needed to be for Monday because I need to go get that flip phone. As part of the arrest, the police had confiscated Sean's flip phone, which contained text between him, Natalie, Natalie sister, and a few other people that could be important to the investigation. They told Sean he would be able to pick up that phone on Monday.

But a few concerned friends on the internet thought he should leave much sooner than that. There's a lot of people involved, but I didn't really know what was going on. And I'm trying to let them know that I was really having the panic attack. And then you might have been cursed at a couple of levels. Did you catch that? He said he might have cursed at some of the people who are actually trying to help him. Some of the threads then speculate that

Sean has Tourette's syndrome. Like as soon as I was done with that, I was like, uh, uh, you know what, uh, Sean suddenly decides to take off his shirt

mid-sentence, and groans and grunts in what seems like severe pain. A friend of mine bought me a ticket so I could leave so I could be safe and that ticket was wasted because I told them I needed to wait until Monday and I was trying to explain that to him. I had to wait until Monday to get my ticket. I couldn't go any sooner. They got me a ticket for that night to leave.

So I had a panic attack and they sent me an Uber and it was sitting there for a half hour while I'm at the safe trying to get money from West Union and I would just under so much pressure like you guys got no idea and there was nobody there. No way tax relief there. pressure like you guys got no idea and there was nobody there. No way tax really there. They sent me money, they sent me an Uber, they sent me a bus ticket, sent me all sorts of shit. I couldn't fucking use because I was busy having a panic deck. I mean, someone there, one person to correspond with me that didn't happen. So I gave up and I decided to let them kill me. The cops wouldn't let them. Instead, they took me in for the wellness check.

Listen to this next part for a clue, as to why this man who harassed a young girl claims he was harassed himself. My phone was very low on battery. That's part of the reason that I'm gonna think of up and said that I just let Tim Beeson and his bitch boys come and get me. Tim Beeson and his bitch boys. But who the hell is Tim Beeson and his rich boys come get me. Tim Beeson and his rich boys.

But who the hell is Tim Beeson? And Tim, I actually talked to him. And he was very interesting character. Not in a negative way. Just when I reached out to him, I saw, again, on these groups, people just attacking his name. So I wanted to reach out and ask how he was doing. And he was very heartfelt about what he had to say about her.

I mean, you know, a people were like, well, he must have done something because he made a huge donation on the GoFundMe. And when I talked to him, he said, if I could have paid for the whole thing, I would have, but it's all the money I had. And, you know, just talking about, you know, he wrote a song that he wanted to play her memorial. I mean, he was genuinely a heartfelt character and, you know, really cared about this girl. And and again you just have people speculating throwing their name under the bus and trying to point a finger without even knowing person without even taking the time to just say hey how are you doing

and it's just crazy yeah uh... go here's this time it is hey this is mike bute i just uh... texted you a few minutes ago Hey, is this Tim? It is. Hey, this is Mike Bude, I just texted you a few minutes ago. Yeah.

First of all, I have to say to you, I'm very sorry for your loss. I don't know. Anything about you or how close you were with Natalie, but I know that you did know her, so I have to say that I'm very sorry for your loss right now. Thank you. Cause I was actually pretty close at all. I dated her for a while. After a while, we, you know, she moved back to Colorado

after we had dated. She moved back to Colorado after we had dated. And a few months ago, we started talking about it again. And then one day she went missing. How long ago was it when you guys were dating? I'd say about a year ago. Was she dating anybody in between between like after or after you? She had dated. After she dated me, she dated some dude out in Virginia for a little while.

Then split with him and moved back out here. And started talking to me again. And then stopped talking to me for about a year. And during that time it was with someone out here as far as I know. Do you know that person's name? The last I heard she was with a deep name, Jelvi. Okay, that's what I heard too. The only time she really mentioned Jelvi to me was that he held on to a dog for

her and that was all the more he came up in conversation. She wasn't dating him when she went missing, was she? I think she may have been. Do you know anything about what's going on with this case? Do you know if this Joey person has emerged anywhere, has anybody heard of from him? Um, I have, I, nobody has heard of her. Her, her, her, more seen him. He just kind of disappeared.

But as far as with the case, the day that she went missing, Joey called me off of her phone. Because earlier that day, she and I were texting because it was a fairly warm day out, little wear and collar out of, you know, and she likes to ride motorcycles.

I happen to have motorcycles. She's having a rough time with her stalker problems, everything, she's only shooting. She wanted to get away from it for a while, and said, well, I can't help you move or anything. I can't afford to have that. I take out a motorcycle ride, which you want to go Friday. It's supposed to be a little warm.

She says, what can we go today, which would have been a Thursday. I said, yeah, I sure just got a grab of code. She says, okay, let me get a few things taken care of first and I'll let you know when I'm ready to go. Okay, a few hours rolls by, I had gone out and ridden a little bit, you know, just to be ready to go whenever she would call. And it got a little too cold to be alright and so I went home. And then a few hours after I had gotten home, her boyfriend, her current boyfriend that she was with when she went missing called me off of her phone. What did he say?

He asked if Natalie was with me. I told him, no, I said, we were supposed to go on a ride but I never heard back from him. And he goes, well, I can't find her. And she's missing and so is my girl. So is my wife? Hit with his girl, spy her on. And I said, what do you mean she's missing? Because her phone is at the house. She is not at the house, and neither is my gut. It isn't.

I don't. It's not like Natalie to just leave her phone somewhere. That's not something she does. And I said, right. Because it's true. She didn't leave her phone anywhere, rather than a circumstance. She's the teenage girl.'t even go from anywhere. Well, there are any circumstances. She was the F-188's girl.

Things glued to her head. And then he hung up. I didn't get any responses from anybody until another couple hours later when her twin sister called me and was freaking out. Because her sister is missing. And she had no idea that Joey had already called to tell me there and ask if I had seen her. During this call, Natalie's twin sister, Alicia, informs Tim Beeson that she knew he was talking to Natalie again.

