The Misery Machine - My Friend Decapitated His Girlfriend: The Chad Gurney & Zoe Sarnacki Story

Starting point is 00:00:00 Prosecutors say 29-year-old Gurney knew what he was doing when he strangled his 18-year-old girlfriend, Zola Sarnacki, cut her head off and then set her body on fire. I found 71 hits on the key word the head. His lawyers, meanwhile, say Gurney is not criminally responsible for the death of Zoe Sarnacki because he suffers from mental disease or defect. And he never even left us a body to say goodbye to. That will always haunt me. One thing that makes our podcast and our YouTube channel different from others that are out there is the fact that Drewby and I have had so many front seat encounters with different homicides in the Lewiston-Oberin area, as you'd remember from our coverage of the Donna Parity and Christiana-Fesmire cases that we covered last year. But you might be shot to know that those two cases that took place at our former workplace ACS

Starting point is 00:00:54 weren't the first for me and they weren't the last. Today's episode is gruesome and has themes of DV that may not be suitable for those who have passed trauma surrounding this issue, and I'm going to be honest with you, I don't know if I'm the best person to tell this story in full. Due to the time that's past, many of the newspaper articles citing witness statements are no longer available. I'm sure there's many other folks out there that were much closer to the situation that might have a lot more insight. However, the story needs to be told, and we feel a duty to use our platform to share the story as there wasn't much coverage in the media about it. So we'll tell it with the facts that are known publicly, the facts I recall,

Starting point is 00:01:31 and I'll share my personal stories as well. I first became aware of Chad Gurney in the late summer of 1999 while I was at the Litchfield Fair with my cousin. School had just gone back into session and we were looking forward to just a few nights out before I started my sophomore year. While we were approaching the zipper,

Starting point is 00:01:47 which is probably one of the most unsafe rides at fairs ever, I caught a glimpse of a good looking fellow just in the distance with a group of guys. And I asked my cousin, who is that? To which she responded to me, that's Chad Gurney.

Starting point is 00:01:59 stay away from him. Both Chad and my cousin attended Oak Hill High School in Wales, Maine, which is just a few miles away from Lewiston headed northeast on Route 126, which is also known as Sabatis Street. Oak Hill was a smaller rural school district, consisting of small towns such as Sabatis, Wales, and Litchfield. There's a running joke that the town of Wales actually has more cows than people, but overall it's a quaint area and a decent place to grow up.

Starting point is 00:02:25 While at Oak Hill, Chad excelled in athletics and was a member of the school wrestling and lacrosse team. I ran into Chad a few years later at Bull Moose Music in Lewison, which was pretty much the local hangout for all kids in the music scene at the time. By then, he had already graduated from high school and amassed a large collection of colorful tattoos depicting aliens on his arm and a black and white alligator. This was around the Brown's 2000 or 2001.

Starting point is 00:02:49 Around the scene, Chad was known as Chad Gator, and I'm not 100% sure if it has to do with his tattoo, which honestly seemed out of place amongst his other colorful ones, but I'm sure it had something to do with it. days later, I had found out that Chad had asked for my contact information from a mutual friend, and we began chatting via AOL Instant Messenger and email. The conversations were always friendly in nature. We discussed music, what concerts we had planned to attend.

Starting point is 00:03:13 There wasn't a lot going on in the Lewis and Auburn area, and there still isn't. So when any band came to the local Civic Center, chances are everyone would be going. In the mid to late 90s, into the early 2000s, pretty much every mainstream metal band that was popular at the time came to the Central Main Civic. Center. And during this time, I became something of a sounding board anytime Chad was having trouble with whomever he was dating. He often claimed his girlfriends were cheating on him, although I was never really provided any concrete proof of any of that. Chad and I were never romantically involved in any way, which was probably for the best. I want to stress this. We were not seeing each other on any level. We were just friends. And we kept in contact over the years and would

