Sword and Scale - Episode 342

Episode Date: March 8, 2026

In a quiet Ohio suburb where families mow their lawns and kids ride bikes on the sidewalks, police uncover a bloody scene: two decomposing bodies, Regina Capobianco and her friend John Mann, buried beneath trash inside a modest home. As investigators peel back the layers, they don’t just find evidence of murder; they find broken families, desperate choices, and a trail of secrets that stretches from prison cells to nail salons. In a quiet, family-friendly town, someone let a killer through the front door.Get instant access to all episodes, including premium unreleased episodes, commercial-free at swordandscale.com

Are you ready to turn your passion for fitness into a career? NTC, Ireland's most trusted fitness education provider, are now enrolling for their accredited personal trainer and fitness instructor courses starting in Dublin and Cork this April. Enroll mail and kickstart your career in fitness with NTC. Visit NTC.combe-E and start working in a job be love. NTC. See you you can be. Sword and scale contains adult themes and violence

and is not intended for all audiences. Listener discretion. is advised. It shouldn't happen. It shouldn't happen. And anyway, I just want to be known that I didn't kill John. Welcome to Season 13, episode 342 of Sword and Scale. Show that reveals that the worst monsters are real. Are you ready to turn your passion for fitness into a career?

NTC, Ireland's most trusted fitness education provider, are now enrolling for their accredited personal trainer and fitness instructor courses, starting in Dublin and Cork this April. Enroll them out and kickstart your career in fitness with NTC. Visit NTCDAW and start working in a job be love. NTC, see you, you can be. In the early hours of May 18th, 2017 in Parma Heights, Ohio, a working class suburb 20 miles south of Cleveland,

which sounds like a lovely place I might add, like the rest of the state. Burrell Road cuts through the town in a long stretch of strip plight, and small storefronts, hair salons, nail studios, pizza shops, you know the kind of useless strip all that inhabits pretty much every city in America? Well, those shops are usually owned by locals, and these businesses open, early, close late, and know they're regulars by name. The strip is dark, and small shops are locked up for the night. The early morning is calm except for one thing.

A burglar is right. ready to do his thing. He grabs a landscaping stone, hauls it up, and hurls it at the front door of classic hair studio. The glass explodes, the stone breaking apart into chunks across the floor. He doesn't hesitate.

He ducks inside, heads straight for the counter, and yanks the entire cash register loose. The drawer jerks free, cords snapping, and he's out in seconds. Inside the cash register, he finds almost $300 in cash, and the machine itself is probably worth a couple hundred more. I'm not going to say it's an emergency, but I was driving to work and I noticed that the door on a beauty shop is totally smashed on Pearl Road.

The address is 6412. It's called Classic Studio. and their front door is just totally smashed. I mean, anybody can go inside at this point. Okay. And I noticed it, and I turned around and went back thinking, did I really see that? And sure enough, I did. So I thought I'd report it.

A few doors down, he does it again. Another front door smashed, this time at the nail studio. Instead of taking the whole register, he opens the drawer. This one has $50 inside. But it doesn't matter. Any amount of money is worth it. He's desperate. The glass crunches under his boots as he walks away,

leaving two shops and ruins behind him. I'm the store manager here at Discount Drugmark. Right next to us, it's 6488, York Road. There's the spa and nail a place right next to the Drug Mart here that I'm in charge of. There's the glass is broken out on the front door here. at the nail and spa place. Right, I believe we just cleared there. Oh, oh, okay, I'm sorry.

I just, I didn't know if anyone was out or anything. 6412, I believe the address is? Um, it says 6488 on the door here. Okay, then that's the different one. Uh-oh. It's called spa and nails. By sunrise, both storefronts are cordoned off with yellow tape. Patrol officers sweep glass into polaroly.

piles while the owners pull up the surveillance video. A white male, short, with a bald spot and tattoos on his arms. The timestamp on the camera is wrong, but they already know the crimes happened overnight. The owners are terrified, and one vows to shut down the business. She wonders how this could happen in such a family-friendly town. Parma Heights has one of the lowest crime rates in the nation, At least, that's what the statistics say. Whoever the perpetrator is, he probably should have worn a mask.

His face is front and center on the surveillance camera. Not only that, the outside cameras catch him speeding off in a white Jeep. It doesn't take long to bring in Thomas Nuff for questioning. Okay, all right. Do you have any deal with my wife is here to speak with you? No. Well, I had a couple of break-ins in my city. at his spa nails and then another classic hair studios.

You know anything about them? No, nothing at all. All right, well, I get surveillance video of the vehicle and the person breaking into their business. Okay, so let me pull this stuff up here. Recognize that person? Looks like it could be me. All right, so let's do this. Recognize them tattoos?

Yeah. Huh? Yeah. Do you remember doing this or no? Tom seemed like your average guy. guy next door. He just didn't have that typical criminal look about him, if there even is such a thing. He looked more like a dad sitting on the bleachers of his son's football game. And Thomas did have a son, a good kid, who unfortunately had to be raised by Tom's sister during the last 15 years he was in prison

for aggravated robbery. So looks can be deceiving. That's what they say anyway. You're running, you take the cash register from the one place and some cash from the second place, okay? And then you're in a white jeep that looks like it blowing to your son, but it's registered to your sister? Maybe. Okay, this. Okay, but the more recent photo would be this. What the hell happened to it? Yeah.

Smash the window. Did you do that? Yeah. Okay. What happened? mean? Just went off road, did a tree branch. Did you mean to go off road or was it kind of...

Yeah. Okay, trying to hurt yourself or what? No. Just went off, was off road in a spot where we used to go off road. Okay. So we're just going to go out there and be like, bah, or what? Yeah, I don't know. You don't know.

