The Drifter Part Two

0:06 Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast where 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.

0:51 Unspeakable as intended for mature audiences. If you are easily offended, then I'm not your girl. Listening discretion is advised. Hey, y'all, it's kJ You're back with the no episode of Unspeakable, and I know for a fact you have been waiting for this one, this part two of the Matt and Meghan saga. I've gotten so many messages of dang it, Kelly, why'd you make it a part two? I'm so sorry, but y'all, there's so much that I have to tell you. And then I have some other information I learned firsthand all over the weekend too, that I'm adding into this, so trust it was worth the wait. Before I start this episode, though. I have some shout outs, and I have one that I owed someone that joined my Patreon and I somehow skipped over her, and I am just I feel horrible about it, but I'm screaming all the way to Saint Augustine, Florida.

1:35 You know it's you, Stephanie de Roca. How are you? Thank you for joining? I apologize for the delay. I have a good heart, but I'm add and I guess whenever I was printing out and getting all my stuff together, somehow I just missed your name. So don't hold it against me. You tell everybody that I love you because I do, and thank you so much for supporting me as well as going to Louisville, Kentucky, Miss Michelle, I think it's iker. I hope I said that right. I even tried to google it and it gave me different options, so ab how to say it? So, Michelle Aker in Louisville, Kentucky, this is my shout out to you. I appreciate you more than you will ever know. You're helping me make my dreams come true. And then in Van Cleeve, Mississippi, Rachel Gillan, Hey, Rachel, what's up?

2:19 How are things over there? You're right there in my backyard. You're a next door state, so I hope that you're having a great time, and I appreciate you joining this Patreon. And then last but not least, we're going to the land down under all the way to Acacia Gardens, Australia, and that is. Where Elena Roland is. Hey, Elena. I've got a couple of people that are members of Patreon from Australia, and I just know y'all by name. Actually usually when I'm. Looking through all my y'all don't care about this, but I get in my spreadsheets, okay, and I see what states everybody's from. But and I know my Australians, So thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. I hope that you are doing well. And we are gonna jump into this episode in one second because I want to remind y'all that we have a new show.

3:02 Jem and I together are doing what's called Crime Wire Weekly. It's its own separate show. It's about we're covering true crime cases from around mainly the US, but we do have some some abroad because they're just so crazy, we talk about them. But it's on its own feed now. So if you're on Patreon, you've been getting these episodes and watching them and giving us a. Lot of good feedback, which we love. But please go check out Crime War Weekly at if you scroll to the bottom of the show notes, there'll be a link there that you can go check out to find that. And as usual, I'm on Patreon, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram. So I made a new link tree with some updated information. We're gonna also put that at the bottom of the notes, so you can click that link tree and find all my social media and everything right there in one spot. So there's my plug for that. Now let's jump in. Now I'm gonna recap a little bit. I had to listen to reach out and say, Kelly, we wait a whole week and now I forget some things, so please recap. Well, this one's for you girl, all right. So Matt and Megan, if you remember, they were trying tlers. I'm not going to call him homeless because they were voluntarily without home.

4:04 They traveled the US together. And so they had traveled and come back home to see Matt's mama, Miss Teresa, because they wanted to share that they were engaged. They set up a place to sleep the night that they got there. It was behind a motel eight, and then in the early morning hours, they were kidnapped. Megan was horrifically raped, and they were all abused by these three men that they had shared drinks with the night before. They also made friends with another drifter and his name was Hollywood, or that's what he went by, and he would ultimately save Megan from her captors. And now we left off with him taking off with nothing but a pipe for protection, while Matt was still tied up somewhere in the woods, location unknown. So I hope that that was a pretty good recap.

4:45 If you haven't listened to episode one, go listen before you jump into this one. So Megan went ahead. She jumped on that phone when they made it up to a store, and she called Matt's twenty four year old brother Daniel, who by now was headed straight to her as well as when he jumped in the car to get to her, he dialed nine one one and told police, we need police here now and explain that best as he could what he knew to have happened. So Daniel and his mom they drove there as fast as they could. They had to come from Baton Rouge to go meet Megan and be by her side. Now while driving there, Miss Teresa was in absolute sheer panic, absolute panic, A feeling of helplessness consumed her. I don't even know how she was able to make it there.

5:32 I would have been hysterical. And she told me. I spoke to her personally. I called her because I wanted to get more insight firsthand from some of the players in this story. And she told me, I felt like my heart was ripping out of my body. I just I knew this was not good. I knew that this was gonna possibly be life altering, and it just was more than anyone should ever have to feel. So when they arrived and they got there, of course they wrapped Meghan up in hugs and the guys meaning Daniel and another I believe he had another friend with him or a cousin. But they set out into the woods to go look for Matt because that's where Meghan said he was somewhere off in that direction. Well, when the police arrived there, it was absolutely a welcome sight. And I found out it was because a lot of them actually knew Matt. They went to school with him, They were very familiar with him. It was like a first named basis, like they knew him, knew him, and they knew that when he was in the area. They knew what his lifestyle was, and they would check in on him while they were patrolling the area. They never ran him off. They knew what kind of person he was, and so they would often bring him hamburgers when they would see him, and they were friendly with him because he was not known to be a nuisance in the area.

