Speaker 1: Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence, and is not.
Speaker 2: Intended for all audiences.
Speaker 3: Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 1: My arms always up almost litterly.
Speaker 4: Bellevue, Washington is a clean suburb just outside Seattle, where
tech wealth keeps the housing costs high and the lawns
neatly trimmed. This is how I like them. It's a
family oriented town, filled with gorgeous parks and trails, a
place of true Pacific Northwest tranquility. But on the morning
of light tenth, twenty twenty, that tranquility was broken. As
the sun shone over the neat hedges and parked cars.
Gunshots rang out in an apartment parking lot. There was
a man down, gasping for air.
Speaker 5: We just turned sego gunshots and we came screaming right there.
Speaker 6: It sounds like it's right outside.
Speaker 5: I lived in any residence in Lakemont behind the apartments.
Speaker 3: About five or six shots.
Speaker 5: It sounded like a a light. Helder Ribbon, I think
I just turned seven gunshots. Someone screaming outside helped.
Speaker 7: It sounds like it's out a building sixteen and we
can hear the screaming.
Speaker 6: I'm just d seven shots and it looks like somebody
has been shot, I mean the overlook at this month.
Speaker 4: The calls were all coming from the same complex. Neighbors
peered through blinds, clutching their phones, straining to make sense
of it all by the sound alone, then, amidst the
beeping dispatch board, the most crucial nine when one call
finally got through.
Speaker 1: Okay, is this so.
Speaker 6: Overlake at Lakeland?
Speaker 8: Yes?
Speaker 1: Okay? And what's going on there?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 1: My husband's that shot? Okay?
Speaker 4: It's your husband?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The woman on the phone was d D Foe Moon.
Her husband, forty eight year old Baron Lee, was the
one bleeding out on the pavement.
Speaker 6: And is it possible for me to speak to him?
Speaker 1: Is he away?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 5: Once?
Speaker 4: Okay, reluctantly did passed the phones. Who her bloody husband
as other neighbors rushed over to help Hi?
Speaker 6: And where he shot her?
Speaker 1: Can you hear me?
Speaker 5: More than three moments?
Speaker 1: Are okay? Need? Okay? I hardy cure my arms?
Speaker 4: A literally my shirt?
Speaker 1: Okay, sir, okay?
Speaker 9: Where is the gun? The gun?
Speaker 6: With the gun?
Speaker 9: It's fun here.
Speaker 6: Hurry can you.
Speaker 1: Hit a hurry?
Speaker 10: I can't hit the.
Speaker 2: Deed.
Speaker 4: He took the phone back after Baron dropped it on
the ground in agony because yes hi hi, hi, yes, okay?
Speaker 1: Who shot him? Okay? So the person is no longer there,
no o in there, ma'am.
Speaker 6: I need you to get a clean where I crossed
in a plye pressure over the wound. Okay, well boon them, okay.
I need you to get some clear I lost in
a prie pressure okay.
Speaker 4: Even in the harsh unforgiving some light. It took a
moment to realize Baron's black shirt was drenched. Three shots
had torn through his chest. Did he fought to stay calm?
Her hands trembled as she tried to help. Then out
of nowhere, a female neighbor appeared, clutching a first aid
kit and reaching for the phone.
Speaker 10: Hi, I knew hi bet Hello?
Speaker 4: Oh here, yes, hello?
Speaker 1: Can you hear me? Yes? I can hear you. Okay,
So I don't want to find pressure right now. Yes,
my name is CHRISA.
Speaker 11: I mus find pressure to the chest room.
Speaker 6: Okay. Did you see which way that person white you
said he left on foot? Did you see which.
Speaker 1: Way it was? Okay?
Speaker 6: So where's.
Speaker 8: I hear?
Speaker 1: I hear okay? And is it just his chester is
but also his arm arm okay, we have it's okay,
I'm okay.
Speaker 6: I want to verify with the one person or multiple ye.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 4: Finally the chaos cracked open with a wall of sirens.
The crowd parted as police cars tore into the complex.
No one knew yet if the gunman was a man
or a woman. All anyone could say was this. The
assailant and the green hoodie vanished under the bridge towards
the shopping center across the road.
Speaker 6: What is the person still there with?
Speaker 2: Did you just hear this?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 5: So I just heard this, and I looked up my
back window and I watched someone run away, the person
that shopped them. They had a great hoodie with their
heard up green kitchen gloves and they pissed up their
shell case students as.
Speaker 2: They ran off.
Speaker 4: As the caller walked outside to see if he could help,
he noticed a clue abandoned on the pavement and.
Speaker 5: They had picking up their Then he's out there, he
picked up.
Speaker 4: The shooter had chosen to attack Baron at eight thirty am,
just as he was heading out to his car to
go to work. Baron hadn't been robbed. His car was
left with the keys right beside it, and his wallet
was on his person. This was a personal attack. The
gunman had targeted Baron, stalked him, and chosen the perfect
time to strike. But who could harbor such a deep
grudge against Baron Lee? A middle aged car salesman with
a wife three kids in a quiet, uneventful life. Baron
and his wife Didi had blended their families and had
been together for years. They had two teenage kids from
Dede's first marriage and one son from Baron's first marriage.
As Baron lay in surgery fighting for his life, police
started piecing together the few clues left behind. The good
thing was that witnesses were everywhere. This was a large
apartment complex, and people all looked outside when they heard
the gun going off.
Speaker 12: So I just walked out to the window in my
master bedroom and I saw an individual sprinting down the
stairs toward the street.
Speaker 10: Okay, And then did he go to the building across
the parking lot from you, or the carports or where?
Speaker 2: Did he go?
Speaker 12: Right along the carports down the stairs?
Speaker 10: Okay, so right between the building and the car ports.
Speaker 12: Yeah, But I heard the footsteps on the concrete as
I was walking to the window, and then I saw
the individual jump up on the curb there and then
run down the stairs.
Speaker 4: Okay. Using canines, the police tracked the scent of the
shooter all across the complex, under a bridge, and into
the parking lot across the street. But then the dogs stopped.
This indicated that whoever did this got into a and fled.
The suspect was at large.
Speaker 10: What kind of stature did that person have?
Speaker 12: It looks slim, bill, That's why I thought at first
it might have been fireworks, because it looked like it
could have been a kid almost probably five four or
five six.