I mean, I appreciate you to be honest. Tom tried to be a good dad. Well, maybe not. But he really did love his son. son and old habits die hard. That included going on benders, robbing businesses, and off-roading. This time, it just happened to be that he had no vehicle, so he took his son's Jeep and damaged it. How messed up were you during this time? I don't know, sir. Okay, all right. By Walters, you know what, unfortunately, you know, due to this and the video and stuff like I have of you,

And then how it got to you is we actually, the news caught a hold of it because I put something on our Facebook page. And then your sister actually wanted to call him and said, hey, listen, that's my brother in my car. You know what I mean? So kind of led us to you. But I had some previous things that led to you. It looks like you've had a history of Brunswick. Brunswick immediately called me. He says, hey, listen, I know that guy.

Yeah. You might want to give him a call. Everything he did is what he used to do. And they used to deal with you a lot, huh? So, what happened me? You were in jail for a little bit? You get out? What happened?

I just, I don't know, man. I just got out and things weren't like I thought it was going to be. You know, I had nowhere to go. Okay. No family was helping here or what? My mom passed. All right. You know, I...

A lot had changed in the 15 years he was on the inside. Y'all seen Shawshank, right? Think about how smartphones didn't even exist in 2002. Everybody was still using a flip phone. There was no social media. at least not like today. Facebook launched in 2004, YouTube in 2005, and Twitter in 2006. Instagram came around in 2010, and I won't even mention TikTok.

In 2002, when he went into prison, people were still using AOL Instant Messenger. And Myspace wasn't even a thing yet. If you wanted to go somewhere, you couldn't just tap on your phone and have directions show up or even read out to you. You had to print something out from a site called MapQuest. I shit you not. On your ink jet printer and hope that the directions were accurate. Kids nowadays can't even figure out what gender they are. Could you imagine if you took GPS away from them?

If Tom repeated his little heist today, he'd be lucky to find $1 in the cash register. People don't even use cash anymore. Just their Klarna debit cards, which they have no intention of ever paying back. Another big difference in 2002 is that we weren't all spying on each other. No one was lurking nearby to film you on their phone, waiting to post it somewhere for the world to see.

Security cameras existed, but were reserved for big businesses. No wonder Tom didn't wear a mask. Not only was he too shit-faced to even think about a security camera, but he just wasn't expecting these tiny businesses to own one. In 2002, voicemail was still a thing, and people actually checked it. Tom felt like he'd been swallowed up by time, but it wasn't just the tech that had left him behind. While he was on the inside, his world fell apart.

His mom died. She was the family anchor. There were some rough years between him and his stepdad, but his mom was always there for the kids, probably almost too much. My mom struggled for the last three, four years before she passed, trying to keep the house afloat and still help my sister with bills and with her kids. And as soon as my mom dies, you know, I told my sister, well, here to take my money and paid a bank note off on borrowing money against it and keep the house.

Well, her current or husband had allowed it to go under such disrepair that she didn't want to walk with it. And so she led the bank have it. And I told her, I said, you know, I feel like you, you know, spit on their graves. You know what I mean? You should have let them, you should have it four years ago. And instead of looking at them out for all the stress she did, trying to, she was the only one that ever had a solid career and a working, a steady work. You know what I mean with good money.

So, you know, she's paying like everybody's cell phone bill, everybody's bill, baby since you and you since you got a good relationship or no? No. His sister took over the money and according to Tom, she mismanaged it. She also failed to get the car Tom had wrecked from the impound because it was too much trouble. Tom was pissed because the car belonged to his son Tommy and still had some of his personal belongings in it. According to Tom, his sister helped raise Tommy and had been a good influence, but ever since their mother passed, she was all about herself.

His sister, of course, had a different story. There was a time when they partied together as teens and acted more like friends than siblings, but then Tom got a girl pregnant when he was 19, and things changed. His sister had lost a baby boy, and now she found herself stepping in to parent Tom's son. Tom continued to party and went to rehab at least once. It was like usually every time he went to rehab, this stuff would come out. Missy gets everything. Well, Missy has a job.

Missy went to school. I paid for it. He always, I guess, felt like I got everything, but in reality, that grandparents were draining their bank account for him. And our whole life revolved around him and what was going on. But he always, and he still will. And when my mom died, he wrote Tommy letter.

same old stuff, like Missy got this. His sister Missy remembered that their mother practically enabled him. She was always there for him. No. And even if he stole from her, he could still come home. I remember backward. I think I told you when I found out when she died that she had all these check-cashing arms and stuff, and I'd found all the receipts.

Commissary and things. And to people like Latasha, McQuisha and my brother's crowd, you know, and Akron and Youngstown and, you know, wherever. And it was always, well, he needs hygiene products. It's like he doesn't need $300. We've all experienced someone in the family like this, right? It always seems like the one who gets in trouble the most or is the least productive gets all the attention, doesn't it? Yeah, fuck the productive one who pays his bills and minds his own business. Let's focus all of our baby bird attention on this idiot over here that can't get their shit together.

Tom was about 25 when he went to prison, and now he was 42, with no home to go back to, no mommy to run to, and a son who was almost an adult now, ready to live his own life. He had a lot to figure out and even more to make up for. and yet here he was back at the police station. Since he got out, he'd been looking for a place to stay, but his parole had restrictions. No guns, no drugs, on and on. His anxiety was increasing in the previous night's drunken binge was going to land him in jail again. Things were about to get worse.