6:46 He just simply took a spot to sleep, and Megan would recount to them what had happened while the family was already deep into the woods shouting for Matt, Matt, Matt, were here, make a noise, Matt. So Miss Teresa actually got there after Daniel and the friend got there. So when she pulled up, the police walked over to either side of her car, like the driver's side and then the passenger side, and they actually shut the doors and did not even let them get out. She said that they were like, look, we're gonna we're not gonna ask that you get out. We're politely asking that you back up and that you go to the police station and if you could just go wait there, we will be happy to update you from there. And we just don't need all of these people in what is now going to be considered a crime scene. So with no other choice, that's exactly what she did. And also the police did retrieve Daniel and the other friend that was with him and say, look, guys, we know you want to find your brother. We're gonna do everything that we can, but we're gonna ask that you please let us do our job and that you take yourself down to the police station.

7:55 So they looked throughout those dense woods, like I told you, but they never Matt never yelled out to them, so they did not locate him. They walked and they walked, and they searched, and they yelled, and they looked under brush, but they just didn't find him before the police arrived on scene. So they asked all of them go ahead down to the station, which they did. So clinging to hope that maybe I don't know, that Matt somehow maybe have gotten away, maybe he had gone to get help and he just wasn't able to get in touch with them. I mean, you've got to hold on to hope no matter what the situation is. Hope is something that you've got to hold onto. And that glimmer of hope was all that they would have during this time of just desperation, utter fear. Hope is a powerful thing to have on your side and to cling to. So now that the area was an active crime scene and they had arrived to the police station, they were also told we also have dogs out there and dogs are searching for Matthew as well. Because I wasn't there, but I'm assuming because of his stuff being on scene, you know, where they had camped out, that those dogs were able to get a scent for him, and then that's how they went out to track them.

9:02 So the family got to the police station, they were escorted into a conference room where they were told to just sit and wait, and the police continued their search, and it wasn't very long after they did in fact find Matthew. But there would be no celebration in calling this family to tell them we found your son. Because Matt's body was recovered from the Intercoastal Canal. He was face down, still bound from his neck to his wrists which were then, as you remember, tied behind his back. And Matthew Milliken was dead. He had not survived the night and now he was in a waterway, so in a somber process. The police collected their badly battered friend and he was transported to the coroner's office for an autopsy to be performed. Now the medical examiner did a thorough examination. In his findings would now make sense as to why Megan heard that final scream from Matt in the woods. Matt had sustained a what he'd described as superficial, non lethal one third of an inch stab wound.

10:16 To his left neck, but this was not what had killed him. The medical examiners described us more as what would be called an intimidation wound, like they had kind of stabbed him in the neck to make him walk and to go do what they wanted him to do. But he did have. Multiple blunt force trauma wounds to his head and to his face, particularly his left eye and his lip. There were hematomas and hemorrhaging in the lower lip and underneath his scalp. The trauma to his face was consistent with either a right hook punch or a blunt instrument, of which the medical examiner was unc exactly which one that was, But the trauma to his head was consistent with a beer bottle as well as a blunt instrument.

11:11 Like a log. There were deep, deep ligature marks in his wrists, as well as a pretty deep ligature mark around his neck that measured fourteen and a half inches in length around The most major findings would include a fatal stab wound to his right chest which penetrated at least eight inches into his thorcic cavity. It perforated his right lung and the right side of his heart, so that final scream that Megan had heard was the result of a k bar slicing straight into Matt's chest and killing him within moments due to massive blood loss. From all indications, Matt was probably unconscious and most likely dead from the blood loss caused from the puncture to the right side of his heart before he even hit the water, And in a strange way, I hope that's true, because drowning sounds on top of everything that that guy had gone through beyond torture. I don't know what the word beyond torture would be, but I'm hoping that he was unconscious and didn't suffer another minute. But his death was ruled a homicide with exanguination listed as the official cause, which is where you bleed out. His time of death according to the coroner, was between two am and four am. Now,

12:45 back at the conference room, the family was notified that one of the men believed to be responsible for attacking Matt and Megan had been found. This all happened very quickly. The man that had been found was fat boy. Now him being found, I want to let you know. A little bit about this. It wasn't because he wanted to come clean or that he was feeling sorry for what had happened. No, that's not what was going on at all. It was more like he surrendered kind of voluntarily, but because he was now afraid of the Garcia brothers because they were threatening to kill him. So basically, he's a little bitch, or maybe a big one. He can hurt and rape people, but when it's going to happen to him, now he's scared, and now he needs the protection of the police, the very people he was trying to run from.

13:38 Isn't that ironic. So the officers arrested him and they would bring him back to the station where Matt's brothers had to physically be told. To stand down. Oh no, Mama told me. Mama, Teresa told me that when they said we've got one of them, and he's here. Both brothers jumped up like their chairs flew back. And the police We're like no, no, no, no, no, no no no. The brothers wanted to kick ass and take names, as any brother worth anything would probably want to do, but they couldn't. They watched. The family was outside and watched as fat Boy exited the police vehicle and walked into the police station. He passed right in front of Matt.

