The Misery Machine - ACS Call Center Murders: Christiana Fesmire [Part 1]

Episode Date: October 18, 2021

This week, Drewby and Yergy release the highly anticipated continuation of the ACS Murders series. We give background on the call center, the cast of characters in this controversial case, and the underground criminal enterprise operating unbeknownst to many. A very special thank you to Levi for supporting our show as our highest tier patron! Levi's Fundraising Page: https://gofund.me/6b9e4f07 Support Our Patreon For More Unreleased Content: https://www.patreon.com/themiserymachine Buy Us A Coffee! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/miserymachine Join Our Facebook Group to Request a Topic: https://t.co/DeSZIIMgXs?amp=1 PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/themiserymachine Instagram: miserymachinepodcast Twitter: misery_podcast Discord: https://discord.gg/kCCzjZM #themiserymachine #podcast #truecrime Source Material: https://www.centralmaine.com/2013/10/18/robinson_sentenced_to_55_years_in_beating_death_/ https://www.sunjournal.com/2014/06/12/lewiston-man-goes-court-new-trial-murder-case/ https://lawyers-maine.com/lewiston-man-goes-to-court-for-new-trial-in-murder-case/ https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/news/local/missing-woman-murder-trial-begins/97-355505914 https://bangordailynews.com/2016/02/02/news/high-court-upholds-murder-conviction-finds-prosecutor-engaged-in-misconduct/ https://bangordailynews.com/2012/11/09/news/lewiston-auburn/witness-says-brother-confessed-to-drowning-disposing-of-victim/ https://bangordailynews.com/2012/11/09/news/lewiston-auburn/witness-says-brother-confessed-to-drowning-disposing-of-victim/ https://caselaw.findlaw.com/me-supreme-judicial-court/1724837.html https://bangordailynews.com/2012/11/16/news/lewiston-auburn/lewiston-man-found-guilty-of-murder/ https://bangordailynews.com/2011/12/01/news/hearing-continues-for-man-charged-with-murder-in-lewiston-escort%E2%80%99s-death/ https://bangordailynews.com/2013/10/18/news/christiana-fesmires-killer-to-serve-55-years-in-prison/ https://news.yahoo.com/news/soldier-says-lewiston-defendant-murder-115811345.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAABAM9Kz_RZGZWdOseih4n4Zp22Npenfu3kqv5UCJDSNkm6cBVbe46b3RlSm9MqAmMvE_wJ3PaHIgC6_c1unlpHsGXHj-gcVf5QHZ91GIufU_Unsy77HMF9NZIaiTna8cnkmwt_WDWlEvLzvYxwPdSIcA1l2oeK6w0DR0iS2JhZLA https://bangordailynews.com/2012/11/10/news/witness-says-murder-suspect-talked-of-body-in-trunk/ http://stronghancock.frontrunnerpro.com/book-of-memories/1021769/fesmire-christiana/obituary.php https://pdfslide.net/documents/levi-gervais-and-brandi-robinson-affidavit.html https://www.sunjournal.com/2013/10/18/auburn-candidate-says-grown-since-murder-trial-testimony/ https://bangordailynews.com/2012/11/08/news/sister-of-accused-murderer-testifies-she-recruited-victim-to-be-an-escort/ https://www.seacoastonline.com/article/20111015/NEWS/111019842 https://bangordailynews.com/2013/10/18/news/christiana-fesmires-killer-to-serve-55-years-in-prison/ https://www.wcvb.com/article/dna-confirms-body-is-that-of-maine-murder-victim/8176187 https://www.necn.com/news/local/_necn__police__woman_s_body_found_in_lisbon__maine_necn/56501/ https://apnews.com/article/b3aa5b5d6f8c41219d598f35faf42b56  

Hi, I'm the Miser Machine. I'm Yergy. And I'm Drewby. And this week we're continuing with the second case in our ACS murders episode. We're on Highland Avenue in Lewiston and behind us. And that building over there is where Kristiana Fezmire unfortunately lost her life. And if you're listening on YouTube, please hit like and subscribe. This is the best way you can support our channel.