I don't see your son wanting to be bashful against you at all. You know what I mean? I think he just wants his dad around. you know what I mean unfortunately and like I said I mean this mom was letting me stay there

and until I got a place and that didn't work out for me or all and then she kind of wanted to start a relationship again and then when I didn't because I had a girlfriend she kind of flipped on me

and then like I said my sister you know she and her just was that girlfriend the girl we were looking for that was missing oh no you don't remember

you know where she's at by any chance That's just an old friend of mine. Okay. Still never heard any contact of anything where she could be? I don't know. She was like when I was writing her from jail. Okay.

We lost contact, but she stayed in touch with my mom. Okay. So when my mom died, she kind of come back in the picture, then her mom died. Then she took off the text and came back, and her and her friend actually picked me up from jail. Okay. Who was that? Who was her friend that came with you? Some old guy, John.

John Meehan? Yeah. In that clip, they were talking about the mother of Tom's son. When he got out of prison, he was hoping to stay at her house, but that didn't work out because she wanted to rekindle the relationship, and he had long since moved on with two different women. 49-year-old Regina Capo Bianco was one of them. About 15 years earlier, she had signed up for a prison pen pal program where she met Tom.

Yeah, she was one of those weirdos. They constantly wrote each other and promised they would meet up once he was out. The problem for Tom at least was that he was looking for stability. And before he even got out, he started to see that she had issues. I wonder how he found out. Could it have been maybe the fact she was writing inmates? Maybe that was it there, Tom. Maybe that was the whole problem.

Anyway, Regina had been... living at home with her mother, but at some point in their friendship, her mother also died, leaving her without a home. Her life took a downward turn into alcoholism. This was the last thing Tom needed, and besides, he had already started seeing someone else. These inmates can really pull some puss, if you know what I mean. When Tom was released, Regina was living with a partner, an older man named John Mann. This was a quid pro-com. quo situation, if you know what that means. A friends with benefits sort of relationship,

where she would help take care of him in his house and exchange for, you know, a place to stay. She was a house whore, basically. Regina and John had generously offered to let Tom stay there too until he got on his feet. But Tom could already see the writing on the wall and knew this would be the worst environment possible for him. It was true.

that he accepted Regina and John's offer to pick him up from prison upon his release. But he told him he planned to find his own lodging. The last he'd heard of Regina, she was about to celebrate her 50th birthday. 9-1-1, what's the address of the emergency? So we have a neighbor across the street, and they just got home, and there's a lady that's, like, on the ground and can't get up, and they're, like, hovering over her. So...

In the front yard? In the front yard, yeah. She's an older lady in her 50s with Dark, a Brown... They're picking her up and carrying her into the room, into her. White female? White female. She can barely stand up, so they're walking her and carrying her. Now, it's one thing to get a little carried away for your 50th birthday.

But when was the last time your neighbors called 911 on you because you were passed out in your yard? And I hope you weren't in your 50s. 6.13, go ahead. They were celebrating Regina's birthday. apparently had too much to drink. But she was up walking and talking, able to answer some simple questions. So she's going to turn okay.

They're going to keep an eye there for the night or clear. Copy. Tom remembered warning Regina to get up that day, but when she wasn't able to, he and John literally had to drag her into the house. On a 50th birthday, she got trashed and was puking up her fake teeth. And I'm like, come on, Regina. I'm like, an old lady and saw that.

And I told it to, I'm like, please. get up. You know, you're laying in your pew. I'm like, this nice area, someone's going to call the police. No sooner than I said, you're coming a couple of cops. And yeah, so, and it looked crazy. Like, you got an older guy and you got this guy with tattoos dragging this girl in the house. I mean, especially with after all that shit that happened in Cleveland, with them girls being gone for all them years, you don't know. She's always been like that. She's a good heart, good girl, through writing, like, for as much as we wrote in prison. Regina may have had a good heart. heart, but she was a wildcard.

Though he did stay at Regina and John's a couple of times since he got out, he mostly bounced around hotels with his current girlfriend. He was right to steer clear of Regina as much as possible. The last thing he needed was to get roped into another bad situation. But Tom, the guy just trying to keep his head down and reconnect with his son, was about to be pulled into something a lot bigger. than a stolen cash register and erect jeep, something that would change his life forever.

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a Cleveland suburb with a reputation for safety, not violent crime. In the last few weeks, police responded to a string of late-night burglaries. The suspect Thomas Nuff was quickly caught. He admitted to everything, saying he was broke and desperate. Hotels were getting expensive. Tom had just been released from prison after serving 15 years. Since then, he'd bounced between hotels, old girlfriends, and temporary stays with people willing to help, including a pen pal named Regina Capo Bianco.

She and her boyfriend even gave him a wrong. ride from prison. He stayed at her place a couple of nights, but mostly kept his distance. She had a good heart, but she was a little unpredictable. Then Regina stopped answering her phone. Her sister worried. I miss her every day. I miss sending her pictures of the girls of my grandkids and calling her. That was all taken from me. I can't do that anymore. I call Regina Reggie. Reggie had a contagious laugh.

If you would ask anybody what they remember most about Reggie, it will be her laugh. The police had been to her house already, but they didn't execute a full search. Neighbors had seen stickers on the door about a potential foreclosure and just assumed John was evicted. Now weeks had passed. They go back. And what they find inside is... Worse than anything anyone's imagined. What they walk into is a hoarder's nightmare.

Trash bags, boxes, rotting food. The air is thick and sour. The kind of stench you think is garbage until you realize it's not. Specialized agents are called in along with cadaver dogs, but even the dogs refuse to go inside. The odor of decomposition, is overwhelming. They stubbornly sit outside like,

no way, man, I ain't going in there. We ain't touching this. That's kind of what I imagine dog sound like. You can get into their head. Yo, bro, we ain't going in there. That's all I'm saying, dog. The search stops here. I think it's kind of cute.

