[dramatic music playing]
[Matt] I have vivid memories of this place
that don't ever go away.
Takes me back every time I drive by this location
because I drive up and down
at least two, three times a week.
Thirty years ago, I came here with Ken, my dad.
My dad had sent me downstairs to go wait in the truck.
Unfortunately, I had to go to the bathroom
and I held it as long as I could
and I finally decided to go upstairs.
If I would've never had to go in the bathroom,
I would've never walked back upstairs
and never seen anything.
This was the first time I had ever seen a dead body
that was not in a casket.
That's something that I can never get out of my head.
Every time I go to sleep, I picture things
along these lines.
[suspenseful music playing]
[detective speaking]
[Kenneth speaking]
[detective speaking]
[Kenneth speaking]
The stuff he did was stuff
that would give most people nightmares
for the rest of their lives.
There's lots of people that didn't believe me,
lots of people thought I was joking.
And they waited way too long
and too many people got hurt after that.
I wouldn't have believed the kid, either.
But they should've.
[dramatic music playing]
[Matt] I was born in Cleveland,
given up for adoption.
I was adopted at birth by my mom Cathy.
When I turned about seven years old,
she introduced me to the man she was planning to marry,
and that was Ken.
Not long after, we were sitting at the kitchen table
and I had heard some stories through church about Ken
and that he wasn't the greatest person.
Matt?
Come sit down a minute.
[Matt] My grandpa and my mom
told me that Ken had went to prison.
He had been convicted of a murder charge.
I was told that he had ran away from home
at 18 years old.
And he had needed cash, found somebody, robbed him,
the robbery went bad, and the gentleman
that was robbed lost his life.
It was a long time ago.
He didn't mean to kill anyone
and he's sorry for what he did.
My grandpa said that Ken had made a bad choice
and that people make mistakes
and that's why it was okay to give him a second chance.
And we all have to learn how to forgive.
Ken served his time, 15 years,
just like anybody else, Ken deserves a second chance.
And since he was out, then apparently,
other people thought he deserved
a second chance as well.
- Do you understand? - Yes.
So to me, being little for him to be out,
then in my head, he had done something
to deserve to be out.
There's lots of times I don't think Ken
should've ever got out of prison the first time.
If he wouldn't have got out of prison the first time,
there would've been a lot of people that were saved.
[suspenseful music playing]
This was the kitchen table at the 7th Street home,
and he was actually teaching me
how to play 500 rummy.
This was the kitchen table we were sitting
when I first remember
getting choked.
One of the first positive memories I have of Ken
was the card games.
But it didn't take long after meeting my dad
for me to start seeing other sides of him
that not everybody saw.
[dramatic music playing]
One afternoon, we were sitting down
at the kitchen table and he started to tell a story
about getting into a fight in prison.
So the next thing you know,
I have three guys have me cornered.
He had gotten jumped by three people
and he used a broom handle to defend himself
and killed those people while he was in prison.
I laughed at him and thought it was kind of like,
"Yeah, yeah, right."
And then the next thing I know,
I got a hand around my throat.
Are you calling me a liar?
He choked me and said, "Don't ever call me a liar."
And I do remember hearing that over and over,
"Don't call me a liar."
My mom made him stop and he never touched me
like that ever again.
God, what are you doing, Ken?
Are you crazy?
He never laid his hands on me,
but I've also made sure to never insinuate
or call him a liar, whether I believed him or not.
He liked to tell a lot of stories.
And sometimes the stories became very wild.
And I just rather I believed the story,
didn't believe the story.
I've never-never said I didn't believe him.
Because I knew how he would react if I called him a liar.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Matt] He loved to teach me everything.
I mean, he taught me how to hunt, trap, uh,
shoot guns, he taught me how to do plumbing, electric,
construction, he taught me everything
that he could possibly teach me.
Ken always felt that hunting and trapping was important.
He, uh, had built a trapping room
on the side of our garage
and he hung the animals in the back
and this was the first time I had ever went actually
with him to trap beaver.