Speaker 2: Somewhere that range.
Speaker 12: It's hard to tell looking down, but definitely not taller
than me based off of running next to the car,
real quickly, gray hoodie fully over it. Could not see
skin color, long pants on. I can't remember if they
were bluer, right. It's weird how some things you remember
so vividly and other things are just a blur. Yeah,
and then holding something. I thought it would look like
a bag in the right hands, like a football as
the person was running down. Okay, and like I said,
I couldn't see skin color anything else. Okay, so no
skin color? Can you tell gender? It was either a
teenage boy most likely, or could have been a woman.
Speaker 10: If you were to think about things that have happened
in the last twenty four hours forty eight hours over
the last week, do any incidents or concerns send out
in your mind in this complex here that would have
resulted in a situation like that.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 12: I mean, as far as I know the family, wonderful family.
I think they have a special needs kid and they've
never done anything but smile and be polite, along with
everybody else in the area.
Speaker 2: So it just was a complete shock.
Speaker 4: It was a complete shock. Baron Lee was a kind
hearted car salesman. We smiled at every person he met.
Now he was at Harbor View Medical Center full of
bullet holes. Baron had been shot nine times all over
his body, from his legs to his arms and chest.
At Harbor View Medical Center, surgeons worked fast, pulling bullets,
tying off limbs, fighting to keep him from slipping away.
The cops were already writing it up as a homicide.
Inside the o R, no one gave up. After hours
of surgery, Baron opened his eyes. He didn't just live,
he remembered everything.
Speaker 1: Hi, my name is Baron Lee. Originally from Hawaii and
now reside here in Istaklau, Washington.
Speaker 4: Baron's survival was a miracle. There was no way he
should have lived, but he did.
Speaker 1: Total nine shots, I took two to the arm, to
the right arm, to the left leg, I believe, one
on the one on the right leg, two on the
left arm, one in the chest, and one in my hip.
Speaker 2: I believe.
Speaker 4: Baron said that the morning was like every other except
that his step children were in Florida visiting their grandparents,
so it was just his wife, Didi, and his son Eric.
Baron his wife and child goodbye, then headed down the
stairs towards his car.
Speaker 1: And I come out of the house and I'm probably
about twenty five thirty feet from my car and I
just unlocked it with my fob and I hear pop.
So this is July tenth, twenty twenty. So I'm thinking, oh,
someone's still firing fireworks. Right, So I looked to my left,
I didn't see anything. As soon as I look to
my right, the second shot goes off, and that's the
one that hits my right arm and shatters my right
arm completely, ends up dropping my keys and my fob,
and I see this person with green gloves and a mask,
aiming a revolver, I mean, just shooting at me.
Speaker 4: Baron's first instinct was to use his car as a shield,
so he moved as quickly as he could while the
rounds kept coming.
Speaker 1: So I run to the car. He's still firing at me.
As I open my car door with my left hand,
I take a shot into the back of my leg,
and then another shot in the back of my leg,
and I end up falling to the ground. I end
up pulling myself behind the car door while the person's
firing at my car, lilding it with bullets. And then
a few seconds later, it seems like instantaneously that person
standing over me. He comes around to the car door
and he's standing over me. First shot goes right through
my chest and out, and I'm thinking, oh shit, I'm
going to die, Like what am I going to do?
Speaker 4: That's when it all hit him, the reality of what
was happening, But nothing compared to the pain.
Speaker 1: It's like, initially it feels like you're getting punched and
pierced at the same time, so like you feel that
searing pain that goes through from the bullet, but the
impact feels like someone just punched the crap on it,
you know.
Speaker 4: It's like that's when Baron made a quick decision that
probably saved his life.
Speaker 1: So I decide, I'm going to throw my head and
body under the wheelwell of my steering wheel. The steering
will call them and protect at least that part. So
if they're gonna shoot me, they got to shoot my
body or my legs or whatever, and not any fatal parts, hopefully, right.
So I dive in and he unloads the rest about
I think six more shots on the left side and
then runs out of ammunition. I see him bend down
pick up some shellcasings, and then I hear him run off.
Speaker 4: That's when neighbors arrived and started tending the baron. He
screamed for them to get his wife, afraid he was
going to die right then and there, right in that
parking lot.
Speaker 1: They do that. She comes out. My wife's like, oh,
you'll be okay, you'll make it. You're strong, don't worry
about it. And I remember having a full blown conversation
where they're asking her to to take care of the
kids that I love them.
Speaker 4: When officers arrive, they tied tourniquets on Baron's limbs. He
was losing his vision. The pain was overwhelming as they
lifted him into the stretcher.
Speaker 1: As the adroning start wearing off. And I'm taking a breath.
What's going through my head? Every time I'm breathing? Is
this my last breath? You know? I felt like I'm
dying right, Like I was in so much pain, and
I was like, oh my god, am I going to
end up? Stop breathing, you know, because I know people
get shot. You see it on TV. Right, They're slowly
fading out, And I'm thinking, oh my god, I'm going
to be you know, this is my last breath. This
is my last breath. Am I dead? Now? You know?
That type of thing.
Speaker 4: As a strength started to fade. Baron's racing thoughts about
who would care for his family faded into something different.
The ambulance raced across town while the paramedics ripped off
Baron's clothes, desperately trying to locate all the bullet ones.
That's when he felt himself slipping away.
Speaker 1: And I remember I felt at ease. At one point.
I was I was imagining myself in a metal or pasture,
very calm, serene, and I was tired and I just
wanted to go to sleep, and the paramedic basically shook
me and said, hey, you got to stay awake. You
gotta stay awake, and I'm like okay, okay, And then
I remember I was like almost gone. I was like
my eyes had closed and all I felt was this
searing pain. He stuck his finger in my wound to
wake me up, and I was like, oh, fuck, don't
do that. I'm up.
Speaker 2: I'm up.
Speaker 1: I won't I won't go to sleep right And from
then on I was up until surgery.
Speaker 4: When Baron finally woke up from surgery, he was bewildered,
but his first concern was his children. Did He assured
him that everyone was safe, and then detectives arrived.
Speaker 1: And actually the investigation started right away. I remember Detective
Parrot and the Detective Grandness both showed up at Harbor View.
