Stacy Lee
Appearances
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
Five or six years ago, Garth Brooks posted some sort of a video on his social media, and he said, I'm going on tour. Let's get weird. And people were like, that was a little strange. The vibe of the video was a little odd. And there's a podcast called Your Mom's House, and it features comedian Tom Segura and his wife, Christina P., who is also a comedian.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
Have radio.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
Is this a real thing? Are you making this up?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
I got to get out more. I know about the furries. I did not know about the Smurfs.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
You're meeting in a hotel ballroom and having a convention.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
I want to be a cat.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
I think the internet – I mean, obviously, it has perpetuated so many of these theories. And I think when Gen Z sometimes gets a hold of things, they think they've discovered them for the first time. I have a couple of nephews that are in their early 20s, and they'll come to Sunday dinner sometimes, and they'll say, did you hear this? And I'm like, oh, my love. Yeah, that's a really old conspiracy.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
You know, I would like to bring back shame and I would like to bring back dignity. The people that have the freak outs on the airplanes. Do you have no shame?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
yeah exactly like are you screaming and hollering and they're yeah it like you're an adult you do you have no dignity like what is wrong i i won't say you told me this but i have a family member that was like you know just one time just open up the back door and just push him out right see if it ever happens again it'll never happen
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
so tom segura i don't know if you've ever seen the podcast yeah it's hilarious yeah they're they're actually really funny him and his wife are just now dying over the fact that they have started this joke that has really taken off on the internet and they really start to lean into the joke and they start saying you know
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
A temper tantrum, like a toddler.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
You know how the internet is. People are kind of shameless on the internet. And they get these ideas and they run with them, be it furries or smurfs or conspiracy theories. And I'm going to tell you, I'm a little disturbed at how many young kids I see, young kids, 20-somethings, that are down the rabbit hole on these conspiracy theories.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
There are people that are truly convinced that Garth Brooks, you know, The most famous male singer in the world is truly a serial killer. And the rumor starts to get worse and worse. They are willing to believe whatever they hear on the internet. If it is typed out or if someone makes a TikTok about it, They're believing it.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
And there are people of every generation, Gen X, millennials, Gen Z, boomers. They will believe anything. But when the younger generation finds out about Chris Gaines, it's like the gloves come off. It is game on. They are completely convinced that this guy is the most famous cowboy ever, the most like broed up country boy ever. And he's turned emo and kind of effeminate for a year in the 90s.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
They went nuts. So now the conspiracy theory starts to involve Chris Gaines and people start talking about all kinds of ideas like Garth Brooks created Chris Gaines because that was his killer alter ego. And he was only Chris Gaines when he was killing people. That was one theory.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
And then there was another theory that he created Chris Gaines because he was testing out changing his look to see if he could become unrecognizable in order to go into hiding so he could continue killing people. I mean, the theories are literally all over the place. And then about six months ago, it culminates when someone makes a claim that they have a chart of
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
where exactly what you were talking about with Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, they can line up tour dates and match tour dates where Garth Brooks is in this city and this city and this city on the same day that someone goes missing or is murdered. So if Garth Brooks is in Detroit on December 2nd, 1992, someone goes missing or is murdered in Detroit.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
Same thing, you know, Sacramento, Los Angeles, whatever.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
It gets so much worse than this. This map, this map or this chart or this list, whatever it is. When I tell you I have been to the depths of hell looking for this thing, it doesn't exist. So I made my own. Hold on. I made my own. I spent about an hour and a half making this list. I had AI. pulled me up all of Garth Brooks concert dates for the years, I think 2013 to 2019 or something like that.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
And then I sat on the computer and I pulled up missing murdered people, missing and murdered people from the exact dates that he was in those cities. And I will tell you about 50% of the time he is in a city where someone goes missing or murdered and the other 50% of the time there is not a murder or someone that goes missing there. And you got to remember, this is Chicago. This is Detroit.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
I don't just think it's that he's kind of robotic in the internet posts or his social media posts. I don't think it's just that he's kind of weird. I think he's a serial killer. And you know, his wife was like, you know, I think he is too. I really honestly think that Garth Brooks is a serial killer. He's very awkward on camera sometimes.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
This is Los Angeles. Of course, someone's going missing or getting murdered on those days. So here you go. If somebody wants to spend more time on it than I did, be my guest. But I'm telling you, there is no list. There's no list.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
No, no, no. I did. I did Garth Brooks. I did. I started in 2013 and I got kind of bored and ran out of time around 2020. And I will tell you, yes, July 12th and 13th in Chicago, Illinois in 2013, a man named Wesley Parks went missing. There was a man named Eugene Johnson who was 84 years old, found shot dead in his car in Chicago, Illinois on September 20th.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
of 2013 uh 2014 two of his dates that that pulled up in los angeles and atlanta nobody but in chicago again on september 5th there was a man from india named brim chanana that went missing and was later found murdered so about 50 of the time something lines up and the other 50 of the time there's nothing
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
He's, you know, he's tired some days. He's too tired some days to go out and work.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
