Shattered Vows

0:06 Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast. Or I tell stories of real crimes with real victims whose cases are so shocking that many are left wondering, how is this even real? I use my experiences in law enforcement corrections, and combined with my years as a criminal justice educator, dig deep into complex cases of evil acts, some so evil many feel they are unspeakable. Warning. Unspeakable as intended for mature audiences. If you are easily offended, then I'm not your girl. Listening discretion is advised. Hey Y'ALLKJ you're back for another Instead of Unspeakable, what is going on?

1:02 I have got a fire episode for you today. I think you're gonna really enjoy it. I worked really hard. Matter of fact, I took eighteen pages of notes for you. That's right. I did my work because while you're driving, or you're doing dishes, or you're cleaning somebody's house, you need the info and I'm here to provide it to you. But before I start, I've got some I got some shout out to some people that I need to recognize for joining my crime family and for just being all around awesome people. And I'm gonna start yall this one straight out of Louisiana. So first I'm gonna go with Tony McClung from right here in Louisiana. Hi, Tony, thank you so very much for supporting me as well as Stephanie. Now I would say Cole, but it could be cohole. I don't know how much I'm supposed to put in it, but I'm saying it for you. Stephanie right there in Lincoln, Nebraska. Hey, Steph's, thank you so much for joining. Thank you for being a part of my podcast, for supporting me and for believing in what I'm doing. It means everything to me.

1:58 And I've got Taylor annbnvenue. How are you girl? You're from right here in Denham's. No shatnay shit, the invenue, theenvenue, And I've. Got Taylor n venvenue. How are you doing? She's right here, right here in Denham Springs. Girl, we gotta get coffee or something. And then Susan Edwards another Denim Springs. In Susan, do you know how important it is to have people in your community support you. I don't know if you do. Ronda Rayburn, now she's a little bit further down, but she's in Hammon Louisiana. I got a lot of family in Hammond, so thank you, miss Ronda. And I've got Raven Adams from Denham Spring. Y'all. My people, my hometown people are bringing it in. Hey, Raven. And then Rachel Brunner or is it Brunner y'all? This makes me I want to do it right for you, Rachel Brunner or Brunner, Hey, Rachel, thank you so much. She's from Kentucky, y'all. Hinkle, Kentucky. Hey, girl, I'm so thankful, and I know you know you should have more words to say than thankful, but that's what it is from the bottom of my heart. I mean, if people believe in me and they support me, that makes all the difference. And so I'm so thankful to have you along the way. But before I start this story, y'all, I have to tell y'all, I have to tell y'all something that happened. If you have a kid listening for some reason, just like, make them your muffs real quick and cover their ears. This is the funniest shit I think I've ever heard of my life. So my nephew and my niece and someone else were driving down the

3:29 road and something happened to where they almost got run off the road, I think is what it was, something along those lines. And so my niece was trying to be funny and like we need to get out of the car, and so she starts screaming, oh, I remember it was her boyfriend and my nephew. That's what makes us even better. Her boyfriend, my nephew, and my niece. She starts screaming, ejaculate, ejaculate. Sorry, I thorted. Both of the boys turn around look at each other while I'd like you, what are you screaming? And that's when she says, oh, wait, I think I meant evacuate, evacuate. So let that be your inspiration today that hopefully, if you're trying to evacuate, you don't scream ejaculate to your brother and your boyfriend.

4:24 I'm partickled by that, like I was because my nephew almost died. All right to the story, which is not nearly as funny. This is gonna be in Bluffed in South Carolina, and it takes place in twenty fifteen, and that is going to be the home of Jonathan Cheryl. Now he's thirty three years old. He is handsome, and I mean for real, I kind of got to thinking about it while I was writing my notes, and I thought, I need to like give them a good description to him. So to give you a good visual, I want you to think of eric On the Little Mermaid, all right. He looks like eric On the Little Mermaid. He's got, you know, this dark tan skin, he's got black hair, it's gelled back. He's very well kept. He looks put together.

5:13 He looks like a great mix of a manly man, a businessman. And he loves sports. He especially liked playing soccer. And he was really a multifaceted guy because he had a range of skills. He was an artist as well as he played the guitar, so he he really was into a lot of things. He was expressive. He had a big personality. He literally would be the guy and you know what happens if they say you're gonna lie up a room. You know, spoiler alert here, But he literally lit up a room when people were there. He was the life of the party. And he also had a passion for collecting comic books, so he also had that little handsome nerd mystique to him as well. He had something else about him that I really was attracted to as well, and that was the fact that he loved his dog. He was very much a pet person and even his Facebook page is littered with photos of Hilm and his puppy. So if that kind of gives you a little bit about what he was like, super super charismatic fella, and he liked a party. He liked to go out with his friends. But as he had gotten older, he really started focusing on being a businessman, making money and being successful. So if you're about my age, I'll be forty in two weeks. Don't tell anybody, but all of our photos, when we look back at our photos, like when we were clubbing and doing all that, he looks just like what you would expect of us back

6:45 in the club with our collared shirts and the gelled hair and that fresh face, cool boy kind of attitude about him, and he looked like he was someone who kind of ran his crew. Well, something that really helped him to be successful was the fact that he was a people person, one hundred percent of people person. And he was educated as well. He had graduated from Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, and right after that he really started out as a bartender, which again you got to have a good personality to be I think you should have a good personality be a bartender. I mean that's how you get the tips, right. And he bartended at places like Catch twenty two, which is a popular place.

7:27 And he just had a gift and it was quickly realized by people. He had a gift for starting successful bars and restaurants. It was just in his wheelhouse. So he opened other businesses like Trinity Restaurant at Greenwood Place and this was on Hiltonhead Island as well as Rumors Restaurant in Bluffton. And he was a co developer of the Charbar restaurant of hilton Head Island as well. And he really grew to be a respected business developer and eventually would become the owner of Pepper's Old Town Restaurant. And I wanted to give you all that detail because it just shows you how talented this young guy was at thirty three years old. I mean, he's owning his own restaurant, and that's hard anyway. I have friends in the restaurant business, and you know, some of them tell me that just to turn a ten to twenty percent profit is like the goal. And to run a business with only that much margin of profit, I think that you have to be a really skilled individual. And he lived in a very nice area of town. It was he had a small home, but it was nestled into a place called Pine Crest Way, and that street is lined with homes at all really looks similar. The area is kept very nice. It's a golf course community, and his home backs up to the golf course, so his backyard he has like a patio, and then there's like a little thin line of woods, and then there's the golf course right behind him. And his home looks like a standard I would say, middle class home. It was

8:58 probably a little more expensive because of where it's located. He's got a single car garage. His house is this creamy yellow color on the front, very well kept and manicured, and then off to the left of the home is the single you know, front door under a small stoop. The neighbors are very close to him. When I'm looking at the photograph, if you're watching me podcast, by the way, I even printed out a picture of it, so I'm giving you a very accurate description of the house. If you see right there, but really just enough room to probably ride a lawnmower between the homes, so they're pretty close to each other. Now Jonathan's living situation, I wanna tell you little bit about that he had a roommate, which when I saw the roommate, no lie, not judging, but I was a little bit surprised by it because his name was Robert's Vox, which if I was pronouncing this and I hadn't looked up the pronunciation, I would have said voe down here in the South, that would be voue all day long. But they say vox, and so I'm going off of the pronunciation as I heard it in some news articles. Heard it news articles that is so ignorant. I heard it on television called vox, but it's vaux. So his roommate was Robert Vox. And he's an older gentleman. He's not some young guy that I would have expected him to be rooming with, but he's an older gentleman. In comparison, he looks to be in his sixties. I would guess he's got, you know, kind of a receding hair pattern. He's got that bright

10:29 white hair that men get with age. Squinty almond eyes. He looks like a decent man. He looks like a you know, good man, and I guess maybe that's why they got along so well. Another reason I think they got along so well was that, from what I gathered, he was also in the restaurant business with Jonathan, but at what full capacity, I'm not sure. There wasn't a lot that I was able to find, except for one tidbit, which I'm going to share with you in a minute. I do know that they had at least one one business business venture together, but like I said, I'm gonna tell you about that. So the roommates lived a very low key lifestyle and their home life was a good one.