They had told me that I was under protection media.
No one was allowed into the hospital to come visit.
The only person allowed was Dede. Dedey was the only
one that was authorized to come up and see me.
Speaker 4: The detectives wanted the obvious answers, like oh, I don't
know the hell would do this.
Speaker 1: When they interviewed me the first time, I basically said
that it was Sharon without adult it was her.
Speaker 4: Sharon Kelly was Baron's first wife. I know, I know
Sharon and Baron. Let's just be adults here and try
to move past it. Okay, But Baron's wife, Dede shook
her head. Sharon was Eric's mother, She would never do
something so horrible to the father of her son. Was
this just Baron's trauma talking?
Speaker 1: And Dedey had told them, oh, no, it could be
disgruntable worker at his job. You know, he works in
the car business. Maybe they're mad or I don't know,
maybe her ex husband sent you know, Dedie's ex husband
sent somebody. And you know, they said, there's all kinds
of possibilities, and in my mind there was no other possibility.
Speaker 4: It was easy to dismiss a man shot nine times, confused,
scared and searching for answers. His divorce from Sharon had
been nasty, but now they barely talked unless it was
a drop off when they exchanged care of Eric. And
yet what if he wasn't wrong? Dede said Baron was crazy,
Sharon was not responsible. Still, the cops promised they'd look
into it. They had to, but first they chased the leads.
They did have CCTV footage from nearby businesses and traffic
lights around Baron's apartment complex, and on those tapes something
stuck a red Ford truck idling on the other side
the bridge just after the attack. Then the shooter ran
up and climbed in. This vehicle was distinct. It was
a Ford F series single cab with diamond plate, bedcap
and tinted headlight covers. Using traffic cameras across Bellevue, police
tracked the truck. Thank goodness for twenty four to seven
government surveillance. Eh well, it worked because they got lucky.
One frame had the plate. They ran it and discovered
that the red Ford was registered to a middle aged
man named Arthur Mendez. And just like that, the case
had a new name, a new direction, and a very
unexpected turn. In July of twenty twenty, forty eight year
old Baron Lee was on his way to work that
the car dealership when he was ambushed outside his apartment
by a stranger, shot nine times in the legs, chests,
and arms, and left for dead. But somehow Baron survived,
while detectives were stalking out a house in Mount Vernon,
tracking the red Ford pickup that helped the shooter. Vanish
Baron was facing something else entirely, a long, brutal recovery
without the use of his legs or his left arm.
Speaker 1: The first three months I was in a wheelchair. I
couldn't walk, I couldn't do anything other than go in
a wheelchair. When I was in the hospital, they wanted,
because it was the middle of COVID, they wanted to
send me home immediately. So they basically said, every day
we're going to have you try and walk a little bit.
And since you have two steps at home, your goal
is to walk down two steps. If you can walk
down two steps, we're sending you home. So I ended
up going home in seven days. But when I was
at home, you know, obviously I wasn't walking around.
Speaker 4: I was still in a wheelchair with Baron immobilized. DDE,
his wife, was the glue that held the family together.
Speaker 1: D D's amazing, an amazing woman, and I owe a
lot to her, not for just a shooting, but but
she went through while I was going through rehab, was
amazing emotionally, Physically, I don't know how she did it.
Speaker 2: Every day.
Speaker 1: I had to have my wounds dressed twice a day,
so she had to go through all the bullet wounds
and take out the gauze and put in new gauze
and you know, clean it all out every single day,
on top of taking care of Eric, feeding medications, all that,
and then taking care of Sophia and Nathan, cooking, cleaning, laundry,
all of that by herself with no help and still smiling,
still being positive, still being supportive, still encouraging, and not
asking for anything back at.
Speaker 4: The time, because that's the thing. Not only did Dedie
have to take care of Baron and her two teenage children,
but Baron's son from his first marriage, Eric, is special needs.
Eric has dystonia and hernictorus. These are two very serious
conditions which means it will require twenty four to seven
care for the rest of his life. Dystonia is a
developmental disorder that causes a person to have awkward posture
and move with twisted, repetitive motions. Crenicterus is a condition
developed at birth when billy rubin builds up in the
baby's brain. I think I said all those things correctly,
but I'm sure, you'll let me know anyway in the comments. Anyway,
this results in cerebral palsy, learning disabilities, and hearing loss.
But the reason this all happened to Eric was not
an act of God, but instead it was due to
negligence from the medical system. When Eric was born, you see,
Sharon decided at the last minute to change from her
obgyn to a midwife at a birthing center after her
obgyn told her she had to watch her wait during pregnancy.
Guess she didn't like that. Anyway. Eric was born safely
at the birthing center and then the new family returned home.
But after a few days, Baron noticed something was off.
Speaker 1: After they sent us home. The very next day, the
birthing center sends a home nurse to get Eric's he'll
proc test, which is a genetic testing, and so they
come over and then they leave, and then over the
next few days, I start noticing that Eric is severely jaundice.
He looks yellow. So I call the birthing center and
tell him, hey, you know, Eric's Eric's getting yellow and
little concerned, and they're like, oh, yeah, that's normal, babies
usually are a little jaundice. Just put him in some
sunlight and he should be okay. So I did that.
Next day, he's not getting better, and so I called
him up again. They're like, oh, no, no, that's normal.
He's you know, he's the Asian. Of course he's going
to be a little yellow, you know, like that's normal.
I was like, that's that's a weird you know, it
seemed weird, but as a first time parent, I wasn't
completely sure. So it wasn't till day seven, or the
evening of day seven. My son was just crying and
wouldn't stop crying. And he had been pretty even keel,
I mean, it was the demeanor was really quiet, you know,
he smiled, but he didn't cry, cry or do anything.
So this was concerning that he kept crying. So the
very next morning, this day eight, I go to my
normal doctor and I take him there and my doctor says, hey,
you need to take him to the emergency room.
Speaker 4: So Baron rushed his eight year old son to the
emergency room, praying that everything would be all right.
Speaker 1: I'm headed to the er with Sharon and basically she's like, no, no,
we need to stop with the birthing center, telling that
they all know what's wrong. With him, and so, you know,
against my better judgment, I listened to her. It took
her to the to the birthing center. We get to
the birthing center, they're like, oh, yeah, he's john this.
