[Music] a couple years back my wife and I threw a Halloween party for our kids and a few of their friends the deal was we'd entertain the kids until around 800 that evening then they'd head off to the respective friends houses to finish their nights off with Halloween sleepovers but in turn that allowed my wife and I to throw a grown-up Halloween party it had been both our favorite holidays growing up and since we'd promised to spend the holidays with my wife's side of the family we threw the All Hallows Eve bash to spend some
time with mine it was definitely a family affair just not quite wholesome enough to Warrant having the kids in the house anyway the party is fantastic everyone has a great time and my parents had agreed to spend the night in our spare rooms so they didn't have to worry about driving or getting a cab home that meant my father and I ended up huddled up around the fire pit at around 1:00 in the morning finishing off any beer that we could find while making each other laugh and telling each other stories then at some point
I asked Dad if he knew any spooky campfire stories I wasn't seriously asking him it was more like I asked him sort of half jokingly because it was technically still Halloween night but then as it turned out dad did have a creepy story to tell me one he'd somehow kept secret from me for almost 35 years my dad grew up in small town Ohio and he eventually moved back to Cincinnati where he met my mom and had us kids but for college my dad went to UC Irvine which is out in California about 30 Mi
south of La he said that he loved it out there he knew that he wanted to come home at some point but said his days as a beach bomb are some of the most Treasured Memories of his youth I knew that already of course but what I didn't know was that my dad used to date some smoking hot wind surfer chick that he met on Newport Beach he said that during the summer of 1982 his buddies and him headed down to the beach to throw a ball around when they saw this sign advertising wind surfing
lessons the two instructors were this tall wiry dark guy and then this absolute Fox with a mess of golden blonde hair stunning eyes and this deep rich tan from all her time spent in the sun my dad said that he and his buddies found a spot for their stuff and then started to throw the football around but all dad did was walk off towards the wind surfing instructors and talk his way into getting a lesson from old Blondie dad said he hated wind surfing but that it was a great way to get close to the
instructor and then once he was satisfied that there was mutual attraction he asked her out and they started dating dad said that she seemed wonderful at first but that after about a month of seeing each other he realized that she was in some weird love triangle with her roommate and some professional wind Surfer that she'd met on a trip to Hawaii my dad explained that at first he trusted that the roommate was just that a roommate but over time it became pretty obvious that they were romantically involved Blondie told my dad that they used to
have a thing together but that they were nothing more than roommates by that time and that he didn't have to worry dad said that he wanted to believe her but by the time the professional wind Surfer entered the picture he realized what was going on he didn't mind her dating other guys they weren't like official or anything like that but what he did mind was all the duplicity I guess she hadn't been straight up honest with him from the GetGo and that as they say these days was a huge red flag I absolutely cannot picture
my dad breaking up with some smoking hot Beach babe like I would absolutely need to see that to believe it but either way they stop seeing each other and Dad eventually moves back to Cincy and starts what became our family and now cut to 1994 I'm six my little brother is three and for my dad the memory of Blondie and her weird deceptive love triangle was a distant one then one day he opened up a newspaper and there she was he said that he didn't recognize her at first to the point that he just thought
the name was a coincidence but nope there was no coincidence the woman in the newspaper was the very same one he briefly dated while in California and her name was Dana Sue gray for those of you that are unfamiliar with the name Dana gray murdered three older women in early 1994 and used their credit cards to go on shopping spree once she realized that there was a man hunt for her she cut all her blonde hair off and dyed it black but the cop still caught up with her and she was sent to prison for
murder dad said it was obviously very shocking that he felt deeply for the families of those affected but that he never felt like he was ever in any danger I guess he just didn't fit her victim profile or whatever the cops might call it and she obviously wasn't ready to kill by that point because she waited 12 years to do it and killed three in as many months but then what my dad said creeped him out so much was that he actually wasn't all that surprised he was surprised Dana had killed anyone that was definitely
a shock to him but it was the way she did it that seemed very in character so to speak dad said that especially toward the end of their relationship it became obvious that Dana simply didn't think that rules should apply to her she seemed to have this idea that she could do whatever she wanted and then just get away with it possibly on account of her good looks dad said it was scary to think that this irritating but very minor personality disorder had basically grown and grown until one day Dana thought that she could murder
old women then go on shopping trips with their credit cards and the law just wouldn't catch up to her it makes me think that psychological stuff like that is almost like a cancer you either deal with it when it's small and manageable or you let it grow and spread until one day it's just far too late to do anything about it and what used to be one tiny flaw has taken them over completely [Music] in 2012 I went through a very rough breakup with my boyfriend of around 18 months you know that old saying you