And this was one of the beavers that we brought back.
Sometimes going in the room bothered me
seeing some of the animals just hanging there.
There was always animals either hanging in there
or caged in there.
This photo was taken about a year
after the incident with the possum.
We were out trapping one day
and there was a very large possum
that had its leg stuck in a trap.
And he had his pistol.
He's still alive.
Here. Give me the stick.
But instead of just shooting the animal
that was in the trap that day,
he decided to take his little wooden...
He called it his "beater" but it's just basically
a little wooden club.
He smacked the possum the first time
and he kind of laughed because it didn't die.
He just continued to hit it over
and then he'd wait and he'd do it again.
And it would either move or twitch or try to stand up
and it would breathe, and he'd hit it again,
and he'd back away again, and he'd laugh,
and he's like, "This thing won't... this thing won't die."
Look, he's fighting. He's fighting. [laughs]
The entire time he's hitting the possum,
he looked demented.
His eyes were blank.
He had a really weird smile on his face.
I would say it was a sadistic smile.
I've never seen him smile like that before.
[laughs]
I'd seen him kill animals before
but that possum was just... I don't know,
he looked like he was enjoying it.
It had to be five, ten minutes
when it could've just been ended in a matter of seconds.
Let's go.
Once the possum was finally dead,
he handed it to me and I had to carry it
back to the truck.
Let's go.
[Matt] It was upsetting.
I had never seen him like that before.
And I never understood it.
But as I thought back about it, I thought,
you know, he had told me the story at the kitchen table
about beating people with a broom handle.
And I saw him beat a possum with, uh,
his little beater, as he called it.
That was the first time in my memory
that I thought maybe that story was completely true.
I started to believe his stories more after that one.
[suspenseful music playing]
Ken always had guns,
but he wasn't allowed to own a gun
being that he was in prison and he was a felon.
It's why he always had them hidden.
Ken had guns hidden under a fish tank he made.
He had an old vintage coke machine
that had guns hidden in it.
Guns under the bed, guns in his trucks.
His favorite gun was a 9x18 9mm.
That gun traveled with him everywhere.
I remember the first time he actually cleaned his gun
in front of me.
Come in.
He would wipe off each round
as he put it in the clip, he would have gloves on.
Here.
[Matt] So, his prints weren't on the bullets.
He told me every time I touched a gun
to make sure I wiped it off completely.
You never wanna leave your prints on a weapon.
And I was fascinated because I was listening
to him tell stories.
Even when you got gloves, you can't take that chance.
[Matt] He started to tell me about his past
and stuff that he had done,
being a problem solver was his words for it.
In Ken's own words, a problem solver was a hitman.
And when people ask me to solve their problems,
this is the one I use.
And he claimed to be a problem solver
for a few families.
But there are rules.
[Matt] There were many jobs that he claimed to have done,
many situations that he's claimed to have solved.
I can think of probably 15 stories at least.
If he said he had a problem to take care of,
he would disappear.
He'd be gone for a few days.
He'd come back a little bit different.
He'd be a little more closed off.
Now get outta here.
I'll be back in a few weeks.
[Matt] I had seen movies that have had hitmen,
so I had the basic idea of what a hitman was.
I remember back then when I was little,
I wasn't a hundred percent sure.
As I got older, I completely believed that he did that.
He was a killer.
[dramatic music playing]
[Matt] When I first met Ken, we used to go
to garage sales all the time.
If there was a garage sale, he'd stop.
Because he always wanted to see
what he could find and make money.
One afternoon, we stopped at a yard sale
and there was a drafting table, drawing table.
I love to color, I love to draw.
Ken, check this out.
When I saw the drafting table,
I wanted it more than anything.
I begged for it.
Can I get it, please?
Let me ask the lady.
And I remember there was a lady that was there,
he started to negotiate with her
at that point for the table.
How much for that table?
Uh, that table there is $85.
[Matt] He kept trying to get it
but he didn't wanna pay her price.
I'll give you $40 for it.
[Matt] His favorite thing was to negotiate.