Starting point is 00:03:53 meet up on occasion on a mutual friend's house or at his parents' house after he got out of work and we'd sit and chat. On one occasion, after he got out of work, we met up and smoked cigarettes in his car in a small local cemetery, listening to the Curse Disintegration album and enjoying each other's company in silence. It was really, really peaceful, and it's probably my favorite memory of him and how I actually prefer to remember him. We lost contact over the years, and eventually he met and started a relationship with a really nice girl that I went to school with. Together, they set off to attend college at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. I had seen him a few times when he'd make the trip back to Maintessi family, and he seemed genuinely happy, and honestly, they made a really

Starting point is 00:04:32 cute couple. I don't know the details on how their relationship ultimately ended, but tragedy did strike. In 2005, Chad was the goalie of the Liberty University lacrosse team. While on a trip in Alabama, his team's 15 passenger van was rear-ended by another van, causing it to collide with an 18-wheeler, merely killing him. Chad suffered a severe head injury and other injuries that led to 20, different surgeries, including almost losing his leg and most of the use of one of his arms. He later returned to Maine and lived off of a multi-million dollar insurance settlement, settling in the Portland area with a French bulldog whom he named Marcel. During this time, Chad became increasingly interested in Eastern religion, martial arts,

Starting point is 00:05:20 and was known to be generous with his money. Also during this time, Chad struggled with his mental health and the residual pain associated with his injuries. An examining physician found that Chad had a number of cognitive defects, including problems with attention, memory, language, math, but did not note any psychotic symptoms. This is important for later. In 2007, Chad was treated for anxiety and depression and diagnosed with organic personality disorder. This is defined as a mental disorder caused by intrinsic disease, which is characterized by persistent alteration of a known behavioral pattern. Changes in emotional stability, motivation, judgment, or impulse controller usually noted.

Starting point is 00:06:08 It is broadly classified as a personality change due to a general medical condition. Chad was also diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, but there was no evidence of thought disorder or delusions, nor did Chad report any such voices or delusions to the examining physician. According to Friends, it was not unusual for Chad to see signs in everyday events, both before and after his 2005 accident, and to attribute importance to those signs, which we'll talk about a little bit later as well. It was noted, however, that Chad continued to have significant distress regarding his relationships with women. Now, let's talk about how I knew Chad. It would be irresponsible of me if I didn't mention that I'm not exactly sure if it was 2005 or 2006. when I first met him. So it's possible I met him after his accident.

Starting point is 00:06:59 This distinction is important based on what I'm about to share. Either way, based on what I saw, I wish the accident had killed him. I'll give you some background context here. When I was a teenager, I used to frequent confetties in Lewiston. Confetties was a chem-free nightclub that was packed every night they were open. My friend Amanda's dad owned it, and she wanted to give back to the local scene by booking hardcore punk and metal shows. there on off nights. Booking local shows is not an easy thing to do at all. It can be a huge headache, actually. Most people only become bookers for a short period of time because it requires a lot of

Starting point is 00:07:35 work and there's very little money in doing it. I took it for granted at the time, but the fact that Amanda was able to successfully book bands from out of state and sell out the venue multiple times was incredible. She was still in high school while doing this. Looking back on it, she contributed more to the local music scene here than probably anyone else did at the time. Shows were all I looked forward to every week at school. It was my escape from an incredibly toxic high school and dealing with the isolation of living in a suffocating small town. Going to shows wasn't a new thing for me at this point,

Starting point is 00:08:09 and I knew that music scenes, especially the hardcore music scene, weren't all full of the camaraderies shared by underground music lovers. Some people went to these shows, purely to hurt people. Chad Gator was one of those people. I first became aware of Chad when I watched him kick a girl in the face. He was hardcore dancing in a mosh pit and she was standing at the edge of it. Not everyone who hits somebody in a pit is intentionally looking to do so,

Starting point is 00:08:40 but Chad looked in her direction and then leapt towards the edge of the pit when he did it. I saw him laugh afterwards. A little more context, hardcore dancing is this, very unique type of moshing. There's two-step in, which is largely fairly tame, but the most notable and violent part about hardcore dancing is during parts of the song called breakdowns. These parts are where people wildly flail around with punches and kicks. I'm really trying to summarize this in a nutshell for people who are unfamiliar. Many people who do this aren't trying to hit anyone. They're just getting lost in a song in a very primal way. It sounds silly, but it's incredibly exhilarating. I myself