11:11 There weren't any you know, records of fighting or discrepancies or anything of that nature. And real quick, just to be clear, when I say roommates, that's really all they were. They were roommates. Jonathan loved the ladies, and the ladies like Jonathan, so they were just strictly roommates. And that's why on the evening of Wednesday, October twenty eighth, twenty fifteen, it was strange when not one, but two nine to one one calls would come in from the home and does that make so? Hello? Our felt some rooms was shot. Okay, I do have someone in the rowd. Okay, are the suspects there? Now? I don't know about you, but when I first heard that call, I legit thought that that was like an older black lady making that call, But it turns out that was actually the voice of Roberts, the room mate.

12:00 And then as you can tell, he abruptly hangs up. So just a few seconds later another call comes in. Literally seconds later, another call comes in from the home, but now it's somebody else. That one one may time. I day my friends, then sewing killed. Hello, Hi my friends, then showing killed. How can hear you say? Could you cut it again? My friend's been shy and killed. Okay, what's the address? It's Pine Crash, thirty nine, thirty nine Pine Crash, and it's just happened, yes, okay, and he's there now, I mean he's your mate. Okay, and you said he was shot. Yeah, we're seeing how saying got shot in from of me?

12:41 Okay, that was thirty nine Pine Crests correct. Yes, and he bleeding, he got shot in the head, he gat. Okay, you're getting them out to you okay, yeah, say this aspects so bad. I don't know. We were outside and someone shot. Ween's cheer him Henry. Okay, where your friend at now? He sing out, I ran okay, okay. Sorry, So you said you was outside. You didn't see any suspects or anything? Sing out back? Okay? Did you see any vehicles or anything? They come around? No, they came from long time the driving arrangement. Okay. Law enforcement isn't route to you. Okay, And it was just you out you there at the resident.

13:24 No, he's roommates homing bag. Well, how much total are they at the resident? Got three? Okay? And no one saw anyone. No, we're singing out there and we nark got back to you're driving range and out back. Okay, we heard a gun talk and then you shot for fire. John, all right, he's making town. Okay, so you say he's making towns now and. Hello? Sorry, hello, you have the cock here? Okay, you can go ahead to speak with them, okay, say all right, okay, bye boy. The second caller doesn't identify himself as by name or anything. He just says, I'm a friend of Jonathan and I know you just listen to it. He does come across as a little flat for somebody that just witnessed their friends supposedly get killed right in front of them. But if there's anything I'd like to caution my listeners about, it's that you never can predict how people are going to respond to a traumatic experience. So I don't want you to necessarily hang on that slat affect and don't jump to a conclusion just yet. So police arrived within minutes, and they do find a man clearly deceased and beyond saving on the back patio, and they're quickly able to identify him as thirty three year old Jonathan Cheryl. So when you're looking at the crime scene, which by the way, I will put photos on Patreon from a listener so that you can go look at this and kind of take in the crime scene, Jonathan clearly is seated comfortably.

14:57 He looks like he was relaxed. He's on this outdoor couch. It looks like he's just hanging out like he would have been talking to friends, and his body just seems like when he was struck, he just fell straight over. Matter of fact, his cell phone was still literally like in his hand or kind of under his hand where it looked as if he was using it because the screen was face up and the light was still literally shining. You know when you tap your cell phone and the light comes up. The light was still shining when investigators went back there. So as police investigated his body, it became very clear that there was a large entrance wound on the right side of his head and that a bullet had passed straight through his skull and then it blew out blood and brain matter with such force that it was spattered on the wall of the house a couple feet away. They kind of were like, Okay, well, this guy's clearly been shot. And what was of concern to police too, was that someone claimed to have been there and witnessed it as the bullet passed through, which was that second caller that called in and he said, yeah, I saw it happen. I was sitting right there when it happened, And police would identify him as Joe Ruby.

16:17 Joe was a good friend of Jonathan's and said, look, I came to hang out and this happened. I called police. So as they were gathering more statements from Joe, they were assessing the crime scene and really trying to take in what was happening had happened on the back patio. Based on the entrance wound and Jonathan's head and how he lay, they believed that the shooter must have been in his backyard, and so police walked out in the direction that they believed that shooter would have been standing. In general, so they walked out and then positioned themselves in the vicinity right where they believed the shot must have been taken. And wouldn't you know, they were right.

17:01 They believed that this was going to be a twelve gage shotgun or something similar, and when they looked down, they found two shell casings within about a foot of each other, right there on the ground. They also found a shoeprint in the dirt near the area where the shooter was believed to be standing when he took the shots. Now, other than these minimal pieces of physical evidence, there really wasn't much else to go on. There wasn't like the house hadn't been ransacked, there hadn't been you know, trashing of anything. Nobody really had much more to give than what they saw. So detectives immediately took Joe back to the station because they had to get some more in depth questioning of this guy, and when they asked him what exactly happened, his summary of events was pretty simple.

17:52 He said they were sitting on the back patio, they were just talking to each other, and during the conversation, at one point they heard what, clearly he sounded like a gun being racked. And if there's anything I know, you know the sound of a shotgun when it's racked. My daddy told me this. I've probably said it before, but he always said, baby, make sure you have a twelve gage in your house at all times, because the racking of a twelve gauge is the universal sound fro. I'm about to fuck you up. Remember that. Maybe we should make that a sound bite, you know. And it's good advice, right. So when they heard the racking of the gun, it caught them both by surprise so quick that he said that we looked at each other and then we looked in the direction that we thought we heard it racked from, and he didn't see anything, and he looked back. Now this was a matter of seconds.

18:37 They looked at each other, he looked towards the sound, and then he looked back at Jonathan with a little bit of confusion, and right as he looked back at Jonathan, boom, that first of two shots was fired, and Joe said it happened so fast that he just looked at Jonathan. The shot went off, and then he said, Jonathan's head snapped backwards, and he knew instantly, Oh my god, my friend has just been mortally wounded. He said, there was no question in my mind. He said, within seconds that second shot went off, and that's whenever he jumped up. He said, I was ducking to get out of the way. I shot into the house. I ran to Jonathan's room, I dove into his closet. I got as far back as I could, and I dialed nine to one one.

19:20 So why did you go into the back of the closet, He's like, I just wanted to get as far back as I could and hide myself because I didn't know what was going on. And you know, when he said that, I almost could identify with it in a really weird way, because I lived in my own home before I got married and all that had my own home, and I remember someone came and knock the way my house was laid out. There's I had a porch right a covered porch, but my bedroom window was on the end of the porch. And I remember being asleep one night and someone started knocking on my bedroom window, but they wouldn't say anything, and it creaked me out so bad. And then they started knocking hard on my bedroom window, and I got up and I dove straight into my closet to the very back of it, and I started blowing up my boyfriend, which is my husband now, I sort of blowing him up.

20:09 He wuldn't answer in the phone, and so I texted him code Rainbow, because we had a joke between us if something was going bad, we would text each other code blue. And I put fucking code rainbow, like every color on the planet helped me help me. He didn't answer. He was asleep. Come to find out, y'all, I made it. I mean, I'm podcasting. And it was a painter that had come. He didn't speak English, and he forgot which day he was supposed to come, and he showed up to try to ask me. And anyway we lived. Life was good, but scared shit out of me. So I could dive in the back of a closet, so could Joe. And you know, it's a very delicate situation here for police, because you know, this person was, you know, in feet of seeing his friend murdered, supposedly, and there's a fine line between trying to get answers from people without making them feel like they're a suspect, which but if you're right there, I'm gonna tell you right now your suspect until you're proven not. Joe also verified that there was no one else at the house except for him, Jonathan, and the roommate Roberts, who he said was asleep in his bedroom when everything went down. So whenever we're trying to rule somebody out, we all know that we're going to start with the closest circle, which is either family or friends or spouse, and then we're going to work our way out. Not only are we going to go closest in relationship, but we're also going to go closest in physical proximity to the person who has now deceased.