Imagine a Doberman talking like that. Anyway, fortunately, agents come prepared with full protective masks and oxygen tanks. This is a full hazmat situation we got going on. They enter through the back door of the ranch home, past the shattered window. Dead flies carpet the floor. The second bedroom is by far the worst. Flies swarm in the air.

The stench pools in the room. Maggots wriggle in a disgusting puddle at the foot of the bed. A puddle they traced to a moment. mound of trash and blankets. When they start to move it, they see skin, then bone, then what looks like a leg, then a skull. The hallway carpet has been cut away and blood stains stretch from the kitchen into the living room, where the carpet has also been removed. Under trash and clothing in the second bedroom, they find John Mann's body, a mire.

of decomposed, rotting flesh, unrecognizable. And behind him, up against the wall, they find a second figure wrapped in a wet Harley-Davidson blanket. The blanket is form-fitting. They can see the outline of Regina's head before it's even pulled back. She's face up, sweater rolled up above her eyes, one foot exposed, and the rest of her body hidden beneath layers of filth. A purple condom wrapper is found near her head. At first, Tom wasn't the obvious suspect, even though he had a criminal background. His crimes didn't involve violence against anyone, and he had a son he desperately wanted to reconnect with.

Why would he risk throwing that all away? He already messed up by getting stupid drunk and breaking into the salons. Stupid and sloppy, but not nice. murder. But because he was one of the only people who had a connection with both Regina and John, they started to dig. Where else had Tom been staying since he got out? Who else was helping him? And that's when his current girlfriend came up. Alicia Stoner. She wasn't just his girlfriend. She was a social worker at the prison. Imagine that. You realize how serious, certainly has lots going on with him, And we understand that.

We talked about that yesterday. So we understand if things don't come back to at certain times. But we just want to have that line of communication. And hopefully we can get through some of this information today, most of it. Alicia was working at the same prison that Tom was serving time in. Tom was attractive to her for some reason. Probably for the same reason why some women write to inmates. Some particular crazy bitches take that extra step and get a job at the prison.

It's one hell of a world we're living in. I'll tell you. Maybe it was the bad boy prisoner thing. Maybe it was his charming gift of gab. Who knows? Who cares? Whatever the case, he was writing to multiple women, including Regina, and they were all falling for it. With Alicia, he had the added pleasure of interacting personally.

That is, until she quit due to an obvious conflict of interest. She chose Tom over her job, and they continued the relationship. Imagine choosing a criminal over your job. These two lovebirds wrote poems to each other. Long handwritten love letters. They were soulmates. When detectives interviewed Alicia for the first time, she didn't want to say much.

But after she realized that she could be implicated and ultimately served time, that's when she started to talk. I just want to clarify some things that I wasn't direct with. Okay. Okay. But maybe this dream of minimizing some of this so that it's a lesser issue.

I avoided, I minimized, I rationalized, I did all the defense mechanisms, I know. It just comes down to telling us the truth. On paper, Alicia didn't look like the kind of woman who'd ever be connected to a double homicide. She was a mental health worker, and she was married. But somehow, she was charmed by this asshole. After his release in April 2017, Alicia became more than just his girlfriend.

She was his driver, his banker, and his safety net. When parole rules barred Tom from living with her, she paid for his motel rooms. when he needed money she wired it and when he called her in the middle of the night she came on May 12th 2017 Alicia drove to pick him up after he made a desperate phone call

she remembered his left index finger was badly cut a fresh wound he couldn't easily explain when we discussed about initially me getting the phone call from Thomas and he called me and he did say to me if I ever need you with now. And I know he gave me, this is where I'm going to tell you,

just, okay, I know he gave me directions. At some point, and here's what I see when I'm driving and I'm crossing over me under, I'm on the phone with him, and he tells me Regina and John are dead. Okay. Did that help spark some memory of the conversation

of him telling you when you got there? Was there anything more than... There's more. Okay. So it's accurate with him with the hood coming out. Okay. And he gets in my car where I tell you and we park where I tell you.

And just let me say this. The story I was supposed to tell was that he got into a bar fight for the finger. Because he says to me, all you know is that I got into a bar fight for the finger. Okay, so that's what I told you. Tom's version started with his relationship with John. He felt sorry for John because Regina was taking advantage of him. What started as a partnership had turned into a one-way street that ended with Regina being the only happy partner.

partner. She came and went as she pleased. She took John's money and did little in exchange. She even started seeing other guys and bringing them back to the house. So when I met John, you know, he might have been dirtbagging a lot of things, but I just took him as an old hippie, nice guy. He was going to get kicked out of the house soon, but he needed someone to mow the grass. And first of all, you know, I want everybody to know that, you know, he's a little. I've never had any sexual relationships with Virginia. Okay. We met in 2005 as pen pals, and for about a year and a half, we kind of were writing a lot

and had ideas of getting out being together. Of course, then I felt a lot different than I do now about what I wanted in life and a woman, and she's always been super wild, told me a lot of crazy stories. I never realized, and of course she's probably progressed and got worse, you know what I mean? so I never realized, you know, like until her 50th birthday, how she was drinking. If he wasn't convinced at her 50th birthday party that she was an out-of-control partier, an incident that happened at a gas station confirmed it. She'd been drinking.

He says she came out of the restroom with toilet paper hanging out of her pants. When he politely brought it to her attention, she says, watch this. and she pulls it out and plasters it on the chest of a little old lady who's walking by. Gross. So we didn't talk for a while, you know, a few weeks, and I ended up when I needed a place to stay, and I knew that, you know, they were still entertaining that idea when I was in jail. So I called her up and she said, well, you know, she was mad at me, but I said, hey, you know, what are you mad for?