Starting point is 00:09:18 used to do it and no I never hit anyone, but I was more careful than most about it. I cannot say the same about Chad. So you might be saying to yourself, well, that's nonsense. Nobody would stand for a grown man kicking a girl in the face. They'd all jump him. Or maybe you yourself think you would intervene if you witness this. Well, you'd be surprised. I don't believe I directly saw it with Chad, but I saw other people try to intervene on these types of people and they would quickly be jumped by all of their friends. As long as you didn't do it often or you made it look like an accident, you weren't kicked out by the bouncers. Some still were. One time I saw a grown man axe kick a girl while jumping off the stage and an axe kick is where you lift your leg up vertically and bring it down using your heel to strike the person.

Starting point is 00:10:09 And he must have broken her nose because I saw the blood spray. He was quickly ejected by a bouncer. Now, I'm not going to sit here and act like Chad was exclusively targeting women because he didn't. In fact, hitting a woman was far more likely to end up with you getting kicked out of the show than hitting men. I also wish that I could say Chad was the most dangerous person I saw at hardcore shows, but sadly he was not. Hardcore shows at the time had crews show up. They may still now, I haven't been to one in a very long time. The biggest crew at the time in Portland was one called hate crew.

Starting point is 00:10:48 If you weren't in hate crew and you were hardcore dancing in the pit, you would get beat on until you stopped doing so. Only hate crew members, if they attended a show, were allowed to mosh in a pit. Now, I'm not sure if Chad was in hate crew, but I'm explaining this to illustrate the culture of what was going on. And Chad always had a group of people with him that backed him up with what He did. If he didn't know you, especially if you weren't physically imposing, Chad would hit you if you were near the pit. I saw it with my own eyes. A friend had told me, that's Chad Gator. Don't let any girl you know be alone with him. So I never spoke with Chad and I didn't want to. He was exactly the type of person I thought ruined music scenes. The exact type of person I was trying to get away from by going to these scenes. I can't control. confirm anything specific, but multiple people told me negative things about him, including that he was violent with women in his personal life. In March of 2009, Chad, who was now 27 years old, met 18-year-old Zoe Sarnacky at a Portland tattoo shop where he often hung out. Against the tattoo

Starting point is 00:11:57 artist's advice, the two subsequently began a casual romantic relationship. Although Chad had stated he did not consider theirs to be an exclusive relationship, he also indicated that he had intense feelings for her. Zoe was a beautiful young woman who had recently left during high school in Portland and was just starting to find her way in the world. She loved animals, the arts, and had a large circle of friends and family. In May of the same year, Chad took a one-week trip to Vancouver, British Columbia, and Canada. After returning to Portland on the 20th, Chad asked Zoe to leave her job at Bagelworks in the old fort in Portland and join him on a spiritual trip to Thailand that he had planned later that month, but she declined his offer. Shortly after, Zoe told Chad that she had been

Starting point is 00:12:43 intimate with another man while he was in Canada. Do the open nature of their relationship, this should not have been a problem. However, on May 25th of 2009, Zoe spent the day at Chad's apartment on Cumberland Avenue in downtown Portland. This is actually kind of a nice area in Portland. It's a very nice area, even at the time. So she apologized for having been intimate with someone else and took an afternoon nap in Chad's bed in the apartment's loft, not that she needed to apologize for everything they had an open relationship. While Zoe was laying on the bed, Chad snapped. He grasped her by the neck, headbutted her,

Starting point is 00:13:20 strangled her until she was dead. He then performed a lewd act on and then decapitated Zoe's body. Due to potential YouTube censorship and out of respect for Zoe, We're not going to get too descriptive into what that loot act was, but I'm sure you know where we're going with this. There's been a lot of rumors, a lot, that were spread around about this case, especially by the media in the early days. Some reports indicated that he went out to his vehicle to retrieve a samurai sword,

Starting point is 00:13:54 but court records indicate that the implements that he used were in fact three different knives. There are also rumors he arranged different spiritual, items, including a crucifix around where her body was. Unfortunately, we can't definitively confirm any of these things. So Chad then showered, changed his clothes, drove off to a gas station, purchased a gas can, and filled it with gasoline, and brought it back to the apartment. Chad then poured gasoline on his bed, all over Zoe's body and all over her personal belongings. He then trailed the gasoline from the bed, down the steps of the loft, and ignited it.