live by the sword you die by the sword well our relationship was like that only instead of a sword there was a lot of drugs and alcohol he was a party animal and at first I found that very attractive but after almost 2 years of fighting and struggling for money while nursing hangovers I realized that I wanted to mellow out while he didn't want anything of the sort I didn't want to be that lame controlling girlfriend I wanted him to live the kind of life that felt right I just wasn't going to let us slowly
drift apart when we'd be much happier pursuing relationship goals with alternative partners and that's the way I saw things anyway but he disagreed like I said the breakup itself was rough there was yelling there was tears but in the end he seemed to accept my decision and agreed that we'd be happier seeing other people I also explained that I wanted to end things on a high note and that I didn't want my final memories of him to be tarnished by anything negative that's what really seemed to make it through to him and after that everything
seemed fine but then came the night that he drove over to complete the ceremonial exchanging of stuff I'm pretty sure that a lot of you know what I'm talking about if you've been seeing someone long enough to have frequent sleepovers at each other's places chances are you've left a whole bunch of stuff over there for example a bunch of skinc care stuff to keep in his bathroom so I didn't have to carry a makeup bag to and from his place then factor in that I have to buy this expensive Korean skin cream that literally has
snail slime in it look it up and you can see why I was so desperate to get it back now anyway so I've been texting my ex back and forth for a few days organizing the exchange making sure we're not forgetting anything so it's a one-time thing and we can make a clean break he agrees to come over to my place once we'd both finished work then when I got home I bagged up all of his stuff and waited for him to arrive he told me that he'd be at my place by no later than
7 but then 7 turns to 7:30 and there's no sign of him I text him to ask where he was but got no reply so maybe like 5 to 10 minutes later I start calling him and after getting his voicemail a few times he finally picks up he didn't sound like he was in a particularly good mood but all that indicated to me was that he was sober he told me that he gotten caught up in a few things and that he'd be over by around 8:15 all I did was ask him not to be
too late as I had to work the next morning he hung up and then I went back to waiting finally just before 9:00 he buzzes my apartment and I let him upstairs while I waited near the the door with his bag of stuff it took him slightly longer than usual to make it to my door but then when he does and I open it I could smell the stink of booze on him and right away that gave me bad vibes he had a shopping bag with what looked like my stuff in it so that was
a good sign but I had also explicitly asked him to stay sober for the exchange because I knew what it might lead to I say I knew what it might lead to but that's not strictly true I figur figured it' get emotional i' just never have guessed that he'd take things as far as he did so first thing I say when I opened the door and smell the booze on him was a reminder that he'd promised to make the exchange sober he just brushed it off asked if he could come inside but I said no
that I prefer just make the exchange and leave things at that he started asking me really this is who you are now and I very politely reminded him that if he couldn't conduct himself like a grown-up then he wouldn't be getting his stuff it was a huge Bluff on my part because I really wanted my stuff back but I also didn't want to give him the impression that he could keep dictating terms outside of our relationship I remember taking a step back from the door and getting ready to close it then after giving him one
last chance to just give me my stuff back I attempted to gently close the door in his face his response was to shove his foot in the door to keep it from closing and then after barging and open so hard it actually frightened me he walked down the hallway of my apartment and into the TV and kitchenet area my apartment door was still wide open as I started yelling at him like what the f do you think you're doing get out of here but he didn't listen he just marched into my kitchenet area where there
was a small dining table then slammed the bag of my stuff down on it then as he took a seat he demanded that I come talk to him about the breakup so he could get some final closure as he called it I held firm refused to even follow him into the kitchen and kept demanding that he leave before I call the cops but that's when he seemed to completely lose his mind and started literally screaming at the top of his lungs do you want to kill me because that's what you're doing here you're killing me
by the time he started freaking out and screaming I was already on the cusp of dialing 911 but when he walked over to my knife block and pulled out the biggest one he could find I realized things were Way Beyond negotiating and hit call after tapping 911 I also rushed back towards the front door to my apartment for several different reasons first off I had a pepper spray in my jacket that I kept on the hanger like out of sight in case I needed to use it on an intruder and so the first thing I
did was grab that but now I'm outside my apartment in the hallway with the door wide open and my ex sitting at the kitchen table so if I need to I can run down the hallway and out of the building and not risk trapping myself in the apartment with him I'm also talking to the 911 Operator by then too all the while my ex is screaming at me to get off the phone and come back inside but since he still had that carving knife and a White Knuckle grip there was exactly 0% chance of me
heading back inside the next thing I was giving the operator the address of my apartment building when my ex started walking toward me out of the kitchen and into the hallway I obviously wanted to keep out of stabbing range so to speak so I remember rushing down the hallway toward the elevator and stairs and stopping to check if he was following me my ex was following me he'd come out of my apartment and into the hallway but when I turned around in that Split Second and he saw that he had my attention he stopped walking