You know what I mean? The way you were acting and I can't have that. Well, so I. I met John a few times, and he had confided in me that he kind of wanted her out. But she told him, like, why get mail here? So you got to evict me. And then he was kind of like, well, I've known her for a while. I kind of love her.

But at the same time, he's like, you know, she don't suck my dick no more. She don't do this. And for her, you know, I'd seen her drunk. Like, you know, you can't get it hard. Real nasty. You know what I mean? So I'm like, I feel bad for him, you know. He felt bad for John.

so he started coaching him on how he could get rid of Regina by evicting her. It would be a bonus that he'd get to live there with John. In effect, he planned to replace Regina. Tom said he didn't have much, but he would help him in any way he could. Just not sexually. John wasn't getting that anyway. I ended up, you know, taking some of my stuff there because, you know, she didn't know at the time, but John was going to try to...

So after the 50th birthday, he took some stuff. her okay all right so I took my blue bin that had my clothes in it okay and I had like a duffel bag they had like my little homemade tattoo shit in it little brown tan bag and you know I wasn't like trying to like move in or nothing yet so I didn't know what the status was gonna be as far as John getting her out of the house I kind of was like I'm not gonna lie to you I said you know I can get you good bud I'll keep you smoking I'll give you 50 bucks a week but I can't live here with her and another reason why I really blame myself.

It's just for entertaining the idea and telling him about the stuff about being elderly and being able to evict her. That's why, I guess, why she bugged the fuck out. You know what I mean? And, you know, I hear them outside yelling and arguing and the dogs are barking and, you know, they're loud. And I'm like, I could hear it outside. So the day this all went down, John had confronted Regina.

She laughed it off and said she was going to go out and meet a guy at a bar. And they might come back to the house. While she was out, John had fallen asleep, so she texted Tom asking him to put the dogs away because she was bringing this guy back. Tom didn't want to be around for that, so he says he left. Well, I just chose to leave. You know, I took a walk in the neighborhood, I decided to want to be there, listening to him as sex, whatever was going on. Well, I had come home, and whoever the guy she had there was gone and her and John were at

arguing and she's drunk. I mean, probably didn't take her much to get drunk anyway. She's such a little person, you know what I mean? And they're fighting and I'm outside in the backyard. Dogs are going crazy. I'm surprised. Nobody called the police, you know, and something just changed in the tone and I come in, you know what I mean? I didn't come in, really, because I didn't want to interrupt none. I didn't know what was said. And I came in and Regina was attacking him with a knife. and I stopped her. I actually got pictures. It took me, believe me, as little she is, she was pretty strong.

You know what I mean? And I had a little mark here where I had a little cut, and I got a bunch of cuts on my hands trying to pull the blade from her. And that's actually how I ended up cutting my fingers so bad. This is when the lies started. Every person he saw got a different explanation for why he got this cut on his finger. from his own son to his ex at the house with his son, to his girlfriend, Alicia,

and finally to the police who interviewed him the night of the burglaries. By that point, his finger was barely hanging on after he tried to superglue it. Gross. But he knew it was bad because it was turning green and starting to smell funny. You know what I mean? I know shit happened, it shouldn't happen.

And anyway, I just wanted to be known that I didn't kill John. The one part of the story that always stayed consistent was that he didn't kill John. He freely admitted he killed Regina, just like he freely admitted several weeks later that he robbed the salons. But he was adamant. He didn't kill John. And none of this shit was planned or premeditated or anything,

but I ended up ripping a knife from Regina. And I threw it behind a chair and she took off. And I went and I checked John, and he was still making sounds and on the floor. And she ends up coming back with another knife. And I don't know, regular steak nights, whatever from the kitchen. And that's when she ended up, you know, stabbing at me and cut my finger real bad. Again, I'm tussling with her. And I get her to the ground, and I'm trying to hold her down.

And, you know, her other hand, she's clawing at my face and my eyes. and I end up getting a knife and using it on it, you know what I mean? And I don't, I'm having nightmares about it. You know what I mean? So much to fucking live with, you know, and I wish I would have ran out of the house, you know what I mean, because I got to live with it. She was a friend, you know what I mean? And, I mean, I'd be stupid to even tell my parole officer I'm about to stay here at this house.

Tom maintained he never met for any of this to happen. He just wanted to get out of prison and start over, be a good dad. continue his relationship with Alicia, except she was still married. And get back to what he loved to do. Tattoos, of course. But he also loved drinking and talking. Those two traits somehow led to him committing crimes

and then involved the very people he loved most in the aftermath of those crimes. Even his young son. It was my phone. I was letting him borrow it for the night, that night. The next morning I woke up, my phone was gone, my keys were gone, and my Jeep was gone, and I didn't talk to him for a couple days. Tom's son thought he was helping his father.

But every time, Tom took more. The next morning, Tommy's phone, his Jeep, and even his trust were gone. When he did move there, he cut his finger open, and he said it was from the hedgehog, but my mom and my aunt both said it was too clean up a cut to be, not a hedgehog, but like, hedge clippers. And my mom and my ampos said it was too clean up a cause I think it was from a knife or glass or something. What do you think? I'd like to believe him, but I don't know.

I haven't seen a cut like that before. It was cut pretty bad. Yeah. It was like hanging off and stuff. Oh, geez. Yeah. He said he was going to try blue and it back together. But when he was in the hospital, they just took it off for him. Tommy Jr. would later learn the truth if he didn't already suspect it. The story was shady. So was his story. about why he needed Tommy to buy him duct tape and garbage bags for the finger. Poor Tommy.