And you've got to realize it's going to take him. I don't know if you've ever been backstage at one of these big arenas. It is a maze of tunnels. It is a literal maze. It takes an hour and a half to get out of one of those venues. You think it takes a long time going in the front door with your ticket.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
It takes twice as long getting in and out, you know, so he's got to have like maybe a disguise or an accomplice.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
I don't know, but it's totally plausible. Yeah, it was.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
And then they start talking about how wouldn't this just be the perfect cover for a serial killer? You're the most famous male singer in the world. The world. But it's all just to hide the fact that you are actually a serial killer. This is the gist of the things they're saying on the podcast.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
Yeah. Yeah.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
You can't lead with Garth Brooks as a serial killer. No, no. They're going to hang up the phone.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
That's the quote. And then you find a roadie, you know, that was at the venue one time and saw something kind of suspicious. I mean, it takes nothing these days to get people to believe.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
Bestseller. Bestseller. And Tom Segura does jump on this. I mean, it's funny that you bring him up because when he starts hearing all of this, you know, this has really taken off. He goes on the podcast one day and he says, well, it's official. Garth Brooks has blocked me on Instagram. I saw that.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
He's rolling. Him and his wife think it is the greatest thing ever. And first off, I think it's weird that Garth Brooks has taken this seriously and is apparently mad about this. I think had he had a better sense of humor about it, it might've gone away a little quicker.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
I would, too. But he absolutely refuses to address it. In fact, this this will kill you. You can look this up. There are multiple instances of people holding up signs at concerts and the signs will say, we love you, Garth. And they've decorated the signs and they're really trying to get the attention of the Jumbotron. Then if they do get on the Jumbotron as soon as the camera's on them.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
And if you say you've watched the podcast, you know, they deliver everything they say in kind of a deadpan way. They talk about it as though they're having a serious conversation. They're not laughing. They're not presenting it as a joke. It's very much sarcasm. But as you well know, you've been on YouTube for a while. Some people are just not... How can I say this nicely, Matthew?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
It dropped the sign and it says, where are the bodies, G? And the jumbotron immediately cuts away. So you've got to think about that for a second. This has gotten so big that Garth Brooks has informed every jumbotron operator in every arena and every venue that he goes to that if anyone holds up a sign that says, where are the bodies, G, they are not to be shown on the jumbotron.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
Cover it up. It's a cover up.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
It's a cover up. They've got him on his heels. He doesn't want anyone talking about it. He's going to start suing people.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
Yep. Yeah. Oh, and it gets even worse because a few months ago, somebody digs up an old clip of Garth Brooks on a talk show. It looks like it's in the 90s just by the way people dress and stuff. And it's like a like a good morning, Philadelphia, you know, type of talk show. And they're talking about Garth Brooks wanting to go into acting. And the talk show host says to Garth, you know.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
Have you thought about it? Do you want to be in a Western? He's like, yeah. He's like, but I told the producers and the directors that have contacted me that if they ever want someone to be the bad guy, I'd love to be the bad guy. And the talk show host says, oh, no, no, no, no. You don't want to be the bad guy. You look like a good guy. You're a good guy. Everybody loves you.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
And Garth Burke responds, I guess, but I'd rather kill somebody.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
I will send you the clip.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
You've got to include the clip. It sends the internet into a spiral.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
You've got Garth Brooks now saying on tape many years ago, I'd rather kill somebody. The people that are barely clinging to reality at this point just go off the edge. They're gone. They're Thelma and Louise at this point shooting into the Grand Canyon. And about six months ago, this thing gets so big on TikTok. I see a video, at least one a day,
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
People talking about the fact they are convinced that Garth Brooks is a serial killer. And they're talking about this list, this map, this chart that doesn't exist. And so Tom and Christina, they just keep piling on. They are loving this. And then they start talking about Trisha Yearwood, who is so famous in her own right. And do you think Trisha knows? Do you think she's in on the deal?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
They've been married since 2005. And Tom Segura and Christina, you know, they banter back and forth and they're just deadpan serious. Most of us realize they're totally joking, but some people aren't in on the joke. They're like, do you think she knows where he hides the bodies?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
You know, and then they discuss a scenario where like Tricia comes into the room and Garth is like bent over a body and she startles him, you know, and he looks up and he's got like blood running out of his mouth. I mean, they're just going off and people are taking notes. They are just eating this up. It is
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
so obviously tom and christina trolling the hell out of garth brooks that there are people who just don't get the joke it is insane but then you gotta hold on to your hats and glasses because it gets worse every time i think this cannot get worse it gets worse tom and christina start talking about how
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
Everybody's pretty convinced at this point in time that the Illuminati is probably real or there is some Hollywood cabal of evil people. I mean, with the P. Diddy thing coming out and all of that.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
So Tom and Christina start telling jokes as if the Hollywood cabal or the Illuminati, whoever you want to believe in, they have come up with this conspiracy theory that Garth Brooks is a serial killer because he really is. And they're trying to cover it up. And they think to themselves, What's the best way to cover up this rumor that Garth is a serial killer? Make it bigger, make it bigger.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
Some people are not the brightest bulbs on the chandelier and they think they're being serious. They do not understand this is a joke. So Tom and Christina then lean even farther into the joke and they are loving the fact that they have started this joke on their podcast and people on the internet have picked it up and they are running with it. They think it is absolutely hilarious.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