But without further ado, the case of Christina Fezmire. In 2009, Buddy Robinson and his twin sister, Brandy Robinson, became employed at affiliated computer services, which will call ACS moving forward in Lewiston, Maine, which was a business process outsourcing company that operated a number of businesses, mainly call centers, that handled contracts for a number of well-known companies around the world. Brandy was placed on a large campaign that handled roadside assistance for a large insurance company, while Buddy was placed on a retention sales campaign that Yergy managed. So after our trainer took a business trip to our client's corporate offices in Westerville, Ohio,

I was actually put in charge of training buddies training class for the week, which was quite bluntly one of the most miserable work experiences that I've ever encountered. Without getting into too many erroneous details unrelated to the case at hand, the class was extremely unprofessional and refused to focus on learning what they needed to know in order to take calls in the following week. All of them seemed to come from extremely troubled backgrounds, and within a week of gaining employment, the bulk of those new hires became homeless,

and they all moved into a strip motel on Route 196 on the Lisbon-Louiston line. Some of them electively. Buddy himself even stayed there for a time with a girl he was seeing. By all accounts, Buddy was actually the most normal out of the bunch. So I can attest to that as well. I will be up front that I did not know buddy very well, but I did know many of the people who were in these membership training classes and many of them were very problematic, were very troubled,

were not great people were taken on because they couldn't get anyone else or were tricked into this particular campaign. We should probably talk about what exactly this campaign did. So I was actually tricked myself into joining. this campaign. Before that, I worked for a credit card sales campaign that's actually where Drew B and I met. And I was told that this was a good opportunity. There was room for advancement. It was a new campaign that was coming into the building. And I didn't really know a bunch about it. Other, it was just some sort of membership programs. Obviously, we can't say the full legal name of

the business that I would be working for. But I got hired on and I hopped into the third training class for just so I kind of knew what I'd be managing. And that's when I found out that this was a retention sales campaign. So basically what that meant is when people, mainly elderly people, were making some sort of purchase over the phone. And it was generally for either medications or some other sort of weird products, mainly out of catalogs or with their credit card bill. They targeted them very, like an array of different.

ways. They were offered these membership programs that were supposed to be money saving, but really they weren't. I hesitate to not admit it was probably a scam, but it was a scam. I mean, we all thought it was a scam. Every campaign on the floor was like, that's the scam campaign. It absolutely was. They didn't make any efforts to hide that fact at all, really. So basically what was happening is these folks, mainly elderly people or the kids of these elderly people were calling to cancel these membership programs that a lot of times they didn't know they had signed up for. So they'd find a charge, a reoccurring charge that is, on their monthly statements and they'd call to cancel. And it was the agent's job to try to get them to keep it.

And this wasn't a $5 or $10 charge. I heard these were like $50 charges. Some of them were. Generally it was like a reoccurring $1499 charge up to generally 2999, but it varied based on the program because there were four different programs that you could be signed up for under this campaign. And it depended on who gave you the offer. So sometimes it came with your credit card bill. Sometimes you were making an order online for something else or over the phone for something else out of a catalog. It really depend on where the offer came from, what the price point would be. But it was extremely scummy and terrible. And this place that we worked for had a lot of different businesses under its roof.

So you actually worked for the same company or campaign that I did, but you did something that was a little bit more legit. They had two different branches. So what I did was credit card rewards customer service. I was the first class out for that. And the people that we got here, obviously, they were trouble. I mean, a lot of people worked here were troubled, were problematic, had criminal histories, were not good people.

But a lot of people were just one paycheck from the street and just trying to survive. I think almost everybody was, including management. The economy was not good at the time. It fostered this really bad environment and culture. One thing that was very common is that you would get all these back-to-back calls that you would do anything to get floor support just to get off the phones, anything, no matter how dirty it was.

And the idea of getting promoted to a supervisor, everybody wanted that. But it was only a dollar extra an hour. So at the time, we were making like $9 an hour. So a supervisor made $10. an hour, but a supervisor was required to be salary. So to be salaried, immediately what this company would do, not the companies inside here, but every company, virtually every company at ACS, where we worked, would pay you for 40 hours, your salary, but work you for 60.