turned the knife and started to stab himself in the stomach it looked like the knife was going deep but not all of it went into his stomach every time he stabbed I guess it was like lots of quick shallow stabs but from the horrible sound it was making I could tell he was really hurting himself I think that lasted maybe a second or two I saw him doing it really really fast and I just turned and ran screaming down the stairwell instead of taking the elevator he didn't shout anything after me or if he did
I didn't hear it all I could hear was those grunts of pain as he stabbed himself again and again and again then I started screaming and I didn't hear anything else after that I remember taking my phone away from my ear as I ran down the stairs because it felt like I might lose my balance if I didn't but then I was so scared that I kept trying to tell the operator what was going on and that resulted in me running down the stairs screaming he stabbing himself he's stabbing himself someone call an ambulance he's
stabbing himself I ran all the way across the parking lot of my apartment building before bringing the phone back to my ear and I kept talking to her as I waited by the street that I knew the cops would come down I remember begging the operator to tell the EMTs to hurry that my ex was really hurting himself to the point where I thought he might die she did her best to try and keep calm then the next thing I knew I saw the cop car and I started frantically waving at them to flag them
down one of the other things I remember is how as I let the cops into the building with my key fob I kept telling them please don't shoot him he's trying to hurt himself so please don't shoot him the cops completely ignored me I guess because they were focused on their job but in the moment their silence had me even more Panic thinking oh God he's still going to be holding that knife and he's not going to drop it and they're going to kill my ex-boyfriend right there in the hallway outside my apartment they didn't
shoot him thankfully he was just lying there bleeding but by the time the EMTs arrived and got him into the ambulance which was at least an hour after he stabbed himself I was totally convinced that he was going to die thankfully some of my neighbors had emerged from their own Apartments to see what all the commotion was and were there to give me the consolation I so darely needed in that moment another thing to be thankful for was that my ex survived his self-inflicted wounds although he did need a bunch of different surgeries to repair
all the damage he'd done to his stomach or intestines I thought the whole experience might sober him up but the last I heard he'd gone right back to his old self after maybe a year on the wagon it's a shame really the guy had a lot of potential and I wish he'd gone and made some better choices in life but as I said earlier if he's living the life he wants to live then I'm happy for him happy to be apart from him also but happy for him [Music] nonetheless back in September of 2016 I
was living just off of St Martin's Lane in London and one Sunday me and a mate of mine met up at our local pub to watch the football game over a few pints we watched Chelsea barely scrape a point from their match with Swansea s then after full time my maid got a text from his girlfriend asking if her and a colleague could join us for drinks about half an hour later she turns up with her colleagues and toe and the first thing I thought when I saw the colleague was wow she was without a
doubt one of the most stunningly beautiful young women I had ever laid eyes on and from the moment I saw her I was absolutely smitten for the sake of the story we'll just call her SAR Sarah she was half Lebanese and right away I could tell that there was chemistry between us little did I know but my mate and his girlfriend had conspired to do a bit of matchmaking as Sarah had sent a photo of me on my mate's girlfriend's Facebook and asked her if I was single so they were just as pleased as I
was when me and Sarah swapped phone numbers and agreed to go out for a coffee some time one coffee date became two then three and then before we knew it we were going out together every weekend and eventually decided to make things official and things went great at first Sarah was a very passionate young woman and I love that about her but after a while that passion started to show its negative sides for start she could never ever be wrong about anything it could be quite cute if she was being playful with it but about
2 months into our relationship and she did something which wasn't so cute so there's this TV game show in the UK called The Chase and it became a kind of tradition to watch and play along together we'd both finish work at around 4: and then she'd meet me at Lester Square Tube Station and then we'd head back to my flat to have dinner together and since the chase was always on at around 5:00 we'd play along with it while we were eating one day one of the questions was something like which former Beetle first performed
his song My Sweet Lord at the concert for Bangladesh Dash in August of 1971 it then gave four options which were a John Lennon B Paul McCartney C George Harrison or D Edwin star traditionally at least in the early rounds of the case option D was always a joke answer designed to raise a chuckle among the studio audience and on this occasion the joke was that Edwin star was never actually in the Beatles it was Ringo Star that was in The Beatles Edwin's sang that war what is it good for song now anyway I immediately
called out George Harrison which was of course the correct answer but Sarah who was into much more contemporary music decided the answer was John Lennon I told her that she was possibly confusing My Sweet Lord with imagine and that in that case the answer was George Harrison but then she starts doing her I'm never wrong routine I just carried on eating then when the correct answer was confirmed as being George Harrison I said told you in the mildest most non-confrontational way possible I didn't rub it in her face I didn't celebrate I just said told