So now we've gone all the way around and we're back to the total beginning of it's a conspiracy theory to cover up a conspiracy theory. It's insane.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
There you go.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
There you go. And that's exactly what people think now that the Illuminati or this Hollywood cabal or whatever has grown the conspiracy theory to cover up the fact they're protecting one of their own.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
You're like, I actually do have a life.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
I think so. That's how I say it. So, yeah, I think so.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
Huge. Huge.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
you only need one disgruntled guy i'm telling you oh yeah back in the day those roadies are i mean there are you know there's a lot of substances uh floating around in those in those circles and you you could probably talk anybody into saying anything i need your i need that list I will get the list to you. I will get the list to you.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
I'm just saying.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
I mean, you would have the actual only list though, because I'm telling you this list, this mythical list does not exist. I have looked everywhere.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
Um, I, from 2000 and we'll, I asked AI to just give the major concert dates. So it chose just the bigger cities that AI just chose the bigger cities. So you've got like Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Tampa, and Los Angeles.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
uh Nashville Denver Minneapolis but I'm sure for every one of these major cities you know there's going to be smaller cities I mean Garth Brooks also goes to Provo Utah you know he also goes to you know Fresno he goes to smaller cities as well so the list would be a lot more exhaustive than this it just pulled up his major concert dates for each year so this this this list would have I mean how many shows do you think Garth Brooks has played in 30 years
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
That's something that started out as nothing more than quips about Garth being kind of robotic and weird has turned into this rumor on TikTok among really young kids, people in their 20s. That's kids to me. And, you know, so for the next year, this joke kind of morphs and twists.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
Yes, yes, yeah. He's got kill kits buried everywhere, a la Israel Keys. He's got, you know, secret stashes in every city, in every park, in every, yeah, he's got all the money. He's got all the connections. He is going to, if he's going to be a serial killer, He is going to be the best serial killer that we have ever seen.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
And this goes on and on and on. And it's all cheeky and it's all funny and kind of crazy. And then almost like, you know, reality kind of imitating the fiction, the news breaks the first week of October that a lawsuit has been filed by a woman who has chosen to remain anonymous. Now, I will say Garth Brooks has since named her.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
which turned a lot of people off because if she is a victim, you know, you shouldn't name victims that don't want to be named. She, she names herself Jane Roe in the lawsuit. And she is alleging that during 2019, she was sexually assaulted, harassed. And I don't know if you have to bleep that out or not. This is his makeup artist.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
So I found the actual complaint on, on the web and I'm a certified paralegal. So I know how to speak legal ease pretty well. The complaint is pretty long, 27 pages. And it says that this woman was hired in 1999 to do hair and makeup for Trisha Yearwood and that she continued to be Trisha's hair and makeup artist for decades. In 2017, she also starts doing Garth Brooks hair and makeup.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
Now, I don't know how this happens if you're Trisha Yearwood and Garth Brooks' makeup artist and hair artist, but she starts having financial problems. So Garth starts giving her more work. He starts hiring her more often. And she claims they get really, really close. And the more she works with Garth Brooks, the more friendly he becomes.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
And she's like standing over him doing his hair and makeup and she's being groped. He's claiming he will like reach up and grab her boobs. And he's, you know, smacking her on the butt and things like that. She says one day in 2019, she goes to Garth Brooks house to style his hair and makeup.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
And he comes out of the room naked and ready for action, shall we say, and that he was holding his readiness for action in his hands and he's walking towards her. And she claims that he grabbed her hands and made him touch him. Um, tells her he's been fantasizing about her for years and wants her to perform on him and that he specifically wants her to leave her glasses on while he finishes. Yeah.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
on this podcast the two of them husband and wife start talking about how garth brooks is sometimes a bit stiff on camera and he looks the joke was something about like he looks like he's wearing human skin but he isn't human and they are just joking they are totally joking But the joke continues episode after episode, it becomes kind of a running theme on the podcast.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
So the woman claims she was shocked. She was confused. She said, you know, I'm not doing this, but she needed the money. So she stayed for the gig and did his hair and makeup. She says later that same year in may of 2019, he asks her to go to Los Angeles with him for this Grammy tribute that he's attending. And she gets on the private plane, which is usually full of staff members.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
But she notices that day it's just the two of them. They get to Los Angeles. They check into the hotel room. And as they do, this woman realizes that there's only one hotel room booked. So they go to the hotel room and she's putting away her things. And Garth again appears in the doorway naked. And I'm ashamed to say, as I'm picturing this in my head, why does he have his cowboy hat on?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
And before long, people start going to Garth Brooks concerts and they are holding up homemade signs that say, where are the bodies, G? So
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
Why does he have his cowboy hat on when he's naked in my head? I don't know. But this is very disturbing information. And I'm picturing it, you know, this really nice hotel suite. And he just appears naked in the doorway. She claims that as he stood there, he started flexing his muscles. I don't think of Garth Brooks and muscles in the same sentence.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
She apparently does not travel with him. She is kind of a homebody. She only performs like once in a great while for like a really big event. And it is normal apparently for Garth Brooks to go places by himself.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