We need to probably give him some milk. So they
get bottled milk and they start feeding my son, and
about an hour later they realized that his temperature is
going up. It's spiking and he's not getting better, and
they're like, oh, you need to get to the hospital.
Speaker 4: Baron was beside himself, a million thoughts rushing through his
head as he packed up Eric and Sharon in the
car to go to the place he originally wanted to go,
the emergency room.
Speaker 1: As soon as we get into the er, a whole
team comes into the room, grabs him, puts them on
the stretcher, and takes them up to the newborn ICU
and like, we don't even know what's going on, and
so they're like, we'll have someone meet with you, and
they end up putting us into this room and about
a few minutes later, there's like ten or eleven doctors
and nurses come in and they're like, you know, we
got to you have some things to discuss with you
about Eric, and they tell us that he has a
severe case of hyper bilerub and he said there. They
say that most children, when their bill Erubin levels are
at fifteen or so, they'll put them under the blue
light and that usually brings them down. And they said
it goes over twenty. Typically they have to do a
blood transfusion, taking out the bad blood and putting in
new blood. They said my son was a forty seven.
Speaker 4: Eric's billy Ruben levels were astronomical. Baron knew that this
was serious, but he had no idea why it happened.
Why had Eric's levels spiked so severely.
Speaker 1: Apparently the person that did his genetic testing didn't submit
it right away, and so my son had a genetic
disorder called galactysimia where he can't break down galactos. And
galactos is one of the components in lactose. Lactose breaks
down into two parts, glucose and galactos, and the glucose
gets burned up as few and galactose usually gets passed
through the body through your urine. But the person that
has galactysimia is not able to break that down, and
that galactos will flow through the bloodstream and get trapped
up inside the and that's what happened to my son.
Speaker 4: The nurse from the birthing center had neglected to send
Eric's genetic testing oft in time, this very serious and
life threatening condition went unchecked, and then Eric was given
milk by the birthing center, which was essentially like giving
him poison.
Speaker 1: So the doctors are telling me all these scenarios about
how he could die. If he does survive, he's going
to be a vegetable, or best case scenario, if he
does survive, he'll have no motor skills, so he won't
be able to talk or walk. And fortunately he did survive.
But they were correct.
Speaker 4: Eric was six years old when Baron was shot, and
though he was not a vegetable by any means, he
did require constant help as a medically fragile kid. So
not only was Deeed tending to a frustrated and traumatized
husband in a wheelchair, she also had a son in
the same condition, plus two teenagers who were terrified that
there was a crazed psycho on the loose wanting to
kill their stepfather. It was absolute hell for DDI, but
She kept a smile on her face the entire time.
Just goes to show some women are truly fantastic. She
was the rock in this situation as Baron struggled.
Speaker 1: I wasn't easy to deal with as well. You know,
through that rehab I had, you know, emotional issues, I
had physical issues, so you know, I had temperaments. You know,
obviously with what I went through, my patience was very low,
and she had She was the water to my fire,
you know, and she made sure that she got me
balanced and told me things were going to be okay
and we're going to make it. And we had financial
issues that we were stressing about and a lot of
other things that you know, we had to deal with them.
Most people don't understand, you know.
Speaker 4: Well, Baron worked on his physical rehabilitation. The police were
setting their sights on the investigation. They checked out dde's
ex husband as well as Sharon. D d's X was
out of the state at the time of the shooting,
and then he admitted to having some beef with Baron.
He claimed he had nothing to do with it. He
checked out. Sharon said the same thing. In fact, she
told cops the only person I know in Bellevue is
my ex husband and we rarely talk. The exes were
checked off the list for now, and police narrowed their
focus on the owner of the shooter's getaway car, Arthur Mendez.
Arthur was about the same age as Baron, and he
lived in Mount Vernon, a town about an hour and
a half away from Baron's house in Bellevue. Instead of
just going right up to the door and knocking, police
decided to stake out the Mendes house to see if
they could get some activity on the truck. The red
F one fifty was the key. Detectives had pulled even
more footage from the day of the shooting and now
confirmed that the truck had arrived at Baron's apartment two
hours before the attack, circled back and exited. They were
also able to secure traffic light footage that showed a
clear shot of the passenger in the truck, a slender
person wearing a distinctive gold chain. This person, the alleged shooter,
also had a habit of tucking the seat belt under
his arm rather than across his chest. They were certain
that this truck was the key to finding Baron's killer,
as a group of officers staked out Arthur's house. Another
team investigated his life on social media. Arthur was fifty
six years old. He had a couple of kids, loved Jesus,
and was a big football guy, but he had no
known ties to Baron Lee. In fact, Arthur wasn't the
one who drove the red F one fifty. It belonged
to his son, seventeen year old Quincy Mendez. Quincy was
your typical high schooler who flexed on social media by
posing for bathroom selfies. He also devoted his life to
wrestling and had dreams of joining the military. He worked
at a tire shop and drove his F one to
fifty there for every shift, so the cops tracked him
one afternoon. They hit the jackpot when they noticed a
friend in the car with him. This friend wore a
gold chain and he tucked his seat belt under his arm,
just like the passenger on the surveillance video had BINGO.
But the detectives had to keep Baron and his family
in the dark. Chasing down Quincy was a covert operation
and they couldn't risk any gossip.
Speaker 1: I worked with the detectives. They kept asking me stuff
you know here and there, but they wouldn't disclose anything
that they found. They told me that they wouldn't because
they wanted to keep the integrity of the investigation in place.
And he said, I understand that. I said, I'm not
in aarage. I said, just do what you gotta do
to make sure you can get a conviction. That's all
I care about.
Speaker 4: The detectives found out that Quincy Mendez went to Mount
Vernon High School, and when they visited the schools administrators,
they were able to identify the alleged shooter as Joseph Good.
The school administrators confirmed that both Quincy and Joseph were
good kids, they never caused any trouble, and they had
zero criminal records. Still, it was time to talk with
Quincy and Joseph and find out what the hell was
going on at the station. Joseph folded his hands and
listened to the detectives.
Speaker 13: So before you decide on that, okay, we have some
informing that we're willing to share with you at this point. Okay,
So if you want, before we get into that, you
can hear us out about what we have to say
and then make a decision about that.