And he couldn't negotiate it.
Come on.
But Ken...
I said, let's go, now.
[Matt] When we went to leave, he was very...
He sort of had been livid
that he couldn't get it for what he wanted it for.
He kept saying, "Oh, I'll get it"
or "I'll get you one."
He kept reassuring me that I'd get it.
He was angry.
We left the yard sale.
And he took me home, dropped me off,
and he left me there.
He left me at home for about an hour.
He came back and picked me back up.
And then we went back to the garage sale,
the drafting table was already outside the garage
which wasn't where it was when we were there earlier.
And he said that it was mine.
Wait here.
I'm going to get the table.
There was nobody else at the garage sale.
I did not see the woman at the garage sale any longer.
I thought he went back and I thought that, maybe,
he went over there to negotiate and got it for me.
He is persistent,
so I didn't think anything of it.
Hurry up. Come help me. Hurry up.
[Matt] The only change I noticed in Ken
when we went back would be the fact
that he was in a hurry.
As soon as he came out of the garage,
it was, you know, it's time to go,
we gotta go, let's load it.
And we didn't even strap it down,
which we always strap stuff down.
We load the drafting table up and we left.
And I remember when he drove home,
he drove home a different way than we drove the first time.
It was in a matter of a couple days,
the cops were at our door.
And they're questioning him about somebody dying
because somebody recognized the car at the house.
That woman was dead.
I didn't know who until later on.
It might have been couple years
before I realized that the two were connected.
Looking back now, I know he's the one that did it.
And I know the cops know he did it.
But the cops can't prove it.
I was only at home, I mean, at the most an hour
and somewhere in that hour window,
I believe she lost her life.
I feel that me asking for the table
is what caused her her life.
And that's, you know, that's something
that I have lived with for, what, 30 some years.
I wanna say I'm sorry.
I feel totally responsible, totally.
One hundred percent, if I wouldn't have said it,
then that wouldn't have happened.
And I don't think I've ever admitted that out loud.
[suspenseful music playing]
Ken always did odd jobs for everybody.
He'd do everything from plumbing to work on bars,
to do roofs, built garages, ripped stuff down,
moved people.
He often brought me along just to help him out.
I was 12, maybe 13 years old,
Ken took me along to another job.
This time, we were helping a friend of his, Patty,
move some furniture from one apartment to another.
Ken was the maintenance man for that building.
We had taken some stuff up already, and Ken says,
"Go ahead and wait in the car. I'll be down in a minute.
And we'll get finished up."
This looks like the last of it.
I went down in the car and sat there.
Five, maybe ten minutes,
I ended up having to go to the bathroom.
So I got out of the truck, which I was told not to do.
And I walked up the steps to the new apartment,
I turned right to go in the door,
I turned the door handle and I saw her laying there,
I saw her bloody and naked.
I knew she was dead but I didn't know
what had happened.
I just seen her ten, twenty minutes earlier.
I tried to block this memory out
as much as possible through the years.
But I remember, I screamed.
I screamed and screamed.
[suspenseful music playing]
He put his hand over my mouth
and he forced me down the steps.
And my feet were barely touching the steps
as I was going down them.
He had got me out as fast as possible.
What's going on?
[Matt] I kept asking what happened.
And I was told there was an accident.
That's all I was ever told.
You understand?
[Matt] I was told to say I was never there.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Matt] As soon as I got home, I told my mom.
I thought that my mom believed it.
I think my mom was blinded to everything going on.
My mom still tells me to this day
that if she realized what was going on,
she would have stopped it a long time ago.
I remember being told that I pretty much
didn't see what I saw.
The cops were there to talk to him that day.
The cops asked me if I was there.
And I was told to tell them, "No."
If I would have said "Yes",
maybe the cops would have found a way to question me.
But all of a sudden, it was dropped.
I mean, they didn't question him anymore.
Once again, there was no evidence.
Between the police releasing him,
between everybody telling me that, you know,
you didn't see it, you weren't there,
I started to doubt what I saw.
I'm, like, "What did I really...