you and then we carried on eating and playing along with the chase or at least I thought we had carried on playing Because by the end of the round Sarah silence told me that she didn't fancy playing around anymore I asked her if everything was all right right and instead of returning even a sarcastic reply she completely ignored me I asked if she was taking the piss and again just completely blanked me so I told her if she was going to act like a child she was free to leave any time she wanted she then
grabbed a purse and coat and slammed the door to my flat on the way out a few hours later in several ignored phone calls later she finally replies to my text telling me how horrible and arrogant I'd been and how I'd made her feel small and stupid and how I owed her an apology I had no intention whatsoever of making her feel that way but when I told her as much she broke down in tears and started apologizing over and over she said she was stressed out at work that her auntie back in Beirut was
sick and that it had all just gotten the better of her in the moment I forgave her we kissed and made up and then that was that only that wasn't that as there were dozens more arguments like that in our future I won't bore you with all the details of each individual set to we'd be here forever and I only went over that first one to give you an idea of what I was dealing with but over time things got gradually worse until we were falling out over petty little things on a weekly basis I
really like Sarah I honestly did when she was at her best she was the perfect girlfriend but at her worst she was an absolute nightmare we were together 6 months and then when the negative started to vastly outweigh the positives I decided I had to man up do the right thing for both of us and end the relationship before things graduated to the next level I.E meeting parents or moving in together to use as few words as possible the actual breakup was much like an accomplished Argentine footballer it was messy on the advice and my
Ma's girlfriend who by that point had apologized profusely for setting me up with Sarah I chose to do it in a public place but unfortunately that didn't really help the situation Sarah caused a massive scene wouldn't talk to me afterwards and it took a week before she agreed to exchange all the stuff that we left in each other's Flats we made the exchange and that time she didn't make a scene but to say that she was Frosty with me would be the understatement of the century she acted like she despised me so much so that
I was worried that she might have snipped up my underwear with a pair of scissors and then used the same pair to scratch my DVDs thankfully she'd been mature enough to do neither and I was thoroughly relieved that I could finally close what had been a rather Grim chapter of my life now fast forward to July of 2017 Sarah and I hadn't spoken in months I deleted her number and we weren't connected on any kind of social media anymore it was a complete completely no contact breakup but she was still on my mind a little
bit I was seeing this new girl and I'd be lying if I said Sarah hadn't made me a little bit paranoid that this girl would also eventually show her true colors we've been on a few dates but we were taking things casually and it wasn't until after the third date at a wine bar that we kissed for the first time I got the tube home feeling wine drunk and rather good about myself then after a flirty text Exchange and what should have been a cold shower I turned in for the night the next thing I
know I'm opening my eyes in my dark bedroom with this distinct feeling of dread tightening my chest I can't even really explain how I knew someone was there but I did and there was perhaps it was the Gentle Creek of my bedroom door opening or the subtle feeling of my mattress sinking as they sat down in the bed next to me either way I awoke to the instant feeling of vulnerability and Terror I knew how buggered I was and I'm not exactly proud of it but my first instinct was to roll over to quite literally
beg whoever it was not to hurt me I spun over in bed adrenaline pumping expecting to see some Mast burglar or God forbid some kind of knife wielding lunatic but I didn't see some balaklava covered face or the wild eyes of some craz spree killer instead I saw her Sarah I should expect some of you to think that I'd be relieved to see my ex-girlfriend in place of some armed psychopath but for a split second I was absolutely convinced that she was there to kill me I remember saying Sarah don't as I slid off the
opposite side of the bed from her and tried to put some distance between us but instead of doing anything rash Sarah simply said I'm sorry and then repeated herself as she got up walked out of my room and continued out of my flat I stood there for a few seconds panting like the devil wearing nothing but my underwear and contemplating just how close I'd come to getting murdered as I said I didn't have Sarah's contact details by that point and I couldn't find any of her social media accounts so I assumed that she'd blocked me
on all of them so instead of reaching out to her directly I asked my mate's girlfriend to pass a message on for me basically saying that if she came near me again I'd be getting in touch with the police I would have preferred to have kept it between us I really would have I didn't want to air out my own dirty laundry in public let alone anyone else's yet as I'm sure you'll agree Sarah didn't leave me much of a choice on that front it sparked a great deal of curiosity among my mate and his
girlfriend who had to pass the message on via Facebook because she and S Sarah weren't working together anymore she said Sarah saw the message and then blocked her without so much as a word and reply obviously the big question on everyone's lips was how the hell did Sarah get into your flat that night well I have a theory on that towards the end of our relationship I'd say the final two months or so I gave Sarah the spare key to my flat the letting agency had given me two copies of the key one to keep