Speaker 2: Okay. Does that make sense? Yeah, that sounds so pretty.
Speaker 14: So you're okay with talking to us at this point?
Do you have to like answer questions and stuff? That's
up to you you, Like you said, you've read your
rights to Yeah, the right to answer questions. You don't
have to answer questions at any time.
Speaker 11: If you want to fill uncomfortable, you can just say, yeah,
I've heard what you wanted to say.
Speaker 14: I don't want to answer that, so I just rather
have like because I don't want to get about any
of the stuff.
Speaker 2: So I'm had to have so And that's fine. You're
you're more than entitled to that.
Speaker 11: What we like to do is just have you give
us opportunity to to share with you what we have
and then you can make a decision.
Speaker 2: Does that make sense? Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 4: Joseph didn't seem to really grasp what was happening, but
like a good alleged hit man, you wanted to seem agreeable,
so he nodded along as the cops told him about
the attempted murder they were investigating in Bellevue.
Speaker 2: So when, like I said, we had that shitting in Bellevue.
Speaker 11: After we went back, we found this this vehicle point
into a gas station, don bellgue. You recognize that pickup
at all them? Yeah, kind of, I don't know. Yeah,
I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, you've never seen that pickup before. I know
a few people who've on those. Anybody that you know
that owns a pickup like that?
Speaker 4: Joseph said his friend Quincy had a truck like that,
but they didn't hang out that much anymore. In fact,
the last he heard the clutch went out on Quincy's truck.
Speaker 2: Because you said the clutch has been out for a
long time. I was just trying to put a reference
on six five, six months. I don't know, five or
six months clutches, I don't I don't know. I'm not
exactly se So there's that picture.
Speaker 14: Therefore I answer all the questions.
Speaker 2: I feel like I'm doing it.
Speaker 4: And just like that, Joseph shut up, smart boy. Because
the cops weren't done with them, not even close. They
started churning out warrants, pulling everything they could from Joseph
and Quincy's iCloud accounts, Instagram, snapchat, emails, text you know,
the entire profile of your life you put online. At first,
it was just teenage noise, selfies, memes, dumb jokes all useless,
But two months in, buried in the noise of selfies
and memes, a detective spotted it. An email receipt from
brick House Security, a company that sells GPS trackers. Why
would a teenager need a GPS tracker in the's car
was still in evidence. Investigators checked under the tailgate and
lo and behold, there it was, the GPS tracker, still
clinging to the frame with a strip of cheap duct tape.
The detectives contacted brick House, pulling every record they had
related to the serial number on the device, and it
was registered to none other than Sharon Kelly Baron's ex wife.
Speaker 6: Yes, I purchased a GPS tracker from you guys about
five years ago, and it's the subscription, of course is
no longer asked? Is I am able to log in?
But it looks like you guys may have changed the website.
Speaker 7: Or service or whatever that you've used. I want to
reactivate that device, and then I'm not sure how. I'm
not sure how I can if it's like track you
or what.
Speaker 1: Warser devices are, it still looks the same.
Speaker 10: So would you like to reactivate your service or your tracker?
Speaker 7: I would like to reactivate it.
Speaker 4: Baron was right. This was all Sharon, and apparently she'd
been plotting this for five years.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 4: The cops had to figure out how thirty year old
Sharon got two teenage boys to shoot her ex husband.
I'll tell you what, Some women out there are pure shit. Anyway,
Joseph lawyered up when they took him into custody, but Quincy.
Quincy wasn't quite as smart.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, we had an incident in Bellevie, and that's
what we're here to talk to you about.
Speaker 13: They told you what you were arrested for.
Speaker 2: They did.
Speaker 8: I was asking and they were just like, shut up
and just leaver these typetives.
Speaker 2: That's all right, That's all I told me in honest Okay.
Speaker 9: Yeah, So like we said, it was, it's a pretty
serious thing. But as we said, who right now? Who
think you're more minimal? But I think you've a minimal
and you're.
Speaker 11: Involvement in it, Like I think there's other people that
are more.
Speaker 2: I don't know, let's explain it.
Speaker 11: So there's other people that obviously haven't played a greater
role in what happened.
Speaker 2: I'm not catching him up. I think as we talk
about it and probably make more sense.
Speaker 13: But okay, So to be clear, you're under rest for.
Speaker 3: An assaults salt and assault, yes, uh, and it's a
pretty serious one.
Speaker 2: What salt you're want to solve this? Well, you don't
like beating up someone, harming another human being? Yeah, harming
another human being.
Speaker 3: We also know that there is another person involves that
needs to be held accountable for a much larger role
in this and than you seem to have played. Okay,
and that's the big part of what we're interested in.
Speaker 11: Today, right, there's a reason we're talking to you, so
we know there's more to what you guys did when
you're in Belfield your time, because we've already talked with him.
Speaker 4: The detectives told Quincy they already knew what happened, which
was of course a lie, and now they needed his
side of the story. Who falls for that shit? Oh right, right, right?
Dumb people which are usually you know, criminals. Quincy said
that when Joseph approached him about driving to Bellevue, he
wasn't in his right mind.
Speaker 2: I can't rather remember.
Speaker 14: Because I was on shrooms and I was on shrom
you know, you and Jada were smoking strings.
Speaker 4: For the first time smoking shrooms.
Speaker 9: Huh.
Speaker 4: To be fair, this Cops drug education probably came from
a Vhess tape. Quincy admitted that he was at Joseph's
house tripping on shrooms with Joseph's sister when Joseph came
home and said they were going to Bellevue the next day.
Joseph said he had something big to do and there'd
be money in it too.
Speaker 2: He told you told me at the end, like do
you want do you want five grand? I was? I
pretty much came in then option okay, I said, yeah.
How much did he say he was getting? I don't know.
I did. That's the standard question negotiating one on one.
He said, well, you give me a god, I mean
that's a lot of money. Five grand?
Speaker 9: Yeah, I just find how much does he get in?
Speaker 2: Well? I think he said like probably thirteen His cut
was thirteen years was five? So eighteen total? Or was
there another person in there just getting a cut of
that that? I don't know?
Speaker 8: He just told me for me said it was just
he's game pained on game paid as it does it.
Speaker 15: So the question becomes, where did that money come from?
Speaker 2: Right? Because I haven't gotten any money, but.
