Speaker 1: Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence, and is
Speaker 1: not intended for all audiences.
Speaker 2: Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 1: Shouldn't happen.
Speaker 3: It shouldn't happen, And anyway, I just wanted to be
Speaker 3: known that I didn't kill John.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Season thirteen, episode three hundred and forty two
Speaker 4: of Sword and Scale show the reveals that the worst
Speaker 4: monsters are real. In the early hours of May eighteenth,
Speaker 4: twenty seventeen, in Parma Heights, Ohio, a working class suburb
Speaker 4: twenty miles south of Cleveland, which sounds like a lovely place,
Speaker 4: I might add, like the rest of the state. Burrow
Speaker 4: Road cuts through the town in a long stretch of
Speaker 4: strip plazas and small storefronts, hair salons, nail studios, pizza shops.
Speaker 4: You know, the kind of useless strip ball that inhabits
Speaker 4: pretty much every city in America. Well, those shops are
Speaker 4: usually owned by locals in These businesses open early, close late,
Speaker 4: and no they're regulars by name. The strip is dark
Speaker 4: and small shops are locked up for the night. The
Speaker 4: early morning is called except for one thing. A burglar
Speaker 4: is ready to do his thing. He grabs a landscaping
Speaker 4: stone hauls it up and hurls it at the front
Speaker 4: door of Classic Hair Studio. The glass explodes, the stone
Speaker 4: breaking apart into chunks across the floor. He doesn't hesitate.
Speaker 4: He ducks inside, head straight for the counter, and he
Speaker 4: yanks the entire cash register, loose, the drawer, jerks free,
Speaker 4: cords snapping, and he's out in seconds. Inside the cash register,
Speaker 4: he finds almost three hundred dollars in cash, and the
Speaker 4: machine itself is probably worth a couple hundred more.
Speaker 5: We're here, Hi, it's in Carmania. I'm not going to
Speaker 5: say it's an emergency, but I was driving to work
Speaker 5: and I noticed that the door on a beauty shop
Speaker 5: is totally smashed on Pearl Road. The address is sixty
Speaker 5: four twelve. It's called Classic Studio and their front doors
Speaker 5: is totally smashed. I mean anybody can go inside.
Speaker 6: At this point.
Speaker 5: Okay, I noticed yet, and I Turnerrund went back, thinking
Speaker 5: did I really see that?
Speaker 7: And sure enough I did so.
Speaker 1: Okay, with God, I'd recorded a.
Speaker 4: Few doors down. He does it again, another front door smashed,
Speaker 4: this time at the Nail Studio. Instead of taking the
Speaker 4: whole register, he opens the drawer. This one has fifty
Speaker 4: dollars inside, but it doesn't matter. Any amount of money
Speaker 4: is worth it. He's desperate. The glass crunches under his
Speaker 4: boots as he walks away, leaving two shops in ruins
Speaker 4: behind him.
Speaker 7: And I'm the store manager here. Just count drug mark
Speaker 7: right next to us. There is a it's sixty four
Speaker 7: eighty eight your road. There's the Spine Nail place right
Speaker 7: next to the drug mark here that I'm I'm in
Speaker 7: charge of. There's the glasses broken out on the front
Speaker 7: door here at the Nail and spa place.
Speaker 6: All right, I believe we just clear it there.
Speaker 7: Oh oh, okay, I'm sorry. I just I didn't know
Speaker 7: if anyone was out or anything.
Speaker 8: I believe the address is.
Speaker 7: It's just sixty four eighty eight on the door here.
Speaker 9: Okay, then that's a different one.
Speaker 7: It's called Spy and Nails.
Speaker 4: By sunrise, both storefronts are cordoned off with yellow tape.
Speaker 4: Patrol officers sweep glass into piles while the owners pull
Speaker 4: up the surveillance video. A white male short with a
Speaker 4: bald spot and tattoos on his arms. The time stamp
Speaker 4: on the camera is wrong, but they already know the
Speaker 4: crimes happened overnight. The owners are terrified, and one vows
Speaker 4: to shut down the business. She wonders how this could
Speaker 4: happen in such a family friendly town. Parma Heights has
Speaker 4: one of the lowest crime rates in the nation, at
Speaker 4: least that's what the statistics say. Whoever the perpetrator is,
Speaker 4: he probably should have worn a mask. His face is
Speaker 4: front and center on the surveillance camera. Not only that,
Speaker 4: the outside cameras catch him speeding off in a white jeep.
Speaker 4: It doesn't take long to bring in Thomas enough for questioning.
Speaker 10: Okay, all right, do you have any day parmaitches here
Speaker 10: to speak with you? No, well, I had a couple
Speaker 10: of breakings in my city at his spawn ales and
Speaker 10: then another Classic care studios.
Speaker 11: You know anything about them? No, nothing at all?
Speaker 10: All right, why I get surveillan's video of the vehicle
Speaker 10: and the person breaking into their business. Okay, so let
Speaker 10: me pull this stuff up here. Recognize that person looks
Speaker 10: like it could be all right.
Speaker 11: So let's do this.
Speaker 10: Recognize them Pa twos Yeah, huh yeah, do you remember
Speaker 10: doing this or No?
Speaker 4: Tom seemed like your average guy next door. He just
Speaker 4: didn't have that typical criminal look about him. If there
Speaker 4: even is such a thing. You look more like a
Speaker 4: dad sitting on the bleaks of his son's football game.
Speaker 4: And Thomas did have a son, a good kid who
Speaker 4: unfortunately had to be raised by Tom's sister. During the
Speaker 4: last fifteen years he was in prison for aggravated robbery.
Speaker 4: So looks can be deceiving, that's what they say.
Speaker 10: Anyway, you're running, you take a cash register from the
Speaker 10: one place and some cash from the second place, okay,
Speaker 10: and then you're in You're in a white jeep that
Speaker 10: looks like it blowing to you your son, but registered
Speaker 10: to your sister.
Speaker 11: Maybe okay, okay, But a more more recent photo of
Speaker 11: be would be this. What the hell happened to it?
Speaker 12: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Smash the window?
Speaker 11: Did you do that?
Speaker 2: Ever? Yeah?
Speaker 11: Okay? What happened?
Speaker 1: I mean, just went off road? Did a true branch?
Speaker 11: Did you mean to go off road? Or was it
Speaker 11: kind of yeah, okay, trying to hurt yourself or what?
Speaker 3: No, just just went off was off road on the
Speaker 3: spot where we used to go off roading.
Speaker 11: So you're just gonna go out there and be like
Speaker 11: maha or what? I don't know. I don't know, man.
Speaker 11: I appreciate you being honest.
Speaker 4: Tom tried to be a good dad. Well maybe not,
Speaker 4: but he really did love his son and old habits
Speaker 4: die hard that included going on benders, robbing businesses, and
Speaker 4: off roading. This time, it just happened to be that
Speaker 4: he had no vehicle, so he took his son's jeep
Speaker 4: and damaged it.
Speaker 11: How messed up were you during this time?
Speaker 1: I don't know, sir?
Speaker 11: Okay, all right, but well there's you know what.
Speaker 10: Unfortunately you know, due to this and the video and stuff,
Speaker 10: I got half of you. And then how it got
Speaker 10: to you is we actually the news of hold of
Speaker 10: it because I put something on our Facebook page and
Speaker 10: then your sister did action want to call it and said, hey, listen,
Speaker 10: that's my brother in my car.
Speaker 11: You know what I mean?
Speaker 10: So kind of let us see you. But I had
Speaker 10: some previous things allowed to you. It looks like you
Speaker 10: had a history of Brunswick can readily called me. He says, Hey, listen,
Speaker 10: I know that guy. You might you might want to
Speaker 10: give him a call. Everything he did is what he
Speaker 10: used to do when they used to deal with you
Speaker 10: a lot.
Speaker 13: Huh.
Speaker 11: So what mean when you were you were in jail
Speaker 11: for a little bit, you get out and what happened.
Speaker 3: I just I don't know, man, I just got how
Speaker 3: and things weren't like I thought it was going to be.
Speaker 11: You know, I had nowhere to go, Okay, no family
Speaker 11: was helping here.
