S7, Chapter 3: Confession

0:01 You actually you wanted to do this to cover victims stories, and you really weren't sure if you were, and you really didn't think you were going to cover Jacob's case in the beginning. Is that right? Yeah, that's right. I didn't want to talk about it. It's something that is extremely traumatic for me and my family. It's a situation that is the worst situation that we've ever had as a family, and so it was not something that I was excited to do. I created the show in honor of Jacob because I wanted to help people who were in the same situation as my family and I, so initially I wasn't going to do Jacob's story at all. Can you tell me about your decision to cover Jacob's case. Was there something a specific event that caused you to want to cover his case? Yeah? I was talking to the mom of a murder victim. Her name was Amanda. Her teenage son and his best friend were taken out into the desert and brutally murdered.

1:12 She came on the show to talk about the case, talk about her fight for justice, and we were having a conversation and I said to her something along the lines of, whatever you ignore you allowed to continue, and if you're not willing to talk about these things, then you can't expect them to change. I strive really hard to not be a hypocrite, So when I said that, I kind of felt like I slapped myself in the face and decided in that moment that I was going to I was going to be true to that. I'm not just going to say something like that and not be true to it. So as soon as that interview was over, I called my mom and I asked her if she wanted to be interviewed on the podcast to talk about Jacob, because I thought it would be a good opportunity for us to one finally have a conversation about something we've never talked about, and two, hopefully it would create some kind of catharsis for us to have that kind of off of our shoulders. And then the third goal was maybe it could help some other people who are maybe in a similar situation, or might help somebody avoid a similar situation. So those were kinds of the things going on in my mind. Of course, I wanted justice for Jacob, but at that point I was really feeling like it wasn't possible. Tapes from the Dark Side contains descriptions of violence and sexuality. Listener discretion is advised from

2:57 Sergeant Garcia, polygraph examiner for the Apartment of Public Safety, State Police Division, New Mexico, dated July thirty first, nineteen eighty seven. Prior to John's pretest, he was made aware of his constitutional rights under Miranda and he signed the appropriate form. The following relevant questions were posed to John. Question thirty three, did you intentionally strike Jacob in the head area on April ninth, nineteen eighty seven? Answer no. Question thirty five, did you intentionally strike the baby in the head area before he went limp? Answer no.

3:38 Based on the numerical evaluation of John's graph recordings, I Sergeant Garcia conclude that John was not being truthful when he answered no to the relevant questions. Sergeant Garcia continues during postest interrogation, I pointed out his physiological reactivity to the relevant questions, which reflected untruthfulness. John continued to deny any action on his part which contributed to the child's death. Following an extensive discussion, John subsequently admitted to being untruthful with investigators when they initially questioned him regarding the circumstances surrounding Jacob's death. John alleges that at the time he was questioned, he had been sedated to the extent that his mental faculties were impaired. John attributed his untruthfulness to fear of rejection by his girlfriend, Brenda Lundean, the child's mother.

4:32 He expressed regret that the mother would now learn the truthful facts inasmuch as he felt the death had been accidental. And then in the reports we get another version of the events of the night of April ninth. Quote. John explained that on April ninth, nineteen eighty seven, he was caring for Jacob awaiting the arrival of Brenda Lundean. The child was in a standing position, holding himself onto the wooden armrest of a chair in the living room. John alleges that he knelt beside him, angled his chin in a playful position to rub his growth of beard between the child's legs. While doing so, he sensed the child was about to lose his balance, and he abruptly raised his head to prevent Jacob from falling. Instead, Jacob leaned his body over John's head as John raised his head, which forcefully moved the child off his feet, causing him Jacob, to impact heavily on the floor. John further explained he was certain that the child's head struck the wooden arm rest before he fell to the floor. Immediately after the baby fell, John picked him up and held him in his arms for what he approximated to have been ten minutes. During this time, the child did not exhibit any visible indications of being injured.

5:46 However, he did appear to be drowsy. John at this point decided to put the child to bed and began walking towards the bedroom. At this point in John's story we get the part that we've already heard. While he's carrying Ja, he hears his cassette tape click. He puts Jacob on the couch, and when he returns from attending to his cassettes, he finds Jacob on the floor, and at this point is when John alleges that Jacob began to convulse and regurgitate from both his mouth and nostrils. He says that he put him over his forearm and patted his back to try to clear his air passages, and then he says something quite bizarre. John says he held the child upside down from both feet and continued patting his back. When the child lost consciousness, John panicked and ran with the child to seek assistance from the next door neighbor. Medical assistance was then summoned. John's polygraph examination was sound recorded in its entirety and is available for transcription if necessary. Case status active.