And, and this woman claims the lawsuit actually says, I actually want to read you the verbiage. Tragically, her worst fears came true. One seconds later, Garth was towering over her, his six foot, almost 300 pound frame ready to pounce on Ms. Rowe, who is less than five feet and a hundred pounds.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
As she began to panic, he grabbed her hands and pulled her into the next room and onto the bed where she could not escape his physical domination. Now, this is very colorful language, especially for a lawsuit. And you can easily picture this scenario in your head. If this happened, this is, of course, horrific. This is where the story gets very unfunny. She claims that she lays there on the bed.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
He rapes her. She was in pain. She was traumatized. and was even held upside down at one point and kind of humiliated. The lawsuit goes on to detail, I would say, some of the most graphic details I have personally ever read in a legal document, much too graphic to say here. But she says she just kind of, after it was over, was expected to do her job.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
And then the legal complaint goes on and lists other allegations like sexting, says he would change his clothes in front of her, expose himself to her. He would stare lasciviously, that's the word that is used in the complaint, at her breasts and force her to open her shirt. It's really quite disturbing. And if this happened... Garth Brooks is a monster, basically.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
This is where it gets really hard for me, really difficult. I did an episode on Marilyn Manson a month or so ago, and his people came out of the woodwork to call me every vile name in the book. He has a lot of supporters, and he has 11 accusers. Nine accusers named, two accusers unnamed. When somebody gets that many accusers, I'm sorry, where there's smoke, there's fire.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
That's the way I believe it. When there's one accuser, it doesn't mean she's lying, but it's definitely difficult, more difficult for her. I mean, wouldn't you agree? Yeah. To come out against somebody like this, so powerful. And so I don't know why she would do this. I think she thought, according to her camp, she tried to get him into talks. And her camp thought they were in settlement talks.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
He was going to pay her off. And then he went and preemptively filed a lawsuit against her claiming to be the victim of blackmail. And he said, if she's going to try to blackmail me, I'm going to out her. So at this point, it really is like a he said, she said thing. And I don't know what to believe. It's you got to you got to pick sides at this point. It's one woman against one man.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
And none of us were there. And who knows what to believe? I mean, that's where it's at right now. So. very unfunny to very, very sad and scary, you know?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
To be the lone accuser, I cannot imagine what that would feel like to accuse any man or any woman, but someone as powerful as Garth Brooks.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
It is. It is. And she has a lot of details. She even tells a story about how they were in the studio one day, headed to an event, and she noticed that he had grabbed her phone when it was unlocked and he had deleted her entire text thread with him. So she's got some details. She also talks about a time where Garth called her and said, you know, I think you think I'm upset with you.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
I would never be upset with you. And then he tells her, he gives her this little analogy and he goes, look at it this way. me and you broke into a jewelry store. And the second we broke the door and the glass broke, we looked at each other and we said, this isn't right. But we had already broken the glass door.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
And so I think what me and you do at this point is we just run out and hope that nobody ever finds out. And we just love one another and be friends. Is that okay with you? So she has this story where he comes up with this jewelry store break-in analogy and tries to compare it to, yes, they did a bad thing, but if nobody ever finds out, then who's the wiser? Nobody gets hurt.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
It is. It is. I agree with you on that. And you'd think at some point in time she would have, you know, recorded something or tried to get something on tape. And the other thing that makes it a little tough for me is that she did continue to work for him. Now she claims she has financial problems and we all know when people are desperate for money, they'll do what they have to do to get by.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
So I don't want to fault her too heavily on that. But she finally did end up quitting in 2021 and she moved to Mississippi and that's when she hired attorneys and they go into these settlement talks. And then on September 13th of this year, Garth Brooks just preemptively files this lawsuit.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
He uses, uh, a thing in the law called a declaratory judgment act where he calls himself the victim of attempted extortion. And in the woman's prayer for relief, which is the part of the legal complaint where the, the, uh, plaintiff asks the judge for damages, monetary damages. The woman says she wants punitive damages, monetary damages and attorney's fees, but she doesn't name a specific amount.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
And I find that interesting as well, because normally in things like this, you will see that someone's looking for a lot of money. And I don't know that she is. Maybe she wants to tell her story. But Garth Brooks puts out a statement and says,
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
For the last two months, I've been hassled to no ends with threats, lies, tragic tales of what my future will look like if I don't write a check for millions of dollars. And then he goes on to say that hush money, no matter how much or how little, is still hush money. And in order for him to pay that hush money, it would mean he was admitting to acts that he did not commit.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
And he said he was not going to pay anybody because he hasn't done anything wrong. So I don't know. I don't know what to think. I really don't. So... Yeah, it's a really tough one. The press got wind of it. And I guess Garth Brooks has this series on Facebook where he talks live to his audience and he tells them that his wife wants to move to Ireland.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
She fell in love with Ireland while they were touring the country. And so his audience immediately goes to they're fleeing the country to move to Ireland because of these accusations against him. when apparently he said, no, we've been thinking of moving to Ireland for a while or getting a house in Ireland for a while. Of course. Yeah. Yeah.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