21:32 So police took Joe's clothes, they took his shoes, and they took gunshot residue tests of the hands of both Roberts and Joe, because if they have residue on their hands, that's what we would call a clue, and we need to investigate these guys a little bit further. Now. As these steps are being taken, another person comes forward, which was a neighbor that lived very close to Jonathan's home. Remember the houses are really close together. And he said, I heard the gunshots go off, and he said, I just happened to get up and look out my backyard in the direction of where the sound came from, and he said, I saw a man walking through my backyard towards the wooded area. And they said, okay, can you describe this man to me? And he said, I mean, I don't have much of a description, but I can tell you for sure that this guy was not in a hurry, he wasn't running, his shoulders were held high.

22:26 He seemed to be walking towards the direction of what looked like a glowing light, which the neighbor thought was break lights. And that was pretty much the best of what this neighbor could tell them. The names of the streets are going to come into play here, so I'm going to try to kind of lay out the neighborhood for you a little bit so you can make sense of this. But if you're looking down from an aerial point of view. All right, bird's eye point of view, there's Jonathan's house with a bunch of other houses in a row. And then in the backyard of all of these houses, small backyards. There's not a fence or anything, but there's a thin layer of woods, and then there's a golf course, like I told you, just on the other side of those thin woods. Now, in that layer of thin woods, which is not super wide, there is a beaten path, I guess you would call it. And you can tell that people walk this path quite often.

23:21 And I have photos of this that again I'll post for you so you can look at it and kind of get a visual of what was going on. So the street that the beaten path opened up one if you walk down that path, there's a street I don't know, I'm gonna guess one hundred yards away. That street was called Master's Way. And it was completely reasonable to believe that someone could have stopped there in a car and picked up whoever this guy that was walking was and made it within the timeframe of the gunshots going off, the neighbor seeing him seeing break lights, and then after that the neighbor said, oh, and by the way, Shortly after after I saw the person walking towards what I thought was break lights. I then heard kind of like a peeling out sound and a car clearly taking off.

24:08 So this was a really good start to try to understand what may have happened. So police did what they do best and they set out to see if there were any surveillance cameras. Surveillance cameras are excellent, and I love when they're in places that nobody expects. So, after all, this was a golf course community, right, so it's going to be well kept, it's going to have a low crime rate, and there's gotta be cameras because where people invest money, they want to protect it. That's one of the draws to living in a golf course community. Well, sure enough, about two houses down police would find a security camera, and as luck would have it, it was pointing directly at Jonathan's house. Like, what are the chances?

24:50 Pretty good? So they headed straight in that direction to collect the footage and to see what could they get. But at this point what was taking place was Joe Ruby is still answering questions. This was not a very short, you know, interrogation, and the basic question of why he was there was kind of a point you on why were you there at the house to begin with, and so he said, well, Jonathan invited me over. I was at work. My shift ended about eleven pm. When I got off of work, I went straight to Jonathan's house. And he said that at some point Jonathan had mentioned that he went outside because a car had shown up, and he explained a little bit more about that situation.

25:33 But rather than me tell you in my own terms, I'm going to let you hear Joe tell it in his own voice about this car that Jonathan said had shown up and how it was kind of a sketchy situation. He told me a story because he said some really weird asking someone that he said, and doorbell rang. He looked here the evil when saw a girl there so open tower. She said she had hard over someone. Trybody know, thenked sash. He closed the door, put the clothson and went ill. Looking at her car. He is everything fine, and he said, tried to make alban or something. She hears to come and tie. So he's totally car And I don't know about you, but it sounds like Joe's being pretty uh forthcoming. He sounds relaxed, and he's being very open and honest about you know, what he says was going on. But when he was asked, can you describe the girl to me that Jonathan said shown up showed up? He said, well, she was a decent looking girl, but he really didn't have much else to add other than she probably was about the same age as Jonathan as well. But Jonathan said something weird to him about her stopping by. He said it was kind of weird though, because he felt like it was almost like maybe someone was casing his house and they kind of were like really, and he's you know, they kind of talked just for a brief second, and then they didn't think much else of it and they moved on to different conversation. So to fully lay out the grasp of kind of what happened when the

27:07 shots were fired again, you can look at the pictures up posted on Patreon, but you'll notice that there's a chair by the back door, and then when the door is opened, you'll see that Robert's the roommate. His room is literally right inside that back door to the left. I mean it's right there. You open the back door, you can stand in the same spot and over open Roberts's door. So Joe even claimed that when he opened the back door and he ran in, he immediately started banging on Robert's door, screaming, oh my god, Jonathan's been shot. Oh my god, and he's banging on the door and that you know, he's He says that he screamed, holy shit at one point, Jonathan's been shot. He's dead. And then he said Roberts immediately opened the door and said, yeah, I'm on the phone with nine to one one because he had heard the shots. It scared him awake. Joe then and was like, I was really afraid that the intruder might be coming towards me or coming through the front door, and that's why he said he then ran into Jonathan's room and had gotten into the closet, and once he got in Jonathan's room, he made that nine one one call, and he was completely shaken by the fact that he saw Jonathan's head blowback, he saw brains come out, and he just wanted to hide as quickly as possible. Once he had nine one one on the phone, though, and nobody came barging into the house, he kind of felt a little bit more comfortable. So he got up and he walked back towards the window where he could

28:37 look out on the patio, and he said, oh my god, he's kind of twitching. He's making these heavy breathing sounds. But based on the way his head looked, he said, I just couldn't believe that this was purposeful movement and sound coming out of him. It was almost just like a death rattle. Everything Joe was saying not only was plausible, but it made sense. And detectives saw something that you can also see in the photos, which made them have a little bit more questioning. So on the table on the back patio, they you can clearly see a pipe which would be traditionally used to smoke weed. So they tell him, you're not in trouble or anything, we just want to understand what's happening in totality. So questions came up about who typically supplied the weed, and Joe said, Jonathan supplied it. But he said, but look, we didn't smoke weed that night, and they said not at all.

29:35 He said, not at all. He just he had the pipe out there, but we didn't smoke anything that night, And so basically they were kind of going on the path of was there possibly a disagreement over the weed and it kind of went to murder? And I know you're like, my god, you know it's weed, And that may seem silly to some people who are who were like, you know, who would kill somebody over weed? But I don't know if you're listening to my episodes in order, but if you haven't, you ought to go back and listen to the episode about the devil, you know, supposedly making these kids kill some other people. And in that case, that literally is what the bad guy brings up as the cause of why they went and murdered people to get money to pay back the kid that was always supplying the weed. So it's really not a far fetch, and people kill over the dumbest reasons and so it had to be ruled out. Joe was also asked where Jonathan usually got his weed from, to which he was adamant, I have no idea where he gets it from. The only thing I could give you was I think that he had a dealer named Seth that he would go buy weed from. And as the questions continue, they say, okay, well, do you have any idea who might have done this to Jonathan, and immediately, without hesitation, Joe brought up the fact that there had been a recent business venture that Jonathan was a part of and it had soured, and it had soured terribly. So for some kid, or I say kid, for some thirty three year old who has had nothing but great success to have a business venture go south, I'm sure that hit him kind of hard.

31:04 So there had been this recent decision that he was gonna go into a joint venture and combine his business with some other people, and they created a business called the Sipin' Cow. So the roommate was actually in on this deal. So it was a woman named Christy Pinksky, Jonathan, his roommate Roberts, and another woman named Mary Bell, which, by the way, if you're a big True cry fan, a true crime fan, it might make you kind of like shiver because Mary Bell is a notorious child killer. I may you do an episode on that. I need to write that down. Do episode on Mary Bell. When I say child killer, I don't mean she killed children necessarily, she did, but she herself was a child and it's creepy af so well, we may have to do that.

31:51 I'll do that for y'all, but Mary Bell, So what exactly had caused this business venture to go south? And Joe explained that once the business was created, everyone in this partnership started accusing everyone else of embezzling money. So everyone's kind of like in a circle. I kind of see four people in a circle with guns pointed at each other on bothans, you know, like everyone thinks everyone else is doing something. And as far as the main point went, Joe believed from what he understood that Christy was not depositing some of the catering checks into the proper accounts, and then she had switched one of the credit cards for the business to her bank account, and then she was paying people under the table, So maybe some tax issue going on here as well as taking money that should have been split between everybody else. And if we all know anything, money can get your ass killed.