6:53 Immittedly, I'm not a childcare expert. I took a basic CPR class back in high school and babysat had a few times for neighbors, but I'm not a medical expert in any sense. But I have never heard that when a child is choking or seems unwell to hold them upside down by their legs and pat their back, Even in nineteen eighty seven, that seems like a bizarre response, especially considering that John had two children of his own, so he wasn't a complete stranger to caring for children. I also want to note that even though the records say that John's polygraph exam was sound recorded, the sound recording was lost and there is no transcription. And again we're faced with what seems to be another case of incompetence by the Sakoro Police Department. What happened after this polygraph examination is hard to comprehend, and that is nothing. John was not arrested, no charges were filed in Jacob, at least when it came to the to system was essentially forgotten. Brenda was suspicious that John had killed her child, but police never prosecuted him, and she went against her better judgment and stayed in the relationship. She even went on to marry him.

8:13 At first, I was both confused and upset upon hearing this, But now that I know the full story behind Brenda and John's relationship, I think I can understand the choices she made. John was not some bum that she found on the side of the street. He was a close friend of hers, going all the way back to childhood, and she had every reason to believe that he was telling the truth, and very little reason to believe that he had been the one to kill Jacob. Firstly, he had no history of abusing his own kids. Second, he rather skillfully pinned the blame on Eric. Immittedly, even myself, with all the information in retrospect, suspected that maybe Eric had done something to Jacob. But now I don't believe Eric ever intentionally or Jacob. Aside from that one kick in the head, which I think was more of a reaction, And just to be clear, I don't think there's evidence that shows that that played any part in Jacob's death.

9:11 And the last reason why I can understand why Brenda stayed with John is again that the police never made an arrest. They never brought charges in de facto basically declared him innocent of the murder. But there was one more reason that Brenda stayed with John. She hoped that maybe in staying close to him, she could find out exactly what happened on that night, because even though she had the story from John, she believed that there was important information missing. So what happened next was a little bit challenging for me to understand because I was so young. But my mom ended up staying with her boyfriend at the time and things just got from there. So we'll go back to the conversation I had with my mom to talk about this so you can hear exactly what happened after Jacob died. I'm not really comfortable asking these questions because I know whatever you want to know him, I'm willing to answer it. I know.

10:20 I just don't want you to feel like I I don't blame you for anything that you did. I know, and I don't feel bad. Just whatever you want to know, just ask me, because I'm not gonna take it like like you think I am. I just have to get the story out, you know, and so you have to know. That's why I'm willing to talk to you. Why did you stay with him after that? The only thing that I cared about is finding out what happened to my son. I didn't care about anything else. I just wanted to know the truth. I wanted to know what happened to Jacob. And if I would have ever known he was like that, I would have never ever ever been around him that I didn't know. He hit it so good. He told me everything I wanted to hear. He was so charming and such a colun artist that I really thought he loved me. He didn't love me. He just wanted to use me. And you know, keep that over my head for three years. He abused me. He put a knife to my throat.

11:28 He said the only way I was going to get away from him would be in a body bag. I didn't know what was going on or what happened or all I kept saying is it was an accident. It was an accident, and meet me at the graveyard so I could talk to you. Why am I going to meet him at the graveyard when he put my son in the graveyard? Yeah, you know, I'm thinking he's going to kill me over there. Well I read that in the investigative report, and I thought it was really weird that he I mean even for him, not just once, but over and over and over anyone. I mean to go meet him aout the graveyard to talk to him at the graveyard. That's so creepy, Like that is sick. Yeah. Who murders somebody and then tries to take the mother of the child you murdered to the grave of the kid? That don't make sense at all. That's just like what. I can't even understand that. I'm not a psychologist or anything, but I just I always try to figure you know, I always try to think about that, like what what what logic is it? I can't there's no logic in it. Yeah, I think I wanted to kill me. I still think he wants to kill me. But I'm going to speak my choes. Not much for what for Jacob pet never a voice, and he deservice one, and I couldn't for the longest time even talk about it. John's behavior became increasingly erratic after Jacob's death. As I've said before, the guilty conscience speaks whether we wanted