Speaker 15: What I'm saying, is he didn't have that money to
pay you, Right, He's getting thirteen from somebody, right, yeah,
So what does that lead you to believe is just
happening here? Someone told him to do it, right, Yeah,
he's he's being paid. He's breaking you off a piece
for being a driver.
Speaker 2: Basically, right, Okay.
Speaker 4: Quincy swore he had no idea who the money was
coming from, but he was high, and five thousand dollars
sounded pretty good. Money was coming from, but he was high,
and five thousand dollars sounded pretty good for a drive
to Bellevue, even if it was some sketchy shit like oh,
I don't know emptying a clip? Oh, before you say,
it's a magazine not a clip. Just shit the fuck up?
Speaker 2: What does it mean to take a whole clip? Or
someone shoot someone? So, you know, but yeah, but in
my head, it's just like.
Speaker 8: I thought it was just fluffy, honestly, like.
Speaker 2: He who does you know that could have put him
onto a job like that? Put him on a job
like that.
Speaker 15: You know, Like, who's gonna say I need somebody to
get shut I.
Speaker 2: Know, I'll call you.
Speaker 1: That.
Speaker 2: Not anyone I would know of all my phraser. I see.
Speaker 4: The more they talk, the more it really did seem
like Quincy was just the tag along who got roped
into something too big for his warped little mind to handle.
We are only showing you about two percent. This excruciating
interrogation went on for nearly four hours.
Speaker 2: So is it some scrapp you're supposed to go knock
off or what? No, you're know what kind of person? No?
Did you ever find out what kind of person it was?
He ever talk about it?
Speaker 11: Just it could have been just a normal Joe Moo
citizen who's walking down the street.
Speaker 2: Or was there a game banger or what? Who was
the person I was supposed to be taken out? Oh No,
I don't know.
Speaker 8: He just talk about the dude that that that this
dude that was it.
Speaker 2: He did say anything. It was just like this dude
right here. I was like, what about him?
Speaker 10: He's like, we need he, we need the club.
Speaker 2: So yeah, he told me we need to do what
he said Again, I didn't the clip the club? The clip?
What does that mean to you? He was gonna cap him? Yeah?
Speaker 8: Get I'm telling you guys straight up, I'm being honest.
I mean everything I am right now, to be helpful
to you guys right now. I do not know who
he's connected with. I do not know who his big
homies are. He told me I did it. It was
fun that I did it. I regret it. I shouldn't
have it just for money or any But I don't
know whose his connections are.
Speaker 4: But the cops didn't need Quincy to confirm what they
already knew. Sharon Kelly was behind it. They had the
brickhouse GPS data, they had the emails to Joseph. They
also had the texts between Sharon and the boys solidifying
their guilt.
Speaker 1: And the conversation between Sharon and Joseph was that the
job wasn't done, that they'll need to go back, and
Joseph will say, well, we need money up front because
you didn't pay the same thing yet, so we need
some of that money, or at least half upfront. And
apparently Quincy said he didn't want to take part of
any of it. They didn't want to participate or help
or have anything to do with it anymore.
Speaker 4: So when the cops showed up at Sharon's door with handcuffs,
she didn't ask what is this all about? She didn't
feign ignorance. She dropped her coffee cup and screamed inside
to her brother, call my lawyer. But what still haunted
detectives was the question no evidence could answer. Why Why
would the mother of a special needs child who saw
him every weekend hire teenage boys to kill her ex husband.
Sharon wasn't going to talk, but the cops didn't need
her to because Baron was alive and willing to tell
them everything. In early July of twenty twenty, Baron Lee
was shot nine times by a teenage hitman. He should
have died, but somehow he didn't. Now his ex wife,
Sharon Kelly, sat behind bars, the mastermind of it all.
She wasn't talking, but to her dismay, Baron was alive
and he remembered everything. Because what no one knew then
was that Sharon hadn't just tried to kill him once.
She'd been laying the groundwork for years.
Speaker 1: She had tried to run me over twice prior once
in twenty fifteen. This is before I ended up fleeing
the state of Washington because I wasn't getting help. She
actually had me on her hood and she was She
actually tried to hit me. I ended up jumping up
and ended up on her hood and she drove, you know,
couple hundred yards before I was able to roll off
the car and get away from her. The second time
was in front of the Kirkland Police Department during a
cussy chanceror and they said that basically it was a
themistic issue and that we would have to deal with
it in family court, which just boggled my mind. So
someone tries to kill me, but it's a family issue.
So I ended up going to family court and I'm
told in family court that we just need to learn
to co parent better.
Speaker 4: Sharon and Baron's amicable phase was short lived. They met
online in two thousand and five. Baron was working in
Nevada at the time, and Sharon was young, pretty and
looking for someone to take care of her. Though they
were over a decade apart, they pursued a relationship through
phone calls and texts, and before long, Sharon left Washington
to meet Baron in Nevada.
Speaker 1: And she wanted to come down to Vegas and she
asked if it was okay to bring her to younger
brother with her to meet me, and you know, stay
a couple of weeks, and so I was like, yeah,
you know, if you want to come down and visit,
no problem. You know, I was single at the time,
nobody lived with me and you know, at space. So
she came down to Vegas and she brought her her
brother Timmy and her brother Joshua, who were like five
and I want to say five and seven or five
and eight at the time.
Speaker 4: With her young brothers and toe, Sharon showed up in
Las Vegas, and surprisingly, Baron welcomed them with open arms.
Being a product of the foster care system himself, Baron
just couldn't turn anyone away.
Speaker 1: We hit it off, and then, you know, the interaction
I had with her brothers surprised her as well. Her
brothers were so used to just doing whatever they wanted
and having you know, no discipline, and so when they
came to stay with me, you know, set some ground
rules and basically the way they treated her was not
very good, and I, you know, I told him that
that's not you know, allowed, you know, and that kind
of stuff, and started parenting them. And the two weeks
that they were going to stay ended up turning into
like four months thying with me.
Speaker 4: Their relationship moved quickly. They decided to move back to
Washington so Sharon could be closer to the family. Baron
agreed without hesitation. After settling in, they got married. Baron
believed they shared the same ambitions, a driven, adventurous future.