And if you refuse to do this, you were stepped down or fired. And why do we take the time to illustrate all this? You need to know what type of environment this was, the pressure this put on people. despite becoming a supervisor sounding like a giant scam, and I turned down an official suit position three or four times before they finally gave up on me. But I still had my own team. I was still an acting supervisor, but I was allowed to be hourly. But people were literally doing incredibly backstabby, illegal, criminal things to get people

out of the running so they could get a supervisor position because of that one extra dollar an hour and because they didn't want to be on the phones anymore. Being on the phones for eight hours drove people insane. I will say I did make 1154, but I got in very, very early before things got so crazy because I got promoted to supervisor, I believe it was 2005. So this was before all these other campaigns came in. It's before they started an activity-based compensation. It was when things were still kind of normal and there weren't any scammy programs.

Let's touch really quickly on the activity-based compensation or a, ABC as it was called. We had lifers there that were making high 20s an hour, which is a very good money for that period of time. And then ABC comes in and reduces all of them to minimum wage, all of them, these old people who, they're the main breadwriters of their family, all of them start making minimum wage. And now they can make basically a flexible amount based on how their activity is for that week. But the metrics were so poor that most people did not make above minimum wage. Right. So they had to, they found like a, I forget what they called it, but it was like a safety net to get them back to the $9 an hour. It was subsidy, is what they called it. A subsidy they'd pay to get them above minimum wage in some cases. And it depended on the campaign to get them back to the $9 base rate that they had started new employees at. But some did let them get dropped to minimum wage. I do know that. Membership was like that. Again, why do I take the time to say all this? You need to know what type of environment this was. And then Yergy's campaign, membership.

not only do you have this type of environment, but a lot of people resented the fact that they were basically their job was to scam other people. Yeah. That weighs on you. So do you well, you had to be a certain kind of not great person. You'd be a scumback.

You had to lie. Like your best agents were... We're liars. Yeah. The thing about it is, is, you know, this was before marijuana became legal here, even on a medical basis. But I had agents who I knew were completely

fried out of their minds or on other drugs. Drunk on the floor on pills. And I didn't do anything about it. I didn't do anything about it because at least they were able to handle their calls and they weren't yelling back. Because if they yelled back, then I had to do something. Yeah. And I didn't want to.

I heard some calls where people, like, I could hear the breaking point where they just went off on a customer. And that was it for them. They just couldn't handle it anymore. So there were quite a few people who had to be drugged up to go in there. There were some people who were selling on the floor holding it. Hard stuff, too. I saw it with my own eyes. This was a very, this was a sketchy place. And I thought most call centers worked that way. I think it's in particular, this call center at every location is like this. Except for in certain places in other countries. Yeah, in other countries, it's not so bad. It's actually

taken seriously. But there's one over in the Portland, Oregon area that was pretty bad, too, I hear. So when the misery machine started because Yergy and I wanted to do a podcast that chronicled everything that happened at ACS, all the immoral, potentially illegal, messed up things. So that way it didn't get lost to time. Because as we got older, because we were young when we were working here, like as we got older, we realized me especially, wow, this is messed up. And I was just so young that I just thought this is how the world works. A lot of people there did. I mean, it was, it was my first adult. job really aside from like the pet store like I worked there from age 20 to age 28 there's a six hour podcast somewhere on a laptop of us talking about this and I need to get that I don't know if it'll ever see the light of day because there's it's just all over the place and there's something I think there's some personal names we put out that we in retrospect find it rather incriminating and I just don't really want to do that but before we go on to the rest of the story and thank you for sticking with us to really understand the environment of this place.

If this is something you want to hear more about in podcast format, I mean, maybe we'd make this a Patreon episode. Let us know because literally we talked about this for six hours, and we could go for six more. There are so many things that can be said, things that we saw with our own eyes and things that were just rumors. So if that's something that interests you, please let us know. But I hope we've set the stage here fairly well.