14:22 After they had just been told what happened to their brother and to their son. The restraint involved there. God helped them because all they could do was watch the person that they thought or was thought to be responsible for their brother's disappearance. And now they know murder. Just walked past them and was being protected and not in that they could not go do something I guess vengeful on him. So megan flashing over to her real quick. She was clearly in need of medical attention whenever the police got hold of her. By this point, she had been taken by ambulance to the local charity hospital, which if you're from here you will recognize it was Earl K Long which is now no longer in existence, but that it's been torn down and everything. But that was the charity hospital there, And interesting is that my mother in law worked there during this time. Now I can't confirm nor deny whether she worked with Megan or not because they would not share that with me, but nor are they allowed to, right because of hippo. But in that kind of an interesting thing. So the process now that she is at this hospital is that they've got to check her out but also do that rape examination kit, the rape kit on her, and this process is so invasive, and after everything that she had already been through, I'm sure that this was just another perceived violation, even if

15:53 it was for her good y'all, even if it was for her good. Ladies, real quick, guys, put your fingers in your ears, real quick. But girls, ladies, women, just when we go to our annual appointment or whenever we were pregnant and having our babies, do you remember how humiliating or how invasive it was just being checked once a year. How you're like, ah, and what do they tell you? I know, women, I know you're listening to me, and you're understanding right now when I say scoot down, scoot down, scoot down some. More, a little bit more scoot Did they scoot down? Why do they have to do that to us? We know it's for our good, but it's because it's just so invasive when you're at that doctor and now here she is having suffered hours and hours of trauma, and she's got to go through this rape test kit.

16:38 And so you'll understand, I'm gonna make it very brief here, but there's twelve fundamental steps to a rape kit. But some of those steps include. Multiple swabs and pictures being taken, and they involve every personal orifice of your body inside and out. Well, Megan's mama wasn't there. Her mama lived states away in California. Her mama couldn't get there in time. So Meghan was basically alone. But like hell, would it stay that way? Because Matt's mama, Teresa, was not gonna have it. She shifted her immediate concern. And if you want to know the strength of a woman, you listen to me. She shifted her immediate concern the moment she found out her son had been found dead. Immediately she was grieving, but she shifted her concern to Meghan, and she said, this is the deal. I'm going to the hospital. I will wait for further updates from the hospital. But Meghan needs a motherly figure with her, and it's me. I'm her mama now and I'm gonna get there. Remember, y'all, Meghan was just in her early twenties and she had been through so much. But all she would say to anyone that would listen to her is she wanted Matt. Where is Matt? Have you heard anything he? You know, has he been found? I know he's out there, somebody, please please please find him. So it was during that initial search,

18:08 like I told you, that Miss Teresa had been told that that Matt was killed. Well, when Miss Teresa was en route to go initially to the site where Matt was believed to be, she made a phone call to her brother in law, who was a deputy in Acension Parish, which is a nearby parish. And again we are I got to interjectoral quick. I always thought County sounded so country, you know, county. It made me think of spurs on the back of boots and walking up, you know, with your wars. And when I was a teenager, which this is embarrassing to say, but when I was a teenager, that's when I found out I live in the only state with parishes in everybody else's counties, and we are in fact the backwards ones. So anyway, Ascension Parish in Livingstone Parish, and West Baton Rouge Parish and East Bettanoge Parish were all next to each other. So that brother in law, who was a deputy, showed up very quickly because they were hoping he could get more information since he was law enforcement and he was going to go try and assist to find Matt. Well, when Teresa and Meghan sat together in that hospital room, Joey, who was the brother in law, would call her and you know, update her on this information about Matt and that.

19:28 This was bad, this was really really bad. Well, her heart just shattered, you know, a mother just had in just the short amount of time to know that not only was he dead, but he had been brutalized and all of these things. Her first born baby boy was gone forever. No, you know, just no, don't tell me. I don't want to hear it. It's not true. And then the additional emotional pain that added right on too. It was the fact that now Megan had to be told mister Reesa just could not do it. She could not bring herself to do it, not after everything that that little girl had been through. And I say little girl because twenty is young to me. It was just too much. And she told me, she said, Kelly, I could not I could not watch. I couldn't break Megan's heart.

20:16 I couldn't do it. And I'm looking at Miss Teresa because I did meet up with her personally, in face, face to face meeting. I had this weekend with her. We sat for hours and talked, and she she told me about her son, her son. She lit up, and she showed me pictures and she shared with me some just such private things, and I watched her face just light up talking about her baby boy, who y'all understand it's been twenty years since this happened. Miss Teresa's in her seventies now. It was like she gave birth to him yesterday, and she just beamed talking every picture and where he went and what he was doing. And I'm sharing that, by the way, on Patreon for my members.

20:59 You can go check it out and you can go look. But she just couldn't break Megan's heart. She couldn't do it. And so shortly thereafter all of this was going down. A detective arrived at the hospital in person, and he would enter the room and as gently as possible, he would break the news to. Her that her fiance was dead. And as the words came out of his mouth in what seemed like slow motion, the agonizing weight of the words physically sucked the air straight out of Megan. She repulsed back when he said it, and still in her hospital bed, Miss Teresa told me she grabbed the blanket of her bed and she just pulled it up to her face, almost instinctually, and she bawled up in the fetal position, trying to just hide from the world.