According to Tim, she made it sound like nobody else really knew. Natalie hadn't really told anyone that they were talking. But Tim Beeson says the reason they were talking was because of Sean. The reason we had started talking was she wanted my help with getting old copies and screenshots of stuff involved in Sean. For restraining order, for the protection order because when he when he first had become a problem I was with her. I was dating her at that time and he had been a problem for a little while before she and I had started dating at that time. When did you first hear about this Sean character and how

did that happen? We were, I don't know, we've probably been dating for a month, maybe two months. And she shot me a message, she was, babe, she was, you need to know about this because this dude is freaking me out. And I said, okay, well, what's up? And she was this guy, I met a while back. He was a homeless guy. I started talking to him, Yaliyatta, I met a while back. He was a homeless guy. I started talking to him, Yaliyata, I saw bad form. I wanted to help him, and now he won't leave me alone.

Tim actually sent me some of the screenshots of text conversations between himself and Natalie about Sean Stockinger. They seemed legitimate, and there's no reason to doubt they aren't. And he's texting me all kinds of crazy shit. He's like obsessed with it, and he's starting to scum, and I want him to go away. I want him to meet me alone. So, maybe the boyfriend, not too particularly fond of someone harassing my girlfriend,

or any girlfriend like that i'd hit him up i said hey partner you need to do it you need to back to fuck off like you can't you can't tree girls like this uh... i don't care what your problem is you can't she's absolutely for a long and should respect that and he turned his attention from her to start a post-abontist shit about me and her ass

and me. Which I mean find her ass me and we still even her along. I'll just ignore you. It doesn't bother me. But he kept, he was persistent. And after a while, he stopped. He just kind of disappeared. He stopped posting about her, he started posting about a bunch of other crazy stuff,

but he left the balls of us alone for a while. Eventually Natalie and Tim break up, but they remain close friends. We ended up having our disagreements because she's wanted to live a lifestyle that I've already lived through and didn't want to be a part of. But I'm not. I can't tell her what to do. She's her own person. What do you mean by that?

She's at that time, she liked party and stuff. And I'm not much a partyer anymore. I found myself in a lot of bad situations because of it. So I tend to stray away from parties, but that was something she wanted to do. She liked to go and go drinking with her friends and all this, and it's just not necessarily my thing. Drugs. You could have been and free. You know She did a bit to me a couple of times that that she had used drugs and whatever we talked about it But I was never necessarily under the impression that she was like wildly like

Doing drugs or anything like that That it just didn't fit her personality She you know she's more the kind of person that I could see sitting back and eating the handful of mushrooms and giggling on her ass off. That kind of thing. So I never really figure it out too much of a problem with it. But at the same time, that's not something that I want around my life or whatever and she and I have disagreements about the way that we wanted to do stuff so we've parted ways.

And I didn't, you know, and I stopped talking to her at times left with me and then one day out of the blue, I got a message from her. She had gotten a hold of me and said, hey, Sean's back. He's causing a problem. I need to get her restraining water. And I said, okay, well, what can I do? How can I help? She goes, well, do you have any of these messages from this time or any of these messages? And I said, I can look, but I didn't figure that I would need them. And Shows well, yeah, I didn't either, but now he's like, he's following me. And shit. And like, he's actually posting things and he's not just posting things about me.

He's posting things about you and he's like getting on my dad's page and posting things about my dad on his Facebook and stuff like that. And I was like, whoa, okay, yeah, give me a second. I'll look. And we went through and she did eventually get everything she needed to get the protection order but on this protection order with this thing the way that they did it was that she had to find a way to serve shown herself she had to get someone herself to serve that's

insanity and have a witness yeah dude fucked up and have a witness. Yeah, dude, fucked up and have a witness. Who what who tells a victim of stalking that they have to serve there? They're their predator. Yeah. And then and here's the even more fucked up part. They put her address on the paperwork that he was served. They gave him her location. What the hell? I've got copies of that shit in text format. This is when Natalie texts Sean and agrees to see him. Immediately after he was given the protection order because she was freaked out about having to give it to him.

So I said, you know what you do? I said, you arrange to meet him, but you don't go there yourself. You send an officer in there to serve it to him. And she was like, that's, she was a great idea. She was, yeah, I'm going to do that. She says, that same day, she was, he's still texting me. He's like posting about me and stuff. And it says on the paperwork that he's like supposed to leave me alone and yada yada. And she's, what do I do? And I said, well, contact the police.

This is their job. This is where they're supposed to be stepping in and, you know, doing the cop thing. And she was, okay, yeah. And she gets, I guess, out of hold of them. And they went out and they talked to them. And then a couple of days later she shoots me a message and I can send out and you screen shots of this too. We're of her telling me that shot is texting her that he's like right the fuck by her

house and she's and she was freaking out because he's how he's messaging her and letting her know like hey I know where you you live and I'm not far away. I'm sure you've gone over the Facebook and just the whole person together. Yes. Can you talk a little bit about that to us? Would you know if there's anything that you can share with us? You know, we have through that through Facebook and all of the information that's out there,

we have followed up on all of those leads. We have interviewed a lot of witnesses. Have we interviewed those folks that are on the Facebook page, yes. And it's all part of the entire investigation that we're putting together at this point. Not ready to call anybody at this point a suspect, but it's certainly something that is going to lend itself as we investigate this further, we need to take all of this information in, digest it, and see how it relates, and how. We have about the same time she disappeared. We have talked to him. And again, not ready to call anybody a suspect, but it certainly a piece of our investigation, a piece of our timeline.

So she was targeted in the face. You're saying that nobody, we, the public doesn't need to be alarmed or worried. Correct. I don't know that I would go as far as to say that she was targeted, but I, you know, again, knowing what I know, knowing where the investigators are at in the case right now, I don't have a concern. And as the sheriff in a very large county, I don't, I don't, I don't know if you're going as the sheriff in a very large county, I don't think that there's a concern to our community at this point.

What does your gut tell you? Like what does your gut tell you about what happened here? My gut says that this whole situation is off. That there's so much of this that doesn't line up that this whole situation is off. There's so much of this that doesn't line up that how can they say that days after she gets a protection order, she's killed, and this dude has nothing to do with it or they're not more seriously looking into this dude. And he is, as far as I know of, the only person who actually threatened Natalie.