32:46 So this whole business dealing had Jonathan completely in a bad spot, and Joe said he hadn't been doing well for a while. He was used to success and this was dragging him down. But recently Jonathan had been in a better mood. He had had a little bit of a change in his outlook and as a matter of fact, he says, Look, he started buying and selling comic books. He was really excited about it. He loved comics and he was making money doing it. And I know this rings true because if you again go look at the photos in his bedroom photo, you can see on his chest of drawers that he's got some marvel looking characters on his dresser drawer, as well as in the kitchen photos you can see stacks of comic books in their sleeves and in their covers on the kitchen table. So Joe really gave everything he had to investigators, and when they were able to rule him out, which by the way, they were able to do because he had negative gunshot residue on his hands and on his clothing, there's no way that he could have shot him and that happened and make that phone call in the amount of time that he did, like and you know, change clothes or something.

33:53 So Joe was eliminated as well as roommate Roberts. There was nothing to indicate they had pulled the trigger. So they asked, Joe, can you give me a list of people that you would consider Jonathan's closest friends, adding that Jonathan was single. He gave the list of friends. So and there's no crazy girlfriend or something to look out or look for. And I know a lot of us were probably wondering about that, but there wasn't a woman. Now. One of the saddest things to do with this case. And y'all know that these victims matter to me and they're the reason we tell the story. We can learn from them. But one of the saddest things about this case, other than Jonathan losing his life, was when another call the next day came into a recorded sheriff's office line.

34:44 Was the next morning after Jonathan was murdered. And I want you to take a listen to this call Spaver kind. Of communications, Kim speaking. Yes, good morning. My name is John Cheryl, c HDRL. And at one o'clock this morning, I received a phone call that my son had to be shot in. Can anybody confirm that we've heard nothing from anyone? Okay, well, you know your son b address. His address would be for you, thirty nine Pine Pine Crest Road. I think in And what's your son's name?

35:24 Jonathan J O H N H T H A N Okay and the design H E. R O L Okay sir, I will have an officer to give you a phone call and they'll be. Able to give you any sort of information that you might need. Okay, keep in line available, So from a block doors you can never you welcome. While there was no screaming or hollering or like direct trauma happening in that call, I find that to be one of the most gut wrenching calls to receive. You've got a daddy because he's heard something may have happened to his son, and he's not able to get in touch with him, and the police now have one of the worst situations because dispatch relays to them, Hey, this dead guy's dad just called, and the detectives have to turn around and make that horrendous notification to his parents that not only a yes was their son shot, but he was in fact dead and one of Jonathan's friends and a former roommate of his before Roberts. His name was Drew Franklin. By the way, I did reach out to Drew. If he does get back with me, I'm gonna share that with you. But he was noted as saying that Jonathan's parents were usually the happiest people. They were so nice to be around. They were those parents that you wanted to be around. But after they received that devastating news that Jonathan had been murdered, he said,

36:55 you saw that fade, and they became heartbroken, beyond pair. And this is just another point to the fact that victimology is not necessarily just the person who is victimized. It's that ripple effect that goes way far out and you can't blame them. And I feel like they deserve grace and they deserve room. Their baby boy was murdered, and I'm not sure if I would have room for joy in my own life if I was ever given that phone call. And this is so under discussed as part of the job for law enforcement. It should never become robotic or routine to just have to go say, hey, your kid was murdered. And anyone I know that's had to go do a death notification tells me that it sticks with you. It doesn't go away, both the victims and they're you know, the victims' families, and then the law enforcement who are now tied to these people for the rest of their lives. It sticks with all of them and it doesn't go away. So within a day detectives that had gone to look for that surveillance footage were able to get a hold of it, and it turns out that the cameras actually covered a lot more than they thought. They had all of the entrances to the neighborhood as well as all of the exits to the neighborhood, and then they had the camera that pointed at Jonathan's house. This included an additional camera that was set up in the community pool area. So, as luck would have it, it was angled perfectly at the roadway

38:28 in front of Jonathan's house, but you could barely see, Like the angle was perfect, but you could barely see the edge of his yard. So you know how they say football is a game of inches, Well, in this case, so is detective work, because they only had a couple inches to work with. Now, while you're unable to see Jonathan's full front yard, you are able to see just enough to make out his mailbox and like I said, a few inches of his yard. About fifteen minutes before where Jonathan was murdered. You can watch a video of a dark colored sedan driving past Jonathan's house. And then I'm gonna say make the loop, But what I'm saying is there's like a square if you'll think of that, with Jonathan's house in the center of it. If you go past Jonathan's house, you're gonna come to a stop.

39:19 You'll take a left. It's Master's Way, then you take another left and then another and then you're back at Jonathan's house. So you can watch the dark colored sedan drive past Jonathan's house make that loop, including turning onto that Master's Way and then exit. So comparing views from all of the surveillance cameras, detectives are able to put together the exact timing and route that this vehicle took, and it shows that it literally made a full circle or a full square and ended back at Jonathan's house. So detectives thought it was kind of strange too, because the vehicle had stopped at the intersection of Pine and Master's Way for roughly twenty three seconds before it completed the loop. Now, I've stopped at stop signs for a couple of seconds, you know, with traffic or whatever. So while that may seem insignificant to the layman, what it's a totality of circumstance here that made it so strange.

40:22 The time of night number one. Right, it's late mixed with the fact there is zero traffic, not a little, not some, there is zero traffic. So it's just kind of curious that the car would stop for nearly half a minute at that intersection in conjunction with the fact that a murder was taking place. So after the pause, the vehicle makes the turn, and once the vehicle makes the turn, boom. That is when the first nine to one one phone call was made. Jonathan's story of the mystery woman with the car trouble was also kind of proven to be true here because on that video at ten point fifty two PM before the shooting, you can see that vehicle pull into Jonathan's driveway. While you can't see what's happening, okay, but again this is before the shooting.

41:16 You can't see what's happening when that car turns in, but what you do see and I have some still shots for you so you can kind of see it. But you can see Jonathan's beloved dog, the one that's on his Facebook come shooting out of the house into the street and then its it finishes crossing the street stops at like a stop sign or a poll I can't quite remember what it is for a brief second, and then the dog looks back at the house. And then a few seconds later you see Jonathan in his bathrobe coming after the dog, but the dog kind of retreats as he's running towards the dog. And then a few seconds later, Jonathan steps out of the frame, but then you see the glimpse of a slender woman step into frame, call the dog, and the dog runs straight back to her. So, I mean, this is Jonathan's dog.

42:09 It doesn't run to him, but it does run back to the woman. And then you can see the dog, the woman, and Jonathan all together just for a brief second before they go back off camera. Considering how they were interacting with each other, even just in those few seconds, it wasn't very convincing that this would be some random stranger, that just the body language was different, and so police felt like they knew one another and that it wasn't a random woman with car trouble. So not only that she wasn't there for just a few minutes either, because from the time that she shows up and the time that she backs out of the driveway, it's a total of about an hour, all right, so timeline here has got to kind of be fixed a little bit. So detectives were able to make out the license plate of the vehicle, which was KSW nine three one, and they immediately ran those plates to see who the owner was and see if maybe they could identify this mystery woman, and the plates came back to a Toyota Camry which belonged to Collette Collins, who lived on Buck Point Road.

43:26 Detectives said, well, I guess it's time to go have this a little chat with Collette. Let's go see if maybe she knows something. And wouldn't you know it that her car was very similar when they pull up to the house to the car that was circling that neighborhood right before Jonathan was murdered. In the meantime, detectives took a close look at Jonathan's cell phone, which, if you remember, was still in his lap at the moment he was murdered, and it seemed and I have a photo of that too, so you can see it kind of in time I say, live time of the investigation, and it seemed that he was texting a friend and when they ran the number, they found that this was a guy named Josh. Jonathan had received a text that said, and this is a direct quote, shoot his ass. I don't give a fuck anymore.

44:11 And Jonathan was in the middle of responding to that message and had typed out the sentence why what happened? But he never got the chance to send that message. You can go see it. It's not sent, but it's typed out. Go look on Patreon. So obviously this is this is concerning because a shooting had happened. So Josh was brought into the police department and they wanted to ask him some questions. Now, I want to tell you about Josh real quick. Josh is a big old boy, and I'm talking big think like Jelly roll. Okay. He a big fella, and I want you to know he wears his hat backwards, he's got a beard. This is not a geeky fella. Okay. He's a big, burly type guy.