as a spare but I ended up giving it to Sarah so she could let herself into the flat when I wasn't around sometimes she'd finished work earlier than I did so instead of having to take the tube all the way back to whopping Sarah used to just let herself into my flat and wait for me there she gave me that spare key back when we exchanged stuff and at the time the thought did Flash in my mind that she might have made a copy but then after weeks went by and there were no signs of
any unwelcome intrusions I decided that I'd just been a little bit paranoid Sarah was intense but I didn't think she was make a copy of my flat key kind of intense yet as events showed I might have been a bit too generous on that front there's always a chance that I neglected to shut my front door properly and that Sarah just so happened to pop around at a time when I just so happened to have failed to properly secure my flat or this is the one that truly scares me she made a copy of my
key waited a little while and then decided that she was going to sneak into my flat in the middle of the night and hurt me granted I didn't see any knife or hammer in her hand all she did was apologize before running out of my flat but if she wanted to talk there's a dozen different ways that she could have reached out she most certainly didn't have to sneak into my flat in the middle of the night and then creep into my bedroom while I was dead to the world the only reasons that she'd want
to do that is to catch me unawares and the only logical reason she'd want to catch me unawares is because she wanted to hurt me I moved away from London just before the pandemic so I'm confident that she and I will never cross paths again but if we did let's just say that I wouldn't be in a rush to grab a coffee with her anytime soon [Music] big fan here and I tend to lurk in some of the live streams you do because it's kind of funny when you mess up I also saw that you
sometimes read out viewer submissions and in that case I have a story for you it's one that I have to heavily clean up for reasons that'll become obvious but I think you and the stream will get a kick out of it so here goes in the late fall of 2017 I had just moved back to my hometown of Las Vegas after spending a year teaching set design at UT Austin it had been a very rewarding experience but it hadn't left much time for socializing so by the time I got back home to Vegas it had
been exactly 26 months since i' so much just held a guy's hand I was fine not dating in Austin it was a temporary stay and I quite literally had a job to do so aside from a few casual flirtations I remained professional and stayed focused on my work but then not long after getting back to Vegas I started to feel the pangs of loneliness setting in and once I mentioned that to a friend of mine she recommended that I download Tinder I downloaded the app made myself a profile and within just a few days had
a date lined up with the guy I actually really liked a guy that we'll call Mark he seemed to occupy that happy medium between hot and nerdy and since he was the perfect gentleman on our first date he made it very easy to accept his invitation to a second date one thing led to another and we ended up dating for a couple of months then when the time seemed right he asked me to be his girlfriend and I happily accepted on the surface this might all seem totally normal right Girl Meets Boy girl dates boy
girl becomes girlfriend like where's the weird creepy part well by that 10 we Mark when he asked me to be his girlfriend Mark and I had kissed a grand total of about five or six times there had been no making out no heavy petting and most certainly no sleeping together I just thought that he was being very gentlemanly at first and I'd never been great at asking to be intimate so to me it seemed like when an Unstoppable Force meets an immovable object neither of us was going to budge and in the end it was
me that brought it up first it was the same weekend he asked me to be his girlfriend when I decided to bring up the possibility of us being intimate together in the near future I communicated to him that it was something that I wanted and made sure that it was something he wanted too then when I asked if there was anything he'd like me to do he seemed to think for a moment and then hesitated when he tried to speak his mind I asked him to finish the thought and made it clear that he was
in a safe space that was completely judgment free he once again attempted to communicate with me but seemed to fall at the final hurdle without actually aing his thoughts I recognized that whatever it was it was evidently something that he wasn't 100% comfortable talking about but I also thought that he'd open up a bit more and act In the Heat of the Moment once we'd finally made it to the bedroom but then we didn't make it to the bedroom and by then I was starting to believe that he was deliberately avoiding any kind of physical
intimacy obviously this bothered me quite a bit I liked him and I wanted him to like me but then if we weren't sleeping together that was probably going to be an issue another week or two went by before I sat marked down and told him we needed to talk once again I brought up the issue of us being intimate and once again he might as well have just turned to stone he seemed either unwilling or unable to voice his needs to me and it took another round of gentle encouragement to even try but then finally
after what seemed like an eternity he told me what he wanted and what he wanted was for me to dress up for him now before I tell you what Mark wanted me to dress up as there's something you need to know about me and honestly I think a lot of you will probably put two and two together by the time I'm finished explaining I've always looked a lot younger than I really am I guess I hit 16 and just kind of stopped growing it's not just that I'm short either and at 4:11 I am very