Speaker 1: What my mom passed?
Speaker 4: You know, a lot had changed in the fifteen years
Speaker 4: he was on the inside, y'all see shawsh ink right.
Speaker 4: Think about how smartphones didn't even exist in two thousand
Speaker 4: and two. Everybody was still using a flip phone. There
Speaker 4: was no social media, at least not like today. Facebook
Speaker 4: launched in two thousand and four, YouTube in two thousand
Speaker 4: and five, and Twitter in two thousand and six. Instagram
Speaker 4: came around in twenty ten, and uh, I won't even
Speaker 4: mentioned TikTok. In two thousand and two, when he went
Speaker 4: into prison, people were still using Aol instant messenger and
Speaker 4: MySpace wasn't even a thing yet. If you wanted to
Speaker 4: go somewhere, you couldn't just tap on your phone and
Speaker 4: have directions show up or even rent out to you.
Speaker 4: You had to print something out from a site called
Speaker 4: map quest. I shit, you not on your ink jet
Speaker 4: printer and hope that the directions were accurate. Kids nowadays
Speaker 4: can't even figure out what gender they are. Could you
Speaker 4: imagine if you took GPS away from them. If Tom
Speaker 4: repeated as little heist today, he'd be lucky to find
Speaker 4: one dollar in the cash register. People don't even use
Speaker 4: cash anymore, just their Klarna debit cards, which they have
Speaker 4: no intention of ever paying back. Another big difference in
Speaker 4: two thousand and two is that we weren't all spying
Speaker 4: on each other. No one was lurking nearby to film
Speaker 4: you on their phone, waiting to post it somewhere for
Speaker 4: the world to see. Security cameras existed, but we're reserved
Speaker 4: for big businesses. No wonder Tom didn't wear a mask.
Speaker 4: Not only was he too shitfaced to even think about
Speaker 4: a security camera, but he just wasn't expecting these tiny
Speaker 4: businesses to own one. In two thousand and two, voicemail
Speaker 4: was still a thing and people actually checked it. Tom
Speaker 4: felt like he'd been swallowed up by time, but it
Speaker 4: wasn't just the tech that had left him behind. While
Speaker 4: he was on the inside, his world fell apart his
Speaker 4: mom died. She was the family anchor. There were some
Speaker 4: rough years between him and his stepdad, but his mom
Speaker 4: was always there for the kids, probably almost too much.
Speaker 14: My mom struggled for the last three or four years
Speaker 14: before she passed, trying to keep the house afloat and
Speaker 14: still help my sister with bills and with her kids.
Speaker 1: And as soon.
Speaker 14: As my mom dies, you know, I told my sister
Speaker 14: well here to take my money and paid a banknote
Speaker 14: all on borrowing money against the house or her court.
Speaker 1: Her husband had allowed.
Speaker 14: It to go into such disappeared that she didn't want
Speaker 14: to fuck with it all, and so she led the
Speaker 14: bank habit. And uh yeah, I told her, I said,
Speaker 14: you know, I feel like you.
Speaker 11: You don't spit on her grains.
Speaker 8: You know what I mean?
Speaker 11: You should have let him.
Speaker 14: You should have let the bank habit four years ago
Speaker 14: instead of moving them on the roll of stretch.
Speaker 1: She didn trying to.
Speaker 14: She was the only one that ever had a solid
Speaker 14: career and a working a steady work, you know what
Speaker 14: I mean, with good money. So you know she's painting
Speaker 14: like everybody's cell.
Speaker 1: Phone bill, everybody build baby.
Speaker 10: Sit or certain sys have got a good relationship or no. No.
Speaker 4: His sister took over the money, and according to Tom,
Speaker 4: she mismanaged it. She also failed to get the car
Speaker 4: Tom had wrecked from the impound because it was too
Speaker 4: much trouble. Tom was pissed because the car belonged to
Speaker 4: his son, Tommy and still had some of his personal
Speaker 4: belongings in it. According to Tom, his sister helped raise
Speaker 4: Tommy and had been a good fluence, but ever since
Speaker 4: their mother passed, she was all about herself. His sister,
Speaker 4: of course, had a different story. There was a time
Speaker 4: when they partied together as teens and acted more like
Speaker 4: friends than siblings. But then Tom got a girl pregnant
Speaker 4: when he was nineteen, and things changed. His sister had
Speaker 4: lost a baby boy, and now she found herself stepping
Speaker 4: in to parent Tom's son. Tom continued to party and
Speaker 4: went to rehab at least once.
Speaker 15: It was like usually every time he went to rehab,
Speaker 15: this stuff would come out. Missy does everything well, Missy
Speaker 15: has a job, Missy went to school. I paid for it.
Speaker 15: He always, I guess, felt like I got everything. But
Speaker 15: in reality, my grandparents were draining their bank account for him,
Speaker 15: and their whole life revolved around him. And then what
Speaker 15: was going on? But he always and he still will
Speaker 15: and recently that when my mom died, he wrote Tommy
Speaker 15: letters the same old stuff like Missy got.
Speaker 4: This, and his sister Missy remembered that their mother practically
Speaker 4: enabled him.
Speaker 15: She was always their form, and even if he stole
Speaker 15: from her, he could still come home. I don't her backward.
Speaker 15: I think I told you when I found out when
Speaker 15: she died, that she had all these check cashing and stuff.
Speaker 15: When I'd found all the.
Speaker 9: Receipts commissary and to people like Latasha, Maquisha and some
Speaker 9: of my brother's crowd, you know, and Akron and Youngstown
Speaker 9: and you know wherever, and it was always, well, he
Speaker 9: needs hygiene products.
Speaker 15: It's like he doesn't need three hundred dollars.
Speaker 4: We've all experienced someone in the family like this, right.
Speaker 4: It always seems like the one who gets in trouble
Speaker 4: the most, or is the least productive, gets all the attention,
Speaker 4: doesn't it. Yeah, Fuck the productive one who pays his
Speaker 4: bills and minds his own business. Let's focus all of
Speaker 4: our baby bird attention on this idiot over here that
Speaker 4: can't get their shit together. Tom was about twenty five
Speaker 4: when he went to prison, and now he was forty two,
Speaker 4: with no home to go back to, no mommy to
Speaker 4: run to, and a son who was almost an adult
Speaker 4: now ready to live his own life. He had a
Speaker 4: lot to figure out and even more to make up for,
Speaker 4: and yet here he was back at the police station.
Speaker 4: Since he got out, he'd been looking for a place
Speaker 4: to stay, but his parole had restrictions, no guns, no drugs,
Speaker 4: on and on. His anxiety was increasing. In the previous
Speaker 4: night's drunken binge was going to land him in jail again.
Speaker 4: Things were about to get worse.
Speaker 10: I don't see your son wanted to be baitchful against
Speaker 10: you at all, you know what I mean.
Speaker 11: I think he just wants to had around, you know
Speaker 11: what I mean?
Speaker 16: Unfortunately, listen, and like I said, I mean, this mom
Speaker 16: was letting me stay.
Speaker 1: There and until I got a place and.
Speaker 16: That didn't work out for the roll, and then she
Speaker 16: kind of wanted to start a relationship again.
Speaker 1: And then when I didn't.
Speaker 3: Because I had a girlfriend, she kind of flipped on me.
Speaker 11: Okay.
Speaker 1: And then, like I said, my sister, you know she enhurges.
Speaker 11: Was that girlfriend, the girl we were looking for that
Speaker 11: was missing?
Speaker 1: Oh have you heard?
Speaker 11: Do you know where she's at? By any chance?
Speaker 1: It's just an old friend of mine, Okay.
Speaker 11: Still never heard any content of anything where she could be.
Speaker 11: She I don't know.
Speaker 2: She was like when I was writing from jail, we
Speaker 2: lost contact, but she's stayed in touch with my mom.
Speaker 11: Okay, so when my mom.
Speaker 1: Died, she kind of come back in the picture.
Speaker 14: Then her mom died, then she took off the Texas
Speaker 14: and came back and her and her friend actually picked
Speaker 14: me up from jail.
Speaker 1: But who was it?
Speaker 11: Who was her friend that came with you?