So I would think that that would be pretty obvious. And as far as I'd ever seen everything about him scream is that he's enough of a lunatic to do it. So I would, I'd say, if I had to make a judgment call I would, I'd say if I had to, if I had to make a judgment call right now, I'd say, yeah, probably him. And you watch the videos and the way that this has freaking out. Like he had videos on his Facebook page labeled how to talk to pray, how to talk to a predator. Like it like kind of crazy shit like that. How is he not more of a suspect? Was my initial reaction to all of it? Was like, how is it because the

eerie thing in my life, this will, I, this fucks me up, because she called it. She on the phone with me, she called it. Like the day when she called to tell me that he had violated the restraining order that day, she called to talk to me about that and told me over the phone, she said if I ever go missing or turn out dead or something like that, it was sharp. She was, I am terrified of this dude and if anything something like that, it was sharp. She was, I am terrified

of this dude and if anything happens to me, it was him. He did it. He is the only one crazy enough to do it. Wow. Three days later, she went missing. Do you know a man by the name of Evan Dacca? Yes. What do you know about him? And I of Evan Dacca? Yeah. What do you know about it? And I do know what he did to you. So I mean, we have these groups saying, oh, it's Ted. It's Ted.

He's only in it. He killed his daughter for financial gain. And oh, he had drug debts. So these people were coming. It's all Ted's fault. And, you know, that quickly started to fall apart. And then it went to Joey. And what do we know about Joey?

Nothing. Because no one even knows if he exists at this point. And then, you know, he finds his Instagram profile. It's private, so you can't really look too much into and he has no face book but everyone says that he's in custody and again these are just speculations and rumors but what do we know about your nothing we can't even to this day we still can't find

any information about this kid just that they live together that's all I was ever able to hear. It just seems like everybody wants to be a detective. Right, and I think that goes back to what I said about as a human beings. What I've learned over my short life is that we have a set of problems solving skills. And most of us as human beings, we want to help do what we can. I mean, we just found out a 19-year-old girl that was murdered.

You know, all this information and evidence that points us to one person. So we want to go out and gather all the information we can and help catch the guy. But sometimes, especially with social media, we take it a little bit too far. We don't take into consideration, we have a family that's grieving. We have strangers pointing fingers at this person, at this person, at this person, even inside the family. And that gets a little scary. Now you don't know this, but the reason that I kind of reached out to you, and the reason that I started talking to you and having you kind of assist

in some of these communications with some of these people, these players online, was because of a man named Evan Daca. Do you know who that is? This is the way things are getting kind of interesting. So, the first few days upon the groups before they kicked me out for asking for their sort of people's sources, I started seeing posts about someone called the mailman. I'm thinking, I don't know who this is, who is the mailman? That's ominous, the mailman. Who the fuck is the mailman? Exactly, Ious, the male man. Who the fuck is the male man? Exactly, I'm like, you know,

I'm trying to figure out who the male man is. And then I get added into another group. And there's like 14 people in there. And so I start, you know, talking around and I find out it's Evan. So I reached out to him and he was just kind of asking me about why I was working like we know why I was so interested in this case. And I was like oh you know I heard this episode of Sorgs Sword and Scale, really it was kind

of coincidental. And then the first response I'm pretty sure was, look Mike Bude. And I'm pretty sure was, look, Mike, you're day. And I'm like, um, okay, well, uh, why, you know, I don't understand. And he was just like, well, he went after, he went after Ted on the day that he announced Natalie's death. On a post in one of the Facebook groups, Ted Bolinger left the comment, thank you everyone, please share. To which I immediately replied, Mr. Bolinger, I'd like to talk with you about this.

If you can, please message me at mbudei at swordenscale.com. That's it. I didn't leave any other comments, I didn't directly private message him, I just left that comment and went about my day. Ted never got back to me, but the mailman, Evan Daca, did. Can I ask how you have the stomach to ask a grieving father who hasn't even had 24 hours to mourn his daughter, to contact you to be on his show? Don't you think by not giving the family time to grieve you are exploiting

them for your own personal benefit? I gotta tell you dude, I used to love your show, but I've lost all respect for you and will be publicly speaking out against it. If you continue these awful tactics aimed, no podcast is that important. He then posts a screenshot of my comment asking Ted to email me, along with the following comment. Just because you delete it doesn't mean I don't have proof. In my head I'm thinking, okay, isn't that what journalists do though? Yes.

Like, I mean, if I'm covering a story, if I am a journalist and I'm covering a story that is blowing up by the minute of course i want it out you know i'm gonna be respectful i'm going to say you know i'm very sorry for your loss i'm hoping that we can talk sometime and that's what you did because i saw i saw the comment i saw you know i saw you know you know i i didn't see anything on the profession i didn't see you trying to attack her for last head the ironic part of this is that this man who's scolding me on respecting the grieving father

had engaged in what one might call a little victim shaming of his own. This comment is in regards to Sean Schwartz, who Evan Daca, with his investigative mailman skills, has ruled out as a suspect completely. Just being real, she 100% definitely let him on, calling him baby, and saying how much with his investigative mailman skills has ruled out as a suspect completely. to which someone else responds. Holy shit, are we actually victim blaming when the poor girl isn't even six feet under yet? And that was another big reason why he was removed from our group. That's another huge thing that we don't allow is victim shaving, it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter what she did. She's not here to defend herself. Yeah. And I never got behind the whole, she let him on. She was being nice to her person that needed a friend and took it too far that's what I think I think With everything this guy just kind of blew it out of proportion and Didn't realize that even local news was going after Ted to try and get an interview

So I don't understand where the hatred came from all all of a sudden but it was strong with this one it seems like he was offended by the fact that he was no longer the center of attention in the story right and and you can't i mean this is your part of community at this point you know i mean you're

in all these Facebook groups. You're trying to find out information just the way everyone else is trying to find information. You're a local guy. So, I mean, yeah, of course, you're able to be a little bit more involved and hands on. And give people, basically, I would consider it's town rumors. But, I mean, when you have, what are you gonna do this to the news people? Are you gonna go to your local ABC station

and fuck you guys for asking a question? You know, you can't be like that. I don't know, I was just kinda at a loss for words when he said all this and you know he made he made you out to be the bad guy and I'm just like you don't know what you're talking about. Did you even take the time to reach out and be like, hey man I didn't think that was a good idea. Maybe you could have done it this way. No. And it was just like, well this pissed me off so I'm going to attack your name.