44:57 And not being judgmental, just being observant. I want to tell you that Josh has an air of maybe not being so clean cut. Is it possible that this guy may have been up to no good? So they asked him, how do you know, Jonathan? And he explains, look, you know I met him drinking in the bar which the bars. Remember, he Jonathan opened bars and they both found that they shared a love for comic books. So he added, look, Jonathan was a collector of comics, and he said, dude, he probably has like twenty grand worth of comic books. I mean, he's very invested in this, you know, comic book world. And he also echoed the same sentiment as Joe Ruby and that Jonathan had been in a very bad place because of the failure of the Sipping Cow, and that he was just trying to encourage Jonathan brought, you know, you can do better. Life is going to go on. Why don't you just start a comic book store.

45:55 You could probably sell these on eBay. You can make some money, and it's something that you really like. And so they say, okay, well, you know what were you with him the day that he was killed, And he said, yeah, absolutely, he said, matter of fact, we went to the store, I got some cigarettes, we went by the bank, and then he was very specific when we got back to his house. He said that we looked at some comic books, we watched Guardian of the Galaxy, and then we played some Halo five. So he had some very specific things that he says that they did, and sure enough, that seems to check out. When asked, well, then why did you leave? What was the reason that you got up and you left the house, and he said, well, my girl and I share a car and she needed it to go get groceries for our kid, and so I left between I guess five and seven o'clock. Now for your notes too, because you are a detective with me, I'll tell you that he drove a Dodge Durango and his vehicle was never seen in camera or anything like that during this murder. They asked about Jonathan's temperament when he was there, and he said, look, he had been in really good spirits. The last time I spoke to him was I had left, but I talked to him on the phone. We were chit chatting for a minute, and then he said, hey, I gotta go. Joe Ruby is here, and then they hung up the phone, and then the rest. You already know what happened for the rest of the evening. He also added that Jonathan had also been a little bit upset with his roommate Roberts because again back to the whole sipping cow thing, it turns out Roberts was a lawyer, and Jonathan felt like

47:26 they shouldn't have been duped by this Christy girl. This should have been better vetted, and this whole situation, you know, you should have been a better attorney and looked at all the ins and outs of this. So there was a little bit of a of a disagreement there. This was new to detectives, and this was when something else came on the radar that was completely new to police, and that was going to be real drug abuse. And when I say real drug abuse, I know we already talked about the fact that there was a pipe, you know, a weed pipe or whatever on the table. I'm talking about heavier drug use. Sure they were smoking weed, but you know, now it was being brought to the table that Jonathan was really actually abusing prescription drugs and that a lot of friends kind of felt like it had gotten out of control for him. And you know, he goes on to say, look, he had a prescription for Xenex, and everybody knew that he already had one, but after the failing of the sipping cow, he got in way over his head and Josh believed that this had something to do with Jonathan possibly owing a lot of money to someone in relation to the drug usage. So Josh has opened a ton of stuff here up. And while this may seem just like an opinion, it kind of became clear that Josh seemed to know even more about something else, but it wasn't He wasn't quite sharing it specifically.

48:55 He said that he mentioned at one point in the interrogation something about a term, and what do you think about whenever you think about a turf war? I know what I think of. It's drug turf you know what I'm saying, Like, we don't have turf war over the LSU versus the Saints or something. You know, it's turf war means that you're encroaching on my territory. I mean, hell, we all know. That's why everybody shooting each other up in the frickin hood. They're fighting over territory to sell their dope. They're not shooting each other over you know, a church pew. So, asking more specifics about what he meant by this turf war, Josh said that a new dealer had come into town and that the regular dealers weren't able to compete with the lower pricing, and that somehow he felt like Jonathan may have been involved in this whole dope uproar and pricing structure issue. Curious about more of because obviously Josh knew something. The police are like, look, man, can you explain like a little bit more, maybe give us a little bit more detail, And Josh says, look, it doesn't really matter. It's just word on the street.

49:57 I don't have proof of anything I'm saying, and I don't want to say something that's not true. But police encouraged him, Broh, talk talk to us, even if it's hearsay, even if what you're saying isn't completely true, we can still investigate that and possibly solve the murder of your friend. And Josh looks at him and he asks his own question. He says, was Jonathan killed with a shotgun? And the detective says it's really possible, And then Josh says, did it happen in the front yard or the backyard? And the detective answers openly the backyard. So Josh kind of sits there for a second and you can tell that he's thinking, and he says to the detective, I mean, you've really never heard anything about what went down on buck Point Road, Like, really, you're the police and you don't know what's going down on buck Point Road. And that's when the detectives realized there's a lot missing here, and they genuinely were lost. They had no They seriously did not know anything about buck Point Road. They weren't faking that they didn't know. They did not know. And so Josh, in his own words, I'm gonna let you hear him explain what supposedly happened on buck Point Road, and I'm gonna let you hear that portion of the interview in his own words.

51:16 Supposedly the story was that John gaves some guys an information about somebody who lived down there. Some of those guys tried to hit Manhattan and I heard shots were fired. I heard shots were fired or they tried to break into his house. And then. And if those guys tried to take out this guy, John was indeed blue money, he goes. I heard those guys a shotguns when they went after and that's why I asked, will you hit with a shotgun? Wasn't in the back, and they basically shrove the guy. What I was told in saying by running around, you know, way sneaking onto this drop. Yeah, I'm friends with Yes, I know him our kids. You point, yeah, what's his name?

52:16 I well, I heard that he's body saw some assuming fire songs and he's fired back. So, based on what Josh is saying, it's kind of starting a new theory here that maybe the same guys that had something going on down on buck Point Road maybe put out a hit on Jonathan as well, if it's all related. So when Josh is asked if he knew the guy, he said, yeah, I know who the guy is. His name is Seth well Ding ding Ding. Didn't we hear Joe Ruby talk about a Seth being a dealer? So hearsay or not, the information does does seem to align with the information received from other people.

53:03 Not to mention that Buck Point Road is the same road if you remember that was listed as Collette's residents when they pulled records on her car. And I always say this, I don't believe in coincidences. Maybe you're feeling that way as well, because guess what, it turns out that Seth is married to Collette. Won't boom boom, right, we got some shit going on here now, supposedly, Seth says that he got shot at and then he fired back at these guys, and basically there was this whole shootout.

53:43 But Josh, you know, Seth had said that to Josh, But Josh was skeptical about it, because how in the hell would all of these gunshots be going off and all this stuff be going down on this road and the police not know about it. That's why Josh didn't really want to put a lot of credence to what Seth was telling him. But don't get it twisted. Josh said that Seth was really afraid that someone was really trying to kill him, and Josh had known Seth for a little over a year, so Seth had asked Josh, hey, will you come walk my property for me and just help me make sure that nobody was on it. So Josh, by the way, he was closer to Jonathan than Seth, but that didn't stop Seth from vocalizing the fact that he thought Jonathan was behind the shooting at his home either.

54:29 So I hope you're following all of this. There's a lot of players involved. He then came to the conclusion because he said Jonathan had been in his house right before the shooting, and that Jonathan was acting really strange and really sweaty, almost as if he was nervous, and that Jonathan had gotten up right before the shooting took place and had left. You know, Seth really felt like maybe Jonathan was behind that setup at the home. But Josh mentioned that Seth walked with a cane because he was all busted up from being shot. So as most people would think, okay, I thought, you know, he's been shot during that home invasion. We've been discussing this whole time, and that's whenever Josh says no, no, no, no, no.

55:18 Seth was shot in another incident, another shooting incident that went down. He said, you know, after that shooting and when Seth got hurt, he became a shell of his former self. He was always in a lot of pain and he was always taking a lot of pain medication. I eat pills. So as far as employment went, if you're curious about this Seth guy, he had been a landscaper before he got shot. His wife, Collette, worked as a waitress. So this was just a lot of information that police were not aware of. First of all Buck Point Row drama and all the shootings that went down, and so they say, all right, we're gonna go pay a visit to Seth and Collette. And when they got there again, remember that Toyota camera was in the driveway.