13:03 to or not. And John's actions over the next few years were not just strange, but became physically and sexually violent. He began verbally and physically assaulting Brenda, and he began sexually abusing Eric. When did he start hitting you? After Jacob died? Everything changed after I don't know what. He told me that he had to get married to me because he filed some kind of papers and he was going to go to prison and big old story. I don't know what it was, but he economy into marrying him. I married him with the JP after all of it was over, I wouldn't ask the judge for in a moment, and I was granted one because it was so violent that nobody deserves that is what the judge said. So it's erased every years after the fact. Though that wasn't those three years. It was from eighty seven until nineteen ninety. After Jacob died, things started changing, you know. I mean, he was obviously he was hitting you, and I remember I think we were still on the other side of the freeway. We were still kind of in that same neighborhood where we lived in Jacob died because I think it was we were living in a single wide at that time before we got the double wide, right, And I remember one day we were

14:37 going to go somewhere as a family with it was like you, me, his kids, him and you guys were fighting the night before when you were all like black and blue. Yeah, bruises on your arms, your eye was black. I remember we were all lined up almost like like we're in the military, all four of us. And he was walking back and forth and he said, if somebody asks what happened to your mom, what are you going to say? Over and over and over again until I said this answer that he wanted, and until it was perfect, and until he believed me, And I almost felt like he was kind of like brainwashing us.

15:28 He would like get in my face and be like, if you fuck this up, I'm going to kill your mom. Kill your mom your like real quiet so that even his kids couldn't hear it. But he was like right in front of my face. There's a lot of things that happened that I never told you because he always threatened to kill us, and I believed him. I YEA, believe them. Your brother's in the grave. I knew he was definitely capable of it. Like there were times when when it was just him and I know his kids were with their mom and you were at work or something. This was like in the double wide on Main Street.

16:26 I wouldn't be allowed to leave my room all day, Like I couldn't even go to the bathroom. And I remember I had all this stuff in my room, And at first I thought I was like, oh, I'm a lucky kid. I have a TV ab and Nintendo. I have a refrigerator. I have all this stuff in my room that most kids don't have. But I think that was his way of imprisoning me. Try to make you a hostage. Yeah, And so I would have to knock on my door and I'd have to ask for permission to the restroom. And if he felt like I didn't really need to go, then I didn't get to go.

17:10 I didn't know that it gets worse. I'm sorry, it's a lot worse. And I didn't tell you, not because I didn't trust you. But because I coudn't want you to fucking die. You know, one time he locked me in my closet and he put the dining chair against the door so I couldn't get out of it because he was mad about something. I don't remember what it was, but I couldn't even be in my room. I had to be in the closet. I just I never told you. I feel bad about that. But I also didn't want us to get killed either. So I was trying to save our lives at least it's what I felt like. And I remember always feeling like like we were walking on egg shells.

17:56 I mean, do you remember when he would get mad if I gave him what he thought was dirty? Look? Yeah, if I would clean the bedroom. It was cycle just anything any little wrong movement, say something wrong, you'd do something wrong. Every help breaks loose. We I mean we didn't. I don't feel like we really did anything wrong ever, you know what I mean, Like, I don't feel like we did not seem to deserve that. Yeah, he's the one with the problem. I mean there were times where he'd be like, stop looking at me like that, and then I would just look down, and so I spent a lot of that time just looking at the floor because I was afraid that if I even just looked at him, that he was gonna start beating the shit out of you, and then I would get locked in my room and you know what I mean, like it was gonna be the same shit. It wasn't even about you, it was just anything I did. It wasn't it was if he felt guilty, he would come home and beat on me because of what he was doing wasn't even like nothing to do with us. I think the point though, is that like we never knew what was going to send him over the edge. Yeah, it literally could be anything or nothing. Sometimes it's hard to react to a psychopath. It's hard to be prepared because you never know. I mean, it explains a lot of why we're both the way that we are. In a lot of ways. You know, we're very we can both be very reactive and very emotional about things, and it

19:30 makes sense that we would have those reactions because we couldn't even fucking look at him. Yeah, I can't even move without where you're going? What'd you doing? Or like even just like the way I ate many sing And I think that really caused me to have a lot of hatred for myself because I felt like I was bad and damaged and wrong, and I started like I started to believe that I slept with I had a can of aquainette and a lighter and a steak knife under my pillow and a bat under my bed.