And it shouldn't have been that way. He was in our group early on. He's a male man in Colorado. You know that, I'm sure. He crossed real life boundaries, very, very, very early on. He posted Natalie's apartment, like he knew where she lived. And, or, no and or sorry I need to correct that. He didn't actually post your apartment he gave everybody the

cross street to where she lived and then he I believed before we kicked him he went to the crime scene and was taking photos so we booted him from our group. So he's a he's a real life detective. Oh yeah, postman. Slash, Melmatt, yeah. That's great. Yeah. What about, so you said that you know what he did to me? Can you explain that?

So he was one of Kara's admins early on. Kara was also one of the original admins. We'll get into her in just a minute. And then about a week later, something happened, and I don't know exactly what happened between the two of them, but he decided to leave and deactivate its Facebook. And then he sent me a message and said that people were after him. And I said, who and why?

And he said that you are because he docks you or something. If I, I mean, I can go back and look at my messages from him, but something about he posted your information or something, and so they told him that you were going to post his or I don't remember. So something along those lines. Now I just, I didn't post his. I just told people what he did. He posted a picture of my house and threatened to post a post.

What is wrong with him? Evan Daca, who also goes by the name inflated penguins, will later write a Facebook post. Sup guys, I'm still here. I had to deactivate my account for safety reasons. May have to do it again. I'm usually a pretty nice guy, and wouldn't call names, but if anyone thinks my silence means I was somehow involved, you're a fucking moron. And you need to find a new hobby because you suck at this. Just because you can't find new clues, I promise they are out there. Doesn't mean you should get bored and attack people. Don't attack me.

Simply because I'm better at this than you are. It's funny how many people in this story engage in pretty awful behavior and then play victim. Evan Daca is just one of those examples. A much more extreme example is one of the original moderators of the original Natalie Bollinger group. Yeah, Kara, one of the first things she said to me was, aren't you the guy that Evan said not to talk to? Huh?

Huh? Yeah, no, this is what she said. She said, aren't you the one that harassed Evan Docka? He said you docks to him. That's what the yeah, he did say that to me, theory, that you were going to dox him or that you did dox him or something. A lot of doxing in this world. But here's the thing, Misty says they have this rule in their group, a rule that can get you booted, a rule that was the reason that Evan got booted. It's called don't go real life So we just have kind of a hard rule that

When you cross over into a real life boundaries when it goes outside of Facebook when it goes from You just being a armchair detective as they call us to Involving yourself and inserting yourself into a case. It causes problems, first and foremost. Second, we don't want it to come back on the group. You know, we just want to discuss, we don't want to cause problems or make waves for anybody. And so we just really discourage, like we know that there's going to be people that call family members or message family members or reach out to the police. We can't stop it. We just don't want it coming back in

the group as a whole. I know it sounds stupid. You know saying it sounds stupid but there's just boundaries that can't be crossed and sometimes people take things too far. So is it just sort of like an interesting hobby to just kind of get involved in this and start to speculate about what might have happened? I hate that word hobby because some of these lifelives lost. But yeah, I mean, I'm going to be 100% honest. It's not like I'm an ambulance chaser, maybe. I don't know. Like that word hobby is so. Because somebody died, but at the same time, I personally, and I know a lot of our group members like to follow these cases all the way through to the end to a trial, to a sensitive thing to, to that sort of thing.

We do want to see an end enclosure for the family. Do you remember the hordes of people, mostly female housewives, standing outside the courthouse during the Casey Anthony trial? It's the Nancy Grace phenomenon. And hey, who am I kidding? I know all about it. So I mean, and maybe, I don't know. I don't know.

What would you call for me that went from reading true crime books their entire life to now being in Facebook? It's like times are different. Yeah. It's kind of an interesting subject to talk about because at least with this case, this case was very, very strange because it was very, very public. And there was a lot of people speculating about it online.

And this thing of not going real life is interesting because it didn't really work in this case. It seems like there were family members that were in these groups, and there was direct sort of like back and forth with some of the members of the group and the family members. Right, and that we, so what will happen

is somebody from our family will join. And sometimes they sit quietly, and they don't say anything. We don't often know that it's them, because like even in this case, few of the family members that we know now don't use the name that would even point us to being a family member. But oftentimes they can't hold their tongue

and so they say something, this was my daughter, this was my stepdaughter, this was my cousin, and then we tell them, hey, we kind of have a, it's not a rule, but we have a thing where like, if you're family or friends, and you're in here, you got to understand you're probably going to see things you don't like. And so we tell them at that point, you can stay or you can go. But we do make it clear that if they stay, that, you know, there's not going to be any harassing other family in our group. But of course, that's not the case in other groups.

Right. Exactly. Some less savory people do go real life in spectacular ways. I've seen admin from other groups go on, father's page in a Q's and the being the murderer. I've seen people from the other group attacking the family members saying that the father was responsible for this. I've seen them starting to go fund me for Sean. A fundraiser for Sean. The man responsible for stalking Natalie before her death.

There were actually several fundraisers for shan but the most notable is one called the castle lady that i had previously seen in the justice for Natalie group she apparently had grown up with shan with a high school with him in the braska i believe and

she'd like posted this go find me thing for this place called the castle. And when I read into it, I'm just like, I don't really understand. Are you guys trying to create a mental health facility? I don't understand the goal here. It just seems like a lot of rambling on about what you guys wanted to do. The fundraiser for Sean Schwartz called the castle has a dream that has lived in the mind of a man who puts others first, who in the midst of chaos worries for others and not himself. The castle is possible, and with your help one man's dream can become a reality and serve as a safe haven

for those who find themselves lost in the rubble. This fund is intended to literally build the foundation of a future for lost souls. Everyone deserves a chance to be home. Help make that a reality. No donation is too big or too small. And if you can't donate but are interested in finding other ways to help, please message us or share the link to spread the word. The Post was promoted on another group called Chance for Sean, which was a splinter group with some of the original admins that had some differences of opinion. They had somehow ruled out Sean completely as a suspect in their own minds and went above and beyond to try to actually help him.

But instead of doing so, which would have entailed, getting a seriously mentally ill man, some actual psychological or psychiatric help, they decided to buy into his delusional dream and even make him into a hero. To me, I don't know, maybe I'm just being a dick, but it sounds a whole lot like a few people trying to help Sean make money off of someone else losing their life off of someone that he victimized losing their life and this fucker is going to make money off of it. That by itself pisses me the fuck off. A place for homeless people to be a place that provides shelter for people who need it. That's a great thing.