Since his dad got out of prison, he was invading all aspects of his life. And Tommy led him because he loved him. Yeah, since he's been out, my life's been so stressful. Like, I've been afraid at my house. Why, why are you afraid? I don't know if, like, he got dropped off by someone and he owes the money and they're going to, like, come inside or something. I don't know. Okay.

I just don't know. like I thought I knew him a little bit, but I guess I didn't. Okay. Tommy had a right to be afraid. His dad was a criminal, a murderer. The only thing the police didn't know was exactly why he murdered. We think you know more, Tom. Someone's telling us that in that conversation,

things were brought up about what your dad did that were pretty serious. And if he told you what he did, then we need to know, Tom. He did tell me he heard two people. didn't say he would kill anybody. He said he hurt him, though. Tell us what he told you. He said that he heard him, and he said he cut his finger on the hedge clippers,

and that he was trying to fight him back, and that was it. He told me that he took Regina, they got her a hotel, and then two black people came and were beating them up, and that he was trying to defend themselves. Say that again, when was this? Did he give you any time frame on when this happens?

It said it happened late at night. Late at night. They were sitting, he was in the, he said he was in the basement cleaning, and he heard John Yellen, and he went upstairs and he started like trying to fight him with him, and then they left, and that's what... A couple black males? He said two black men. He didn't, he didn't use those words.

He used the, like, the racist turn for them. Okay. And then he was fighting with these black males? Mm-hmm. He said that's how he had a scratch on his head. He said, that's how he got a scratch on his head was from them. This was just one more version of Tom's lies. And when he couldn't cover his tracks with his lies, he simply told Tommy not to look.

Like the time he asked Tommy to pick him up at John Mann's house. This time it was to get rid of the dogs inside. He went back to the house. He went in and grabbed the dogs. I didn't see the dogs. He told me not to look and we drove out there. He had me pull over on the side of the street and he shushed him out. Yeah, he just told me they were John's dogs and that he didn't want him anymore

and he'd want him anymore and that John was going to hurt under like, kill him and get rid of them. So he was going to give him a chance at life and just let him go. The detectives didn't want to have to press Tommy. They knew he was a good kid. In fact, one officer had also been Tommy's rugby coach and had nothing but great things to say about him. Somebody did something right, but it sure wasn't his dad.

And the last thing I want to see is anything. And this isn't trying to pit you against your dad, But you're in this position. Sadly, he put you in this position. He did. And it's sad and we feel for you. You know I do. You know what I think of you. And it's wrong. But I just want the truth, 100%. And you walk out of here and you know your conscience is clear. If I tell you guys now. Tell us now. And you're not in any trouble. He said he killed him. Kill Regina and John. Just Regina. He said he was in the basement cleaning and he heard John upstairs screaming. Saw Regina. stabbing him, tried to get in the knife away from him, and then he said he took the knife and stabbed her. Tommy's story matched the version his father gave police, that Regina had attacked John, that Tom wrestled the knife away and stabbed her. There were no other people at the house

that day, black, white, or otherwise. If they could just get Tom to admit to killing both Regina and John. It was their gut feeling and the coroner's reports backed it up. John Mann's body was pierced with multiple sharp force injuries, including to the neck, ribs, collarbone, and defensive wounds on his hands and arms. Regina stood under five feet tall and didn't weigh much. Besides, Tom's version was that he intervened after only one or two stabbings. Then there was the elaborate cover-up, including commissioning a guy,

named Delugo to burn the house down after he'd removed the dogs and the carpeting. He used Alicia for contact because he was already in jail. Delugo said no, he wouldn't do it. And the defensive wounds on Tom indicated a serious altercation where Tom lost control of the blade, not to mention the lies, the overwhelming number of lies. So, detectives had one more. card to play with Tom, the polygraph. And when the subject turned to John Mann, Tom's story started to crack.

It was May of 2017 in a suburb of good old Cleveland, Ohio, the home of the Browns and a whole lot of killers and even worse, Ohioans. Thomas Nuff had been out of prison for just a few weeks. He was drifting between motels, borrowing from his sons, and leaning on his girlfriend, Alicia Stoner, who drove him, gave him money, and even picked him up the morning after he killed at least one person inside the house on Nellwood Road. So yeah, you know, Tom was just living his best life. John Mann lived in that house with his partner, Regina Capo Bianco. By then, Regina had long since given up her part of the bargain for living there. and was dating other men.

She had also been writing to Tom while he was in prison. In fact, it was Regina and John who picked him up on the day he was released. Regina may have expected to carry on a relationship with Tom, but he already had Alicia. And he also realized that Regina's drinking and other bizarre behaviors could land him right back in prison on a parole violation. John was fed up with her too. He wanted her gone. and Tom was all too happy to help. If Regina were out of the picture, it meant Tom could move in and finally have a stable place to reconnect with his son and have a girlfriend.

On the night of May 11, 2017, something violent happened inside that house. John and Regina were both killed, their bodies hidden away. Police wouldn't discover their decomposed remains until June. In the meantime, Tom was getting rid of evidence and roping his loved ones. into helping him cover his tracks. You know, I've always tried to tell him, even though I've done fucked up shit or I've been in jail,

I always try to, you know, do the right thing. A lot of things that, you know, I did the past, it was reckless, you know, out drunk and doing stupid shit and just being wild. But, you know, for the most part, you know, he knows to do the right thing, you know, so that's, I just, if I can only be that example to him,

you know what I mean, that's what I want to do for him. What he wanted to do for his son? what he actually ended up doing were two vastly different things. By May 17th, his life was spiraling. He was walking around with a finger that was barely hanging on, and his freedom was also barely hanging on. In the weeks that followed, Tom didn't lie low. He went right back to his old ways.