21:55 The words physically hurt her. And there she was, after all, she had been in the fetal position. Just the room was completely silent other than the sobs coming from these two women, the two that loved Matt more than anyone in the world, and now they were left to suffer the emotional consequences of such a great loss. So when Megan was released from the hospital, they were gonna and by they, and this is not I'm not saying this in a negative way, but you know, she didn't have anywhere to go, so the police were going to get her a hotel that she could go to to stay in and be safe, but Miss Teresa said, absolutely not, you are coming home with me. And Miss Teresa packed up Meghan, put her in her car, and she drove her straight to the house where she gave her a bed, and she cooked for her, and she doated on her just like any mama would pray that someone would take care of their own child. And she was released fairly quickly from the hospital.

22:57 And that's why I want to go ahead and jump out here when someone's like, well, where's her mom? No, no, no, no, no, don't don't get mad at her mama. Her mama was still in California, unable to get to Louisiana that quickly. I mean, this happened very quickly from the time that the police got involved. So as you can imagine, shortly after the discovery of Matt's corpse, multiple law enforcement agencies began a began a massive manhunt for these three men, well now two, because they had gotten fat Boy. So fat Boy and the brothers had parted ways after the crime, probably a mix of them thinking it would better their chances of getting away with it, but fat Boy more so because he didn't want to be killed by the brothers, like I mentioned, and so he was apprehended later that same day that they that the police recalled. That was February eighth of two thousand and six. The Garcia brothers, though they were going to prove much harder to find.

23:49 They eluded capture with multiple agencies involved for three days. But it was an alert Shell station clerk that called the Sheriff's Sheriff's office after apparently I wasn't very clear on this what happened, but the essence of it is that one of the brothers fell in the parking lot of the Shell station and hit his head really hard and she had to attend to him. It was that bad of a fall. But it was later on that she realized, oh my god, this is one of those wanted guys that was being blasted all over the TV. And so, working off of this tip that that worker called in, the hunt was one because now they had a more specified location to go to. So multiple agencies, including the West Batone, the West Button Rouge, Sheriff's Office, their special response team was deployed K nine chase teams from Hunt Correctional Facility, as well as Angola showed up. Louisiana State Police, the FBI, the local sheriff's office, and city police were all also involved, and they weren't playing helicopters launch. They put the birds in the air equipped with that heat fleer where they can do the heat sensing and all of that. They were in the sky, so if the brothers moved, someone was going to find them. It was just a matter of time. Now. The police also knew that the brothers were in possession of a cell phone, which figuring all of this out, they were able to triangulate from the

25:21 cell phone signal and pinpoint a GPS location. That's triangulation. I think I've mentioned that before and how it's done. But this really narrowed that search area to about a mile and a half. But again, a mile and a half is a lot of search area, especially in our neck of the woods where we literally have lots of woods and swampy areas and. All of that jazz. Well, the area was worked meticulously and the police would eventually come upon a hand crafted bunker where these guys literally had dug down in the dirt and then made a palmeto. You know what a palmetto plan is meadow tree. I mean, I've always been taught don't buy property with palmetos on it.

26:03 That means wetlands. But anyway, they had put a palmetto plant cover over themselves, and as daylight broke on the third day after the murder, that's when police came upon cautiously this little hut type thing that had been created in the woods. So the police, I'm sure, guns drawn, approached, gave their demands, and when they ripped back those palmetto leaves, sure enough. There were the brothers hiding right there. And what they had on them raised some eyebrows in light of the fact that they knew Matt was now murdered and stabbed to death. They had knives, machetes, and duffelbacks.

26:47 Hmm. Sure seems fitting for what we're we're looking for here. And word on. The street is that had there not been so many people around, the others may have been neutralized on the spot. That's allegedly, of course, But y'all know I do a lot of talking to a lot of people, and these police officers were pissed when they found these guys, but they took them into custody and they brought them to the station. Now, the results from the vaginal swabs taken from Megan would come back, and they tested positive for seamen that matched the DNA profile of James aka fat Boy Nelson. Now, this is the part of this podcast where I could wrap this up in a pretty bow and tell you that the men were charged with Matt's murder.

27:40 But I can't. I physically cannot do that. That's what a lazy pipe I'm telling you, That's what a lazy podcaster would do. But that ain't me. And trust when I tell you you're gonna want. To know the rest of this. I have to explain some of this to you, this post arrest information, because it's gonna blow your fucking mind. So all of the men are now in custody, thank god, and the interrogations commenced. Now fat Boy cooperated from the start. But big, big frickin' whoop. Okay, he didn't do it because he's a saint all of a sudden. He did it for his own personal safety. But everything he told the police aligned for the most part, with not only what Meghan told the police, but also Daniel, who was interrogated.

28:26 By that point, Fat Boy and Daniel's stories pretty much matched with Megan's. Fat Boy, though, was able to fill in the blanks about what happened when he and Michael marched Matt back into the woods. Because remember Meghan had been left behind. She was guarded by Daniel, so he wasn't there either. He had his machete at her and said don't move or make a noise. So, according to fat Boy, Michael led Matt from behind until the two ended up walking off the side of a bank of the Inner Coastal Canal. Now it was dark and it was hard to see, so they ended up sliding down this brush lined embankment, and Fat Boy at one point fell into this hole that was there, and so it took him a second to get up out of the hole.