That is a great idea. Except for we have those, they're called homeless shelters. One of the people running this GoFundMe and also an admin of the Chance for Sean Group was Kara Mia. On that group, she posted, Sean called me tonight. He said the money in the GoFundMe

will go towards his castle dream. He told me why it is important to him. In Colorado, it is a crime for anybody to use blankets in public after 11 p.m. He found land, 10 acres, that he can get for $10,000 and his plan is to make it a safe haven for the homeless. This same person, Caramia, would later shut down the group, explaining the following. I'm writing this post to explain why I stepped down as Admin. I was only made one last night and had no clue it was going on. I figured Candace stepping away was another person to fail Sean. Boy was I wrong.

My main focus is and always will be finding justice for Natalie. I joined Sean's chance as a member to advocate for something that was being done to someone with disabilities. The day Sean was arrested, a group of us had been working diligently to get Sean into a safe place. Every solution we gave him, he had an excuse as to why it wouldn't work. He insisted he needed to go to South Dakota, and all he needed was a hatchet. A couple of us found that statement odd. That evening he became erratic and ended up going into a 72-hour cycle where he assaulted an officer.

Everyone should know this part. Well, since his release, he's been offered numerous opportunities, but always has an excuse. There are homeless shelters he could have gone to in multiple cities, but he said because of all the bullying he wasn't safe. He needed to protect the people from police and the wrong doings. He needed to do this for someone and that for that person. He called me daily while in the psych unit over the last week, and I did notice a completely different shun than what I had witnessed before going in.

He was under medication, but he seemed calm, but very agitated when I mentioned how good he sounded. Yesterday, I invited him to this group because he seemed in good spirits, and I thought it would be good for him to see support. What I didn't know was he had sent some of the nastiest messages to Candace, and that to me is unacceptable. It has made me completely change my mind about him, supporting him, and speaking to him again. I see nothing wrong with what Candace wrote. She, like myself, has been advocating strong for Sean, with the assumption that he is being bullied behind the case. But what I saw in those messages is completely unacceptable.

It has made me realize that I am supporting a man who verbally assassinates people, and I could only imagine what poor Natalie had gone through for stepping away from their friendship. I'm going to share these private messages, but as of now, my only focus is justice for Natalie. I sent Sean a message telling him he needs to find a pay for his GoFundMe and let me sign the account over to him. If I don't hear anything over the next 72 hours, I will be refunding all donations.

That will also give people time to private message me if you want your donation refunded. I don't judge anyone for wanting to still stand up for Sean, but I have seen first hand that he doesn't want help. The help that has been offered has been generous and plentiful, and none of it is good enough. It's always, I need someone by my side. So speaking for myself and Don Nick, we will stay here quietly as supporters because we still believe he is innocent of what the public court of opinion has harassed him for. But as far as advocating, or helping him in any way, after the messages we saw sent to his personal friend Candace last evening, I agree with what Candace has told him.

He does need help, and I hope he gets it. She goes on to post several of Sean's messages where he does actually verbally berate this poor woman, telling her that she can't understand how shitty he feels for her wasting her resources on him and tells her to go fuck herself several times. He tells her to suck a fat cock and calls her a back stabbing goddamn cunt. He actually even goes as far as to blame her for his attempted suicide. But surprise, surprise. After all, this is a very seriously mentally ill homeless

man, not a hero. See,000. I know that. Who knows? So I didn't realize it was a plot of land for... I mean, you're in Colorado, you're just having homeless roaming free on the plot. We're going to sleep at the dorm. So, yeah, I can't comprehend that one properly. How does somebody go from, you know,

like a curiosity in this case, to fully supporting and even creating a fundraiser for the guy that's stalked a girl that's now dead? I wish I could answer that. I honestly wish I could answer that. That's the thing that makes me the most aggravated in all this. Forget everything that's happened to me, forget everything that's happened in the group. But please remember that this man, this grown man, stalked a 17-19-year-old girl for two years and continued after her death to do so. And you're gonna go and support him. You're gonna go create a good fun for him.

You're gonna give him money to come to your house to stay. You're gonna give him money for an Uber. You're gonna give him a train ticket to get out of Colorado. Like, I understand compassion. Trust me, I would give the shirt off my back to somebody, but never to somebody that was stalking a teenage girl. Never. Sorry. Yeah, it's weird. There seems to have been early on some sort of split division conflict. Can you tell me how that came to be?

So this other admin within our group, I would say this was the second or third day that the group was open. And she was in the group. She had sent a message to me and some of our other admin, asking if she could be an admin essentially. I ignored her. The other ones kind of had said, well, I think we're good. Thank you, though. The next day, she was in the group and it was like I said early morning, I was sleeping. She was antagonizing people in the group. Anybody that thought that Sean could have done anything, she was telling them that they were wrong and pretty much shaming them for having an opinion other than hers.

The other admin tells Kara to cut it out, that she shouldn't be shaming people. Well, Kara doesn't like that. So they get into an argument, and the admin boots Cara from the group. Misty then wakes up to an email asking why she was banned. Misty tells her and shows her a screenshot. Well, Cara doesn't like that either. If I could say the word that she said without wanting to vomit, I would.

But she attacked with nasty foul words, and then I just ignored her. I was done with the conversation. So I know that some of the people that were running these groups were very, very caddy. You don't say it. I know that. I know that Sean put my name on his Facebook because basically, I was trying to get him help. He needed help and I didn't see one person out there trying to find him mental health advocate and that's what he had been screaming about on Facebook.

I just need someone to advocate for me. I can't think properly and that was a big thing about when me and him talked. It was, you know, one, just, when I have these questions coming out, my thoughts don't work right. I need someone who can help me. And especially if it was him, don't work right. I need someone who can help me. And especially if it was him, you know, who would have helped him get a lawyer? Who would have, you know, if he would have gone into interrogation, he would have been, it would have been like a brand-and-dassy situation. You know what I mean? Just... No, he's innocent. There would have been... Exactly.

No, I'm kidding. I don't think he's innocent. There would have been exactly. No, I'm kidding. I don't think he's innocent. All right. So it just seemed really unfair. So I was trying to help him find an advocate and it seems like impossible in that town. No one wanted to help him. And he plays a call because of the case. And that pissed me off.