short I have a baby face too and be the mother of all baby faces meaning that although I was in my late 20s at the time I was dating Mark I could have probably passed for a High School freshman on a no makeup gym day it was a real problem around the time that I started drinking but then the older I got the more it work to my advantage looking 14 at 21 honestly sucked but looking 21 at 30 there was worse things to deal with I guess but then that second time I sat down
with Mark and finally got him to confess that that he wanted to dress me up I realized that there was another downside to looking as young as I did one that was unforeseen and unencountered right up until that moment Mark told me that he wanted me to dress up for him and at first I figured he wanted me to dress as something cute or maybe even one of the cosplays that I'd shown him pictures of but Mark didn't want that he wanted something different and when at long last the words finally left his lips I
was so horrified that I must have visibly pulled back Mark said he wanted me to dress young very young and when I asked him what exactly he meant by that he told me how before we slept together he wanted me to dress up like a little girl Those Were the words he used but what I heard because let's be honest this is what he was really asking me was that he wanted me to dress up as a child and I was stunned I thought he was going to ask me I don't know wear stockings or
go blindfolded or something so when he finally told me what he wanted and it was that I felt sick to my stomach I didn't know what to say so I just didn't say anything and my silence prompted Mark to backpedal as he tried to explain away what he just said to me he knew it was wrong he knew it was ugly and that's why it had taken him so long to to say it but I think without a doubt the worst thing was realizing why he chosen me as his prospective girlfriend me who looked no
older than 17 on a gym day like I said and me who looked so young that I had to dress Ultra professional to be taken remotely seriously at work even though on any given day I could be the most experienced person working on a set that was one of the huge downsides to being blessed with such youthful looks one I really hated just not nearly as much as I hated realizing that there was another downside too that creeps like Mark were going to want to use me to satisfy some unspeakable urge I walked out of
Mark's apartment not long after telling me that he wanted me to dress up as a child in the bedroom for him he kept trying to call me as I made my way home and I remember just putting my phone on airplane mode feeling like I couldn't even see his name without wanting to throw up one once I was home and I gathered my thoughts I sent him a text saying that I was deleting his number and that he should lose mine too any further attempts to reach out to me would be considered unwanted harassment and
I'd be making a note of them prior to filing a police report and after that his calls and texts suddenly stopped and I'm thankful to have never heard from him again I wish I could tell you that I never allowed Mark a single second of thought time from there on out but as you can tell that's not true at all I've actually thought about him quite a bit and I've told the story to quite a few people I guess it's because whenever the subject of child abuse or exploitation comes up either in a movie or
on the news or a TV show I can't help but think of Mark part of me hopes that he's gone to therapy or something anything to help him deal with a disgusting desire that he confessed to me that night but another part of me thinks it's just a matter of time before I see Mark's face in the news having been arrested for one of the worst crimes I could possibly conceive [Music] of I used to have quite an abusive ex I say quite abusive because he never actually laid a finger on me he was just
super controlling and had a habit of breaking things whenever he was mad I should also add a little avat to the whole never laid a finger on me too because during the whole time that I was with him I was never 100% confident that he'd never hit me if that makes sense I figured that if i' stayed with him any longer that probably would have changed one of the wildest Things he ever did was in a moment when I thought that he might just hit me that first time he wouldn't let me leave my own
apartment heck he wouldn't even let me leave my own bedroom all I could do was lock myself in in the unsweet bathroom until he'd finally calmed down he did eventually calm down but before he did he smashed something into the bathroom door something really heavy over and over again while screaming at me to come out I didn't I just stayed put wrapped in a towel sitting on the floor quietly crying until the storm had finally passed after what seemed like hours I heard the sound of him leaving my apartment and closing the door behind him
after that I came out of hiding to survey the damage and that's when I discovered that he'd used my big old wooden Buddha statue to do the door bashing the statue which I still have is probably about the size of a football thin on top where the body is then real heavy and Thick at the bottom no jokes please where Buddha Throne thing is you could quite easily do some serious damage to someone if you hit them full force in the head with it and it sure is put a dent in my bathroom door but
the property damage and potential danger I myself faced they're not what stick with me about this one incident and using my little Buddha statue my ex took the literal embodiment of Peace Harmony and tranquility and used it to commit a reckless act of violence if that isn't the bright shining indicator of what a vile toxic person he truly was then I don't know what is [Music] it's a Sunday afternoon on October 29th of 2017 in the small sleepy Southern Australian town of Little Hampton founded in 1849 by Englishman Benjamin gray the town was once famous