I just I just don't I've looked into this for weeks now and I just really don't know what to believe. If this really happened to this woman, that is absolutely horrific. Absolutely terrible. If she's making it up, that's terrible for him. You know, and I just I don't know what to think right now. I tend to want to believe accusers.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
Just my gut, my woman brain tends to want to believe other women, but we've seen a lot of false accusations as well. And if no one else comes forward and she doesn't have any evidence, it's gonna make it very difficult for her. But I still have to wonder why would she do it then? I don't know. I just don't know what to think right now.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
was going to talk about yeah i was going to talk about we already talked about diddy and all that stuff yeah so we did yeah well i mean we just mentioned him that you know since since he came out you know everybody's thinks there's this evil hollywood cabal
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
But I also think it's important to point out that Sandy, Garth Brooks' first wife, is very supportive of him. And there are these rumors that go around all the time that Garth Brooks cheated on Sandy with Trisha Yearwood, you know, that he started his affair with Trisha Yearwood before he divorced Sandy. Sandy herself has never said that. She is actually one of his biggest fans.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
Does she know where her bread is buttered? Of course. But, you know, she has never had a bad word to say about him. So that also... I don't know. I don't know.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
She's also in on the serial killer thing. They're a trio of serial killers. You got Garth Brooks, Trisha Yearwood, and his first wife, Sandy, who was like a Grammy Award winning songwriter. I just, I don't know what to think at this point. The whole thing is just, you cannot make stuff like this up. When something takes on a life of its own on the internet, it is, it's out of our hands.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
Yeah. If you Google is Garth Brooks a serial killer, you'll get articles, I think, from Vice, CBS News picked up on it. It is everywhere. It is absolutely everywhere. And then, of course, you want to really get into it. You go on Reddit because it is Reddit is where I go digging when I want to find the stuff that's not in the mainstream.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
And then there's other places I don't want to mention that I go digging. And I'm telling you, the map and the chart does not exist. I mean, if it does, it's somewhere that I don't want to go to find it. but it's definitely not on TikTok or anywhere mainstream like that. But there are news. Yeah, the mainstream media has picked up on this story, which is just wild.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
This started out as a joke on a podcast.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
You need to write this book.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
You've got to write this book.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
I mean, it just this is a pop culture moment. I think this is something that will be studied later on as proof of how wild the Internet is, you know, in these. I mean, I think in the future they will look back, you know, still 20 years after everybody has it, 30 years after everybody has it. This is still the early onset of the Internet.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
And I think this is going to be an example of just how it really was the Wild West. And anything that you said on the Internet quickly could turn into fact. And it's terrifying.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
And this is real?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
So people are thinking, right. I got you. Yeah. People are wrongly imprisoned because of this guy. Right. Okay.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
Oh, yeah, I've seen it. I did not know that was about a book. I just thought it was a film. I did not know that.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
Not a true story.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
I love Sam Rockwell. He's great. He's amazing. I love him. He's one of my favorites. Yeah, it's been a long time since I've seen that film, but I'm going to watch it tonight.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
And they start talking about these specific instances, where Garth will give an interview, and he's kind of like, you know, deer in the headlights. And there's just something a little off about him. So people are listening to the podcast, they start picking up on the joke. And you know how the internet is, some people really take hold and
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
The government actually did inject people with syphilis and LSD, and they didn't give people treatment even after they had, you know, the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, I think is one of the most disturbing things that the government has done just because so many people suffered and got sick during that. But yeah, a lot of those conspiracy theories from decades past have turned out to be true.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
When that photo came out of Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson sitting next to a Nazi, an actual, can we say that on YouTube? I don't know. An actual man from the German 40s in the space station. The guy ended up being the one who helped us go to the moon, you know?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
Yeah. And people didn't want to believe that forever. They thought, oh, there's no way the government would partner up with someone like that. Well, they sure did.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
They did. They absolutely did.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
You got to go to the moon. We got to go to the moon.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
Kind of what ends up happening is as people are holding up these signs, it's like the guy that holds up the John 3, 16 sign at the football games and nobody knows what it means. As soon as people start holding up these signs that say, where are the bodies, G? Other people start seeing the signs and they start asking, you know, what does this mean? So they go searching for the meaning of the signs.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
And then the joke turned rumor starts showing up on Reddit and Tumblr, you know, and then, of course, on TikTok. And then someone makes and mass produces T-shirts and starts selling T-shirts outside of Garth Brooks concerts that say, where are the bodies G on the T-shirts? And this thing just kind of takes on a life of its own.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
grab onto certain things and sometimes it's things that you wouldn't expect and for whatever reason this joke just took hold so considering the fact that Garth Brooks is the most listened to solo music artist of all time even more than the Beatles in the solo category because they're in the band category He is also the highest selling country artist of all time.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
So as the conspiracy theory starts to pick up, people start remembering back in the ancient days of dinosaurs when I was young, that in 1999, Garth Brooks did something not only unusual, but frankly, really strange. He invented a totally different persona. Do you remember?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