It made me sad. So I would give him information like, hey, did you know, you know, they announced it was her body. Do you know anything about this Joey Marino? It wasn't like I was like, oh, this is what's going on. It was just like, hey, this is what I'm hearing. Do you know anything about it? Just doing my job investigating this as just a stranger. And he put my name on his Facebook and everyone started string-shotting it and posting it in these groups and I was like, yo, like I wasn't sitting there giving him information like I talked to the guy and everyone just

freaked out. Oh, you're not supposed to go real life and says who? I didn't know you ruled my life. Thank you, a whole life. So yeah, what are you, my mom? Yeah. Thanks. So after that, it was just back and forth, women just accusing each other of this and that and because they didn't agree with someone else's theory, well, that person is getting the boot.

That person is getting the boot. So there's a certain mod named Cara Mia. Have you heard of her? Do you know anything about her? So I've heard of and I think she was a part of the group that just blocked me and didn't add me. But I know that I had seen her post and the original Justice for Natalie Page. And then I'm pretty sure that she was budding heads with the moderators in that group and went and made her own group.

And it just became a shit-talking fest about each of the groups. And I was like, you know, I'm glad I'm not a part of this. It was no longer about Natalie at all. It was just, let's shit talk about that other group about this murder that we all got interested in at the same time. Right. So then she formed her own group.

Like that minute, she formed her own group. She made a post in her group that she was a loop from our group for no reason, sent screenshots of our conversation but cropped out the part or she called me anything. conversation but cropped out the part or she called me anything. Yeah, but from that point tone she made it her mission to make my life hell. If you think what you've heard so far sounds stupid. Well, you're absolutely right. It is stupid. But this is the part in the story where we go from stupid to dangerously stupid behavior, borderlining on criminal. I would say I probably have 500 private messages in my inbox from her. I do know for a fact that she found my husband's employer, she found my brother-in-law and

said that she was going to call my brother-in-law's job. She was saying that to another admin of mine. That admin said her brother-in-law doesn't have a job. He had a stroke. She called him a liar. She told another friend of mine that I could take a bullet to the head and nobody would even care. In the subsequent days, there were three attempts to get into my Facebook.

There was a page, an inner, a Facebook page that went up called Ugly Babies of Instagram or a Facebook with my granddaughter's picture of the cover photo. And then the last one was on Sunday. I woke up to text messages on my personal phone from her and then text messages on my business phone from a 707 number, which was really weird. And the text messages from her said, I mean, it was a lot, but it was pretty much you have 45 minutes to take your group down or I'm going to out you. And I said, you're blackmailing me.

And she said, no, I'm going to come after you. I'm going to come after your family. I'm going to come after your businesses. And at that point, I had to make a hard decision. Do I keep going forward and let this person harass me? Or do I protect my family? And so I told the other admins, I'm sorry guys, I've got to protect my family.

And I single handedly removed my group, one by one deleted 3500 members. Sunday I was a mess, I was gone, like I didn't want to talk to anybody, I was done. My other admins decided, no, we're not going to hear on run a foster. They made a new group. I wasn't in it. And then I woke up Monday morning to more text messages

saying, you put the group back up, came on. And she took my criminal history, which it is what it is. I mean, I can sit here and explain it to a million people. Missed you did take time to explain it to me. And I don't want to further aggravate the way her privacy was being exploited like this. But after understanding the story, it's pretty clear that all the charges 12 years ago

stemmed from a nonviolent domestic dispute. And to be honest, to me, it doesn't sound like she deserved much of the blame. It's not anybody's business. She posted it everywhere, including my address, my business address, my phone number. I mean, I'm sorry, I'm getting all emotional again. But she did it anyway.

I mean, everything that she said she wasn't going to do this good. And I had to go in and hide my businesses. I've lost money this week because of her. I've lost friends because of her. So at that point on Monday, my other admin Susan said, Hey, let's fight this head on. Let's just make a post and tell everybody this is who you are

and this is what your past is and if they don't like it, they don't have to stay in the group. Let's just not let her win. Let's beat her to the punch and out yourself. And so Monday night, that's what we did. We put a post up and I said, if you have any questions on me, here you go, but I would say there was 400 some comments on that post and everybody said we don't care about that we care about Natalie So I mean

This is I mean, am I not My wrong is it's not the craziest thing you've ever heard in your life? It seems like crazy attracts crazy and there's a lot of it in this case I But there are there's some there's some crazy behavior here. I hope you're not calling me crazy. But there's some crazy behavior here. I mean, that's a lot of time that this person has on their hands to devote themselves to this campaign of hate and trying to take someone down all for what? All for what? For a Facebook group? A Facebook group. Yes. A Facebook group. That's what it's for. It's kind of crazy. It's kind of insane, right? A lot in thing. I mean, I

The things that she has done are criminal. They're criminal. It's threatening people. She threatened one of her own admins and said that I have three bullets with your name on it but she used an app to save, mind you, the same phone number that was messaging me on Sunday morning that was a fake number of 7-07 area code which is like for Brad California. It happens to mess in her admin on Thursday from that same number and says you could take three bullets to the head or I have three bullets with your family's game on it. Now tell me and then and now she's crying that she didn't do that if somebody's setting her up. Huh. Who would that be? Exactly. Exactly. Why would

anybody want to set her up? Like she's doing it to herself. I tried to talk to Caramia and send her a private message to what she responded to almost immediately. I tried to get her to talk to me, explaining over and over that I just wanted to hear her side of the story. She kept asking me questions, though. Questions about Miss T Evans, about the other group, about whether I knew what they were saying about her.

She told me that they blackmailed her and that she has young biracial kids who were threatened. She also said, aren't you the guy who harassed Evan Daca? He said you doxed him. The conversation became increasingly more and more frustrating. It sounded like she was just trying to milk me for information and that she was never going to agree to an interview. And then after quite a while of this, I suddenly get a private message from someone I've never spoken to warning me about Cara and claiming that she was a fraud.

Initially, I thought I was being catfished. I thought Cara was messaging me from a separate alt account, trying to get information about what I wanted her to say, about what angle, about what angle I was taking with this interview that I wanted her to be on. So I said to her, I find it curious that no one knows I've contacted you, yet while we've been speaking, another account has reached out to tell me not to talk to you. Anything to say about that?