Sharon had away with words. Soon they decided to start
a family. Then Eric was born. His birth was traumatic,
leaving him severely medically fragile. Baron stepped up. Sharon did not.
Speaker 1: I worked in the car in the street at the time.
I worked for Toyota, and I worked twelve hour days
to get up in the morning at six, and I'd
come home about six and I would find Eric so
looking with in his walker or you know, his little
walker thing, and he'd be crying and screaming, and Sharon
would be sitting on the couch watching Korean dramas or
whatever it is that she was watching, and she would say, oh, yeah,
he's been like that all day. And I'm like, then,
why aren't you changing him? Why aren't you doing anything.
It would take me, you know, three four hours to
calm him down, you know, because he had been, you know,
in that high emotional state for so long.
Speaker 4: Whether she was depressed, overwhelmed or just playing lazy. Sharon's
mothering went from bad to worse. Barn new things were unmanageable.
He tried to get help for his wife, but she
insisted she was fine, and so was Eric.
Speaker 1: So the last job for me was that I found
out that she was having Eric. Someone babysit Eric, like
they're not medically trained to babysit him, but they were
babysitting him while she was going out and having an affair.
Speaker 4: Baron had enough, not out of anger but fear. His son.
Eric's health was on the line with estonia and her nictorus.
Every day required constant specialized care, and Sharon couldn't handle it.
She wasn't just failing as a mother, she couldn't even
be trusted as his nurse.
Speaker 1: And so I was like, okay, I'm done, you know,
like this is it. So I came home one day
and I picked up Eric and I was trying to
leave the house and she's asking what you're doing, and
I'm saying, I'm leaving him, taking Eric with me, and
she got mad and started pulling on Eric, and I
was afraid he was gonna get hurt, so I gave
him to her and she starts screaming, you know, like
like she's being abused or something, and just at the
top of her boys screaming, and the neighbors end up
calling the police. When the police come, and she says, oh, yeah,
that I'm abusing her and abusing my son, breaking furniture
and doing all this stuff. And I'm like, I haven't
even touched her, I haven't done anything to her, and
I haven't broken anything. And so the police do their
investigation and they realize that none of what she's saying
is true, but they advised that one of us leave,
and I said, well, she has my son. If she
wants to go and leave with him, then go ahead.
I'll just deal with it in court. And so she
takes off.
Speaker 4: It was the point of no return. Two weeks later,
Sharon filed the restraining order and the state put Eric
in her care. That's what the state does. Favors women
in situations like this. It happens all the time. Must
be that male privilege I keep hearing about. That's when
the war started. For the next five years, Baron fought
for custody while Sharon played the system, demanding support and
collecting benefits. Her son wasn't a child doer anymore. He
was a paycheck. At least that's what her family convinced
her of. The woman Baron had fallen in love with
had transformed into a bitter, entitled mother who expected sympathy
from the world because she had a special needs child.
A lot of that going around these days.
Speaker 1: Her her family are you know what we call them
career welfare cases, you know. And then her mom basically
lives off welfare, uses welfare because she has multiple kids,
so she uses welfare to survive. And their mentality and
I saw this in text where like, you know, oh
you can do this? Is this you don't have to work,
you know, you can get welfare, you can live off
his child support. So it was more of like, oh,
you know, I don't have to do anything anymore, and
I can, you know, abuse the system and that type
of stuff.
Speaker 4: It became clear that Sharon wanted sole custody Eric, not
to care for him, but because there was a million
dollar settlement tied to his birth injury. Though they could
not sue the birthing center directly, the insurance paid them
for what happened to Eric.
Speaker 1: I took that money and I put into a special
needs trust so later on, when Eric's eighteen, hopefully that
money will grow and help you take care of him
when we're not there anymore. One of the things that
I found when we broke up because I access to
all of her phone records as well, and so there
was text messages where she had planned, you know, to
siphon money out of our accounts. Also when we break up,
that they were going to utilize the courts to force
me to pay child support, and that eventually she's wanting
to get access to the trust fund money.
Speaker 4: Sharon had custody of Eric until he was three years old,
and during that time she did her best to put
him in a more medically fragile state, demanding a feeding tube,
a tracheotomy, and a do not Resuscitate order, all things
doctor said he didn't need. So she hospital shopped until
she got the feeding tube and the DNR. What a bitch.
Speaker 1: During this time, I expressed a ton of concerns because
he was being hospitalized, he was being sick, she was
trying to do things that didn't seem appropriate. But because
I didn't have medical medical making decisions, she was able
to go to the hospitals and convey what she wanted.
Speaker 4: That's when CPS stepped in. Sharon was diagnosed with Munchausen
by proxy and deemed unfit. Eric was placed in foster
care pending a parenting plan. For Baron. It was a nightmare,
a legal disaster. His life narrowed to one goal, bringing
Eric home, but the courts leaned towards Sharon. I wonder why, oh, right, right? Female?
This was despite her erratic behavior and her obvious lack
of concern for her own child's well being. Then came
twenty seventeen, a custody exchange at the Kirkland police station.
Sharon didn't just lose control. She threw Eric on the
floor instead of placing him in a wheelchair. That changed everything.
For the first time, someone besides Baron saw her rage firsthand.
Baron and Dedi took Eric home. He stayed with him
full time, but legally, Sharon was still considered the primary caregiver.
Let's face it, the family court system is more than broken,
it's pure shit. Anyway, Baron didn't water to have contact
with Eric for obvious reasons. Shared custody was just not
an option for him.
Speaker 1: She was after Eric. Was the way that Eric was
being hospitalized or the things that she was doing. It
looked to me like she wanted him to die, but
in a way that no one was going to question
her and say that he's it's because he's medically fragile,
or this is you know, this is the cause of
his death is because he had complications.
Speaker 4: There was one incident where Eric's home nurse aid found
him nearly dead at Sharon's house and he had to
be rushed to the hospital. Things like this just kept happening.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing is the family court system ignored
it all. Like the GL was saying, hey, this this
boy is not safe around her. He needs you know,
and they ignored it all. They when it came to
whatever she did, it doesn't matter who spoke on my behalf,
whether it's me was, whether it was a GL, whether
it was a social work, it didn't matter. The courts
never listened.
Speaker 4: Baron, Indeedie cared for Eric while Sharon had visitation. What
she really wanted was money. If Baron was gone and
Eric returned to her care, she thought she could get it.