Starting point is 00:14:30 He then poured gasoline in two other areas in the lower level of his apartment. Somehow nobody noticed him doing this. So Chad collected his luggage and passport that he had packed for his trip to Thailand. He packed his laptop and an empty shotgun and placed the items in his vehicle. He then drove to Old Orchard Beach, stopped at an ATM, and paid cash to rent room 107 at the Crest Motel for two nights. Chad was noted to ask the motel clerk for suggestions on where to eat dinner, and he later used the motel's hot tub. Portland firefighters responded to the fire at Chad's 463 Cumberland Avenue apartment at approximately 6.30 that evening, where they discovered Zoe's remains. When Chad's neighbor called him to inform him about the fire, he told the neighbor that he was on his way to Lewiston and then hung up on them.

Starting point is 00:15:20 At around 9 p.m., 20-year-old Amber Wallace showed up at Chad's apartment and was greeted by a police office. a certain taken down to the station. Amber had been an ex-girlfriend of Chad's and also had this non-exclusive relationship with him, as Chad wanted to see other women and also preferred to date women several years younger than him, and this was an ongoing theme throughout his life. This is what he was known for. Yes. She advised police that Chad had been texting her throughout the day to come over and visit after she got out of work, and although she knew that he had been seeing Zoe, she had no idea that she was in the apartment. In the early morning hours of May 26, Chad's best friend at the time Corey Bryant spoke with him on the phone. Chad, sounding calm and irrational,

Starting point is 00:16:02 admitted to his friend that he murdered Zoe, saying that she had done something to hurt him, and that he was tired of being hurt, and he just lost it. While he was speaking with Chad, Corey was stopped by a Portland police officer for a minor traffic violation. Chad stayed on the phone with Corey while he was pulled over, and he asked Corey to tell the officer what had happened, and to explain to the officer that he had been in an accident and might not be all there mentally as a result. After talking to Corey, Chad turned himself into the police and admitted to killing Zoe and gave a detailed account of how it occurred. In his statements of police, Chad admitted that he knew that killing her was wrong. He also consented to a search of his motel room and his vehicle, and the police seized his laptop and cell phone as evidence.

Starting point is 00:16:50 During multiple conversations and interviews with Chad on May 26, the police observed no evidence. evidence that he was suffering from delusional thinking. Chad explained to police that Zoe was, quote, a bright, wonderful being, and I lost it, and I feel terrible, end quote. He also reported to a social worker during his intake at the Cumberland County Jail that he was hearing voices and seeing signs before and after killing Zoe. He also reported to a social worker, however, that Zoe's murder resulted partially from his impulsive anger. About a month after the crimes, Chad reported to the social worker and to others that the crime would have never happened if he had seen love letters that Zoe had written to him that he read only after her death.

Starting point is 00:17:29 Now, my big question is, where did he find these love letters? I don't even think any were officially found. They were just found by his own admission, correct? I mean, were they with her belongings? Did he have them in the house? Like, none of that makes sense. Yeah, did he torch them afterwards? We just don't know.

Starting point is 00:17:45 Chad was charged with one count of murder and one count of arson. He entered a plea of not criminally responsible by reason of mental disease or defect at his arraignment. Chad underwent a three-stage examination and was assessed by several psychologists and psychiatrists. And his explanation for killing Zoe changed over the course of these interviews. Chad first met with a psychologist four times in June and July 2009. He explained to them that, quote, Zoe was just laying there. I walked up the steps. I looked at her with a blank look. And I did what I did.

Starting point is 00:18:18 The last couple of days she had been at my heels, I misread it. I got arrogant rather than loving and nurturing her. I had such a problem with women and this is how it finally came out." Chad also stated, quote, you don't kill people. I knew it was wrong, end quote. He denied that Zoe's recent intimate encounter with another man was related to killing her. However, in interviews with a psychiatrist occurring around this time, Chad admitted that the intimate encounter heard a lot and deflated him.