Speaker 1: An old, same old guy, John John Mayn. Yeah.
Speaker 4: In that clip they were talking about the mother of
Speaker 4: Tom's son. When he got out of prison, he was
Speaker 4: hoping to stay at her house, but that didn't work
Speaker 4: out because she wanted to rekindle the relationship and he
Speaker 4: had long since moved on with two different women. Forty
Speaker 4: nine year old Regina Capo Bianco was one of them.
Speaker 4: About fifteen years earlier, she had signed up for a
Speaker 4: prison pen pal program where she met Tom. Yeah, she
Speaker 4: was one of those weirdos. They constantly wrote each other
Speaker 4: and promised they would meet up once he was out.
Speaker 4: The problem for Tom, at least, was that he was
Speaker 4: looking for stability, and before he even got out he
Speaker 4: started to see that she had issues. I wonder how
Speaker 4: he found out. Could it have been maybe the fact
Speaker 4: she was writing inmates Maybe that was it there, Tom,
Speaker 4: Maybe that was the whole problem.
Speaker 11: Anyway.
Speaker 4: Regina had been living at home with her mother, but
Speaker 4: at some point in their friendship, her mother also tied,
Speaker 4: leaving her without a home. Her life took a downward
Speaker 4: turn into alcoholism. This was the last thing Tom needed,
Speaker 4: and besides, he had already started seeing someone else. These
Speaker 4: inmates can really pulse a puss, if you know what
Speaker 4: I mean. When Tom was released, Regina was living with
Speaker 4: a partner, an older man named John Mann. This was
Speaker 4: a quid pro quo situation, if you know what that means,
Speaker 4: a friends with benefits sort of relationship where she would
Speaker 4: help take care of him and his house in exchange
Speaker 4: for a place to stay. She was a househore basically.
Speaker 4: Regina and John had generously offered to let Tom stay
Speaker 4: there too until he got on his feet, But Tom
Speaker 4: could already see the writing on the wall and knew
Speaker 4: this would be the worst environment possible for him. It
Speaker 4: was true that he accepted Regina John's offer to pick
Speaker 4: him up from prison upon his release, but he told
Speaker 4: him he planned to find his own lodging. The last
Speaker 4: he'd heard of Regina, she was about to celebrate her
Speaker 4: fiftieth birthday.
Speaker 13: And one one what's the address of the emergency?
Speaker 6: So we have a neighbor across the street and they
Speaker 6: just got home and there's a lady that's like on
Speaker 6: the ground and can't get up, and they're like hovering
Speaker 6: over her. So in the front yard, in the front yard. Yeah,
Speaker 6: she's an older lady in her fifties with dark go
Speaker 6: brown hair. Wait, they're picking her up and carrying her
Speaker 6: into the room into her white female waite female. So
Speaker 6: can barely stand up, so they're walking or in carrying her.
Speaker 4: Now, it's one thing to get a little carried away
Speaker 4: for your fiftieth birthday, But when was the last time
Speaker 4: your neighbors called nine one one on you because you
Speaker 4: were passed out in your yard? And I hope you
Speaker 4: weren't in your fifties?
Speaker 7: Sure, three joke ahead Regina's birthday.
Speaker 6: She apparently had too much.
Speaker 7: Drink, but she was up, walking around and talking, able
Speaker 7: to answer some simple questions. So she's been a durle
Speaker 7: guy ar and keep an eyeron for the night before me.
Speaker 4: Coppy Tom remembered warning Regina to get up that day,
Speaker 4: but when she wasn't able to, he and John literally
Speaker 4: had to drag her into the house.
Speaker 1: On her fiftieth birthday.
Speaker 16: She got trashed and was puping up her faked teeth,
Speaker 16: and I'm like, come on, Regina, I'm like an old
Speaker 16: lady and saw that, and I told her too, I'm like,
Speaker 16: please get up. You know you're laying in your puke.
Speaker 16: I'm like, it's nice area. Someone's gonna call the police. No,
Speaker 16: sooner than I said it. They're coming a couple of
Speaker 16: farm tops. And yeah, so it looked crazy like you
Speaker 16: got an older guy and you got this guy tattoo's
Speaker 16: dragging this girl in the house. I mean, especially after
Speaker 16: all that shit that happened in Cleveland with them girls
Speaker 16: being known for all that years.
Speaker 1: You don't know, She's always been like that.
Speaker 16: She's a good heart, good girl through writing, like as
Speaker 16: much as we wrote.
Speaker 4: In prison, Regina may have had a good heart, but
Speaker 4: she was a wild card. Though he did stay at
Speaker 4: Regina and John's a couple of times since he got out,
Speaker 4: he mostly bounced around hotels with his current girlfriend. He
Speaker 4: was right to steer clear of Regina as much as possible.
Speaker 4: The last thing he needed was to get roped into
Speaker 4: another bad situation. But Tom, the guy just trying to
Speaker 4: keep his head down and reconnect with his son, was
Speaker 4: about to be pulled into something a lot bigger than
Speaker 4: a stolen cash register and e wrecked jeep, something that
Speaker 4: would change his life forever.
Speaker 11: It was late.
Speaker 4: June twenty seventeen in Parma Heights, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb
Speaker 4: with a reputation for safety not violent crime. In the
Speaker 4: last few weeks, police responded to a string of late
Speaker 4: night burglaries. The suspect, Thomas Nuff, was quickly caught. He
Speaker 4: admitted to everything, saying he was broke and desperate. Hotels
Speaker 4: were getting expensive. Tom had just been released from prison
Speaker 4: after serving fifteen years. Since then, he'd bounced between hotels,
Speaker 4: old girlfriends, and temporary stays with people willing to help,
Speaker 4: including a penpal named Regina Capobianco. My boyfriend even gave
Speaker 4: him a ride from prison. He stayed at her place
Speaker 4: a couple of nights, but mostly kept his distance. She
Speaker 4: had a good heart, but she was a little unpredictable.
Speaker 4: Then Regina stopped answering her phone. Her sister worried I.
Speaker 11: Miss her every day.
Speaker 17: I miss sending her pictures of the girls of my grandkids.
Speaker 1: And calling her.
Speaker 11: That was all taken from me.
Speaker 17: Anne Berkeley, can't do that anymore.
Speaker 1: I call Regina Reggie.
Speaker 17: Reggie had a contagious laugh. If you would ask anybody
Speaker 17: what they remember most about Reggie, it will be her laugh.
Speaker 4: The police had been to her house already, but they
Speaker 4: didn't execute a full search. Neighbors had seen stickers on
Speaker 4: the door about a potential foreclosure and just assumed John
Speaker 4: was evicted. Now weeks had passed, they go back, and
Speaker 4: what they find inside is worse than anything anyone's imagined.
Speaker 4: What they walk into is a hoarder's nightmare. Trash banks, boxes,
Speaker 4: rotting food. The air is thick and sour, the kind
Speaker 4: of stench you think is garbage until you realize it's not.
Speaker 4: Specialized agents are called in along with cadaver dogs, but
Speaker 4: even the dogs refuse to go inside. The odor of
Speaker 4: decomposition is overwhelming. They stubbornly sit outside, like, no way, man,
Speaker 4: I ain't going in there. We ain't touching this. That's
Speaker 4: kind of what I imagine dogs sound like. You can get
Speaker 4: into their head, yo, bro, we ain't going in there,
Speaker 4: That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 11: Dog.
Speaker 4: The search stops here. I think it's kind of cute.