So it was on the roadside assistance campaign that we mentioned earlier that Brandy Robinson met and became acquainted with a beautiful young woman named Christiana, Melosine Fezmeier. And before I go into Christiana real quick, I do want to talk about how this roadside assistance campaign, you know, there was some criticisms you could bring towards the campaign itself and the management. But generally, people who worked on that campaign were happy to work there. So I want to stress that this is a very different campaign compared to membership that we just highlight. Obviously, it's stressful. You're dealing with roadside assistance and people who are in a very vulnerable position. But generally, people liked it there.

Yeah, yeah. So I want to be clear that this campaign is not like membership, which we just described. Now, under Christiana, she was born in Concord, New Hampshire, on December 17th, 1988 to her parents, Chester and Deborah Fezmire. She spent the first four years of her life in New Hampshire before her family moved to Pennsylvania, where both of her parents were from. They moved to Maine in 1997, and she then attended and graduated from Great Salt Bay School. She would later go on to Lincoln Academy and Coastal Christian School before completing high school in 2007. Christiana was very athletic and always kept active. She participated in cross-country while in school, but out of school she loved biking and snowboarding.

Christiana was a very creative person who enjoyed painting and cooking. She also loved music and would occasionally be found helping DJ different events. And oh my goodness, could she dance? I don't know if there was any videos out there of her anymore, but there were some videos on her Facebook. I remember at one time dancing at festivals, and she really, really could dance. It was quite lovely to watch. She was very charismatic and had a great sense of humor and was a joy to everyone around her. She cared deeply for her friends and even total strangers that she came across, and I can attest to this. So I've always been a self-conscious person, always. That's just me. And I remember one day, I hadn't met her yet. I had seen her on the call

floor, but we were both out back having a cigarette. And she came up to me all like jubilant and happy and just told me that I was so beautiful. And coming from her who was a very, very, very beautiful woman, that meant a lot because I don't feel that way often. I unfortunately never got the pleasure of meeting her or interacting with her. But everyone that I talked to held her in very high regard and had nothing but amazing things to say about her. So from accounts that I've come across, Christiana actually gave herself her middle name. So Melosine or Melosina is a figure of European folklore, a female spirit of fresh water in a holy well or river.

She's usually depicted as a woman who is a serpent or fish from the waist down much like a mermaid, and it would only be fitting that she'd name herself after such a beautiful creature, as she herself was a gorgeous person inside and out. So in addition to working for ACS, she also modeled displaying her portfolio on the website model mayhem, which is still up. So Brandy Robinson, as we mentioned before, that was Buddy Robinson's twin sister,

and her eight-year-old son Michael resided in the second floor of a duplex that she allegedly owned at 36 Highland Avenue in Lewiston, Maine. And we say allegedly, as some account state that the previous owner had abandoned the building and that it was in the process of being foreclosed on. In November of 2010, Cristiana was allegedly looking for a place to live,

and Brandy offered her the vacant first floor apartment in her building. Around that same time, Buddy moved into the upstairs unit with his sister and her son. Meanwhile, Buddy had been proving himself to be an excellent resource on his campaign at work and quickly became someone that I came to trust and rely on. whether it was helping to coach difficult agents for quality issues or to help them with their retention strategies, Buddy became my right-hand man. At the time, I could honestly say that not only I considered him to be a great colleague, but I considered him to be a friend as well. The only glaring problem that Buddy had was his attendance. He often had to leave work early, generally an hour before his shift had ended, to go home to watch Michael because Brandy and Christiana had to,

to work. To remedy this, I offered to watch Michael at my desk so that he didn't have to leave work anymore, and Brandy would just drop Michael off. Buddy, Michael, and I had something else in common to. We were all huge fans of the game World of Warcraft. So while Buddy worked, I kept Michael busy showing him my characters in the Wow Armory or watching different raid videos on YouTube. So one night, I jokingly said to Buddy regarding Brandy, what is she doing over there running a brothel? and little did I know my joke was actually an extremely loaded question that I did not need to know the answer to. Should we talk about points for a second? The point system.