56:04 You may say, well, hey, there's a lot of Toyota camera's. I mean, a defense attorney would tear that up. But unfortunate for Collett was the fact that one of the detectives was a car guy, and he had a very keen eye, and he noticed something about that vehicle on the suspect video that I'm telling you now, I would not have noticed, and I bet majority of people would not notice. And I've got photos for you to go look at it in the grainy black and white video. But one of the detective detectives noticed that one realm did not match all of the others on the car. Now, hold up, I know what you're saying, Kelly. We would know if a rim didn't match. Uh ah. All of the rems look exactly the same, but one of the realms, only one had seven spokes while all of the others had six. It's not this, captain obvious difference. You almost would have to be paying attention to that exact thing to pick it out. So kudos to the car guys out there. When they looked at that vehicle that was similar outside of Collette's home, wouldn't you know one realm didn't match? All right, So we're getting somewhere here. Police knocked on the door and Collette answered, and they said, look, we need you to come down to the station. We have some questions for you. She readily agreed, never asking why.

57:23 That to me is important. If someone doesn't ask you why you're being brought down to the police station, I'm going to consider that a red flag. So when they got there, they say, you know you're not curious as to why you're here, and she said, well, no, of course I know why i'm here. And one of my good friends was shot and killed, so I was just assuming it was about that. Okay, maybe so all right, So I'm going to play you in audio here of her, in her own words, being questioned, Listen to this. I was there. I know they're going to come talk to me, and I've watched a lot of versions. And whoever's the last person you go talk to? We had gone.

58:03 Really and we oh, Josh, I think he was there, but I don't know who else from there or today or dead. Or really talk to Okay, did anyone else choke whenever they heard her say I watch a lot of First forty eight, Like what a weird ass thing to say when you're being interrogated about a murder that went down. But hey, I'm weird. Everybody's weird. We all have our things right. But her basic statement was that she just went to go check on Jonathan because she knew he was going through a hard time and that he had been having some depression about the restaurant failing, and so her thing was, look, I've been suicidal in the past before I recognized that, she said, I even had suicidal attempts, and so she just wanted to make sure that he was okay, and she even laughs at one point, she kind of chuckles, and she says that it was funny because when she got there, he had on a robe and he had on a peel mask like on his face, you know, appeel mask, And obviously Jonathan wasn't expecting her to come by. I don't think you would have answered the door like that. So she just wanted to stop buy and check on him because he had been so down lately, and she did not call first, and that's probably why he was surprised. So what exactly was their relationship then and how close were they? And so she explained, Hey, I met him at Pepper's. That was the remember the restaurant bar, because me and my husband used to go there a lot, and he backed the bar and we clicked as friends. We really got along, she says, you know,

59:34 matter of fact. I mean, his birthday is two months and nine days away from mine. I mean, we just know a lot about each other and we're friends. But then the line of questioning starts about her husband and Jonathan. How was their friendship friendship? And the answer here to me is a little eyebrow. Raising the relationship. Yeah, I mean at first they were better friends than he and I were. And then I don't know if my husband started to get jealous him and I like, you know, needed to jealous, but I was like okay, and he didn't know, I want to over there that night. How I don't want him to get up that with me. You're going over there, you know, And nothing into happened, Nothing injouent happened.

1:00:29 We hugged a thing twice. We never really talked about having we blurted, but it never when you are Majel throwing me out. It was a very decade. She was going by another man's house that her husband wasn't aware of that and he was jealous of and your husband didn't like that relationship, but you continued to do it anyway, right, doesn't sound too loyal to your husband. But either way, what she was saying was lining up with what was seen on surveillance camera. Call it said she pulled in. They never went inside. They just talked about kind of like the direction of his life, the failing restaurant, and she was pumping him up, saying, look, you're a strong guy. You've got a lot of support from your parents, and you can do anything you want to if you set your mind to it. And she said they also kind of touched on his drug usage and she was concerned for him that he kept saying that he had money problems or like he owed money to people and it was the people that he was getting pills from. Even more, she said that after she left his house that she went and bought two bottles of Pinot noir and that she didn't want to go home and drink it because her husband had just made a year sober. I think it was like September first, and so she drove around drinking the wine so that she wouldn't have to put her husband around it. And when asked, okay, well where all did you drive to when whenever you were drinking the wine it seemed to

1:02:02 coincide with what the video surveillance was showing. So take a listen here. So I kind of rode around and drink on that bottle of wine, and where did you write? Around? You? A little bit of you know, just kind of stay it closed to the. Home, but forty eggs and the farm area and back his neighbor, like I think it went back through there maybe one time. And then. So detectives then just jumped straight to the chase and they say, look, we know what happened at your house. She never had brought that up. Someone came in and they shot at your house, and she confirms it. Yep, that happened. There were two shots and they didn't know who did it. But word on the street was that they had been set up somehow because someone said they had money in their house but they didn't. So they say, well, do you think you know that Jonathan or you may have been the one that sets all up. And she at it and she goes, that's ridiculous. He knows we don't have any money. I mean, I'm a waitress, you know.

1:03:05 And the detectives say, well, if he was really deep in this drug addiction and he owed money to people like you just said, what if he told people y'all had money and he could collect it the bad people could collect it from your house, wouldn't that make sense? And she kind of listens for a second and said, well, you know, I never really thought of that because we always thought Jonathan had money. We didn't know he didn't have money. Even though she just said that she was worried about him because of all of his debt, possibly due to drugs. So the detective says, look, girl, you know this is captain obvious. He was at your house. We know he was acting squirrely. He left, and then all that shit went down at your house. Not to mention, we have Jonathan's phone records where he straight up says in a text message to your husband, Hey, my bad, I messed up. I'm sorry. I should have you know, not said that and sent people to your house. I'm just in a really bad spot. I'm sorry, but don't get mad at me. Please be mad at the people that showed about your house. So Colleen then is like flabbergasted by this, and she says, excuse me, I didn't know Jonathan was behind anything that happened at my house.

1:04:17 They never we never discussed that. My husband never told me that. And she says, we didn't. I didn't even know my husband had like a gun. I didn't even know that he was selling pills to people. Like all these things were coming to light that detectives were cluing her in on. But look, I wanna tell you something. If someone busts up in my house and starts shooting at me and my husband, we anna talk about that, baby. We all talk about that shit till the day we die, because we're gonna be shocked. We're gonna be curious as to hell what happened, and we're gonna like be like, holy hell till the day we die. So you're telling me you care enough about your husband's well being that you go and drink and drive to bottles of wine or a bottle of wine, and that people in the past shot up your house and started shooting, and you never discussed it. That dog don't hunt my friends. I got a problem with that explanation. So detectives go further, when was the last time you drove through the neighborhood?

1:05:18 And she gives a time that clearly is not accurate, and they tell her, booboo, you're lying. We know you're lying because we have security cameras that show your car going in and coming out, and magically it's during the time that Jonathan is murdered. And so there's obviously something you're not telling us, and we want to know why, like now, explain it to us. And that's when Collette gets really nervous. She starts getting very worrisome and says the dreaded words, do you think I need a lawyer? And they say, well, you're not in trouble, do you think you need a lawyer? And so they take a twenty minute break from the interrogation, and then they resume back and it's a different detective this time that comes in the room, but he's been observing from outside of the room the whole time, and when he starts talking, he tells her, do you understand that we have got some shotgun shells, and whoever loaded those shotgun shells into that gun and shot it, it's gonna have their DNA on it. You do recognize that, right. Is there any reason why your husband's DNA would be found on those shotgun shells? And she says, I have no idea. And they say, okay, was anyone else in the car with you when you were driving through? And she says absolutely not.

1:06:36 She is adamant no one was with me. Nobody was in the car with me. And they say, well, it sure does look like someone's in the car with you, and she says, no, I had my uniform from work hanging. And the detective like scoffs and laughs at that. He's like, no, baby, there's definitely another person in the car with you. We can see their face. So that's when she says, look, if you're gonna act like I'm a suspect, then I want a lawyer. She lawyers up, and that's a rap. Now her husband, remember the SETH guy. Turns out that's not even his name. His real name, his government name, if you want to was sam Samuel Collins. So obviously they wanted to question him, but he wouldn't show up.