Speaker 4: Imagine a Doberman talking like that. Anyway. Fortunately, agents come
Speaker 4: prepared with full protective masks and oxygen tanks. This is
Speaker 4: a full hazmat situation we got going on. They enter
Speaker 4: through the back door of the ranch home, past the
Speaker 4: shattered window, dead flies, carpet the floor. The second bedroom
Speaker 4: is by far the worst. Flies swarm in the air,
Speaker 4: the stench pools in the room. Maggots wriggle in a
Speaker 4: disgusting puddle at the foot of the bed, a puddle
Speaker 4: they trace to amount of trash and blankets. When they
Speaker 4: start to move it, they see skin, then bone, then
Speaker 4: what looks like a leg, then a skull. The hallway
Speaker 4: carpet has been cut away, and blood stains stretched from
Speaker 4: the kitchen into the living room, where the carpet has
Speaker 4: also been removed under trash and clothing. In the second
Speaker 4: bedroom they find John Mann's body a mire of decomposed,
Speaker 4: rotting flesh, unrecognizable, and behind him, up against the wall,
Speaker 4: they find a second figure wrapped in a wet Harley
Speaker 4: Davidson blanket. The blanket is form fitting. They can see
Speaker 4: the outline of Regina's head before it's even pulled back,
Speaker 4: She's face up, sweater rolled up above her eyes, one
Speaker 4: foot exposed, and the rest of her body hidden beneath
Speaker 4: layers of filth. A purple condom wrapper is found near
Speaker 4: her head. At first, Tom wasn't the obvious suspect. Even
Speaker 4: though he had a criminal background, his crimes didn't involve
Speaker 4: violence against anyone, and he had a son he desperately
Speaker 4: wanted to reconnect with. Why would he risk throwing that
Speaker 4: all away? He already messed up by getting stupid, drunken
Speaker 4: breaking into the salons, stupid and sloppy, but not murder.
Speaker 4: But because he was one of the only people who
Speaker 4: had a connection with both Regina and John, they started
Speaker 4: to dig where else had Tom been staying since he
Speaker 4: got out, who else was helping him? And that's when
Speaker 4: his current girlfriend came up, Alicia Stoner. She wasn't just
Speaker 4: his girlfriend, she was a social worker at the prison.
Speaker 4: Imagine that you realize.
Speaker 12: How serious certainly last going on with him, and we
Speaker 12: understand that we time to talk about it yesterday. So yeah,
Speaker 12: I understand if things don't come back to he at
Speaker 12: certain times, but we just want to have that line
Speaker 12: of communication of what good we can get through some
Speaker 12: of this information today.
Speaker 11: Most of it.
Speaker 4: Alicia was working at the same prison that Tom was
Speaker 4: serving time in. Tom was attractive to her for some reason,
Speaker 4: probably for the same reason why some women right to inmates,
Speaker 4: some particular crazy bitches take that extra step and get
Speaker 4: a job at the prison. It's one hell of a
Speaker 4: world we're living in, I'll tell you. Maybe it was
Speaker 4: the bad boy prisoner thing. Maybe it was his charming
Speaker 4: gift of gab who knows who cares. Whatever the case,
Speaker 4: he was writing to multiple women, including Regina, and they
Speaker 4: were all falling for it. With Alicia, he had the
Speaker 4: added pleasure of interacting personally. That is until she quit
Speaker 4: due to an obvious conflict of interest. She chose Tom
Speaker 4: over her job and they continued their relationship. Imagine choosing
Speaker 4: a criminal over your job. These two lovebirds wrote poems
Speaker 4: to each other, long handwritten love letters. They were soul mates.
Speaker 4: When detectives interviewed Alicia for the first time, she didn't
Speaker 4: want to say much, But after she realized that she
Speaker 4: could be implicated and ultimately served time, that's when she
Speaker 4: started to talk.
Speaker 8: I just want to clarify some things that I wasn't
Speaker 8: direct with Okay, okay.
Speaker 12: But maybe this dream of minimizing some of this so
Speaker 12: that it's oh, I did lesser issue.
Speaker 8: I avoided, I minimized, irrationalized, I did all the defense mechanism.
Speaker 12: Guy, Now it just comes down to telling us the truth.
Speaker 4: On paper, Alicia didn't look like the kind of woman
Speaker 4: who'd ever be connected to a double homicide. She was
Speaker 4: a mental health worker, and she was married, But somehow
Speaker 4: she was charmed by this asshole. After his release in
Speaker 4: April twenty seventeen, Alicia became more than just his girlfriend.
Speaker 4: She was his driver, his banker, and his safety net.
Speaker 4: When parole rules barred Tom from living with her, she
Speaker 4: paid for his motel rooms. When he needed money, she
Speaker 4: wired it, and when he called her in the middle
Speaker 4: of the night, she came. On May twelfth, twenty seventeen,
Speaker 4: Alicia drove to pick him up after he made a
Speaker 4: desperate phone call. She remembered his left index finger was
Speaker 4: badly cut, a fresh wound he couldn't easily explain when.
Speaker 8: We discussed about initially me getting the phone call from Thomas,
Speaker 8: and he called me, and he did say to me,
Speaker 8: if I ever meet you with now, and I know
Speaker 8: he gave me, this is where I'm going to tell you.
Speaker 11: Just okay. I know he gave me directions at some point.
Speaker 11: And here's what I see.
Speaker 8: When I'm driving and I'm crossing over Meander, I'm on
Speaker 8: the phone with him and he tells me Regina and
Speaker 8: John are dead.
Speaker 11: Okay.
Speaker 12: That helps spark so memory of the conversation, that of
Speaker 12: him telling you when you got there, was there anything more?
Speaker 11: That there's more?
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 8: So it's accurate with him with the hood coming out
Speaker 8: and he gets in my car where I tell you,
Speaker 8: I me park where I tell you and does let
Speaker 8: me say this The story I was supposed to tell
Speaker 8: was that he got into a bar fight for the finger,
Speaker 8: because he says to me, all you know is that
Speaker 8: I got into a bar fight for the six Okay.
Speaker 11: So that's what I told you.
Speaker 4: Tom's version started with his relationship with John. He felt
Speaker 4: sorry for John because Regina was taking advantage of him.
Speaker 4: What started as a partnership had turned into a one
Speaker 4: way street that ended with Regina being the only happy partner.
Speaker 4: She came and went as she pleased. She took John's
Speaker 4: money and did little in exchange. She even started seeing
Speaker 4: other guys and bringing them back to the house.
Speaker 3: So when I met John, you know, he might have
Speaker 3: been a dirt bag and a lot of things, but
Speaker 3: I just took him as an old hippie, nice guy.
Speaker 3: He was going to get kicked out of the house soon,
Speaker 3: but he needed someone to motograss.
Speaker 1: And first of.
Speaker 3: All, you know, I want everybody to know that, you know,
Speaker 3: I've never had any sexual relationships with Regina. We met
Speaker 3: in two thousand and five his pen pals, and for
Speaker 3: about a year and a half we kind of were
Speaker 3: writing a lot and had ideas of getting out being together.
Speaker 3: Of course, then I felt a lot different than I
Speaker 3: knew now about what I wanted.
Speaker 1: In life and a woman.
Speaker 3: And she's always been super wild and told me a
Speaker 3: lot of crazy stories I never realized. And of course
Speaker 3: she's probably progressed and got worse, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: So I never realized, you know, like until her fiftieth birthday,
Speaker 3: how she was drinking.
Speaker 4: If he wasn't convinced at her fiftieth birthday party that
Speaker 4: she was an out of control partier, an incident that
Speaker 4: happened at a gas station confirmed it she'd been drinking.
Speaker 4: He says she came out of the restroom with toilet
Speaker 4: paper hanging out of her pants. When he politely brought
Speaker 4: it to her attention, she says, watch this, and she
Speaker 4: pulls it out and plasters it on the chest of
Speaker 4: a little old lady who's walking pie. Gross.
Speaker 3: So we didn't talk for a while, you know, a
Speaker 3: few weeks, and I ended up when I needed a
Speaker 3: place to stay, and I knew that, you know, they
Speaker 3: were still entertaining that idea when I was in jail.
Speaker 3: So I called her up and she said, well, you know,
Speaker 3: she was mad at me, but I said, hey.
Speaker 1: You know, what are you mad for? You know what
Speaker 1: I mean, the way you were acting, and I can't
Speaker 1: have that.
Speaker 3: Well, so I had met John a few times and
Speaker 3: he had confided in me that he kind of wanted
Speaker 3: her out, but she told him like, welly I get
Speaker 3: mail here, so you got to evict me. And then
Speaker 3: he was kind of like, well, I've known her for
Speaker 3: a while. I kind of love her. But at the
Speaker 3: same time, he's like, you know, she don't talk my
Speaker 3: dick no more.
Speaker 1: She don't do this.