20:18 That's scary, but I knew I needed to do something to protect myself. The story of how Eric saved his mother's life coming up after the break. I don't know if you remember this one time. It was like the middle of the afternoon and he had locked me and his kids in our room and he was beating the shot out of you for a long time, and then you stopped screaming. Yeah, I remember, and I broke out of my room through the window. I busted the screaming window out, and I started throwing rocks at your room window. You're saving my life. She was choking me with the wire hanger because I kept telling him I was gonna leave.

21:30 I choked me to I almost best. And when you jumped out the window, go to the house with me. And that's the only thing let's saved my life that I remember. He chased me out of the house, and I ran across the street to the neighbors because I was friends with that little boy. And I was like banging on their door. I'm like, let me in. He's gonna kill me. Let me He's gonna kill me. They pulled me inside. They already knew what was happening. They had two ice creams. Loud is like good. Nobody would ever help. But she pulled me in the house, and she loved me. At her parents, we all got along. She used to go read to the little boy, You're a good kid. After nearly four years of increasingly erratic and abusive behavior from John, in nineteen ninety one, Brenda made one of the best decisions of her life when she left John for good. There was a pivotal incident that occurred in November of nineteen ninety that Brenda states helped her make this decision for good and for all, and it might have saved her life and Eric's life. In the fall of that year, nineteen ninety, Brenda discovered that John was making sexual advances on her thirteen year old niece. From the police report, here's what Brenda told police. On November nineteenth, nineteen ninety, John called Brenda's niece, who was thirteen years of age, and kept telling

23:00 her she was pretty and that he watches her when she is at his house. He also said that she knows that he is watching her. Brenda stated as she confronted John and that he denied doing it, but that he doesn't remember, possibly because he was stoned. Brenda stated that is when she left him for good. John was questioned by police about this incident. The report says, quote the suspects stated that he does not think that he did this. He stated that on the day in question, he had smoked weed placed with cocaine and that he doesn't remember calling anyone. So she was fourteen thirteen and he was making like leude calls, was calling her and telling her to come over when all at work, and he thinks she's so pretty. And I get mad at him because he's always staring at her and all this garbage.

23:52 But she's she's my little savior because she told me, and she told him in his face. She was very outspoken, happy for my family. Yeah, yeah, she didn't care. She told me right there from the God and everybody. And that's what you need is somebody to help you get out before they kill you. Yeah, it's somebody that's going to stand up and tell you the truth in front of their face. And then I just don't care how her high water is coming out. I think she saved both of us. She did. I don't even know she knows she does because she went with me when I loved him, because I took the cup and I took her and I took my sister, and that's all I needed.

24:37 One of the primary motivators that Brenda gave for staying with John after Jacob's death was to try to find out the truth behind what really happened the night Jacob died. And I think finally Brenda realized the truth was in front of her all along, her worst fears were true. John had beaten Jacob to death. In nineteen ninety one, Brenda left John for good and went to the police, and finally the police seemed to listen. Coming up in the finale part four Tapes from the Dark Side, a warrant for rest was issued for John on August thirteenth, nineteen ninety two. Thank you for listening to Tapes from the Dark Side. I've been your host. TZ You can get access to the last episode in this series right now by joining Patreon, or you can wait and it will be released next week. All of our episodes our early release on Patreon and our ad free We also have some bonus episodes and after shows. Every single dollar we get on Patreon makes a huge difference to me in the show, and I want to thank everyone who has joined.

26:04 If you want to sign up, it only takes about one minute. Go to patreon dot com slash Tapes from the dark Side. Now, I want to to share with you another show that I would recommend. It's called Crimatorium and I've been listening to their show this week. It's actually an excellent show. If you like true crime, I know you will enjoy it. The episode that really got to me was the Death Row series and the case was called the Sad Case of Faith in Liberty. Battaglia, I think I'm saying that right, Battaglia. It's about a thirty minute episode, excellent content, and I'm going to put a link to that in the show notes. Just search in your podcast app Crimatorium or search them up on YouTube. This particular episode has one hundred and twenty two thousand views and it deserves every single one of those views, it's an excellent episode. Crimatorium translates to a Place where Crime resides. If you like lesser known true crime cases such as murder, missing persons, unsolved mysteries, and more, take the next step and subscribe from your favorite podcast app. Join me in the place where crime resides.

27:41 I had to open the bruise up and let some of the blues blood come out to show them