1:07:18 He didn't show up until the next morning, and police were like, man, this has got to be tactical or strategic or something. Obviously he stayed with Colette. They talked about it to get their story straight, and now he showed up for questioning. But either way, they asked him some questions. How do you know him? We know him from the bar, we became friends. They were like, well, how good are friends? He's like good friends. A matter of fact, I even loaned money to him in the past. He said, there was this whole sip and cow incident that went bad with a business, and he said, I loaned him money. Now he hadn't paid me back yet, but he said he's given me things from time to time to just show good faith. And he holds up his wrists. He's like, I mean, even this watch I'm wearing he gave me and I've been wearing it ever since he was murdered in his honor. That's when it kind of kind of starts coming out that both Sam and Jonathan were seeking pills at the same time and they shared the same plug. If you don't know the word plug, plug is like who hooks you up with your with whatever you want, and they shared the same plug.

1:08:16 The plug's name was Isaiah Walker, whose street name was Talk, and he says, as in like TikTok because he always takes forever. So eventually Sam says that instead of you know them both going to talk, Talk became Sam's you know, dealer, and then Sam was turning around and he was selling dope himself, and he said, I was even selling to Jonathan at one point. Well, the detectives kind of call bullshit. They're like, well, if y'all both have the same plug, why would he buy dope from you when you're gonna mark it up from the price of your plug? Why would he do that if he already knows where to get it wholesale basically, And he says it was strictly out of convenience. He said, I'm very close to where Jonathan lives, and because Talk takes forever to get the dope. Said, I didn't really mark it up, I just you know, cut even I don't buy that, but that's what he said.

1:09:11 When they got into the marriage questions, Sam verified that he and Collette had been married for fourteen years, and so they said, well, was there ever a rocky point? In your marriage. Listen to this. We were having issues, and I think with her it might have been some addiction issues. She was having the pills and I was trying to get her to stop, and she didn't want to stop. So she was yeah from her cancer, and I was just trying to get her to stop. But when she gets in that mind frame sheet, there's no stop. There's fews. You want me to stop, or you're trying to stop me. That's the way she was then, because whenever she went through cancer, they give her so much medicine.

1:09:53 It was ridiculous. And then afterwards I tried to help her to get off of it, you know, And it wasn't very much longer that she ended up taking off. But she ended up going up to Augusta and saw on her phone that she'd been talking to another man, and I figured out who it was and and it turns out that it was her stepmother's brother, which is. Terrible to me. Okay, hold up real quick, did you and you better tell me the truth? Did you just choke on whatever you sipped out of your ice cold Stanley like I did the first time you heard that she was messing around with her step uncle is that really what was just said to me? Because what have I gotten you, my listener into? But we can't stop now, keep listening.

1:10:38 Okay. So we split up for about a year and some change, almost two years, and got back together in the middle of it for a little bit, you know. But then. She came back in April, not last April. I believe that April before. So we've been together ever since then. How how was her relationship with them? I don't know. I mean, I know that he took a liking tour that I could tell a little bit. They were smoking a cigarette on the porch together one day and he came in and he goes, oh, she's just so nice and so sweet and pretty or so lucky, sad.

1:11:23 Good, okay, good, He said it made him feel good. How about maybe jealous or maybe you felt like Jonathan might be overstepping some territory. Maybe, I don't know, it's a possibility. Detectives didn't shy away either at this point, and they say flat out, do you think your wife was messing around with Jonathan? And he says, I don't believe so, and I would really hate to find that out. He did say that she told him that as soon as she found out Jonathan had been murdered, she admitted to her husband, Look, I had stopped by and seen Jonathan that night before he was killed, and you know, you said it kind of took him by surprise, and said, is this something you always do? Are you always leaving and going and stopping by his house without me knowing?

1:12:10 But he didn't believe that they had been intimate because she had cancer at one point, and because of the type of cancer she had, she had to have some procedures that made it very difficult for her to have sexual relations. Let your mind just figure that one out. So police wanted to search his home and car. That would just be kind of standard to rule him out. But he says, no, that will be an invasion of my privacy. So police kind of go oh okay, and they switch topics and start talking about the shooting at their home. So Collette had already verified that two shots were fired. She said one bullet had ended up in the ceiling. But whenever Sam was asked about this exact same incident, he said, no shots were ever fired at my house. What a strange discrepancy between husband and wife.

1:12:59 Police tell him, look, we're kind of under the impression that there were bullet holes in your house and that if we go look, there's gonna be bullet holes. And he goes, oh, well, there will be, but that's those were already there when we moved in. So police were like, legit perplexed here by you know this, it was much to do about nothing. Why would you lie about an incident we're not even interested in right now? So Sam says, two men came on their porch and they were acting like they were gonna come rob him, but he went and he flickered the porch lights on and off, and it scared the people away. But this just wasn't jiving with what every other person had said, and so police are kind of like, so y'all were afraid that y'all were gonna be hurt because two men randomly came and stood on your porch, so you scared them off. I mean, that just doesn't make sense. But there's a reality that detectives face and police face, and that's that not everybody's police friendly. And this guy clearly has some shit going on that he doesn't want to share with police. But finely he gives in and says Okay, look, yeah, shots were fired and I didn't call nine one. One the reason I didn't is because I'm a convicted felon and I shot back at them, and I don't want to get in trouble for being a felon in possession of a firearm. Okay. Police are like, look, do that's all you had to say. We're not going after you on something that's not related to this. We just want to know why there would be a lie there. So, true to their word, police didn't go after that. They just collected a DNA sample from him and let him be on his way. They did feel like there was more

1:14:31 to the story, but you know, you gotta have time. Time always will tell and this is where that comes true and a little bit of luck comes into play. Four days later, which would have been November fourth, Sam Collins gets pulled over in a traffic stop. And I do have video from that traffic stop, like bodycam video, and I'm gonna try to upload that on Patreon for you. Sam was polite, he handed over his ID. The officer does the routine go back to his car to check to see if he has insuran rants and to CPS warrants. Will lo and behold. Guess what he was wanted on three active warrants from other incidents. They included things like motor vehicle theft, burglary, larceny. So this guy is not really the greatest dude. Clearly he was going to be placed under arrest. But something that happens if you've never been arrested before, is that there's going to be search incidental to arrest. That's what it's called. So they empty his pockets and things like that. Well they pull a baggy a weed out of his pocket, you know, shocker, But they also pull a twelve gage shotgun shell. Again, I'm going to shout out good policing here because the officer that did the search and found the shell vocalizes on the body cam once they put Sam in the car to take him to jail, Hey, I'm going to go drop this stuff back in the car, which included that shotgun shell. And that's when the other officer goes, wait a minute, what kind of shotgun shell is that?

1:15:58 And the officer says, it's a it's a twelve gage, it's a Winchester, and then he drops it back on the seat like the front seat of the car, and in a random passing conversation while they're just talking and they're doing what they got to do, that second officer says, didn't we just have a murder with a shotgun? And then they just kind of go about their business. Sam's booked into jail. Well, the arresting officer, thinking about what that other officer had said about the murder, went the extra step of notifying detectives that he had found a shotgun shell during that search incidental to arrest. So they turned around and they were able to get a search warrant for Sam's vehicle, where they recovered that same shotgun shell, as well as a cell phone that they took in as evidence. They also were able to get a search warrant for Collette and Sam's home, where when they got there they surprised Collette, who at this point, the little Collette who was, you know, kind of quiet and slow talking at the police station, she was a whole frickin different animal when they showed up better house, incredibly disrespectful and not helpful. And as they completed the search of the home, they noticed shotgun holes throughout the house and they also took photographs of a shooting target that had numerous holes in it and it was hung on the wall.

1:17:20 So detectives were excited when they found what they thought was a shotgun, but when they did a closer look, it turns out it was actually a BB gun of their sons. And they didn't locate any other weapons inside of the home, but they did find those shotgun shells, but they did not match the type of shells used in the murder. It was also rather curious that as they searched the home they found multiple cell phones. So detectives took the cell phones and they searched through them, and one of the phones was apparently SAMs that he wasn't using, I guess, And there were some text messages between he and a friend named William Cody Brand who went by Cody. One of the messages peaked investigator's interest.