Speaker 3: And for her, you know, she i'd seen her drunk,
Speaker 3: like you know, you can't get it hard, real nasty,
Speaker 3: you know, what I mean.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, I feel bad for him.
Speaker 4: You know, he felt bad for John, so he started
Speaker 4: coaching him on how he could get rid of Regina
Speaker 4: by evicting her. It would be a bonus that he'd
Speaker 4: get to live there with John. In effect, he planned
Speaker 4: to replace Regina. Tom said he didn't have much, but
Speaker 4: he would help him in any way he could, just
Speaker 4: not sexually. John wasn't getting that anyway.
Speaker 3: Ended up, you know, taking some of my stuff there
Speaker 3: because you know, she didn't know it.
Speaker 1: At the time, but John was going to try to birthday.
Speaker 11: He took some stuff there, okay, all right.
Speaker 3: So I took my blue bin and had my clothes
Speaker 3: in it, okay, And I had it like a duffel
Speaker 3: bag that had like my little homemade tattoo shit in it,
Speaker 3: lived brown tan bag. And you know, I wasn't like
Speaker 3: trying to like move in or nothing yet. I didn't
Speaker 3: know what the status was going to be as far
Speaker 3: as John getting her out of the house. I kind
Speaker 3: of was like, I'm not gonna lie to you. I said,
Speaker 3: you know, I can get you good, bud, I'll keep
Speaker 3: you smoking, I'll give you fifty bucks a week, but
Speaker 3: I can't live here with her. And another reason why
Speaker 3: I really blame myself is just for entertaining the idea
Speaker 3: and telling him about this stuff about being elderly and
Speaker 3: being able to evict her that.
Speaker 1: That's I guess why she loved the fuck out, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean?
Speaker 3: And you know, I hear them outside yelling and arguing,
Speaker 3: and the dogs are barking and the little you know,
Speaker 3: they're loud, and I'm like, I could hear it outside.
Speaker 4: So the day this all went down, John had confronted Regina.
Speaker 4: She laughed it off and said she was going to
Speaker 4: go out and meet a guy at a bar and
Speaker 4: they might come back to the house. While she was out,
Speaker 4: John had fallen asleep, so she texted Tom asking him
Speaker 4: to put the dogs away because she was bringing this
Speaker 4: guy back. Tom didn't want to be around for that,
Speaker 4: so he says he left.
Speaker 3: Well, I just chose to leave, you know. I took
Speaker 3: a walk in the neighborhood, so I didn't want to
Speaker 3: be there listening to him in a sex whatever was
Speaker 3: going on. Well, I had come home and whoever the
Speaker 3: guy she had there was gone, and hearn John were arguing,
Speaker 3: and she's drunk. I mean probably didn't take her musk
Speaker 3: get drunk anyway. She's such a little person, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. And they're fighting and I'm out in
Speaker 3: the backyard. Dogs are going crazy. I'm surprised nobody called
Speaker 3: the police, you know, And something just changed in the tone,
Speaker 3: and I come in, you know what I mean. I
Speaker 3: didn't come in, and really I didn't want to interrupt nose.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what was said.
Speaker 3: And I came in and Regina was attacking him with
Speaker 3: a knife, and I stopped her. I actually got pictures.
Speaker 3: It took me to believe me. As little she is,
Speaker 3: she was pretty strong, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 3: I had a little mark here where I had a
Speaker 3: little cut, and I got a bunch of cuts on
Speaker 3: my hands trying to pull the blade from her. And
Speaker 3: that's actually how I ended up cutting my fingers so bad.
Speaker 4: This is when the lies started. Every person he saw
Speaker 4: got a different explanation for why he got this cut
Speaker 4: on his finger, from his own son, to his ex
Speaker 4: at the house with his son, to his girlfriend Alicia,
Speaker 4: and finally to the police who interviewed him the night
Speaker 4: of the burglaries. By that point, his finger was barely
Speaker 4: hanging on After he tried. I had to superglue it gross,
Speaker 4: but he knew it was bad because it was trending
Speaker 4: green and starting to smell funny, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I know shit happened.
Speaker 3: It shouldn't have happened, And anyway, I just wanted to
Speaker 3: know that I didn't kill John.
Speaker 4: The one part of the story that always stayed consistent
Speaker 4: was that he didn't kill John. He freely admitted he
Speaker 4: killed Regina, just like he freely admitted several weeks later
Speaker 4: that he robbed the salons, but he was adamant he
Speaker 4: didn't kill John.
Speaker 3: And none of this shit was planned or premeditated or anything.
Speaker 3: But I ended up ripping a knife from Regina and
Speaker 3: I threw up in a chair and she took off,
Speaker 3: and I went a night checked John and he was
Speaker 3: still making sounds and on the floor, and she ends
Speaker 3: up coming back with another knife, and I don't know,
Speaker 3: regular stayed nice whatever from the kitchen, and that's when
Speaker 3: she ended up. You know, staffn't have me cut my
Speaker 3: finger real bad again. I'm tussling with her and I'll
Speaker 3: get her to the group, to the ground and I'm
Speaker 3: trying to hold her down, and you know, her other hands,
Speaker 3: she's clawing in my face and my eyes, and I've
Speaker 3: ended up getting a knife and using honor, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. And not only I'm having nightmares about it,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. It's so much to fucking
Speaker 3: live with, you know. And I wish I would have
Speaker 3: ran out of the house, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: because now I lived with it. She was a friend,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. And I mean I'd be
Speaker 3: stupid to even tell my pro officer, I'm about to
Speaker 3: stay here at this house.
Speaker 4: Tom maintained he never met for any of this to happen.
Speaker 4: He just wanted to get out of prison and start over,
Speaker 4: be a good dad, continue his relationship with Alicia, except
Speaker 4: she was still married, and get back to what he
Speaker 4: loved to do. Tattoos, of course, but he also loved
Speaker 4: drinking and talk it. Those two traits somehow led to
Speaker 4: him committing crimes that involved the very people he loved most.
Speaker 4: In the aftermath of those crimes, even his youngest son.
Speaker 2: It was my phone. I was letting him borrow it
Speaker 2: for the night that night. The next morning I woke up,
Speaker 2: my phone was gone, my kids were gone, and my
Speaker 2: jeep was gone, and I didn't talk to him for
Speaker 2: a couple of days.
Speaker 4: Tom Son thought he was helping his father, but every
Speaker 4: time tom took more. The next morning, Tommy's phone, his jeep,
Speaker 4: and even his trust were god.
Speaker 2: When he did move there, he cut his finger open,
Speaker 2: and he said it was from the hedgehog with my
Speaker 2: mom and my ample said it was too clean of
Speaker 2: a cut to be not a hedgehog, but like hedge clippers.
Speaker 2: And my mom and my ample said it was too
Speaker 2: clean of a CUTZ. I think it was from a
Speaker 2: knife for a glass or something.
Speaker 11: What do you think.
Speaker 2: I'd like to believe him, but I don't know. I
Speaker 2: haven't seen a cut like that before. It was cut
Speaker 2: pretty bad. Yeah, it was like hanging off and stuff.
Speaker 11: Oh jeez.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He said he was going to try bluing it back together,
Speaker 2: but when he was in the hospital, they just took
Speaker 2: it off for him.
Speaker 4: Tommy Junior would later learn the truth, if he didn't
Speaker 4: already suspect it. The story was shady, so was his
Speaker 4: story about why he needed Tommy to buy him duct
Speaker 4: tape and garbage bags for the finger. Poor Tommy. Since
Speaker 4: his dad got out of prison, he was invading all
Speaker 4: aspects of his life, and Tommy led him because he
Speaker 4: loved him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, since he's been out, my life's been so stressful,
Speaker 2: Like I've been.
Speaker 1: Afraid at my house, an't you afraid?
Speaker 2: I don't know if like he got dropped off by
Speaker 2: someone and he owes them money and they're gonna like
Speaker 2: come inside or something. I don't know, Okay, I just
Speaker 2: don't know. Like I thought I knew him a little bit,
Speaker 2: but I guess I didn't.
Speaker 4: Okay, Tommy had a right to be afraid. His dad
Speaker 4: was a criminal murderer. The only thing the police didn't
Speaker 4: know was exactly why he murdered.