Starting point is 00:18:46 He also stated, quote, I was so sick of it. Like every effing girlfriend I'd ever had, every effing woman. part of me was saying, why do you do anything nice for her? She slept with someone else while you were gone, one week, end quote. The psychiatrist found no evidence of Chad responding to internal stimuli,

Starting point is 00:19:08 such as hearing voices or experiencing delusional thinking. In November of 2009, Chad told a forensic psychologist that he had been listening to the band A Perfect Circle on the Day of the Killing, and the lyrics described how he felt, in that the, quote, universe was pushing me to hurt

Starting point is 00:19:24 her, end quote. A disclosure that the psychologist found to not be credible because Chad had never referenced it before. Chad told the psychologist that his urge to kill Zoe became overwhelming, so he killed her. He also went on to explain that after he killed Zoe, he figured that he had already done one horrible thing and was just thinking of the next horrible thing to do, which is why he engaged in further damaging acts to her body. So although the psychologist did not find his admission credible, I can attest that Chad did in fact listen to the band a perfect circle on occasion. In fact, we both went to their show when they came to Lewiston. On one occasion back in the late 90s when he was fighting with his then girlfriends,

Starting point is 00:20:05 claiming that she was cheating, which again, I cannot confirm, he actually sent me an email with the full lyrics to the song Three Libras. Now, why is this important? So according to frontman Maynor James Keenan, Three Libras is a song about parasitic-like people seeing something different or special about a person. Instead of nurturing that quality or helping that person grow, the three Libras feed off the energy in a bad way instead of using it for good. He has also further stated that it's about loving and opening yourself up to someone,

Starting point is 00:20:36 but they don't care or notice you back. Maynard likened it to rare mountain gorillas that were rarely noticed by humankind. By his own explanation, those guerrillas could only be approached by being empathetic. you can be the one to decide how Chad Gurney interpreted the song as it applied to his own life. On August 13th and November 12th of 2010, Chad was examined by a psychiatrist that was hired by the defense. I have read somewhere, this psychiatrist cost six figures. Chad told the psychiatrist that his spiritual advisor instructed him to set aside everything that he had in his life in order to go on a journey with him, and that this was the ultimate test.

Starting point is 00:21:17 Chad had also stated that he did not believe that he was killing Zoe because they shared eternal life, that he and Zoe had shared these beliefs and values, and that he was performing a ritual of purification for eternal life by strangling, beheading, or fire. On May 10, 2010, Chad filed a motion to suppress evidence obtained from a search of his laptop, his iPod, and his cell phone as a result of an allegedly defective search warrant. The court ruled in a detailed order that the search warrants and supporting affidavits were sufficiently credible, therefore denying his motion to suppress evidence

Starting point is 00:21:53 derived from those two devices. The court did grant his motion to suppress evidence with respect to the iPod. Chad also filed a motion to suppress evidence obtained from his Facebook account, which the court also denied. However, there was no evidence relating to Chad's Facebook account that was ultimately admitted or referred to at the trial.

Starting point is 00:22:11 But what was he trying to hide? So evidence was found on Chad's laptop with regards to a beheading video of a woman that was allegedly accused of cheating, and that was viewed prior to Zoe's death. The court held a nine-day jury-waved trial beginning on January 10th, 2011, and included expert witnesses from both sides that testified regarding Chad's mental state. The court had also heard testimonies from some of Chad's ex-girlfriends, some of whom claimed to suffer mental and physical harm at his hands, others who had not. Amber Wallace testified that Chad could be mean and

Starting point is 00:22:47 withdrawn, but he had never been violent with her. She also testified that Chad had never talked to her about hearing voices, and there were no indications that he was ever delusional or suffering from a serious mental illness. Amber visited Chad four or five times at the Cumberland County Jail after his arrest. She testified that she asked him what would have happened if she not Zoe had been at the apartment on the afternoon of May 25th. She said that Chad told her, quote, that if I was the one who was there, nothing would have happened to me. He made reference to me being bigger than Zoe, end quote. On February 4th, 2011, the court found Chad guilty of murder and arson as charged. The court entered a thoughtful and thorough written judgment with comprehensive findings of fact. The court found that the

Starting point is 00:23:32 evidence indicated that this was a DV homicide and that Chad was reacting to Zoe having been intimate with another man when intentionally or knowingly, he strangled her. The court found no credible evidence that Chad suffered from any psychiatric or medical condition that supported his contention that he was not criminally responsible by reason of insanity for murdering the victim and setting the fire. In addition, the Sarnaki family was awarded a $1.35 million settlement. Chad is currently being housed at the Maine State Prison in Warren, Maine, serving 50 years for Zoe's death, and another 25 years with 10 years suspended for the arson. Although it's not an official life sentence, Chad's earliest release date is October 16th, 2068.