She claims it's not her. And it turns out it wasn't. It was actually someone else warning me about Kara, which can only mean one thing. That while I was trying to get her to be on the interview, Kara was going on to a public forum somewhere and posting that I was trying to interview her. Which begs the question, why exactly would someone do that? I've explained who I was, I've explained why I want to talk to her. Yet she's reluctant.

Aloof. Misty Evans, however, agreed to an interview on the spot. But that doesn't prove anything, does it? Kara, of course, claimed to me that she was actually the victim. She said, Their entire Natalie group has turned into a hate Kara group, even saying, I blackmailed Misty to delete her group. When I just said I was going to release info that someone texted me,

so she can feel the same fear I'm feeling. I have young kids, and when someone draws a news around my biracial kids' neck and says kill this end child who belongs to Kara then four days ago post pictures of my grooming van business which had my phone number and I get a phone call that night saying we're gonna burn your house down with your end family in it. Okay the photo of the child the day that all that came out, of course, she blamed me for it. I also have a biracial child. She's, I mean, and a biracial grandchild.

So for anybody that seems that I would do anything so horrific is, and everybody that knows, knows I would never. So that didn't ever, like, ever come of anything. And everybody also knows that Karen did it to herself because Karen's Facebook page is completely locked down. Well, in order to get a photo, you would have to be on her friend's list. So, I mean, and also in the photo itself, she was not smart enough and she left the top URL bar open and said searching Kara's photos and the edit tool was left open. So somebody that's going to do that and send it out to people which nobody ever thought from anybody but Kara. I mean how are they going to get into her photos to do that. And then as far as the phone call goes, I specifically

told her, well, give me the case report number that you filed with the police and I will call them and talk to them because I didn't call anybody and she couldn't give anybody any sort of proof that she called, any sort of proof that that actually happened. You see where I'm going with this. It was no longer about Natalie at all. It was just, let's shit talk about that other group about this murder that we all got interested in at the same time. Right, it wasn't. And that's what I don't understand. I mean, again, you're pulling yourself into a criminal investigation. A murder of someone you don't even know. I don't think many of you even wanted to just go out and send some flowers or anything to the family just say, hey, I'm sorry for your loss.

No, it just immediately became. I'm a armchair detective and I'm right you're wrong. Yeah, it's all about ego. Exactly. It never felt like it was about a murder investigation. Just who was right, who was wrong? I'm going to get credit for this. I'm going to get hired by the police department because I saw this case.

I don't think people realize that it's not how it works. That's all it is. Exactly. Don't you think it's really fucking sad that this case has become less about Natalie's murder? In fact, not at all about Natalie's murder. Completely about the craziness of these web sleuths and people who think they're online detectives trying to solve it based on nothing more than what they can find online. Absolutely. I thought we were all coming together because we have this poor girl who's and kill she was missing found and

and even i believe the sheriff when he did his first press conference spoke about just how i would i took it as like, you know, social media is affecting this negatively. It's not helping our investigation. There's a lot of speculation out there.

And it just veered off from trying to find out who hurt this poor girl to, I don't know how to explain it, right? Just, it it's just the shit show. It's got to be. Yeah, exactly. And that's what makes me feel so terrible about it, that no one could just sit back and let police do their jobs and just keep an eye on information. Hey, this is what I'm hearing you know drop an article

now it just became we're gonna dissect this thing down to the family i'm pretty i'm if i remember right they were accusing the uncle out of nowhere yeah recently i'm pretty sure that they that they actually got their guy

they were going around saying that it was Ted's brother who killed her. And then people out there who were like, this is never going to get solved. Oh, changed an incident. So despite the hours and hours of speculation and wasted time online, everyone got it wrong. It wasn't the uncle. It wasn't the father. It wasn't the boyfriend or the ex-boyfriend.

It wasn't Sean. In the end, everyone missed it. It was Natalie. But she wasn't alone. Almost two months go by after that initial police press conference. In that time, countless people who seemingly have serious personality disorders have attacked each other online, claiming I know more than you, based on loosely tied together fragments of pieces of information.

In fact, as we were finalizing this episode, someone from our Patreon posted about it on the Natalie Bollinger Case discussion group. It took seconds for some of these people to start to personally attack me, making false claims and stating them as fact. It just goes to show what human behavior is actually like. During the course of the investigation, police obtained a warrant for Natalie's phone records. AT&T provided a transcript, which showed that Natalie had either sent or received approximately 111 texts to or from an unknown phone number. The messages two and from began approximately at 10.58am on December 28, 2017. The very day she went missing. The very last text with this unknown phone

number occurred between one to three hours before she went completely silent. This appears to be the last conversation Natalie had. Nobody, none of her friends or family, knew of this phone number. Police obtained a warrant and found out that the number belonged to a Michelle Lopez. A Facebook search of the cell phone number tracked police to a Joseph Lopez. And a Department of Motor Vehicle Database Search showed a Joseph Michael Lopez, born on June 6, 1995, and residing in Denver, Colorado.

They located his address, drove to his residence, and observed a male that appeared to be Joseph Lopez from a DMV photo they had seen taking out trash on the curb. This man worked at Domino's Pizza and his work time card showed that he had missed work from December 28th through the second of January, calling in sick on several days. A GPS analysis of his phone number indicated that he was within the area of Natalie Bollinger's residence around the time of her disappearance. The following is from the Adams County arrest report for a Joseph Michael Lopez. Joseph Lopez confirmed to us during the interview

that he had been in contact with a female later identified as Natalie Bollinger via email and text message. Joseph Lopez said, sometime after Christmas 2017, he was at his residence looking through the Women Seeking Men category on Craigslist. He told us that he sent several messages to people when he saw an unusual post titled Something to the Effective, I want to put a hit on myself.