Speaker 11: We think you know more to someone's telling us.
Speaker 12: Sitting there conversation, things were brought up about what your
Speaker 12: dad did. That we're pretty serious and if he told
Speaker 12: you what he did, then we need to know.
Speaker 1: Tom He did tell me he heard two people. Didn't say
Speaker 1: he killed anybody.
Speaker 11: He said he heard him, though, tell us what he
Speaker 11: told you.
Speaker 2: He said that he heard him, and he said he
Speaker 2: cut his finger on the hedge clippers, and that he.
Speaker 1: Was trying to fight him back, and.
Speaker 9: I was it.
Speaker 11: He told me that he took Regina.
Speaker 2: They got her a hotel, and then two black people
Speaker 2: came and were beating them up, and that he was
Speaker 2: trying to defend themselves.
Speaker 12: Say that again, when was this Did he give you
Speaker 12: any time frame on when this happened.
Speaker 2: He said it happened late at night, late at night,
Speaker 2: and they were sitting He was in the He said
Speaker 2: he was in the basement cleaning, and that he heard
Speaker 2: John Yellen and he went upstairs and he started like
Speaker 2: trying to fight him with him, and then they left.
Speaker 11: And that's what a couple of black males, he.
Speaker 2: Said, two black men. He didn't he didn't use those words.
Speaker 2: He used they.
Speaker 12: Raised this turn for them, okay, And then he was
Speaker 12: fighting with these blackmails and he.
Speaker 2: Said, that's how he had a scratch on his head.
Speaker 2: He said, that's how he got a scratch on his
Speaker 2: head was from them.
Speaker 4: This was just one more version of Tom's lies. And
Speaker 4: when he couldn't cover his tracks with his lies, he
Speaker 4: simply told Tommy not to look. Like the time he
Speaker 4: asked Tommy to pick him up at John Mann's house,
Speaker 4: this time it was to get rid of the dogs inside.
Speaker 2: He went back to the house, he went in and
Speaker 2: grabbed the dogs. I didn't see the dogs, he told
Speaker 2: me not to look, and we drove out there. He
Speaker 2: hadn't pulled around the side of the street, and he
Speaker 2: shussed them out. Yeah, he just told me they were
Speaker 2: John's dogs and that he didn't want him anymore. Knew
Speaker 2: that John was going to hurt out early, kill him
Speaker 2: and get rid of them, so he was going to
Speaker 2: give him a chance at life and just let him go.
Speaker 4: The detectives didn't want to have to press Tommy. They
Speaker 4: knew he was a good kid. In fact, one officer
Speaker 4: had also been Tommy's rugby coach and had nothing but
Speaker 4: great things to say about him. Somebody did something right,
Speaker 4: but it sure wasn't his dad.
Speaker 12: And the last thing I want to see is anything.
Speaker 12: And this isn't trying to pit you against your dad,
Speaker 12: but you're in this position.
Speaker 11: Sadly.
Speaker 12: He put you in this position, he did, and it's sad,
Speaker 12: and we feel for you, you know, I do. You
Speaker 12: know what I think of you, and it's wrong, but
Speaker 12: I just want the truth one hundred percent, and you
Speaker 12: walk out of here, and you know your conscious is clear.
Speaker 2: If I tell you, guys now, tell us now, you're
Speaker 2: not Eddie Trump.
Speaker 11: He said he killed him, kill Regina John.
Speaker 2: Just Regina He said he was in the basement cleaning
Speaker 2: and he heard John upstairs screaming, saw Regina stabbing him,
Speaker 2: tried giving the knife away from him, and then he
Speaker 2: said he took the knife and stabbed her.
Speaker 4: Tommy's story matched the version his father gave police that
Speaker 4: Regina had attacked Jawn, that Tom wrestled the knife away
Speaker 4: and stabbed her. There were no other people at the
Speaker 4: house that day, black white or otherwise. If they could
Speaker 4: just get Tom to admit to killing both Regina and John,
Speaker 4: it was their gut feeling, and the coroner's reports backed
Speaker 4: it up. John Man's body was pierced with multiple sharp
Speaker 4: force injuries, including to the neck, ribs, collarbone, and defensive
Speaker 4: wounds on his hands and arms. Regina stood under five
Speaker 4: feet tall and didn't weigh much. Besides. Tom's version was
Speaker 4: that he intervened after only one or two stabbings. Then
Speaker 4: there was the elaborate cover up, including commissioning a guy
Speaker 4: named de Lugo to burn the house down after he'd
Speaker 4: remove the dogs and the carpeting. He used Alicia for
Speaker 4: contact because he was already in jail. Delugo said no,
Speaker 4: he wouldn't do it, and the defensive wounds on Tom
Speaker 4: indicated a serious altercation where Tom lost control of the blade,
Speaker 4: not to mention the lie. The overwhelming number of lies,
Speaker 4: so detectives had one more card to play with Tom,
Speaker 4: the polygraph, and when the subject turned to John Mann,
Speaker 4: Tom's story started to crack. It was May of twenty
Speaker 4: seventeen in a suburb of good old Cleveland, Ohio, the
Speaker 4: home of the Browns and a whole lot of killers
Speaker 4: and even wor Ohioans. Tomis Enough had been out of
Speaker 4: prison for just a few weeks. He was drifting between motels,
Speaker 4: borrowing from his sons and leaning on his girlfriend, Alicia Stoner,
Speaker 4: who drove him, gave him money, and even picked him
Speaker 4: up the morning after he killed at least one person
Speaker 4: inside the house on nell Wood Road. So yeah, you know,
Speaker 4: Tom was just living his best life. John Mann lived
Speaker 4: in that house with his partner, Regina Capobianco. By then,
Speaker 4: Regina had long since given up her part of the
Speaker 4: bargain for living there and was dating other men. She
Speaker 4: had also been writing to Tom while he was in prison.
Speaker 4: In fact, it was Regina and John who picked him
Speaker 4: up on the day he was released. Regina may have
Speaker 4: expected to carry on a relationship with Tom, but he
Speaker 4: already had Alicia, and he also realized that Regina's drinking
Speaker 4: and other bizarre behaviors could land him right back in
Speaker 4: prison on parole violation. John was fed up with her too,
Speaker 4: he wanted her gone, and Tom was all too happy
Speaker 4: to help. If Regina were out of the picture, it
Speaker 4: meant Tom couldn't move in and finally have a stable
Speaker 4: place to reconnect with his son and have a girlfriend.
Speaker 4: On the night of May eleventh, twenty seventeen, something violent
Speaker 4: happened inside that house. John and Regina were both killed,
Speaker 4: their bodies hidden away. Police wouldn't discover their decomposed remains
Speaker 4: until June. In the meantime, Tom was getting rid of
Speaker 4: evidence and roping his loved ones into helping him cover
Speaker 4: his tracks.
Speaker 3: You know, I've always tried to tell him, even though
Speaker 3: I've done fucked up shin or I've been in jail,
Speaker 3: I always try to.
Speaker 1: You know, do the right thing.
Speaker 3: A lot of things that you know I did with
Speaker 3: past it was reckless, you know, out drunk and doing
Speaker 3: stupid shit and just being wild.
Speaker 1: But you know, for the most part, you know he knows.
Speaker 3: To do the right thing, you know, so that's I
Speaker 3: just if I can only be that example to him,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, that's what I want to
Speaker 3: do for him.
Speaker 4: What he wanted to do for his son and what
Speaker 4: he actually ended up doing were two vastly different things.
Speaker 4: By May seventeenth, his life was spiraling. He was walking
Speaker 4: around with a finger that was barely hanging on, and
Speaker 4: his freedom was also barely hanging on. In the weeks
Speaker 4: that followed, Tom didn't lie low. He went right back
Speaker 4: to his old ways. He broke into two salons, leaving
Speaker 4: a trail that would put him back on police radar.
Speaker 4: At the same time, he told everyone a different story.