Starting point is 00:24:23 If he makes it to his release alive, he will be 87 years old. At this point in the episode, we'd love to talk about who Zoe was as a person, things she liked, but unfortunately, there's very little information about her out there. However, we did find some really nice things written about her on a memorial page. And we'll read some of those things right now. So this one says, quote, on Saturday Zoe and I talked of what the future held for her. She said she was going back to school, maybe leaving the state of Maine. In her eyes, I saw someone with a bright future.

Starting point is 00:24:57 I believe on Saturday in the parking garage when we spoke for the last time that I would see her years from now with amazing stories of where she was in her life. But in a blink of a moment, she was gone. There will be no seeing her again. She was a wonderful, sweet person who touched my life. life in the short time I knew her. I will always remember her smile and her kindness, end quote. I remember walking the halls of Deering, admiring Zoe for her beauty and uniqueness. Not many freshmen come into high school already being cool, but she did. Some people exude so much confidence that you know they will lead a successful future. Zoe's life ended prematurely,

Starting point is 00:25:38 but she clearly affected many lives in her 18 years. Even in her death, Zoe has brought a community together to mourn this terrible crime and celebrate her short life. God bless to her family. May they find comfort in such tragedy. Rest in peace. We will miss you. End quote. Quote, nearly every time we hung out, we wandered around looking for jobs, but not really

Starting point is 00:26:02 looking very hard. Just knowing we should probably get them. We were both so quiet, and there would be a lot of silences, and I would worry you thought I was boring. It was so awkward that silence. silence, but I kept trying because you were so lovely. The last time I saw you, we had run into each other. You asked me if I wanted to have a picnic and then we never made more specific plans. I wish I could have seen you one more time. That smile, the most beautiful smile I have ever seen.

Starting point is 00:26:33 Lady, I hope you are somewhere dreamy. Rest well. I love you. End quote. Hey guys, I wanted to take a small break to talk about sponsorships. I know some people feel that true crime channels, podcasts, or even TV shows should have no ads or sponsors whatsoever because we're talking about people who have suffered. We try to be very mindful and respectful of that fact. Please note that we put over 40 hours each week into each episode we do on top of our full-time jobs. The majority of our YouTube videos are demonetized. We have monthly costs for our hosting fees and our tools that we use to make. episodes and videos, and sponsors help keep us afloat so that way we can keep bringing you the best content we can every week. We hope that you understand that our number one priority is to honor those that have tragically lost their lives and tell their stories as completely and accurately as possible. With that said, I want to take one minute to tell you all about this episode sponsor. Afterwards, we're going to discuss the aftermath of Chad's conviction, and Yergi will also discuss some dealings with him while he was incarcerated, so please stick around.

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Starting point is 00:28:39 and enjoyed 20% off the entire Anna-Luisa website today. Thanks and back to the episode. So a couple years after he was convicted, I started writing to Chad, and we wrote back and forth for a couple of years. So this would have started around 2012. It started as letters. We just kind of caught up with what was going on.

Starting point is 00:29:03 Also in 2012, that was the year my grandmother passed away now at that point Chad started calling me he did some really horrible things obviously this murder what he did awful but I will say that he was one of the few people that was extremely supportive to me during the time when my grandmother died and how does this tie in so remember earlier when I was talking about how he would see signs in everyday life well when my grandmother passed away I went outside and a cardinal perched out in a tree in front of me after I went back inside I stayed with her We watched Food Network for the last time because that's something that we used to do all the time. And that Cardinal flew over to her window and stayed with me for the full four hours that it took for the funeral home to come pick her up.