Did I really see that?"
And every time that the cops do show up,
they question him and let him go,
maybe I'm the one that was seeing it wrong.
Rationalizing what I saw, I kept trying to tell myself
that it was, like, maybe she fell, it was an accident.
When she was getting out of the shower,
she fell and got hurt and he laid her there.
I doubted myself for a very long time.
The yellowish tan brick building behind me
is where Patricia was killed.
She didn't deserve what Ken did to her.
She was one of the nicest women that I've ever met.
I was joking around with her
on the first trip up the stairs,
everything seemed to be fine.
And next time I walked up, she was just lying there.
[suspenseful music playing]
We came out the open door right there,
to the left of the electric meters.
And we got into the vehicle right here in the middle
of the... What would have been in the middle
of the white brick building and we left.
I believe what happened had to have been quick.
At least I... I hope it was quick.
I hope that it wasn't drawn out.
And I hope she didn't lay there when he took me away
and potentially suffer.
I believe he strangled her and I believe he cut her,
but I was turned around so quickly.
I mean, I have somewhat of a vision in my head
of what I saw but I was told for a long time
that I didn't see what I saw.
He just kept saying that there was an accident
and we had to get out.
I had just seen her, everything was fine moments before,
now you're naked in the middle of the floor.
That's not... that's not an accident.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Matt] Ken did a lot of home improvement jobs.
He also installed security systems.
And Ken had previously installed an alarm system
on a home and he told me I needed to come with him
to help him fix a problem that they were having
with this alarm.
We showed up and the woman that lived there was...
Said she was getting ready to make cookies.
We were working on the alarm system.
Ken seemed, actually, relatively happy.
I mean, I didn't see any issues.
I didn't see anything wrong.
I was in the bedroom.
He was in the living room, dining room area.
[gunshot]
And I heard a very loud, pop, bang,
very loud noise, like, extremely loud.
And I was like, "Hey, Dad, what was that?"
I was like, "Are you all right?"
And he answers back, "I knocked something over and I broke it."
He was like, "I'll tell you when we get outside."
[Kenneth] Keep doing what you are doing.
[Matt] He was, like, stay there and I'll get done.
He finished fixing the thing to the wall.
We hooked the wire up and we finished the alarm system
and we went to leave.
I walked by the room and you could see
into the living room, she was in the living room
when we left, on the couch, ice pack on her forehead.
Don't wake her.
[Matt] I asked him what was going on.
She's not feeling well. She's taking a nap.
He said, the woman had a headache
and went to lie down.
He had helped her make an ice pack.
Here, take this.
[Matt] He handed me his... It was his blue handkerchief
that he always carried.
He had me wipe off the door handle,
the alarm panel, the inside and outside of the door
as we carried everything out,
which I thought was, kinda, weird.
He's like, "When you close the door, use your rag."
He's like, "We don't wanna leave dirt marks."
He made sure I was the one that wiped it off
and I set the alarm and I closed the door
and then we left.
That was the weird part,
was why would we set the alarm
with her in the house?
Within a matter of two days, I had heard it on the radio,
I had heard she had died, I had heard she got shot.
Apparently her husband came home and didn't realize
that she was deceased at the time,
thought she was just lying on the couch with headache
and it took him a while to realize that she was gone.
[suspenseful music playing]
Early the next day,
once again the police were at our door.
Then it started to click.
And I started to realize,
"Hey, you know, something is going on."
But once again, nobody believed me.
I mentioned it to a therapist that I had had.
My therapist pretty much told me
that I was exaggerating,
that I didn't know what I was talking about,
which seemed to always be every adult's answer.
There's lots of people that didn't believe me.
Lots of people thought I was joking.
And I told my mom that I thought he did it.
And she thought I was exaggerating.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Matt] I also talked to Ken and I asked him
why this kept going on.
And his response was, "Oh, it's just BS.
Every time that there's a murder in Canton
they come to me.
I'm freshly out of jail."
And when he said that, I'm like,
"Okay, well, maybe."