Speaker 4: He told his son, he told Alicia, He told the
Speaker 4: police a story about a drug dealer, a fight, Regina
Speaker 4: stabbing John, and Tom stabbing Regina in self defense. But
Speaker 4: there was one part he never changed. He swore he
Speaker 4: didn't kill John Man. You know how you've heard that
Speaker 4: polygraphs are unreliable. Well, police departments across the country insists
Speaker 4: they yield a success rate of eighty six to one
Speaker 4: hundred percent, and Brunswick police were counting on its reliability
Speaker 4: and listening.
Speaker 10: I don't want your son to be around this, but
Speaker 10: right now, he is smack in the middle of it.
Speaker 1: You know, listen, I know, but that's why as much as.
Speaker 10: You know, if he's telling us, you can fight it
Speaker 10: in him, then you know you killed two people, and
Speaker 10: then you know you're confiding in him.
Speaker 11: As both both the people we found in the house.
Speaker 1: Okay, I told him the black people.
Speaker 3: And then when I ended up telling him the truth
Speaker 3: after the truck incident, I told him what it was,
Speaker 3: and I told him I was just embarrassed because I
Speaker 3: had killed the girl, and.
Speaker 1: That's when I told him the truth of the matter.
Speaker 10: No, I want to bring this thing back up from
Speaker 10: this machineer. Okay, it says you me and your failed.
Speaker 10: They say you'd stick John. All right, So I want
Speaker 10: to talk about some similarities and some stuff in the
Speaker 10: injuries of both.
Speaker 11: I want to talk about that.
Speaker 18: This is gonna be exactly what I was told, all right, Okay,
Speaker 18: Regina stab wound in the back, two stab wounds to
Speaker 18: the right side of the neck, crushed Adam's apple. Right
Speaker 18: corotid artery was cut her left hand near her index figure.
Speaker 18: The webbing was cut.
Speaker 11: Cause him down.
Speaker 18: The defensive booms caused this sharp force injury and a
Speaker 18: crushed damn sample, neck compression, strangulation.
Speaker 4: All of these injuries included or were in addition to
Speaker 4: the stabbings, and the polygraph had confirmation.
Speaker 11: Didn't you mentioned that?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 10: You know you several times that John was over there
Speaker 10: making gurglings as they did, and stuff like that. Okay,
Speaker 10: this machine says that you had had stabbed John. Yeah, okay, something.
Speaker 10: John had one stable right here? Did you help him
Speaker 10: stop every by doing it?
Speaker 11: Is it the one?
Speaker 10: Did you do one stay up woman of John to
Speaker 10: help him out, to put him out of measurement?
Speaker 11: If you did that, you couldn't understand.
Speaker 1: If I did.
Speaker 4: Detectives kept giving Tom an out. They told him maybe
Speaker 4: it was an accident, an act of mercy, self defense,
Speaker 4: and maybe things got out of control. Any of those
Speaker 4: versions could have given him a softer landing, even a
Speaker 4: shot at claiming self defense. But Tom wouldn't take it.
Speaker 4: He stuck to his one line over and over. I
Speaker 4: didn't kill John.
Speaker 11: You've got to.
Speaker 10: Help yourself out in this. You gotta tell us what
Speaker 10: the hell happened in that house?
Speaker 12: You know.
Speaker 10: He brings up a good point. I'm gonna let you
Speaker 10: explain him to about it. Where he thinks something happened
Speaker 10: in the argument. I'm gonna let him go ahead with that.
Speaker 10: You know, it brings up a good point as we talked,
Speaker 10: You don't, Mike, wouldn't be getting beat up with you.
Speaker 18: Tell me a little bit about your your stepfather right
Speaker 18: right and your mom abusive relationship, Yeah, something about.
Speaker 11: Hap him quite frequently.
Speaker 1: Well, when we were younger.
Speaker 11: You know, what's your feelings on that.
Speaker 3: I just loved my mom and I hated him at
Speaker 3: the time. You know, even though there was times where
Speaker 3: he was a good guy and I liked him, you know,
Speaker 3: for certain things, he would drink and used drugs, and
Speaker 3: you know, he took all his aggression on her, and
Speaker 3: you know, she's just such always a good person and.
Speaker 1: Being a kid.
Speaker 3: You know, that really hurt you know, I want to
Speaker 3: see her go back to him.
Speaker 13: You know, how did that make you feel? It hurt me,
Speaker 13: you know, make you angry? Well, sure, I mean it
Speaker 13: wouldn't be angry. You know I was angry that. You
Speaker 13: know she put up with it, but I mean obviously
Speaker 13: she felt it.
Speaker 3: You know, she loved him and worked through it, you know,
Speaker 3: and they'd separated for like a year and we got
Speaker 3: back together.
Speaker 18: And what do you think should happen to somebody that
Speaker 18: beats their their wife or their girlfriend?
Speaker 10: George, no woman to jump one with you.
Speaker 11: What do you think should happened to somebody?
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't feel like they should hie, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean I could understand why some women do that,
Speaker 3: you know, because they feel like there's.
Speaker 1: No other way out.
Speaker 11: They feel tripped.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I feel like, you know, women even
Speaker 3: deserve that to when a man does that.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean, that they should be able to.
Speaker 11: So, so what was John doing in Virginia? What was John?
Speaker 1: He wanted her out?
Speaker 11: What really happened?
Speaker 1: He wanted her out? He wanted her out?
Speaker 11: Was her? I don't know her.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 11: Did you see him?
Speaker 1: I never seen him, Herbert.
Speaker 11: Did she tell you here's her?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: She told me many stories about punching on her boyfriends.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean. She never said John heard her.
Speaker 1: You know, she said he was dirty and never changed
Speaker 1: its clothes.
Speaker 11: And I think you know that he. I think she
Speaker 11: could fighting and.
Speaker 19: You were trying to protect her, and then she get
Speaker 19: angry with you for what was.
Speaker 11: Going on with your Joss. Is that what happened? Listen? Man,
Speaker 11: I get it.
Speaker 4: This was their best hypothesis. It was the only time
Speaker 4: they'd seen Tom get this emotional, other than when he
Speaker 4: was talking about his son. They had tapped into his
Speaker 4: past to find a trigger. John was abusing Regina and
Speaker 4: Tom was going to stop him. But Regina was used
Speaker 4: to the chaos and abuse, so she tried to stop Tom.
Speaker 10: You do realize come Monday morning during this ring to me,
Speaker 10: he's gonna be there. They're gonna paint you his monster,
Speaker 10: don't you Yeah? Do you want them to paint.
Speaker 1: Do you want you're gonna have any money?
Speaker 11: The difference is if we if we can tell our story.
Speaker 11: We're gonna have news conference.
Speaker 10: We're gonna give a press conference Monday morning before you're raingment.
Speaker 10: We're telling everybody you're here, you're being arranged. The news
Speaker 10: is gonna be there. How's it gonna be? You know
Speaker 10: what I mean?
Speaker 11: Did you sit in this chair with us?
Speaker 10: Did you talk to the detectives, and did you tell
Speaker 10: us everything that happened one hundred percent to the team.
Speaker 11: Which right now I don't believe. Okay, And your son
Speaker 11: is going to watch this news conference. Sure, you know
Speaker 11: what I mean? Your son is gonna watch this news conference.
Speaker 10: Pretty soon he may be watching it with you somewhere
Speaker 10: else because of the trouble he's in and Alicia as well.
Speaker 10: They're both in trouble right now with this. Too much
Speaker 10: is going on because you put them in this position.
Speaker 10: The only way for you to help them and not
Speaker 10: paint yourself as a monster. I mean, come on, I
Speaker 10: know that you love your kid, and your kid does
Speaker 10: love you, Okay, he does, but he's going to have
Speaker 10: to live with this cloud of the immediate pain in
Speaker 10: my father as a monster, and people know that you're
Speaker 10: his father.
Speaker 11: Would you rather just have them him be known as
Speaker 11: my dad made a mistake. He fessed up to it.
Speaker 11: He did, He did jak who he is. I still
Speaker 11: talk to my dad in jail. Do you want Dad
Speaker 11: or do you want everybody going on look at as
Speaker 11: a monster?
Speaker 4: If Tom had accepted their version of what happened, would
Speaker 4: he have gotten away with it? I mean, there was
Speaker 4: no way he wasn't going back to prison. He robbed
Speaker 4: two salons and killed a woman. These were indisputable facts.