He broke into two salons, leaving a trail that would put him back on police radar. At the same time, he told everyone a different story. He told his son, he told Alicia, he told the police a story about a drug dealer, a fight, Regina stabbing John and Tom stabbing Regina in self-defense. But there was one part he never changed. He swore he didn't kill John Mann. You know how you've heard that polygraphs are unreliable? Well, police departments across the country insist they yield a success rate of 86 to 1.

100%. And Brunswick police were counting on its reliability. And listen, man, I don't want your son to be in about this. But right now, he is half smack in the middle of it. And that's, I mean, listen, I know, but that's why, as much as, you know, he's telling us you confided in him that, you know, you kill two people. And then he, you know, his, you're confiding in him is both, both the people we found in the house. Okay. I told him the black people.

And then when I ended up telling him the truth. After the truck incident, I told him what it was, and I told him I was just embarrassed because I had killed a girl, and that's when I told him the truth of the matter. Now, I wanna bring this thing back up in this machine here, okay? It says you failed, that's saying that you'd stay a gun.

Right. So I wanna talk about some similarities and some stuff from the injuries of both of both our background. Right. Want to talk about it? This is gonna be exactly what I was told. Okay. All right?

Yep. Okay, Regina, stab wound in the back, two stab wounds to the right side of the neck, crushed Adam's apple, right carotid artery was cut. Her left hand near her index figure, the webbing was cut. Cause a death, a threat, defensive wounds. I know, I told you. Cause a death, sharp force injury, and it crushed Adam's apple, neck compression, strangulation. All of these injuries included or were in addition to the stab wounds. And the polygraph had confirmation.

You mentioned that, you know, several times that John was over there making gurgling whizzes like that and stuff like that. Okay, this machine says that you had stabbed John. Yeah. Okay. Let me ask you something. John hit one stabling right here. Did you help him stop everything by doing that? Is it the one, did you do one stab wound into John to help him out to put him out of misery?

No. detectives kept giving Tom an out. They told him maybe it was an accident, an act of mercy, self-defense, and maybe things got out of control. Any of those versions could have given him a softer landing, even a shot at claiming self-defense. But Tom wouldn't take it. He stuck to his one line over and over. I didn't kill John. You've got to help yourself out in this.

You've got to help yourself out in this. You've got to tell us what the hell happened in the house. You know, he brings up a good point. I'm going to let you explain him to him about what he thinks something happened in the argument. I'm going to let him go ahead with that. You know, it brings up a good point as we thought. You don't like women getting beat up, do you? No.

Tell me a little bit about your stepfather, right? Right? And your mom? Yeah. Abuse of relationship. Yeah. Something about that. Yeah.

that happened quite frequently? Well, when we were younger. What were your feelings on that? I just loved my mom, and I hated him at the time, you know. Even though there was times where he was a good guy, and I liked him, you know, for certain things, he would drink and use drugs, and, you know, he took all his aggression on her. And, you know, she's just such always a good person.

And being a little kid, you know, that really hurt, you know, I wanted to see her go back to him, you know. How did that make you feel? It hurt me, you know. It made you angry? Well, sure. I mean, it wouldn't be angry. You know, I was angry that, you know, she put up with it.

But, I mean, obviously, she felt that, you know, she loved them and worked through it, you know, and they had separated for like a year and we got back together. What do you think should happen to somebody that beats their wife or their girlfriend? A woman who has heard something. A woman in general. I stand with you, and I don't know. Nobody should touch a woman. Right.

I mean, what do you think should happen to somebody? I mean, I don't feel like they should hide. You know, I mean, I can understand why some women do that, you know, because they feel like there's no other way out. They feel trapped. Yeah. You know, I feel like, you know, women even deserve that to when a man does that. You know what I mean?

That they should be able to. So what was John doing in Regina? What was John doing in Regina? He wanted her out. What really happened? He wanted her. her out. He wanted her out. Was he hurting her? I don't know. Was he hurt him? I don't know. Did you see him hurt? I never seen him hurt her. Did she tell you he was hurt her? No. She told me many stories about punching on the boyfriends. You know what I mean? She never said John hurt her. You know, she said he was dirty and never changed his clothes and I think you know that he heard her. I think she can fight it in you and you're trying to protect her. And then she'd get pandering with you for what was going on with you and John.

Is that what happened? Listen, man, I get it. This was their best hypothesis. It was the only time they'd seen Tom get this emotional, other than when he was talking about his son. They had tapped into his past to find a trigger. John was abusing Regina, and Tom was going to stop him. But Regina was used to the chaos and abetia.

abuse. So she tried to stop Tom. You do realize come Monday morning during this ring, the media's going to be there, man, they're going to pinch you as a monster for this, don't you? Yeah. Do you want them to pinch his mind you? Do you want you? They're going to any one. The difference is if we can tell our story, we're going to have news conference.

We're going to give a press conference. Monday morning before your arraignment. We're telling everybody, you're here, you're being arraigned. The news is going to be there. How's it going to be? You know what I mean? Did you sit in this chair with us? Did you talk to the detectives and did you tell us?

everything that happened 100% to the team, which right now I don't believe. Correct. Okay? And your son is gonna watch this news conference. Sure. You know what I mean? Your son's gonna watch his news conference. Pretty soon, he may be watching it with you somewhere else because of the trouble he's in.

And illicit as well. They're both in trouble right now with this. Too much is going on because you put them in this position. The only way for you to help them and to not paint yourself as a monster, I mean, I mean, come on, I know that you love your kid. And your kid does love you, okay? He does. But he's going to have to live with this cloud of the immediate pain of my father is a monster,

and people know that you're his father. Would you rather just have him be known as, my dad made a mistake, he confessed up to it, he did exactly who it is. I still talk to my dad in jail. Do you want dad or do you want everybody going to look at your dad's a monster? If Tom had accepted their version of what happened, would he have gotten away with it? I mean, there was no way he wasn't going back to prison.