Starting point is 00:29:48 So that was something Chad and I talked, you know, in detail, the symbolism of Cardinals and bird totems. And it's something we kind of related on. So that definitely the symbolism thing is true for him. I was hoping maybe he could give some explanation further of what he did. He never really did. He admitted to me that obviously they had done this. But we never got that deep into the case. How did you find out and what was your response when you found out that he had done this?

Starting point is 00:30:11 So my friend Amanda, not Turkish's mom, but one of my friends from high school had texted me the day that he was arrested and was like, Jess, have you seen the news? They think Chad killed somebody. I was just kind of at loss for words. Like, how do you react? This is like the not the person you knew. And this is not a scenario most people are faced with in their lives. So since finding out what he had done to Zoe, how long had it been since you contacted him? A couple of years had gone by. So a lot of our contact had started like winter 2012.

Starting point is 00:30:44 Some had time had passed. And I had time to think about it and think about what I wanted to say or if I even wanted to have contact. So eventually he asked me to come visit. And I hemmed and hawed on that quite a bit. Because one, Warren's really far from here. Two, we hadn't seen each other in many years. and I didn't know how uncomfortable that would be sitting with him there. And the third part is, is visits at Warren are pretty long. They're like for three hours. And I just didn't know if I wanted to be in a possibly uncomfortable situation for that long. But I went and it was incredibly uncomfortable.

Starting point is 00:31:20 I feel like I got some sort of closure in doing so. He's definitely not the person that I hung out with as a teenager into my early 20s that I listened to The Cure with. It's a totally different person. Now, one thing, when Yergy and I started talking about this case, because I didn't know that she knew Chad until way later. And one of the surprising things that I had heard from Yergi was that she had no idea that Chad was a violent of a person. No, because he was never like that with me.

Starting point is 00:31:54 And I don't want to discount anybody that had some sort of past with him that was like that. I honestly don't. didn't see it. And I think a big part of that is because we were just friends. There was no sort of like intimate partner DV situation going on there. So I wouldn't have seen it. And you weren't at shows either. I didn't go to local shows. I went to like some of the bigger shows. I have social anxiety. And at the time I didn't go to some of the smaller shows. You were you connected with him after his accident though, right? So you did see him after the accident who he was then. I did not. Oh, you did. So that's kind of an important thing. I didn't get to see how he was after the accident, but prior to the murder. But prior to the

Starting point is 00:32:32 murder. I didn't get to see that at all. We've talked about traumatic brain injuries, TBI. What that can do to a person was the reason he killed Zoe strongly related to the fact that he got in a massive car accident that gave him brain damage. I mean, I don't want to say that that is the sole reason. My personal belief, and obviously we can never know for certain, is that he was already a pretty terrible. manipulative, awful person before the accident. And now after the accident, with the traumatic brain injury, much more impulsive and angry than he was before. That is my guess. I've seen people give takes that they thought that he was a sociopath even far before the accident. I cannot say that for certain.

Starting point is 00:33:24 And again, my experience with Chad, I cannot say 100% if this was after his accident or not. So why did I stop corresponding? So when I went to visit, it was really weird. It seemed like he was playing crazy. And what do I mean by that? He was explaining to me that he was really, really trying to get into Riverview, which is the psychiatric unit up here in Maine,

Starting point is 00:33:47 with hopes that he would be released earlier. He had also told me that he was trying to go and find somebody to marry to then hopefully get transferred to a New York facility to get conjugal visits. So that was rather strange. Another really strange thing that he told me is that Zoe's mom had been visiting him in the prison and that she forgave him. And I'm not wanting to tell a mother how to grieve

Starting point is 00:34:10 if this is true. If that's how she's found forgiveness and peace, so be it. But I was just starting to feel like I can't really believe some of the things he was saying. He also said that she was better off and in a better place because she really didn't like things here on earth. That that's what Zoe's mother said about Zoe? That is what Chad alleged.

Starting point is 00:34:30 She said. Yes. Another strange thing he was constantly trying to weird out his psychiatrist that he has in the prison. And he also told me that he told his mother when she visited one time that he was just going to do whatever in prison. And once he felt sick and tired of it, he was just going to kill himself. At some point, and this was around the time, if you again remember our Buddy Robinson, Christiana Fesmeyer episode, Buddy had been sentenced and was now going to Warren. And Chad really wanted to know who Buddy was. and would not leave it alone.