You know, I wanted to believe him.
And I didn't wanna think he was capable
of something like that.
Are you okay?
You got nothing to worry about.
Every few years, the cops were at my house.
Every few years, he was accused
to murdering somebody, nothing ever happened.
If they had any evidence, they would have arrested him.
But they never arrested him.
If the cops didn't think he did it,
then why should I think he did it?
Then I heard that the husband got questioned.
People were saying, "Oh, it was the husband."
I thought, "Well, maybe the husband came home
and they got into a fight."
So I, once again, tried to, in my head, brush it off.
[suspenseful music playing]
A few years after the last incident,
Ken got into an altercation with a friend/business partner
and it wound him back up in prison for about five years.
By the time Ken got out of the prison,
my life had changed a lot.
Him and my mom were divorced.
I was already planning on getting married.
Before I met my wife, I had two children
with a prior relationship.
For years, I had been in a really nasty battle
over custody of my two oldest children.
And it really caused me a lot of stress.
And Ken was aware of everything
that it was causing me.
At the wedding, right before we were married,
my fiancee, Mindy, came up to me...
You're not gonna believe what your dad just said to me.
and said that Ken had offered
to kill my baby's mom as a wedding gift.
Please tell me you're kidding.
[Matt] She 100% thought he was joking.
But I knew it was a real offer
'cause I knew Ken's history, I knew Ken's path.
Babe, he wasn't serious.
Yes, he was.
I came to the realization that I believed
he had killed the three women prior.
When he made that offer at my wedding,
I mean, pretty much confirmed
everything I had ever thought.
And I immediately looked at Mindy and said,
"I hope you told him no."
She giggled and laughed and she's like,
"Why? He was just joking."
I was like, "No, he's not.
He's dead serious. Please tell me you said no."
What did you tell him?
Of course I said, "No."
I had no doubt in my mind
that if we would have said "Yes",
within two weeks that that would have been the end
of my oldest kids' mom.
This was my wedding to my wife.
This was about ten minutes prior to when he offered to,
as a wedding present, to kill my ex.
He was beyond dead serious.
I'm glad my wife said no.
But he made that offer here and hour and a half,
two hours later, when the wedding is over,
he's sitting downstairs sharing his plate of food
with my youngest son.
It shows exactly what I was...
What I dealt with the entire time.
One minute, he would be the guy that was in this picture
that made the offer and the next minute,
he would be one of the nicest people in the world
that would give you his shirt off their back.
When I saw him sitting there, holding my son,
and feeding my son sausage, with my son on his lap,
I looked at him and said, "There's still a chance
to make him a decent person."
And I tried. And I tried.
And I tried.
Unfortunately, it didn't work.
When I first heard about Linda Smith's death,
it was from an article I read in the local newspaper.
I had met Linda Smith numerous times.
Ken had done odd home improvement jobs
for one of her friends.
She had been in our home to have many cookouts
and parties that Ken had on our property.
And the weekend prior to her death,
she was at a cookout at our home.
I had read that she was murdered.
And I had read that it was a gruesome scene.
And when I heard the description,
somewhere inside of me, I knew it was him.
He was just over there.
The first time I got to talk to him,
he was loading his truck out back.
I asked Ken if he had heard about it.
I just heard about Linda.
He was like, "Yeah. I heard it."
He was like, "I'm pretty sure they'll be here
to question me before long."
But this time, I wasn't a kid.
You're going some place?
Yeah. I'm going to a Buddy's house for a few days,
waiting for this to blow over.
And I said, "Well, what do you want me to say if they come?"
"Just tell them I'm out of town
and you don't know where I am."
I gotta get going.
[Matt] I had no doubt at all
that it was him that had done it.
And I wasn't lying for him.
I wasn't gonna say, "No, I didn't know where you were."
I wasn't gonna say, "You were out of town.
I know where you are, I'll say where you are."
I couldn't not come forward.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Matt] I reached out to the police department
and said, "Hey, you need to look at Ken."
And they had me come in and they questioned me.
So what makes you think your dad is the one who did this?