Yeah, it's probably worth mentioning briefly. Mentioning what the point system is at ACS. So basically, attendance went on a point basis were at seven points you would be fired. You accumulated these by being certain increments of time late. So I believe it was five minutes to a quarter of your shift. was a quarter of a point, then up to, you know, half a point, to a full point, if it was anything more than that. We were told even if we were a minute over, they could get us for a quarter of a point.

I mean, some campaigns did that. I was a little bit more lax, as we all know. Well, you know, you were one of the better supervisors there, so. Yeah. So Buddy was accumulating points pretty quickly by just leaving an hour early constantly. And it was getting to the point where I had to write them up. So having Brandy dropped Michael off, just as. he could finish his shift out, like was like the least I could do, honestly.

And it made things a lot easier on you to not have to put this pressure on you to write him up or discipline him or even fire him. Right. There were other people who had points problems and they were, they were either being grossly covered up by supervisors who they had relationships with, had affairs with. People were paying to have their points taken off under the table. or were doing favors for certain supervisors so their points would go away.

One particular manager of one campaign, I've heard alleged by multiple people, you would go into his office and magically you had all these points there that weren't there before and he would tell you that he'd make them go away if you just, you know, did some favors for him right there at his desk. And if you didn't, he fired you on the spot. And he got away with that for a while, a long while.

still has a good career nowadays. But yeah, that's the type of place we worked at. Yes. So in reality, Brandy ran a prostitution ring and Christiana began working for her, advertising on sites like Backpage. When Yergy asked Buddy about how they managed to not get caught, he told her that Brandy's cover was that they were running some sort of medical coding or transcription business and they filed their taxes as such. However, you said you've never seen it officially reported anywhere that this was indeed the case. It's not in any affidavit or source.

This is just what Buddy told me specifically when I was like, how are they getting away with this? And at this point, neither of them I should mention worked in the roadside assistance program anymore. So Christiana had quit. So had Brandy. Okay. Also involved with the operation was Brandy's boyfriend Levi Jervais, who was a trainer for the roadside assistance campaign at ACS, along with a Canadian woman by the name of Alonda Godbout, whom Buddy met during his time at Humane Preskyle, which is a. college in a more rural part of Maine. It was rumored that some of the clientele allegedly included folks in law enforcement, as well as high-ranking officials in Maine politics. So we have

some listeners comments that, hey, are you sure you want to do a true crime podcast? You might go missing one day. Well, if we're ever going to mysteriously die over a case, it'd be this one, because allegedly some of these clientele included former governors, and that's all we're going to say about that. In the spring of 2011, Kristiana worked less for Brandi and spent more time away from the apartment, staying with other friends in the area. On June 28th, Brandi informed Buddy that Kristiana had told a client that Brandy was operating an escort business. Allegedly, Buddy became upset and said that he was going to kill Cristiana. This is Brandi's statement. Nobody else, I believe, has confirmed that. It should be noted that the motive in question seems a bit

strange. Christiana allegedly shared this information with a client who would know exactly what type of business was being operated since they were indeed a patron of the said business. However, Yerga, you've heard some different accounts that Cristiana provided the client with Brandy's actual legal name, which is definitely a no-no. Yeah. So I believe that's actually the angle. In some sources, they're like, she told the client that Brandi was running a business. Well, obviously Brandy's running this business. He's there to be a patron. Yeah. We should note that They were making really good money. They were.

They were even taking weekend trips down to Foxwoods to work there. And we're getting very, very, very good money. This was a very profitable business. So on June 30th, 2011, Brandy agreed to lend her Lexus to Christiana so that she could drive to a family reunion the following day in Rangely, which is a resort kind of lake town in northwestern Maine. It's quite lovely. as well as to gather some of the rest of her belongings from the downstairs unit

because at this point she'd basically moved out altogether. In a text message sent to Brandy on the morning of July 1st, 2011, Christiana wrote that she would pick up the car later that morning. Between 7 a.m. and 7.30 a.m. that same morning, Brandy left her apartment with Alanda Godbout, the Canadian woman that worked for her. As they were leaving, they saw Christiana arriving, and Brandy had a brief conversation with Christiana through the window of her. Cadillac SUV about the location of the car keys.