He said he responded to the message and soon was talking to an unknown female by email. Joseph Lopez said this took place sometime between two o'clock and three o'clock in the morning, on December 28, 2018. Joseph Lopez said later that morning they exchanged cell phone numbers and they began texting each other. Joseph Lopez told us he has struggled with depression and suicide attempts in the past. He said because of this, he was using a fake persona of a hitman that he had created

himself. Joseph Lopez said he was talking to Natalie Bollinger, using this fake persona to give him the strength to convince Natalie Bollinger that he was an actual hitman and that he was willing to help her commit suicide. Joseph Lopez went in a detail about an app on his cell phone called Amino that allows him to create these fantasy personas and then they use them in gaming exchanges on the app. Joseph Lopez said he currently has 12 fantasy personas on this app, including one that he created and named Akai. He said the backstory for his Akai persona is that he's very charismatic and can lure people in,

but then he turns psycho and he strikes. Joseph Lopez said he created this a Kai persona in the horror genre Killer. While using this persona, he continued to have a text conversation with her and agreed to meet her and kill or assist her in suicide. Joseph Lopez then started telling us about his senior year at Adams City High School. He was going through a rough time in his life. He told us when he left class, he left his journal with all his personal writings behind. Joseph Lopez said, his teacher found his journal and he read it and saw he had been writing stories about kidnapping

people, torturing them and executing them. Joseph Lopez said he ended up having to go talk to the school counselor about it. Joseph Lopez said he ended up having to go talk to the school counselor about it. Joseph Lopez got back on track and started talking to us about the text conversation again. During the conversation Natalie Bolinger eventually gave him her address and had him come to pick her up. Joseph Lopez also said that they were discussing how she wanted to be shot and killed and that she wanted it to happen quickly. Joseph Lopez also said that Natalie Bollinger told him that she wanted to get on her knees and be executed from behind, because she did not want to see the gun.

Joseph Lopez told us that Natalie Bollinger asked him how much it would cost him to kill her, and he just told her from hundreds to thousands it just depends. Joseph Lopez said also sometimes he could trade for something of value in exchange for payment of his hitman services. Natalie Bollinger asked Joseph Lopez, if he had a gun he could use, and he said he didn't. Joseph Lopez said Natalie Bollinger offered to bring her gun from the apartment and let him use it. Natalie Bollinger said he could keep the gun

and sell it later if he wanted to. Once Joseph Lopez got her address and drove his white Nissan Ultima to pick Natalie Bullinger up, Joseph said he arrived at her apartment building. Once in the car, he said they continued to talk about how her death would happen. Joseph Lopez said that he was only talking to her about it until he gained her trust and then he would try to convince her that it was a bad idea and that she shouldn't do it. After driving around for a while, Joseph Lopez said they stopped at a few places where he would help her commit suicide. He said Natalie Bollinger did not like any of those places so they eventually drove back to her house and dropped her off at a gas station. Joseph Lopez said this was the last time he saw her

or had any contact. At this point, they take a break. He gets a snack and a drink. But then interrogators go back into the room after Joseph has had a mountain dew and some cookies. And they start talking about this amino app again. The conversation then shifts to the fact that the police have already obtained Joseph's GPS records.

At that point, he suddenly remembers that he was in the area where Natalie died. And police advised him that he has to be 100% truthful because they know where he was. They take another break, Joseph goes out to have a smoke with his Mountain Dew. And at this point, Joseph Lopez states he was in the area that he drove down the dirt road to the cul de sec where Natalie Bollinger was found and parked

his car. Natalie had told him to stop. He said he was still trying to talk her out of killing herself. But she was set on doing it. He told police that she was saying she needed to get away from her boyfriend because he was bad for her and nothing was going to change for the better until she left him. He says she then got upset and started telling him that she loved her boyfriend and did not want to leave him or hurt him. He told police that Natalie got out of the car and walked over to some trees and squatted down. He said she pulled the semi-automatic pistol out of her purse and held it to her left temple.

Joseph says he tried to talk her out of it and even knelt down next to her. He says she was adamant about wanting to die and before he could grab the gun from her, she shot herself in the left temple, causing her to fall backwards against the tree. Joseph claims he panicked and did not know what to do. So he grabbed her purse and the gun and got back into the car. This is the point at which police inform this genius that they know what they're doing,

that she did not place the gun to her temple to commit suicide like he said. Because Ballistics show that the gun was between temple to commit suicide like he said, because ballistics show that the gun was between 1 to 3 feet away from her when she died. So the trigger was pulled by someone else. At this point Joseph changes his story again. He said Natalie Bollinger knelt down on the ground and that the two of them prayed together, and he held the gun with both of his hands.

He said he was shaking so he decided to turn his head to the right away from Natalie, and he closed his eyes. Joseph fired a single round from the gun striking Natalie in the head. Then he panicked, grabbed the purse, and the gun, and drove back to his house. He never told his fiance or anybody else what occurred that day. And he was charged with first degree murder. In the end, nobody could have guessed how this case was going to unfold. Who the perpetrator actually was, and nobody, not all the King's horses, or

all the King's men, not an army of online web sleuths, or a mailman from Colorado, could have solved this case. enforcement and the justice system are for. Hey, hey, what happened? So after we were in contact, Detective reached out to me to get information about the interviews that I have done with Sean. So yesterday, I obviously reached out to him and we just got to talking, you know, he explained that Sean was no way involved. But we talked a little bit about the social media aspect of things and how it disrupted the case. He told me that people from the Justice for Natalie Group had been calling him an his partner demanding information like they were involved in the investigation. Not only that, he told me that someone from that group actually went to the arrangement for

the suspect and took pictures inside the court room and posted them inside that group. Wow. Which I found absolutely absurd. I mean, it's also a content of court. Exactly. Yeah. So they're looking into that right now to find the person who did that.

But there were a couple other things that were interesting. He got a call from the hospital apparently a lunch mob has formed and thrown shan off a bridge what he got a call from shan at the hospital and a group of people think he's still involved in this and through him off a bridge. Holy shit. Yeah. I mean,

this is what this whole case has been. An absolute shit show. How do you do this to a person? We have the suspect's been named. The suspect's been arrested and arraigned Why are you gonna go after an innocent person at this point? Oh my god So and I noticed I can't even find Sean on Facebook anymore He's Vanished Did he say probably because of all this did he say if he's okay? He's he's alive as far as I he's, he'll be okay, but I mean that's absurd. Yeah, that, that it is.

And the last thing that detective left me with was that if we think that this is all crazy now, it's about to get a whole lot crazier once all the details get released. Huh. Alright guys that's it. Get back to your regular lives. This has been a insane ride. Very special thanks to our guests, Trisha Griffith, Ryan Williams, Misty Evans, Tim Beeson, the amazing and anonymous Colorado detective, and the whole

Sword and Scale staff who worked tirelessly to put this two-parter together. For everybody who just joined us on Patreon, welcome, make yourselves at home, and thank you. To everyone else, enjoy trolling me on the internet. Have fun, see you there, and stay safe. you