[Matt] And I gave the police
details of what I thought happened.
She was either strangled with this or this.
And I started describing details of the murder scene
without ever being there.
Seem you know an awful lot.
Sure you weren't there?
And they said that I knew some details that were there
that I shouldn't know,
for being somebody that wasn't there.
And they were like, "How do you know these details?"
I said, "Because they match another one."
[detective] What other ones?
They put me on to a lie detector test at that point in time.
After a while, they realized that I wasn't lying.
Listen. If you're right,
you could really help us out here.
And they asked if I thought I could get him to talk.
They said, "Does he trust you? Will he talk about things in front of you?"
I was like, "Yes. He tells me stories all the time."
I'm supposed to see him this week.
That's when they had me wear a wire for the first time.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Matt] It's 3:53, January 3rd.
I'm going to Ferraro's to meet Ken Roth
and have a conversation with him.
I'm gonna leave the recording on the whole way there.
So it's already on and hidden.
Every time I wore a wire, I was always conflicted.
It was always a toss-up between
the guy I wanted to put in jail and my dad.
[Matt speaking]
[Kenneth speaking]
I went out of my way to try to get Ken to admit the stuff.
I tried to get him to talk about Linda.
And I tried to get him to talk about the three
when I was growing up.
[Kenneth speaking]
[Matt speaking]
I was trying to get anything and everything
that the cops could use as leverage to get him to admit
to murdering Linda.
[Kenneth speaking]
[Matt speaking]
He would have never thought that I would have been
the one wearing a wire,
which is why I knew that if anybody was gonna get him
to admit anything, it was gonna be me.
[Kenneth speaking]
[Matt] The times I wore a wire,
he always had his gun on his hip, always.
So every time that I was sitting there talking to him,
and he had his gun, I'd think what would he do
if he knew I was wearing it?
And I knew he would have shot me.
And that kept pushing me back to the reality
of I need to get him to talk.
That actually kept me focused on what I was supposed to do.
[Matt speaking]
[Kenneth speaking]
That was one of the times I wore a wire to try
to get him to admit to stuff.
I was pushing the issue quite a bit more there
than I normally would have.
Because I was afraid he would hurt somebody else.
I was afraid of what he would do to the next person
or how many next people there would have been.
I kept fishing for a long time
to see if I could get him to admit something.
And I think that around that point in time
is when he realized too, that I was up to something.
I have no way of knowing for a fact how he found out.
But I believe that he found somehow,
found some way to realize that I was talking to the police,
that's when I realized that he was even more dangerous
than I thought he was.
[tense music playing]
After I started speaking with the police,
I noticed some strange things happening.
A truck ran me and my son off of the road next to our home
and put us into a ditch.
Somebody came in our house and loosened plumbing
under three different sinks at once to the point
that our house was filling with water.
Next night, somebody went and opened
all of our house windows.
People started disconnecting our car batteries.
Then stuff started coming up missing.
Like a picture might be moved from one room to another
or a picture of all of us might be gone.
Only one other person had a key to our house,
and that was Ken.
I started to realize that maybe
it was a message to shut up.
That night, we were all in the living room.
We were just kind of hanging out like we always do
and getting ready to watch some TV.
All of a sudden, I noticed a light,
a red dot shows up on like my chest.
It hit me right here.
What the hell is that?
And the light started to move on the wall
and towards where my oldest son was.
And before it could get to my oldest son,
I yelled for Mindy to turn off the light and get down.
Shut off the lights.
I shoved my son to the floor.
It wasn't one of those little pens like you shine
through somebody's window. It... I mean I've seen
laser lights on weapons before
and that's exactly what it was.
It was not a laser pointer.
It was actually a laser sight off of a rifle or a pistol.
And I know Ken had one on a rifle
and I know he had a laser sight on a pistol.
I was so scared. I don't think I've ever been
that scared personally in my life.
Okay. Go. Go that way.
Go. Go. Stay down.
I believe it was Ken that was trying to scare me
because I had information.