29:16 And when he caught up with the guys moments later, they all kind of had slid down that little muddy bank area. They met back up together there and from there they both led Matt to stand on. The edge of the muddy waterway. At this point, Michael then tried to force Matt to sit down facing the water, but Matt pushed back against this. He heard the water. He was understanding what was going on here and he kind of was like pushing back against this, not wanting to go. To the water. And that's when Michael reached up over Matt's shoulder, so he's behind him. He reached up over Matt's shoulder and he raised up at k bar and he just came down with full force and stabbed Matt in the chest with the k bar knife. And that was when Matt screamed out in pain. That was the scream that everybody heard.

30:15 And once he had jabbed it so deep, it popped his long and it hit his heart. He then ripped it back out of his chest and in that moment, the only sound that could be heard, and this is according to Fat Boy, were Matt's lungs doing what he called, quote a wheezing noise as he was struggling and gasping to get air but he couldn't. And then Michael, callously, i mean just like this was cutting the grass, just pushed Matt into the water, face down, and Matt collapsed down into the water. And then Michael stepped to the side and just kind of swished his knife around in the water to clean the blade off. And fat Boy decided at that point, well he can't just lay here, And so in an effort to get rid of the body, he went up to Matt and walked out further into the water and pulled Matt's body out, hoping that the body would float away or sink in the waterway. And this did add up what fat Boy was saying, considering that the crime scene videos and the pictures showed a muddy edge that was just a few feet away from the water that was a drop off. Now, this is where some mistakes were admittedly made by the police, and they fully admitted this. Back at the Texaco station or the Motel eight area, during evidence collection, they failed to retrieve the shirt from the bathroom that Megan had spit the seamen down in the sleeve. If you remember that, well,

31:47 you remember Hollywood. He had taken off with that pipe, right, what happened to Hollywood, Well, he took off with a vengeance. But he never found the guys. Why because they had all absconded. They were gone. Well, Hollywood, I'd never left the area, even after the police were done collecting evidence and had untied their tape and had were gone. It was just Hollywood and the things left by Matt and Meghan, do you know that that homeless man took it upon himself to pack up the couple's belongings that were all left behind. He went into that bathroom and he retrieved that shirt from the bathroom, but he was unaware that there was DNA evidence in it. How could he have known that?

32:35 He didn't? And that hero, in my opinion, in that moment, that homeless alcoholic hero then took himself and all of Megan and Matt's belongings to a laundry Matt where he used the little bit of change that he had to launder all of their items so that the couple would have their things back clean and orderly after everything that they had been through. And I am truly honest, and I'll tell you that touched my heart so deeply on a level.

33:20 It's almost unnatural that things went that way. You know that that was so important to that man. He felt like that's what he could do, and he did it, and he had nothing, and he cared that much about these people that he had just met that he wanted to take care of their things. He even remember tried to save their dog, Lola. I mean, what a guy. It just goes to show that you never know who you're dealing with. Sometimes you're dealing with angels in disguise, and I think that Hollywood was one of them in this instance. And when Hollywood was done with this, he got in touch with Meghan. I don't know how. I don't have all the information on that, but he did get in touch with Meghan, and he returned everything to her nice and neat.

34:01 He did not take a thing. Now, this would make sense as to why only Fat Boy's DNA was found in her vaginal swabs, because the other two had finished or completed their rapes in her mouth if. You remember everything. Well, now that shirt had been laundered, Hollywood didn't know, and the police had left it. So it's really just a big crap, you know, Just dang it. How did this happen? And it really, I don't think is anyone's fault. It just was poor evidence collection. Now, when it came to time for the ringleader, Michael to talk to police, he, on the other hand, he denied any involvement or knowledge of this crime. He knew nothing, He had never seen these people, He didn't know. He was offended that he would be accused of such atrocities. He then though after some evidence would come forward and say hey, Bud, you're not that good, would change his story. And now he admitted to being there, but he had no intentions of doing anything to anyone in the group. And then it shifted again and he said, well, okay, I was there, but fat boy is who killed Matt, not me, But then faced with more evidence and more questioning, specifically that everyone's story here matched, including the living victims and his brother and his friends, there's all matched in his didn't.

35:27 Then he claimed, okay, fine, but it was an accidental killing. We didn't mean to kill him. He then admitted to having a knife. He admitted to robbing the couple. He admitted to taking them into the woods, raping megan beating Matt to death, almost within an inch of his life before anything else. He admitted that he hogtied him. He admitted that he brought him to the water's edge, but he wasn't going to do anything to him. He just wanted to scare Matt. You already did. I would suggest that that option come out here, but whatever, I guess he didn't think that that. He thought this was smart. I think, and Michael said that he was standing to the side and behind Matt with the knife in his right hand, and while they were walking and they fell down that drop off in the water, that's when he accidentally stabbed Matt. He didn't mean to. So then they're like, okay, it's an accident. Wow, Well why did you leave Matt there?

36:29 Why didn't you call for help after this tragic accident? And he said, because they were scared. They were scared, y'all, give me a break. He did admit to raping Megan with the other men for several hours, and for kidnapping them and robbing them. But murder, no way, He wasn't capable of that. Do not put that on him. But the police aren't done yet. After all of this, they put the brothers together in a conference room and left them there for a while, and the two struck up a conversation unbeknownst being recorded. So while that recording was going on, first the police learned that the murder weapon and the machete were hidden in the ground because the brothers had taken them and they shoved the blades down in the dirt. So that's cool, we can go find the murder weapon. Secondly, the brothers then start callously talking about how they should have just killed Megan and they should have killed fat Boy because that wouldn't have left any witnesses. So it sure sounded like they were capable of murder, even though that was just beyond them. Well, regardless of the claims that Michael made. All three of them were arrested and they were charged with first degree murder.