Starting point is 00:35:01 At this point, Chad had started getting really violent, was attacking guards, and I didn't want Buddy to have any trouble while he was there. So I basically cut off contact at that point. And that was the last time you spoke with him. Right. And before we stopped talking, he sent me this picture. Now, it's a picture of him,

Starting point is 00:35:17 and we'll definitely have this as something as part of our YouTube to show. But it's a picture of him, you know, standing kind of jail pose. And on the back, it said, Dear Jess, be my D20 crits. Love Chad. But he had actually scribbled some stuff out.

Starting point is 00:35:34 So it originally said, I love you, you should be mine. Just kind of just showing how all over the place he is. A D20 crit for people who aren't nerds is in the game of Dungeons and Dragons, which is a tabletop role playing game. You roll a dice, a 20-sided die. And if it comes up on 20, you are critically successful. Yes. Therefore, rolling a crit.

Starting point is 00:35:57 So that's what that means. And D&D was something we talked about generally at length, sometimes on the phone through letters, and we talked about during the visit. The thing that I find strange about Thailand is that I don't think it would have taken a reasonably intelligent person to have gotten out of the country in this time. I think that had he decided to do this, he could have been on that plane before she was to be. discovered. I'm kind of surprised that did not happen. Well, that's why I think he didn't get an actual life sentence here, because this was more of a crime of passion. If he hadn't set the fire, nobody would have known until he was already long gone. But instead, he set the fire and then just camped out over at Old Orchard Beach and hung out in the hot tub. Which is not to say that had he fled

Starting point is 00:36:48 to Thailand, he wouldn't eventually been caught. Because they do extradite. A lot of places will extradite to the U.S. They have a whole team looking out for people over there that shouldn't be. But I'm surprised he was not there. The idea that he was going to Thailand in general should be touched upon because you may have thought when we were talking about he wanted to take a spiritual trip to Thailand. Well, people don't really go to spiritual trips to Thailand. That's not really top of the spiritual destinations for Thailand, not to say that people don't. And I don't want to act like I'm an expert on Thailand here. But I do wonder, and other people have theorized maybe there was a different reason as to why Chad was fleeing to Thailand.

Starting point is 00:37:34 So I think you read that in a forum post on the Return to the Pit site, right? Yes, that's correct. So I found something else that's really interesting there. And it goes back to talking about how he may have been rough with his girlfriends or something to that effect, just not a really great partner. So someone posted, quote, someone I know has known and disliked him since she was 16 while working with him at a record store. So this record store would have been bull moose music. It had a bunch of posters covering the walls in the back, and one hardcore band poster had a male

Starting point is 00:38:05 figure strangling a woman who was lying helplessly on the ground. Someone had written Chad with an arrow pointing to the guy and his then-girlfriend's name as the woman, end quote. I mean, that kind of goes to show how he might have been acting at the time. I originally thought when reading this, this was something that was in his room, but after like rereading it again, clearly it was some of the posters that were all at Bull Moose because they had posters on every wall there. So do I still consider him a friend?

Starting point is 00:38:35 So that's a really hard question. You can have friends, family members, what not do horrible things and still consider them so. I have a really hard time with it because I mean, we haven't corresponded in a number of years, but I think that I can just keep the memory of the

Starting point is 00:38:51 chat that I did know that was good and consider that a friend and just kind of keep but at that as if someone has passed on. It's like he's dead, but he's still alive, if that makes any sense. Yeah. And I've had a lot of time to kind of stew and think on this. And I think that's basically how I feel. I mean, it's been 10 years.

Starting point is 00:39:07 It's been 10 years. Yeah, well, let's be clear. Like, this wasn't, she was talking to him the other day. It has been over 10 years at this point since they've talked. If you appreciated this video, know that we have put a lot of time and effort into it. We put in the amount of time that one would spend at their full-time job every week on one episode. All I'm asking in return

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The Misery Machine - My Friend Decapitated His Girlfriend: The Chad Gurney & Zoe Sarnacki Story

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