for cottage industries such as Brewing meat curing and jam making today it lies around 20 mi Southeast of the much larger Adelaide but unlike its more populated cousin little Hampton remained true to its name and its citizenry has yet to exceed 4,000 the town is a quiet place and unless you count the almost 200-year old church on Main Street it hasn't much cause for visitors but today something terrible has happened an unbeknownst a police officers who race towards one of the town's large luxury homes a scene of pure horror awaits them upon arriving at the
home the officer discovers one man later identified as Zachariah Brookner with a single gunshot wound to his abdomen another man Jonathan hotton lay motionless under a bed sheet nearby he was later discovered to have deep gashes to his neck which were later determined to have been caused by a razor sharp Hatchet a loaded rifle and a bloody hand axe was found in the home's garage and though it stood to reason that they were used in the attack who had taken them from the hands of the Wounded men the police officers continued to search the home
preparing themselves for the discovery of additional corpses but all they found was a lone survivor a woman named Lisa lines Lisa was determined to be a career academic who was visiting from nearby adalade she was also Jonathan Hutton's ex-wife as well as Zachariah brookner's current girlfriend Jonathan was a self-employed plumber who shared a 7-year-old son and a 5-year-old daughter with the now EST strange to Lisa Jonathan also shared a particularly close bond with his two children as for many years he'd acted as a kind of house husband with Lisa being their sole Financial provider they
shared many happy years together and indulged a mutual love of hunting using the rifles they kept locked in their garage but over time their relationship soured and the love they once felt for one another began to fade despite efforts to make their marriage work the couple split in June of 2017 with Jonathan vacating their little Hampton home just 2 months later he later said that Lisa changed the locks and put all my belongings in a locked garage attached to the house according to Lisa it was her right to change the locks and moving all her
ex-husband's belongings into the garage would would facilitate their quick and easy extraction it seems Lisa was intent on moving as quickly and completely as possible and her intention wasn't just emotional it was physical too as soon as August of 2017 just weeks after her husband had departed their home Lisa became romantically involved with the aformentioned Zack Brookner in 2014 Australian Department of Defense psychological report states that Brookner was argumentative verbally hostile and deluded with regard to his self-importance and place in the military context a disciplinary report from 2 years said that he was unsuitable to
remain in training on the grounds of adherence to Army values and performance the allegations against Brookner involved him shoving a female officer Cadet down a flight of stairs and following the scathing report from 2016 he was permanently and dishonorably discharged from the the Australian Army around the same time that Brookner was first being written up for poor conduct his future lover became a history lecturer at the prestigious military history department at the University of canbar it was here that she met Zack Brookner a man 13 years her Junior and in August of 2016 she offered
him a job at her Media Company Capstone editing it was there that the pair became romantically involved but incredibly just a few short weeks later Lisa invited Brookner to share her family home with her two young children the one her ex-husband had freshly vacated the move in no way excuses any kind of violent Behavior but it's also certainly what provoked Jonathan hotton to stop by the home that Sunday in late October miraculously both men survived the attack and once they were able each was interviewed by the police Jonathan hotton explained that he had only driven
over to his former home in order to drop off his children who had been staying with him for the weekend hotton then explained that as he was preparing to depart again Brookner had emerged and asked to see one of his hunting rifles Hunton claimed he agreed to show Brookner his rifle and that he felt no ill will towards him but after opening up his gun safe hotton claimed brockner ambushed him with the hatchet I opened her up then the next thing I know I'm being Struck from behind hotton told police I was just wondering why
is he hitting me hotton claimed Brookner struck him with the hatchet eight times before he managed to get a shot off with his rifle and this is the single shot that pierced his attacker's abdomen the bullet shattered part of brookner's pelvis almost completely immobilizing him yet Hutton's wounds were infinitely worse he is now paralyzed from the neck down confined to a wheelchair and requires Round the Clock Carri in a private Care Facility Hon's version of events paint a terrifying picture yet brookner's seemed to differ drastically from that of his girlfriend's ex-husband Brookner claimed that it
was hotten that under the pretense of showing his rifle it was hotton that led him into the garage before he was suddenly and unexpectedly shot Brookner also claimed the eight Hatchet wounds had all been inflicted in self-defense I didn't really think I just grab the first thing I could he told police officers the hatchet looked like it could be useful so that's what I used this Hatchet was identified as not belonging to Jonathan hotton and when pressed Brookner admitted to having purchased it himself yet he asserted that it was purchased several months prior and that
it was pure coincidence that it had been in the garage on the day of the attack Brookner also claimed that once the two men had fallen to the ground he carried on attacking hotton and what amount of to a clear attempt to finish his attacker off shortly afterwards Lisa lines entered the garage let out a banshee's whale upon seeing all the blood then rushed to summon emergency services to the scene incredibly the police seemed as side with Zack Brookner and it was Jonathan hotton who was charged with attempted murder yet in context this is very