37:48 This was on March third, two thousand and six, and the state gave notice of its intent to seek the death penalty. And this is the part where my jaw literally dropped and yours is going to too, because I had to. I had to share this to you. I couldn't end the story. So in working with the plan to go after the death penalty, a few things happened. Number one, all three of the defendants were separated their cases and they were going to be tried separately. So part of the problem became anytime someone's going to go for the death penalty, if you don't know this, you have to have two death penalty qualified attorneys to represent the person on trial for the death penalty, not one, but two, and they have to be qualified which means experience. Well, there were only six available. There was a total of only six death penalty qualified attorneys available, which this means this would take up all of the attorneys, and then one of them ended up dying right there in the middle of all of this the attorneys, so now they had even fewer. Well, fat Boy may the first move and as part of a plea deal, he agreed to testify against the Garcia brothers in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table. The state said, you know what, fine, we'll take it. They took him up on it. So James Fat Boy Nelson pled guilty to one charge of conspiracy to commit second degree murder, three counts of forcible rape,

39:21 one count of second degree kidnapping, and one count of armed robbery. He avoided the death penalty, but he was sentenced to sixty years, So I mean he would dan near be eighty whenever he got out. So funny little side story of God. It interject here because you're gonna want to know this. When I went and I had coffee with Matt's mama, Miss Teresa, this week, she told me this and it it cracked me up, and so I'm gonna share it with you. So when Fat Boy was sentenced and was headed to go to Angola. He begged, he begged, please, no, no, no, no, no, please, please don't take me to Angola. Take me somewhere else. I want you to know why he was begging for that.

40:03 It was because when he was in the jail in West Baton Rouge, he was being raped. He was being raped, and he was scared to go to Angola. So that's all allegedly. Of course I don't have that in a police report. But in the words of Jojo Sewa, Karma's a bitch. Should have known better and they took his ass off to Angola. Now, Daniel Garcia was charged with second degree murder, three counts of aggravated rape, armed robbery, and second degree kidnapping, and he pled guilty after jury selection to that second degree murder and in exchange, the state would dismiss all of the remaining charges. But right before sentencing, Daniel comes back and he files a motion to withdraw his guilty plea.

40:55 But the judges like, naham, I'm not playing with this. No, he denied the motion and he sentenced him to serve law life imprisonment at hard labor without the benefit of probation, parolar, suspension of sentence, and his ass was also shipped off to Angola. And now is where your jaw shall dropeth. It was Michael's turn for trial, and his defense team filed what's called a demand for notice of any bad acts that the state planned to bring up and use against him in trial. Basically, were there any other things that he had done that the state was going to use as part of their case? And in response, the state said, oh yeah, We're definitely going to be using some other bad acts against him, including a murder that Michael Garcia committed in Tampa, Florida, just two months before killing Matt.

41:46 Yes, you heard that right. Remember the RV that the men were traveling in but it broke down well, that belonged to a fifty eight year old named Bessie Davis, and Miss Bessie had lived in Tampa for about three years. She worked as a security guard, just a blue collar individual, just doing her thing. She was a mother of two daughters, Michelle and Alicia. She was a good woman and the only real link that I could find between her and the killers was that fat Boy was originally from that area. And remember they're all running together at this time, the brothers and fat Boy. Well. Miss Bessie had been discovered on January thirteenth, two thousand and six, in her home, which is right next to the Gibsonton United Methodist Church if you're from that area, but she had been dead for a few days.

42:37 According to the medical examiner, she had suffered from upper body trauma and sexual assault. She had been beaten about the head and the chest with the dumbbell and stabbed to death with a machete. But not before these bastards bound her, covered her face with masking tape and anally raped her with a vibrator. A fifty eight year old mother. And from what I understand, the whole reason they met her was that she was trying to help them. She had come across them, she felt bad for them and was trying to help them, and that is how they repaid that poor woman. And then, as weird as this is, less than thirty six hours after her body was discovered, her car was stolen and was found set on fire, her home was burglarized, and then obviously they took off with her RV to Louisiana.

43:43 That was after her body was found, so they went back, but it doesn't end there. It took a literal spreadsheet prepared for court to detail all of the crimes that Michael had committed in the seven months before the murder of Matt. And what if I told you before Matt was murdered and before Miss Bessie was murdered, Michael was involved in another attempted murder. Miss Teresa told me that back in Michigan, where Michael was from, he had one small child at the time, as well as a baby mama who was pregnant. Well Michael's sister, I'm gonna say, allegedly, Lord that baby mama and Michael's child over where Michael planned to kill them.

44:35 Yes, his own little. Baby toddler and his baby mama and his unborn child, he planned to kill them. I don't have all of the details on that one. I wouldn't have been able to do it all in this in this episode anyway, but I can tell you, thank God that the woman and the child did survive. But the police wanted to talk to him about another the woman's murder, so that's whenever he skipped down. But before that would happen, he assaulted his estranged girlfriend at the time in a wooded area in Lansing, Michigan, which is where the brothers were originally from. And this was sometime in June two thousand and five. You want to know the details of it. He held a machete to her throat and forced her to perform oral sex on him.