He robbed two salons and killed a woman. These were indisputable facts. But was it chivalry gone way wrong? Or was it a premeditated attempt to secure a place of his own? It's possible no one will ever know, but the jury would seal his fate. No matter what, Tom would probably spend the rest of his life jail, but Ohio also has the death penalty, which is a good thing, but they should use it a lot more. The relationship Tom wanted with his son was never going to happen, at least not outside of

prison walls. Thomas E. Nuff Jr. was convicted of two counts of aggravated murder for killing John Mann and Regina Capo Bianco, along with multiple other charges, aggravated burglary, gross abuse of a corpse, kidnapping, conspiracy, tampering with evidence in theft-related offenses. There was, of course, a jury recommendation that the sentence of death be imposed. The court finds, by proof beyond a reasonable doubt, that the aggravating circumstances the offender was found guilty of committing outweigh the mitigating factors. Therefore, on count two, the sentence of death will be imposed upon the offender. This meant Tom's son lost the father.

Well, and that's what I hope is by being, you know, straight up with you guys, the things that you can't control to help with, you know, I'd appreciate. So I'm not here to fuck nobody around or be a bad guy and... No, no, nobody's, nobody's thing said at all, you know what I mean? I'm saying it's enough to have to live with my faults and all the mistakes I've had in the past and letting my family down and, you know, not being there through my son's high school years when, you know, other people. glad her dance there at the football game.

Because of Tom's actions, he would never get the chance to go to one of his kids' games and walk him out onto the field. But his son wasn't the only one who suffered. Two lives were lost. Regina may have been a bit of a wild card, but she mattered to her family,

to her friends. She was a person. And no matter what her life choices, she didn't deserve what happened to her. This monster took my sister from me. My heart is broken. I don't know if it will ever repair. I miss her every day.

She will not get to see her sons get married. She will not get to be called Grandma. And it's all because of trying to help somebody that I told her that I thought she should stay away from. stay away from. I have horrible visions and I hope someday will get out of my head of the murder. And no one should ever have to have these visions of a family member. I am glad he has the death penalty. I think he deserves the death penalty. He's had a chance to plead for his life. And I'm sure my sister pleaded for her life that he chose to ignore.

John Mann's son and sister both gave incredible heartfelt statements, and John's son spoke for more than 10 minutes. My dad was a goofy, bright, and sensitive man. He loved the Cleveland Browns, watching match reruns and doing community theater. He had a full scholarship offer from Heidelberg University in astrophysics. He ended up floating into electrical contracting. from his interest in solar power. He loved the idea of cheap, renewable energy.

He even studied to be an architect because he thought it would help him develop solar power cells. Later in life, he became a computer programmer. He truly had a gifted mind and could do just about whatever he wanted to with properly motivated. People tended to like my dad. He had a gregarious and colorful personality with an oddball sense of humor. You took my dad for me. You robbed him.

of the golden years of his life and the time we had together. I miss him terribly. He proceeded to lay out how Tom had failed, as a man, as a human being, and as a father. He sympathized with Tom's son and thanked him for his bravery in enduring the trial and doing the right thing by testifying against his own father, whom he loved. But then, he surprised everyone.

You do not deserve to live. You do not deserve a lot. humane death. You butcher two people for reasons I cannot begin to comprehend. I have wanted you to die, yet I am faced with the reality that it will not and cannot be enough. In order to heal, I must accept this and find a way to reconcile it against my own feelings. I will continue to beg for his life to be spared, however possible. I want you all to hear it from a man that wanted him dead. As a son to a man whose life was ended, his father, I will back to anyone who will listen to spare his life. I don't think we should do it for me or him. I think we should

do it because it's the right thing to do for our society. Of course, Tom is appealing, and the legal fight will go on for years. But what lingers isn't just the courtroom drama and appeals. It's the contradiction. Tom wanted to be a good father. He wanted to prove he could do right by his son. He stayed in touch, leaned on him, even dreamed of settling down in a house where they could reconnect. But instead, he fell back into every pattern he swore he'd left behind. The lies, the violence, the selfishness that burned through everything in his path. And maybe the hardest part to make sense of is the question of whether Tom could have been telling the truth about John Mann.

Maybe John was abusing Regina, like the detectives had suggested. And it triggered a traumatic reaction from Tom. Or maybe what happened as exactly as Tom described. John tried to evict Regina, and she went at him, so Tom intervened. Even if parts of his story are true and noble, all of his following actions say the most.

Tom's choices after that night spoke the loudest. He hid the bodies, tried to hire someone to burn the place down, dump the dogs into someone else's neighborhood, manipulated and lied to those he loved, dragged them into something horrible and, most importantly, never called police. Whatever happened in that house might have started with good intentions. but what followed were really, really, really bad choices that only a complete fucking idiot would make. Then again, this is Ohio. At the end of the day, we all have to be accountable for our choices.

We all have to be responsible for what we decide to do. Otherwise, what the fuck are we doing here? Today, Thomas Nuff's son is grown. He's built a life that has nothing to do with Parma Heights or with the crimes his father committed there. He's well-adjusted, stable, and in 2023, he got married. Whatever cycle Tom was trapped in, his son has escaped it. Good for him. And maybe that's the real ending here.

Not the death sentence, not the deaths, not the appeals, but the fact that even out of something so violent and tragic, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, a different kind of life is actually possible. Gonna do it for another one.

Thanks for joining us. If you like the show, head on over to sordenscale.com. Get the app. Get Plus. We'll see you next week. Stay safe.