We should probably mention that they had quite a few cars, right? Yeah, they had three higher-end cars. So they had this Alexis sedan. It was black. They had a Cadillac SUV that was basically brand new. And Levi drove a kind of tealish-green colored Volvo. They were all registered to Levi. So we know that Levi dating Brandy at this time was involved in this business from our

understanding, correct? So from our understanding, he had some sort of hand in this business as either some sort of driver to her. I believe he doesn't believe he was involved with it, but by all accounts, there was some involvement, either we're trying to recruit women at work for it, or, you know, at least being some sort of active bystander in the business. So here's what I have never really understood and what people seem to kind of ignore. Buddy didn't really have a place in this business, did he? No, he did not. He was not working as some sort of muscle. he was not recruiting girls, he was not wrangling patrons or anything like that. He just happened to live with his sister who was running something like this.

Yes. But yet the claim is that he had some major stake in this business operating. He did not. Not at all. That's, I find that a bit peculiar. So Brandy and Alonda stopped over to ACS as well as to Dunkin' Donuts on Lisbon Street in Lewiston, very close to each other. Allegedly, Brandy received a call from Buddy via Christiana.

cell phone, letting her know that he had a fight with her. Brandy and Alanda returned to the apartment, and both of them noticed that the black Lexus was still there. According to Brandy, Buddy was present, and he informed her that he and Christiana got into a fight and that he, quote, took care of the situation, end quote. He further stated that Christiana's body was in the trunk of the Lexus. Alonda allegedly noticed that Buddy's pants were wet and heard him state that Christiana, quote, had thrown up blood everywhere because she was on drugs, end quote. So with that said, this is where we're going to hold it for this episode. Next episode, we will talk more about what happened allegedly when the apartment was found in the condition that it was in.

There is just an awful lot for us to talk about. We have 16 pages worth of information to share with you. Yes. And I know that in future episodes there's probably more background that we're going to We took some videos around ACS or what's left of it now talking. I'm going to see if we can include those in future episodes. If not, they will definitely be available on Patreon in the very least. So if you appreciate this and you want us to release part two of this case next week, please hit like and subscribe, share this video with someone that you think would appreciate it.

These are the best ways to support our channel. We have not been showing up in YouTube search as of late. and if you'd like to help us get around that, sharing this video and telling other true crime fans about us is the best thing that you can do to help us right now. We also have a very wonderful group of people who have decided to go that extra step to support us on Patreon. So let's thank those people now. Yes, so thank you. Eddie, Rowan, Markey, Holly, Mark, Karen, Karen, Dave and Karina, Dakota and Kitty, Jen, Mo, Robin, Tom, Alex, Jacob, Bailey, Stephen Ciazza, Amanda, Patricia, Alexis. Karine, Catherine, Jody, Sally, Kimberly, Jacqueline, Lawton, Crystal, Nat, Cooper, Blue Unicorn, Michelle, Catherine, Rondy, Janice, Andrea, Cindy Joe, John, Greg, Dylan, Audrey, Jossie, Heather Morgan, welcome Shannon, welcome Shannon, welcome Brittany, welcome Brittany, welcome, Renee, welcome Marie, and Levi. And Levi, our highest tier, tier, Patreon, supporter. There's this lovely picture right now. And if you two want to support us on Patreon, us on Patreon, Patreon.com, slash the misery machine, you get access to all of our secret episodes, you'd access to our secret

Discord and Snapchat groups and you may even get a postcard. Haunted one. Patreon.com slash the misery machine. Also, I should say, just to be clear, in case anyone thought this, our Levi is not the Levi in question that we talked about in this case. I know. Two Levi's from the Lewiston area. No, Levi, our super patron Levi and friend is not Levi-Jervase.

So, yeah, got that out of the way. I don't feel guilty anymore. But until next week, we love you. We love you. Bye. Bye.