45:26 Does that sound familiar? Does that sound like a motive and an a modus operandi That kind of seems really familiar by this point. Three months later, in Florida, Michael cut the forehead of his new girlfriend, her name is Shila Keys with a machete during a fight. In what world are we cutting our girlfriend's heads with machetes when we get mad? Well, that would be Michael's world. Well, then a man, his name was Daniel Corley. He observed this physical fight that was going on between Michael and Shy, so he went up trying to be a man's man and help a woman out and intervene. And that's when Michael turned around, put the machete to him and said, you better back off. So this guy's got a really strong pattern of problematic behavior, wouldn't you say? And when again, when I was speaking with Matt's mom, I learned a few other things that irked me so bad, and I want to tell you about this.

46:25 When Michael was asked. About the murder in Florida, whenever he was being interrogated, his response to them was and this is almost a direct quote of miss Teresa. I'm not sure if this was the direct quote from Michael, but when Michael was asked about a murder that he was believed to be involved in in Florida, which I'll tell you is Miss Bessie, they didn't say. A woman's murder though, they just said a murder. Michael's response to detectives was, are you talking about the man or the woman? The detectives were just as confused as as you and me right now, because they didn't know about a man being murdered in Florida to So again, I just found this out right before I'm recording this, so I don't have any any more information on that man or what that's about, but that's what was said in the interrogation room. So, once the RV was stolen and they made their way to Louisiana, they kept getting run off by police for trying to camp out under our interstates. I know at one point he was I think maybe in maybe the Slide Dell area or something, but then he ended up they or all of them ended up in the RV like at the gross Tate exit.

47:30 If you're familiar with where I am, that's between Baton Rouge and like Lafayette. So when they stopped them that time in the. Gross Tate area. This is why knowing details about how our systems work matters. It really matters that you're paying attention. And this is not political, This is just knowledge's power. Michael was detained by the police before Matt was murdered for a warrant from Michigan for that attempted murder on his baby, mama and his kid. But whenever Louisiana's police contacted Michigan on the warrant, Michigan declined to act on it. They said, no, don't worry about it now. I know right now you're going, how could that be? Don't quote me on this, but from what I understand is, whenever we have these warrants that are put out that if it's so many states away, those states aren't going to take the time or the money to come and get these people. And I don't know if it was signed, sealed, delivered. I don't know what exactly the details on that are, and I'm just I'm being completely transparent with you, but either way, he was in custody and Michigan declined for them to act on that warrant, so he literally walked away from custody with just a citation and then went on to kill Matt and brutally rape Meghan shortly thereafter. And I'm not blaming our police in any way. I am blaming our

49:01 systems in place, rules, regulations, and laws. And this is why criminal justice education matters so much to me, because if he would have been taken when they had him in custody, and I'm shaking why I'm saying this, but Matt would be alive, Megan would not be brutally raped. We could have stopped this. These fuck ups in society continue to offend people over and over and over again, but because they seem to have more leeway and more grace than. You or me, I don't understand it. I would have been put under the jail, and he walked off, and as a result, two mothers are now suffering.

49:47 One's child is dead and one's child has been victimized on a level that would take forever to recover from emotionally at least, and he was in custody. Now, when Matt was laid to rest, I got to tell you this. Guess who showed up at the funeral home None other than Hollywood. A true friend was made in less than a few hours that fateful night. And if you want to know Hollywood's name, his name is Robert Hollywood Peterson. I was able to find his name, and I did want to say it. I wanted to put a face that I don't have, but an identity to the name. Hollywood, though, would remain a very tortured soul after Matt's death, and he carried that weight with him, firmly believing, Oh my god, if I had not been drunk, I probably could have saved him that night. I could have protected Megan better, I could have done all of these things. I feel confident, though, that Matt and Meghan would absolutely rely leave him and absolve him.

51:01 Of that pain if they could. Hollywood also testified on Matt's behalf for Matt in court. Now. I wanted to tell you this little detail too, because you won't know this anywhere else. Hollywood had to be extra duided or transported from California back to Louisiana so that he could do his testifying. And maybe this makes me an. Asshole, but I loved it because while he was on the stand and he was asked in court why he was currently in jail in California, he just chuckled on the stand and he responded for beating up a sex offender. Hollywood didn't like a sex offender.

51:42 I can tell you that Hollywood stands on business when it comes to people offending other people in sexual ways. And by the way, the prosecutor in this case was Tony Clayton, which is the exact same prosecutor that prosecuted the Derek Todd Lee serial killer case that I'm about to do a multipart, multiple part series on. I know a lot of people have been waiting on that it's coming up. So all of these men have been in prison now for a while, and then twenty twenty three rolled around, and I want to make sure that you understand what clemency means before I tell you this next part. So clemency is basically when an inmate files formal paperwork asking the state, the courts whatever for leniency, or for their sentence to be commuted from a death penalty sentence to life in prison, or this even can go up and asking for a pardon, which is where total forgiveness is given for their crime as far as the state is concerned. Now, just to add insult to injury, and again this is not political. I don't care what side of the aisle you're on. You live your life, go America.