And I knew details that nobody else knew.
And he knew that.
We kept the lights off.
I ended up moving everybody into a room
that only had one window on it
that faced the other direction.
That was the night that we decided that we were going
to get a U-Haul and leave.
We were gonna leave everything.
I gave up everything, my whole life,
my whole career, and moved into a basement
for the next two years.
We didn't tell anybody where we lived,
we basically just hid.
[dramatic music playing]
[siren wailing]
Got a call from a friend that told me that
there was 20 to 30 cop cars surrounding the house,
cops everywhere.
Ken wound up getting arrested for a weapon's charge
to where a felon's not allowed to own a firearm,
so they arrested him and he was given two years in prison.
During that time, the investigation
into the murder of Linda Smith had picked up.
A new sheriff had taken over and was really pushing
to make sure Ken did not get out of prison
after the two years.
[officer speaking]
About a year later,
he was charged with the murder of Linda Smith.
[officer speaking]
I wasn't sure exactly what leverage they had,
but I thought they finally got some leverage to do something.
[officer speaking]
Me and my wife went to the trial every single day
and we sat right behind where Ken's seat was
next to the family of Linda Smith.
But I was there to support the family not Ken.
[officer speaking]
[Kenneth speaking]
It's weird hearing his voice after this long.
He was never gonna admit it. He'd never make it that easy.
It angered me that nobody believed me,
because if people would have believed me
and people would've listened to me over the years,
and all the times that I had came in for...
Told anybody, therapists, anybody,
then she would have been alive.
[dramatic music playing]
[Matt] I actually did feel validated.
I know that sounds selfish.
But I had told people for many years what was going on.
And I had so many people that I had been around
and grew up around that messaged me
and reached out to me on social media,
in person and said, "Hey look,
I'm sorry I never believed you."
But half of me thought I did the right thing,
and half of me was like I just gave up my dad.
Lost a lot of family because the family didn't want
to admit he did it. I actually had
a family member tell me that
I should have been grateful and shut my mouth.
I can't believe you ratted your dad out.
I can't believe you're a snitch.
Part of me was saddened because I knew that would be
the last time I ever saw him in person.
Once he went to prison, I never reached out again.
I never attempted to talk to him.
I debated writing him letters, but I never did.
I wish I would have. I wish I would have wrote him
and asked him why and see if I could get him
to tell me why he did what he did.
Now, that he's gone, I regret it even more
because I'll never get the answers that I wanted.
[tense music playing]
[Matt] He was diagnosed with COVID.
He ended up going into a coma and while in a coma,
his bowels burst and he died.
I immediately got super depressed.
I went in the bathroom and actually got in the shower
and locked myself in the bathroom for a couple hours.
I didn't wanna come out. I didn't wanna talk to nobody.
I didn't wanna look at nobody.
I was already feeling guilty.
I was the one that helped put him there
and I was the one that made him die alone.
And that's the part that I felt guilty on.
Wasn't the fact that he was spending the rest
of his life in prison, was the fact that he had
to suffer and die alone.
He deserved to live his life sentence out in prison.
I don't think he deserved to die the way he did in prison.
And that's something that I have to figure out
how to deal with.
I miss the good dad that I grew up with.
I miss the man that taught me how to shoot a gun
and trap an animal.
And as much as I love him for being my dad,
part of me hates him for putting me
through everything he put me through.
[dramatic music playing]
I don't think there's enough evidence and enough people
remaining alive that were around at that point in time
to solve any of those.
The only way that the family of those three women
will ever know is if they watch me say
that I think he did it and that I was there.
That's why it's always been important for me
to tell my story. I'd like some of the families
to have some type of closure.
He's never gonna be convicted.
But I can tell you he did it.
And I'm sorry.
I should have screamed louder.
I should have said something.
I did say stuff, but could have maybe done
something different.
And maybe me telling my story will also potentially lead
to other things found, other connections made.
I know there were other murders.
Every story he told me couldn't have been a lie.
I have no doubt in my mind that there's many, many more.
[dramatic music playing]