And I remember seeing the photos, you know, Garth Brooks has always been a bit rotund, you know, kind of fuller through the face. But this guy was like thin and his face was a lot bonier. And he had this emo hairstyle, you know, with the bangs down in his eyes. And he had the little soul patch and the whole nine yards. Very rock and roll, like you say, and a lot edgier.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
I remember he would always wear the... the black suits with the architect's collar, kind of R&B style, kind of boys to men style. And people were looking at him and saying, you know, I think that's supposed to be Garth Brooks or this guy says he's Garth Brooks. And other people were like, that's not Garth Brooks. That is absolutely not Garth Brooks.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
This is some sort of a publicity stunt or the record company is paying someone to say this is Garth Brooks. People honestly did not believe that it was Garth Brooks.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
I've got to show the photos I'll try to find one without all the junk on it yeah you've got to find the photos because he really did look like a different person he lost a bunch of weight his face the bone structure in his face looked different and I remember seeing an interview someone asking him you know why why do you want to do this and he said well I just have this other side to my personality I just have this other part of me
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
And, you know, so so people are thinking, well, he has this other part of him. He's admitted on camera that he's got this totally different other part to his personality. I went to Apple Music and then to Spotify to try to listen to some Chris Gaines songs because I didn't remember what they sounded like. And that's when I found out Garth Brooks is exclusive only to Amazon Music.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
You can't hear him on any other platforms. And I don't have Amazon Music, but I did find some stuff on YouTube. And when I started listening to the Chris Gaines songs, I have to tell you, I was shocked. First of all, Garth Brooks's voice is incredible. I mean, he really I'm a singer myself, and I will tell you, his voice is stunning.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
And when he is Chris Gaines, he almost sounds like an R&B singer. Or you remember that band Nelson? And then there was like Xtreme. Do you remember those kind of 90s? You know, it was kind of soft rock, kind of yacht rock, but elevated. And then there was like early third eye blind. It's kind of a mix of that. It was a little edgier, but still, I would say like adult contemporary music.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
You know, but but nobody really knew what he was trying to. What was the point of this? But then when people hear this conspiracy theory and they find out that he had this whole era of his life where he was a different person, they're like. There's something wrong with this guy. There's something wrong with him. It was very weird for people.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
They had this manly man, good old country boy that all the bros liked, all the jocks and the hunters and the big truck driving guys like. And then suddenly he's appearing in a wig and an emo wig at that. He's wearing a very fancy suit, and people honestly just did not know what to think. And the music pretty much bombed, if I remember right.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
He is the highest selling male artist of all time. And he has the most certified platinum albums of any other musician. It is crazy. He has the most number one hits in country music and the most number one albums on the Billboard 200. So he is at the top of the top. This man is the most successful, the most famous. No one is more talked about or watched or listened to.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
It did not. No, no. And, and when I listened to the music getting ready, you know, to talk to you, I was like, you know, the music really isn't bad. There's a couple of songs that I would consider, you know, kind of similar to the old boys to men stuff and the art, you know I don't know if I would say extreme and Nelson so much, but it was a cross between R and B and kind of,
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
don't know poppier music but his voice is just incredible and you know it's it's a little bit um sweet and a little sexier i mean i don't think of sexy when i think of garth brooks but it it flopped because people were just like this is too weird it's honestly too weird i think if garth brooks brought chris gaines back today it would be huge I do.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Tom Segura Exposes Garth Brooks (The Real Story)
I think it would be like a throwback to the old times. Don't you think?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
He was arrested for writing bad bank notes, selling magic rocks and crystals. He was a con artist. This is literally how every cult starts. Every cult is started by... So I was born into a very devout Mormon family. My parents are still devout. Some of my sisters are still devout. Most of my cousins and aunts and uncles and everyone else is still devout.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
You are Mormon before you're a wife, a husband, a son, a daughter, a doctor. You are Mormon first. So we go to the temple and people kind of tried to prepare me for what it was going to be like. I'm sure your viewers and you probably know a little bit about Freemasonry.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Okay. So Joseph Smith was very into studying Freemasonry and he took a lot of the things that happened in the temple from Freemasonry. So you go in and you can watch this all online now. People have gone in with hidden cameras and recorded this whole thing.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Now, you have to understand, I was told growing up that if you ever shared what went in the temple, there were signs that you do in the temple. You stand in the temple. It says, if I ever reveal the secrets of the temple and you make a sign from here to here that your throat will be cut from ear to ear, that you will be gutted from breastbone to pubic bone.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And then there are other penalties that they tell you will happen to you if you ever talk about what goes on in the temple. And they've since taken that out of the ceremony because it got online and they did not want people seeing that. You wear all white clothing. You watch a movie that has to do with the Garden of Eden and how Satan came to be. You put on
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
These strange hats for the men and the women veil their faces. The women sit on one side of the room, the men sit on the other side of the room. And then at the end, you are given what's called signs and tokens. The very first time you ever go to the temple, they give you your own name. And they tell you that when you meet God in heaven, God will not ask you what your earthly name was.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