1:18:06 This was a text and it was in kind of like broken English and like a lot of misspelled words and things. So I'm gonna make the sentence make sense for you, but basically it said, I hope I didn't wake you up. I put your gun in the back of your truck. I was gonna wrap it in the camo gloves in there. I had a late night ride last night, but just keep this conversation between us, don't share it with the crew. So this message was timestamped less than two hours after Jonathan's murder had taken place. Then two days later, Sam messages Cody again and says, you haven't seen me, and I haven't seen you. Sketchy, you know what I'm saying. So during that same search warrant, police had also found camouflage clothing. Police were then able to get a search warrant for Cody's house, and so as they searched his home, they went into his garage and in Cody's garage they found a spent shell casing as well as some that were not fired. And guess where Cody lived. Cody lived in the Farm neighborhood. And that's really interesting considering Colette had already admitted that while she went out supposedly on her drinking and driving tour, she drove through there if you remember. Obviously, Cody had some explaining to do, but he seemed very upfront. He said Sam asked to borrow a gun for self protection because of a home invasion that had happened. Some shots had been fired at their home and he said, yeah, bro, you can borrow my gun. That's fine, Please take care of it. This gun is my baby. So he thought

1:19:38 it was kind of strange though, because he gave Sam the gun. But the very next day, Cody had already returned the gun. And he also thought it was weird because he said it had been raining the night before and it seemed really strange that he would get out in the middle of the night in the rain to return a weapon and all of that, he said, But I took the gun, I unloaded it. I was I'm surprise to find that there was a spent shell casing still inside of it. He said, I didn't throw it away, y'all can have it. What he didn't know is police had already found it during that warrant. So now police had the task of trying to place Sam at the crime scene. But you know, they never saw him in any of the surveillance footage, to be honest, they never saw him. That's when they decided to go back to the drawing board and rewatch the videos to see if there was anything they may have missed. And lo and behold, remember when the vehicle drove past Jonathan's house and then made that left hand turn onto Master's Way. Well, if you keep watching very closely, as soon as that vehicle is out of range of the video, you can clearly see lights light up and those are very obviously tail lights to a vehicle. There was no other traffic on the road, so it begged the question why did the car stop there? And it was again just a few minutes for Jonathan was shot. So detectives went back to Jonathan's house and they walked from Jonathan's backyard through the wooded area to that McMaster's Road to see is it

1:21:13 possible that someone could have walked that path in the timeframe they had to jump in a car. Police had developed the theory that Jonathan was in his backyard when Sam walked through the woods after being dropped off by Colette, shot Jonathan and then walked back to the car, but they didn't have enough to prove this all the way. What would become extremely helpful was that eight days later, the DNA came back from Cody's shotgun and sure as shit, Sam Collins DNA was found on the magazine cap, the trigger, and the stock. They were also able to find his DNA on the Camo clothing that the shotgun was wrapped in.

1:21:53 At this point, police felt incredibly confident we have our killer. They executed arrest warrants for both Collette and Sam Collins in the murder of Jonathan. Cheryl Colette then was arrested on her front porch without incident. But once she got in the police car, now she wanted to talk to detectives and without an attorney. Wouldn't you know that once she was officially under arrest, all of a sudden, her story started to change considerably. She now claimed she and Sam got in a fight after she left Jonathan's because she went home and was honest and to her told him where she had been. At that point, she says, her husband grabbed her and told her you're not going anywhere.

1:22:36 Because she was trying to leave, she said, he chased me down. He got in the car with me, and since our son was at the house, I didn't want the fight to escalate in front of him, so I drove off and Sam said take me to Jonathan's. She said, I didn't want to go to Jonathan's, but I was really upset with all of the fighting, and as we drove towards Jonathan's house. The fighting escalated at what point which point she stopped and she said, get out of my car, and she kicked him out of the car. She said, a little while later he called me and said come pick me up. And she admitted, look, I have treated on my husband in the past, so I understand why he was so upset. But you know, she said, my husband does not have a gun. And you know, I found out about Jonathan's murder the next day. I saw it on the news at work and at that point, you know, that's when I realized what must have happened.

1:23:32 And the police looked her in her face and said, bull fucking shit, that is not what happened. But it really hit home to her whenever she says, what's gonna happen to me, What's gonna happen to me? And the detective looks at her and says, maybe you're going to jail, and now you're being charged with murder. She starts hyperventilating and she's crying at one point, talking about how she has to go through some more cant her treatments and how scared she is. Then she completely seeing the detectives are unmoved by this show starts throwing her husband under the bus. When I say throwing him under the bus, I mean she slung him. She ran him over. She put that bitch in reverse. I said no and backed right back over his ass. Because she throws him under the bus, and she starts talking about how he's nothing but trouble and he's so problematic for her. And what I love is that the police are like, well, you're still being charged with murder, and she says, what didn't kill anybody? And that's when they go blow by blow about all the turns that she made when she dropped him off. They also add in that she made the circle around Jonathan's house while her husband was out of the car. She had her window rolled down, which seemed really convenient. She's they say, hmm, I wonder why you drove by the front of his house really slowly with your window down. We can tell when the shotgun blasts go off because the camera shakes, so there's no doubt

1:25:02 that you heard it. Then we see you pull up to the stop sign when you continue making the circle where you sat for twenty five seconds, which makes sense because that sam husband of yours has a limp. Because he walks with a cane because he can't run, which is exactly why the neighbors saw the man walking through their backyard through those woods. And then magically you make that turn when you see him pop out, we see brake lights again. He gets in your car and he leaves. So boo boo. Your husband got out of the car with a shotgun. You drove around and heard shotgun blasts. Then you go back and pick him up. He gets back in your car with a shotgun. What do you think happened? Your husband was angry because he thought you were cheating. He grabbed a shotgun. He got in your car.

1:25:54 You drive to the house that he thinks you're cheating with you. Hear shotgun blasts from behind the house. He doesn't knock on the front door, babe. He made you drive around and he went through the back tactically. You, my friend, are a mother yourself. How would you feel if your baby boy his name was Chase. How would you feel if baby Chase was murdered by somebody and you were sitting here wanting me to solve it. Wouldn't you want someone tell the truth and the whole truth. And that's when the story changes yet again, she says Sam did accuse me of sleeping with Jonathan. She said he even went so far as to check my pennies to see what they looked like. He rubbed my legs to see if they were shaved, and he looked at my vagina to see if it was shaved. A classic Oh, I'm the offended female. He was yelling at her. He said that she was making him look like a fool because she went to another man's house. He grabbed his gun.

1:26:53 Pissed off, they went to go confront Jonathan. While they're driving there, she says that he started slamming her head into the window so hard her head was hurting and her ears were ringing. And then she says, yeah, I did hear the shotgun blast. But he got in the car and I started saying, what did you do? And he said, I just shot the gun to scare Jonathan. And again, I didn't even know Jonathan was dead. I'm serious. I didn't know until the next day. And my husband said yes when I confronted him about it, and I better not say anything, y'all if you're not outdone with her. At this point, I don't know what to say. But the police were done with her ever changing story because it's crystal clear what happened. They transported Collette to the Beaufort County Detention Center where Sam, her husband was already in custody due to that drug possession charge, and police served their arrest warrants for Jonathan's murder to him there.

1:27:46 Eventually their cases would go to trial. Sam was convicted of murder and sentenced to fifty years in prison. Collette's charges would be reduced to accessory after the fact. And this is kind of funny because once the prosecution laid out their case against Collette and Sam realized that Collette was gonna play victim, he agreed to testify against his own wife. I guess by that point he was angry, so he was a matter of fact when he said that he told Collette as soon as he got back in the car, I killed Jonathan, and then she helped him get rid of the gun by dropping it off at Cody's house. Collette Collins was convicted of accessory after the fact and sentenced to fifteen years. So I guess this story is one of those where it's safe to say keep your enemies close and your friend's closer, because jealousy doesn't look good on anyone, and it's no different in this case. So my advice would be, when you marry someone, maybe make sure they actually like you and they're committed to you. I have a feeling that Collette went to Jonathan's house that night looking for a little bit more, but Jonathan just wasn't interested. And I'll say this, I'm not mad about her lying. I didn't really expect much, but I'm thoroughly amused that she thinks were all dumb enough to believe it.