understandable as initially hotton had lied regarding the sequence of events at first he claimed that someone else had fired the shot which wounded Brookner and that Zach had attacked him in the ensuing chaos he only later admitted to having personally shot Brookner and since he was the only one who seemed to be lying it was he who was ordered to stand in the docket in court the prosecution claimed that hotton went to the house that he used to share with his partner and invited the alleged victim to the garage to show him his collection of
guns the accused then positioned the barrel of the loaded rifle so that it was pointed directly at Zack brookner's stomach as Brookner then attempted to push the rifle away hotton pulled the trigger shooting him in his lower abdomen and shattering part of his pelvis Prosecuting attorneys then asserted that as hotton turn to retrieve more ammunition from the gun safe Brookner found the hatchet pulled himself up onto a pile of boxes then struck the accused eight times on the head and neck it made for a compelling argument but it was one the jury didn't buy in
September of 2019 at the conclusion of John Hutton's trial he was unanimously acquitted of all charges after just 3 hours of jury deliberation Hunt's defense team had categorically proven that in complete contrast to the assertions of the prosecution Zack Brookner had not been shot at close range a ballistics expert testifying on behalf of the defense exclaimed how patterns of blood splatter indicated the bullet had been fired from a minimum of 3.6 M from its intended target the defense also established that the localized nature of the hatchet injuries were inconsistent with brookner's claim that he was
failing wildly in self-defense they were brutal life-changing wounds inflicted with the intention to kill text messages were also shown to the courtroom messages would appear to confirm that Zack Brookner had been the one to to request a showing of the rifle he was eventually shot with when Jonathan haunton asked him why he wanted to see the rifle Brookner replied to send a photo of it to my mate Brookner was asked the name of the friend who'd requested the photo but he claimed that he was unable to remember it the analysis of electronic devices also revealed
that hotton had no idea that Brookner and his ex-wife were romantically involved both Brookner and Lisa lines made efforts to keep the relation relationship a secret despite having him move into her home but this rules out wrath or Envy as being hotton motivators to attack Brookner poking yet another hole in the ladder's decreasingly credible story honestly didn't even know that they were in a relationship he told the court they never said anything to me and I never asked it was actually relieved to be out of there I was dating other women by that time too
the court also went on to hear that following Hutton's departure from his former home Lisa Lions had transferred over $200,000 Australian dollars from their joint mortgage account into her own personal account then just 5 days before the attack Lisa reportedly told her therapist that I can't deal with him in his bloody custody demands he wants the kids 50% so he can get 50% of the assets and not pay any child support then 12 days following the attack while Jonathan was grievously ill in an intensive care Lisa Lions wrote to his life insurance provider seabus and
had an $800,000 life insurance policy taken out in her ex-husband's name just a few months later at 6:00 a.m. on New Year's Day a woman walked into Adelaide's Hamstead Rehabilitation Center she made her way to the room where now paralyzed Jonathan hotton was laying then simply stood over him for a moment or two as if contemplating something when she was disturbed by nurses the woman apparently rushed out of the rehab center and fled the scene on foot police officers then caught up with her and she explained her actions by claiming she was training for a
marathon bizarrely someone claiming to be This Woman's former partner contacted the Australian Crimestoppers organization and warned that she was planning on suffocating someone with a pillow but this wasn't the only thing police discovered about this mysterious and possibly malevolent morning morning visitor back in June of the previous year during the very same month that Lisa and Jonathan separated Lisa is believed to have met the woman through a popular dating app they were romantically involved in at least some capacity but under her courtroom cross-examination Lisa line said her connection with the woman was at the very
most charitable it's true that the woman had been suffering mental health issues and Lisa claimed that she merely intended to help her get back on her feet they'd been in contact for no longer than 6 months and during that time Lisa claimed to have barely even mentioned her ex-husband or divorce and that the ominous visit to the rehab center had most certainly not been at her Direction Lisa continued to vehemently protest her innocence but as questions regarding her involvement continued to mount she shocked Australia by fleeing the country with her two small children she was
later arrested in November of 2023 in the micronesian nation of palao police also confirmed they'd arrested Zack Brookner who was due to appear in court relating to charges of conspiracy to murder at first it seemed as if Lisa Lin was simply the innocent third tip in a violent love triangle but now it's clear she played a far more Sinister role in the eventual fate of her ex-husband as far as as far as I know Lisa and Zach are still in police custody with their trials set to commence either later this year or early 2025 only
time will tell what additional secrets are yet to be Unearthed and it'll be up to a jury of her peers to decide just how guilty Lisa Lions really is hey friends thanks for listening click that notification Bell to be alerted of all future narration I release new videos every Monday and Thursday at 700 p.m. EST and there are super fun live streams on Sundays and Wednesday nights if you got a story be sure to submit them to my subreddit r/ letre official or over email and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video
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