Speaker 4: But was it chivalry gone way wrong? Or was it
Speaker 4: a premeditated attempt to secure a place of his own.
Speaker 11: It's possible.
Speaker 4: No one will ever know, but the jury would seal
Speaker 4: his fate. No matter what. Tom would probably spend the
Speaker 4: rest of his life in jail. But Ohio also has
Speaker 4: the death penalty, which is a good thing, but they
Speaker 4: should use it a lot more. The relationship Tom wanted
Speaker 4: with his son was never going to happen, at least
Speaker 4: not outside of prison walls. Thomas Enough Junior was convicted
Speaker 4: of two counts of aggravated murder for killing John Mann
Speaker 4: and Regina Capo Bianco, along with multiple other charges aggravated burglary,
Speaker 4: gross abuse of a corpse, kidnapping, conspiracy, tampering with evidence,
Speaker 4: and theft related offenses.
Speaker 20: There was, of course, a jury recommendation that the sentence
Speaker 20: of death be imposed. The court finds by proof beyond
Speaker 20: a reasonable doubt that the aggravating circumstances the offender was
Speaker 20: found guilty of committing outweigh the mitigating factors. Therefore, on
Speaker 20: count two, the sentence of death will be imposed upon
Speaker 20: the offender.
Speaker 4: This met Tom's son lost to father.
Speaker 3: Well, and that's what I hope just by being you know,
Speaker 3: straight up with you guys, it the things that you
Speaker 3: can control to help with, you know, I appreciate.
Speaker 1: So I'm not here to fuck nobody around or be
Speaker 1: a bad guy.
Speaker 11: And no, no, nobody's nobody's things said at all. You
Speaker 11: know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I'm saying, it's enough to have to live with my
Speaker 3: faults and all the mistakes I've had in the past
Speaker 3: and letting my family down, and you know, not being
Speaker 3: there through my son's high school years when you know
Speaker 3: other people had her dad's there at the football game.
Speaker 4: And because of Tom's actions, he would never get the
Speaker 4: chance to go to one of his kid's games and
Speaker 4: walk him out onto the field. But his son wasn't
Speaker 4: the only one who suffered. Two lives were lost. Regina
Speaker 4: may have been a bit of a wild card, but
Speaker 4: she mattered to her family, to her friends. She was
Speaker 4: a person and no matter what her life choices, she
Speaker 4: didn't deserve what happened to her.
Speaker 19: This monster took my sister from me.
Speaker 11: My heart is broken.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I will ever reap here.
Speaker 17: I miss her every day. She would not get to
Speaker 17: see her sons get married, she would not get to
Speaker 17: call her Grandma.
Speaker 2: And his.
Speaker 17: Oh because of trying to help somebody that I told
Speaker 17: her that I thought.
Speaker 1: She should stay away from.
Speaker 2: I have.
Speaker 11: Horrible visions, and I hope someday will get out of
Speaker 11: my head of the murder.
Speaker 17: And no one should ever have to have these visions
Speaker 17: of a family member. I am glad he has the
Speaker 17: death penalty. I think he deserves the death penalty. He's
Speaker 17: had a chance to plead for his life, and I'm
Speaker 17: sure my sister pleaded for her life that.
Speaker 1: He chose to ignore.
Speaker 4: John Man's son and sister both gave incredible heartfelt statements,
Speaker 4: and John's son spoke for more than ten minutes.
Speaker 19: My dad was a goofy, bright and sensitive man. He
Speaker 19: loved the Cleveland Browns, watching Mash re runs, and doing
Speaker 19: community theater. He had a full scholarship offer from Heidelberg
Speaker 19: University in astrophysics. He ended up floating into electrical contracting
Speaker 19: from his interest in solar power. He loved the idea
Speaker 19: of cheap, renewable energy. He even studied to be an
Speaker 19: architect because he thought it would help him develop solar powerselves.
Speaker 19: Later life, he became a computer programmer. He truly had
Speaker 19: a gifted mind and could do just about whatever he
Speaker 19: wanted to with properly motivated people tended to like my
Speaker 19: dad he had a gregarious and colorful personality with an
Speaker 19: oddball sense of humor.
Speaker 11: You took my dad from me.
Speaker 19: You robbed him of the golden years of his life
Speaker 19: and the time we had together. I miss him terribly.
Speaker 4: He proceeded to lay out how Tom had failed as
Speaker 4: a man, as a human being, and as a father.
Speaker 4: He sympathized with Tom's son and thanked him for his
Speaker 4: bravery and enduring the trial and doing the right thing
Speaker 4: by testifying against his own father, whom he loved. But
Speaker 4: then he's surprised everyone.
Speaker 19: You do not deserve to live. You do not deserve
Speaker 19: a humane death. You butcher two people for reasons I
Speaker 19: cannot begin to comprehend. I have wanted you to die,
Speaker 19: yet I am faced with the reality that it will
Speaker 19: not and cannot be enough. In order to heal, I
Speaker 19: must accept this and find a way to reconcile it.
Speaker 19: Against my own a feelings. I will continue to beg
Speaker 19: for his life to be spared. However, if possible, I
Speaker 19: want you all to hear it from a man that
Speaker 19: wanted him dead, as a son to a man whose
Speaker 19: life was ended his father. I will beg to anyone
Speaker 19: who will listen to spare his life. I don't think
Speaker 19: we should do it for me or him. I think
Speaker 19: we should do it because it's the right thing to
Speaker 19: do for our society.
Speaker 4: Of course, Tom is appealing, and the legal fight will
Speaker 4: go on for years. But what lingers isn't just the
Speaker 4: courtroom drama and a peals. That's the contradiction. Tom wanted
Speaker 4: to be a good father. He wanted to prove he
Speaker 4: could do right by his son. He stayed in touch,
Speaker 4: leaned on him, even dreamed of settling down in a
Speaker 4: house where they could reconnect. But instead he fell back
Speaker 4: into every pattern he swore he'd left behind, the lies,
Speaker 4: the violence, the selfishness that burned through everything in his path.
Speaker 4: And maybe the hardest part to make sense of is
Speaker 4: the question of whether Tom could have been telling the
Speaker 4: truth about John Mann. Maybe John was abusing Regina like
Speaker 4: the detectives had suggested, and it triggered a traumatic reaction
Speaker 4: from Tom. Or maybe what happened is exactly as Tom described.
Speaker 4: John tried to do evict Regina, and she went at him,
Speaker 4: so Tom intervened. Even if parts of his story are
Speaker 4: true and noble, all following actions say the most Tom's
Speaker 4: choices after that night, spoke the loudest, He hid the bodies,
Speaker 4: tried to hire someone to burn the place down, dumped
Speaker 4: the dogs into someone else's neighborhood, manipulated and lied to
Speaker 4: those he loved, dragged them into something horrible, and most importantly,
Speaker 4: never called police. Whatever happened in that house might have
Speaker 4: started with good intentions, but what followed were really, really,
Speaker 4: really bad choices, and only a complete fucking idiot would
Speaker 4: make Then again, this is Ohio. At the end of
Speaker 4: the day, we all have to be accountable for our choices.
Speaker 4: We all have to be responsible for what we decide
Speaker 4: to do. Otherwise, what the fuck are we doing here today?
Speaker 4: Thomas Nuff's son is brown. He's built a life that
Speaker 4: has nothing to do with Parma Height or with the
Speaker 4: crimes his father committed there. He's well adjusted, stable, and
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty three he got married. Whatever cycle Tom
Speaker 4: was trapped in, his son has escaped it good for him,
Speaker 4: And maybe that's the real ending here, Not the death sentence,
Speaker 4: not the deaths, not the appeals, but the fact that
Speaker 4: even out of something so violent and tragic, like a
Speaker 4: phoenix rising from the ashes, a different kind of life
Speaker 4: is actually possible. That's gonna do it for another one.
Speaker 4: Thanks for joining us. If you like the show, head
Speaker 4: on over to sword and Scale dot com, get the app,
Speaker 4: get Plus. We'll see you next week.
Speaker 11: Stay safe,