52:50 But I do care when families of victims get revictimized. And in my opinion, this feels like revictimization because to add insult to injury, the family of Matt and Megan had to listen as Louisiana's former governor, John Bell Edwards was in the news for his push to change the status of the inmates on death row at Angola, including Michael fucking Garcia. Now what was he wanting to do in twenty twenty three, He was telling the parole board to hold meetings to see about commuting all of their sentences, to which he would then consider them for pardon for pardon, now, I know what someone saying right now, Well, that doesn't mean he was gonna do it. Okay, even entertaining this and my kids know when my hand comes out like this.

53:49 If you're watching me right now, when my hand does like this and my head starts by, I mean business, okay, But even entertaining this as a consideration was something that it just chapped my southern as it made me so angry. Imagine how Matt's family felt, and imagine how Meghan's family felt they had fought in this court system. That these bastards would never see the light of day again. That a multiple time killer and rapist may just walk out of the gates, That that's just even a possibility is mind blowing to me. I'm not a political pundit and I don't want to be one. However, I'm gonna speak up when shit like this happens.

54:31 Now. Luckily, Michael Garcia was not released, but I will let you know that John Bell Edwards did commute fifty six inmates sentences forty convicted of first or second degree murder. I don't think personally, and I just I'm saying this for you to think about things in your own state, wherever you are. But I don't think that a governor should have the power over all of the constituents of the state that have respectfully done their duties as jurors to just have one man, with the strike of a pen overturn it all. Not in the case of murder at least, I'm sorry. I will never agree with that.

55:12 These twelve jurors listened, they weighed the information, they measured what was told to them, and they came up with their decision. Unbelievable that one person could could overthrow that. Now, Megan, I'm gonna give you some updates. Meghan eventually moved back home with her mother, and she even got to take her precious pup, Lola with her. The one that was with her through all of this. Three years after she moved home, Meghan went on a trip to go visit some friends in Portland. She was very excited to go see these friends. Now in the Portland area, the train stations have multiple tracks that are lined up next to one another, and they're all flat and level from what I understand. And so while Meghan was walking three years after all of this happened, she turned left and accidentally walked onto an active track and was hit and instantly killed on impact by a train.

56:10 So I don't really have a lot of good news for Megan. Meghan went through a lot, and Meghan is now resting eternally. What I can tell you is that after Matt's death, she really began to search for her truth. She started to explore the idea of God, which I know is a blessing in the hearts of those who have prayed for her soul and people that would hope that for her. And so I think that. I hope that Meghan and matter together and that we can find some type of peace in that. You know, there's been multiple tragedies in her poor mother. My heart aches for her mother. I can give you some happy news here though, and I can report that that baby in the beginning, in the beginning of this story, Caleb, remember that baby that Matt was gonna go visit and see he's alive and well today. Matt was right when he told his mom all those years ago, it'll be alright, Mom, just like Bob Marley, every little thing's gonna be all right.

57:15 Matt's brother, Daniel and his girlfriend of the time, they took a trip to Europe to see it for Matt. Because Matt dreamed to go to Europe and he also dreamed to travel all of the US and the fifty States. And this is where I'm gonna ask. I'm gonna put a request out to my listeners. This is probably my first real call to action. It does not cost a thing, just a minute of your time. I want it. It's my personal goal that me and my listeners and maybe any of your friends that you might could share this with. I want Matt to make it all over the world, and I want us to be a part of it. I want to do that for his mother. My goal is that we can do this together and make it happen. So if you want to help, wherever you are in the world listening to this, if you could write Matt's tag on a piece of paper or whatever however you want to do it, his tag nests five o four n ees five o four and then write the city and the state or wherever you are.

58:17 If you will take a picture of that with you in the area. I'm gonna compile it and put it all together. And I want to log his travels through US. I think that would just be amazing. And the sites that we can just let Matt see through us. I'm gonna post mine on my socials so you can feel free to tag me or stitch it on TikTok or whatever. I'm gonna post mine the day that this release is on Wednesday, I'm gonna do mine. So look for that, and I'll continue to update you on where he's been. And I'm also going to share this with his precious Mama once we get the ball rolling. Even today, twenty years later, Miss Teresa told me that when she sees a guy hitchhiking with the dog, she said, I see my son. I see it in every hitchhiker and every dog, and she usually stops and she hands them some money, just as.

59:04 Mister Gary always did his stepdad. Time will never heal wounds, nor will a death sentence bring closure, but it is a way to keep others safe from monsters like Michael Garcia and the others. So when people want to feel soft hearted towards inmates, specifically the ones on death row, I would rather they hear Matt's story first, in all of its brutal honesty. I'm so sick of the current sentiment that justice needs to come wrapped in kindness and second chances every time, because the fact is, guys, not everybody is redeemable. These men didn't hesitate when they snuffed out an innocent life and gang raped another, So why the hell should we. No mercy was given to Matthew or Megan, none, and no apologies to date have been sent from either of the Garcia brothers, and mercy to me is for the remorseful of which these men have shown none zero. So everyone who thinks I mean can spare me the moral gymnastics and we should just get to the nut cutting. The death penalty was handed down for Michael, so get after it, and let's quit acting like we the people need to show restraint while society is out here mopping up carnage

1:00:35 everywhere that bastard has been because, honey, I'm gonna tell you this, Michael Garcia was already dead inside. All we're assisting in is having his body catch up