God will ask you for your name. And they tell you your name and they tell you it's very secret. And to this day, I still have a really hard time saying mine because it's just so drilled into your head. But I was given the name of Leah. And you go to a curtain and there's a man standing behind the curtain and his hand comes through a slit in the curtain.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And he takes your hand and impresses upon your hand his thumb here, his finger here. And there's different handshakes that are supposed to represent where the nails were put in Christ's hands at his crucifixion and other signs. But they are really just the same signs as Freemasonry.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
There's a very famous photo of George Bush shaking Thomas Monson's hand when Thomas Monson was in the first presidency. And they are holding each other's hands in a very unusual way. And that is because George Bush was a Freemason and Thomas Monson was a Mormon. And they both know the same handshakes.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
very very good question matthew uh it's supposed to be divinely inspired by god do you know what it is everyone who went to the temple on tuesdays was leah wednesdays was virginia thursdays was jessica So you're told that this is a divinely inspired name that is given only to you. And you're not supposed to talk about any of this stuff with other people.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
But then you find out later there were roles and dates printed on a calendar and your name was just given to you depending on whatever day you happen to go through the temple on the first time.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And the bishops knew that about me. And they knew I was one of those girls that they could maybe ask a You know, that were not appropriate to be asking a child. Some bishops never did this, but I had two in particular from the time I was a little girl until the time I was older that would ask very inappropriate questions. You know, are you kissing boys? Are you using your tongue?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Not very divinely inspired and not very magical. You know, there's a lot of magical belief. There's a lot of magical thinking in Mormonism. And so, you know, I go to the temple. It is not what I expected. My dad tried to handle it with humor as he always does. He's great. And he said, don't be surprised if you see pizzas flying through the air at one point. And I was like, what?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And then I see the men get out these hats. They're like a cardboard baker's hat and put them on. And I was like, dad, I was all like, do not start laughing. My dad's he's great. But anyway, It was strange. And we went home and my ex-husband was quiet all the way home in the car. And we got home and he took his suit off and he looked at me and he said, don't ever ask me to do that again.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And he never went back. I did, but he didn't.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
I've seen a few episodes of Big Love. Yes, I have.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
I don't know if they're supposed to be Mormon or not. I think there's a misconception in mainstream society. The polygamists that exist now are not Mormons, mainstream Mormons. They are members of what is called the Fundamentalist Latter-day Saint Church, the FLDS. So when you see... If you see pictures like about 40 minutes from where I'm sitting right now, you drive out to Colorado City.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Everyone's dressed like it's the 1800s. The women's have these big poofy bangs with French braids. The men are in cowboy Western shirts and jeans. But, you know, they have iPhones and stuff now, but they didn't used to. They believe they are the real Mormons. They believe mainstream Mormons are wrong because mainstream Mormons stopped practicing polygamy.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
So, um, the FLDS are not what was portrayed in big love. They had like jobs and stuff, right?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Yes. So that they would not be considered Mormon. No, just maybe like sister wives, you know, that Cody, that weird Cody guy that has different wives. I don't know that he considers himself a Mormon on that show. Sister wives. He's just a polygamist, but the Mormon polygamists are different.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
That doesn't exist. That makes sense.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
That makes sense. It was good. I've heard a lot of people say that it was good. Sometimes that stuff is a little triggering for me. I'm not a big fan. I think triggers are overused and I'm not a big fan of like, I think you're responsible for your own triggers. I'm not a big fan of giving trigger warnings and stuff on my channel. I'm like, it's a true crime channel.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
What the hell do you think you're going to be talking here? Um, but it is a little triggering for me. I have a hard time with some of that stuff because it's so close to home. I mean, when I go to Walmart, if I leave here, we finish here and I go to Walmart today, I will see polygamists in my Walmart. Um,
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
They believe all the same things that Mormons do with the exception, Mormons do with the exception of polygamy. They still practice polygamy. The mainstream Mormon church did away with polygamy because the federal government said, if Utah wants to become a state and get statehood, you have to do away with polygamy because it's immoral.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And that is the one and only reason the Mormons did away with polygamy. If the federal government had not made that happen, we'd still be practicing polygamy today.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And that's new. That's new. I was taught there's a scripture that says he is the same yesterday, today and forever. And I was always taught the doctrine of the church does not change and the gospel does not change. But oh, wait, we've got to let black men have the priesthood in 1978 because we're getting a lot of pressure on that. Black men were not allowed to have the priesthood until 1978.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And even farther than that. And they would use the word back then, the word, this word makes my skin crawl. They would use the word petting. Oh, I just hate that word. But that was the word that they use. I don't know if that came from your culture too, but.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Not 1878, 1978. So they changed for that. Then all of a sudden it was, well, you know, we're not getting as many missionaries as we used to get. And two years is a long time to go on a mission and be gone when you're 20 something years old. So we're going to change it to 18 months. And then we used to go to church when I was growing up. You went to church for two hours on Sunday morning.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
You went home and had lunch. And then you went back for two hours in the afternoon. Well, they started to notice. Yeah. Well, and then you had in the middle of the week, you had young women's and young men's and mutual and Relief Society parties. And it's your life. And then they started to notice a lot of people aren't coming back for that afternoon session.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