So she went through her little brother, the same one
Baron once looked after in Vegas, and she found Joseph Good,
setting in motion her final plot to get rid of
her ex husband. Sharon's little brother put the word out
amongst his friends at high school, and Joseph took the bait.
It was that easy. With Baron dead, the money would
be all hers money, money, money, money, or so she thought.
Speaker 1: But what Sharon didn't realize is the way the trust
is set up, unless it's needed for medical reasons, that
money will never be pulled out, and he can't be
pulled out. It's cash. It's going to be pulled out
to pay for medical reasons only. So in other words,
if there's a medical bill, then it goes directly to
the medical company, not to us, and then we pay
them the medical company. But that wasn't what she thought.
She thought she would have access to it.
Speaker 4: For years, Sharon had threatened Baron and worse, their son,
but what she did was so outrageous, so unhinged, that
when Baron spoke up, he sounded like a man describing
the plot of a bad movie. No one believed him,
and the family courts only emboldened her. Every time Eric
landed in the hospital or CPS got involved, she was
given a pass because she's the mom years of getting
away with it convinced her of one thing she could
get away with murder.
Speaker 1: As horrible as you may think that the shooting was
shooting was the best thing that happened to me. The
shooting gave me a voice. A lot of men go
through this, and this is one of the hardest things
as a man sitting on an island by yourself. I
was telling people what was going on at work, my
personal life, my family, and I would always get that
eye roll, you know, not you know, not blatant, but
you could tell like, yeah, he's full of shit type
of look right, like, oh, he's not telling all the
truth or he's exaggerating. But the shooting a lot of
people to see that, now what I say is true, right,
Like what I've been saying all my life is true.
Speaker 4: Joseph Good was charged with attempted murder and unlawful possession
of a firearm, then sentenced to thirteen years in prison.
Quincy Mendez received eight years for the assault on Baron
and was sent to a juvenile detention center. Baron has
since forgiven both of the boys. Sharon, on the other hand,
was eventually offered a plea deal, taking her charge down
to solicitation of attempted murder in the second degree, she'd
be looking at thirteen years, not twenty five. Then for
shits and giggles, they lowered her charge a smidge more,
probably because of the tits and puss, you know.
Speaker 1: But in the plea deal, the prosecutor offered her one
hundred and fifty months, And my argument to the courts
was that the fact that they were reducing this the plea,
she should have got the maximum of the reduction plea,
not an agreed average of that plea. And so the
reason I wanted that was one, at one hundred and
fifty months, she would get out when Erik is seventeen.
And my concern is that I'd have to deal with
this family court bullshit again on top of having to
deal with her trying to kill me. So I told
the court that one, she shouldn't get less time than
the shooter or the driver, So she should get one
hundred and sixty the maximum hundred and sixty five months,
which will allow me to set up guardianship and do
everything that's needed before she gets out, so Eric will
already be eighteen by the time she gets out.
Speaker 4: It was abysmal. It was outrageous. How could Sharon receive
a lighter sentence than the teenagers she hired to shoot Baron?
Without her, none of this would have ever happened.
Speaker 1: That's what appalled me. Them all is like I even
stated that in court, you know the fact that she
not just ruined my life, in my son's life, but
she ruined two teenagers as well. You know, I s
They're like, you know, she deserves a lot more than
what she was given.
Speaker 4: Sharon is behind bars, and she'll be there until her
son turns eighteen. But for now, one legal problem remains
that Baron is still trying to fight.
Speaker 1: Technically, Sharon still has custody. I wanted to go to
trial and get custody, but she was in county for
three years, and during that time they wouldn't allow me
to move forward with the family court case, saying that
she had a right to be there and that I
couldn't move forward. So this whole time, I've been waiting
to get custody, and because it took so long, they
closed the case and I had to petition to reopen
the family court case so I can still fight for custody.
I still don't have custody.
Speaker 4: It's unbelievable, But barn is still fighting for custody, for control,
for peace. Sharon is behind bars for literal murder, but
not forever. One day she'll walk free, and as co parents,
their paths will cross again. Can you imagine they share
a child? Not just any child, but Eric, a nonverbal,
vulnerable boy, will need care for the rest of his life.
Will he ever say he wants to see his mother?
Will she even care now that the money's gone? Sharon
Kelly was evil, not misguided, just plain evil, munch housing
by proxy, delusions of grandeur, abusing a medically fragile child.
She was dangerous and calculated, and for years she had
Eric all to herself. Baron still lies awake, wondering what
she did during that time, the early years shape a
child forever, and if she left him in filth when
they were married, through him on the police station floor
in front of strangers, then what actually happened behind closed
doors when she was alone, when she could get away
with anything. But Baron can't live in those shadows, not anymore.
This isn't just about Sharon's twisted plan to kill Baron.
It's about the man who survived it to be a father.
That should have been the end of it, but it wasn't.
It was the start of something bigger, a second chance
for Baron. Now he's on the advisory board of a
nonprofit organization for foster children called Root twenty one, and
he's fighting to change the system, pushing laws to protect
fathers and family court, including one bill in the House
and another in the Senate. And at home with his
wife died and his kids, he's building the life Sharon
tried to destroy. Baron didn't just survive by luck. He
survived for a reason. For Eric. Everything he does is
for his son. What a great dad. The shooting didn't
ruin him, It revealed the truth. Sharon is a threat,
and in twenty thirty six, she'll be out, free to Rome,
free to plot. Baron knows she's not done after thirteen
years in a cell to stew on vengeance. So maybe
he'll move to another state, to another country, whatever it takes,
because in thirteen years he'll need to disappear before she
finds him again and does even worse. Who knows what
that bitch is capable of.
Speaker 7: Well.
Speaker 16: That episode was produced by Mish Barber way, one of
our one of our long time producers. We've had producers
here for I don't know what, six, seven, eight years now,
so try to keep track of how long they put around.
Speaker 4: She's very talented. Though very talented lady always puts that
great stuff. I'm your host, Mike Boudet. In case you're lost,
just browsing through the Apple catalog. If you like this show,
you can help support it. You can go find a
lot more of it at Swordskaille dot com or download
our app on iOS and Android.
Speaker 11: Its s