So we're going to make it a block, a three hour block. So I then through all my adulthood, I left the church when I was about 38. All through my adulthood, I went to church for three hours on Sunday. And then about a year ago, they said, we're noticing a real drop in membership here. We're going to go to two hours.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Now, last week, they announced that the garments that Mormons wear, now only Mormons that go to the temple wear garments. You've seen the garments, the underwear.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
OK, so now they've changed the garments for women. When I was in the church, my garments hit me about right here. You're not allowed to wear tank tops, spaghetti straps, strapless dresses, crop tops, anything like that. They go past your belly. You can't show anything. And now they've just come out with one that you could maybe wear a tank top with.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And they've said all along, the garments will never change. Well, the garments used to be long sleeved and go all the way to your ankles. So they've changed the garments a bunch of times too. So things do change. And that also bothered me. That was like, I grew up with these rules being told this, and now all of a sudden it's changed and it's different. So which is it?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Petting is like fondling each other. Oh, okay. Like first base, second base type thing. That was the word that they would use was petting. And it just makes my skin crawl. But, um, and, and I thought in my mind, it was like, even as a little kid, I was like, this doesn't feel right. Like I know there's something, this isn't right. Like my dad wouldn't ask me these questions.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Oh, you should be around the Mormons when BYU used to... BYU doesn't play on Sunday, but there was a time where this was a big uproar and a big controversy. But yeah, football is a big deal. It causes a lot of problems, causes a lot of bishops interviews for those men that seem to be sneaking out early. Yeah. So I was... I was always a square peg in a round hole in the church.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
My job did not lend itself to being a good Mormon. I spent my weekends in smoky dive bars and casinos and clubs that most people probably wouldn't even go into.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Yeah. And I put out an album in the late 90s. This was right as I was getting divorced. And I've been with my husband now since 1997. I put out an album and I got picked up by Sarah McLaughlin to do the Lilith Fair tour. Those of us that are ancient will remember. And then I got put on kind of a satellite circuit to all of those big artists and kind of toured around with a lot of those artists.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And I had a record deal presented to me by Third Rail Records. It was a subsidiary of Hollywood at the time. They brought me down to Los Angeles and sat me down and said, you know, we're going to give you this half million dollar record deal. And I called my bishop. That's how that's how in in I was.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
I I don't like to use the word brainwash because I think it's disrespectful to people that are still in the church. But there are people that use that word. And my bishop said, how are you going to be a good mom? And that really broke my heart. And he said, how are you going to be a good Mormon? And I didn't care so much about that. But the mom thing really hurt me.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And so I didn't sign the record deal. At the time, I was with Gwen Stefani and no doubt almost every night. And they went this way and I went this way. And, you know, they stayed on tour and I went home and they blew up. And I was back home running my husband's construction company. So who knows what would have happened? But that's that's how in I was. I called my bishop for advice.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And then my husband and I grew through the church. We ended up going to the temple together. New husband. My husband now, my second husband. He was raised in Las Vegas until he was about 12. My husband is a In tennis, they don't call it AAA tennis. They call it satellite tennis. You go on the satellite circuit.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
So we played, he went to Mizzou on a tennis scholarship and then he got picked up on the satellite circuit. Same time Andre August. He did. So he played a lot with Andre August. He is like his tennis partner, things like that. And then he kind of aged out of it. He wasn't good enough to go pro. He had been on the satellite circuit for a while. His parents had moved back to Missouri because.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
I don't know if you know the Lauren Mormonism, but Jesus is coming to Missouri. Did you know that? Did you know that?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Tickets, Matthew, because Jesus is coming to Missouri.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Well, whenever Jesus decides to come back, the second coming, it's going to be in Missouri because Missouri, according to Mormons, is where the Garden of Eden was.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
You know, my mom wouldn't ask me these questions. So why is this strange man asking me these questions? And as I got a little bit older, the, um, I don't know how familiar you are with the Joseph Smith story or the origins of the church.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
It is the only true American religion. I mean, besides all the cults, you know, that pop up here and there. But the reason Mormonism survived is because of the isolation. Joseph Smith made so many people mad. I mean, he tried to kill the governor.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
you know and they put him in prison and then he tried to break out of prison and then when he tried to break out of prison he was shot and murdered so then he became a martyr so then brigham young his successor picked the mormons up and moved him to utah and in the isolation with no exposure to anything else any cult will grow i mean when they tell you to keep to have 15 kids and then 15 kids have 15 kids and you're isolated for 50 years
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
That cult is obviously going to grow. And that is the reason Mormonism survived where so many other folk magic cults and things like that did not. It was surely due to the isolation. Now Mormons will tell you it's because it's the truth and truth always endures. But that's not what I believe.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
That's another, we could definitely go into that.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
We are, we are very much so.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
So before I married my second husband, when I was just like 19 years old, my ex-husband moved me from Cedar City, Utah to St. George. There's about 45 miles difference. And I got down here and I needed a job. And I thought, you know, I'm a good dancer. I'm going to start a dance school. So I opened a little dance school, started out with like 20 girls from the neighborhood.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And within a year, I had 500 students. And so I had this big dance school and I started going to these dance conventions and And I found out what homosexuality was. I did not know growing up in Southern Utah what a gay man was. I did not know. I was probably 20 years old. I went to a dance convention and I knew there were a couple of friends I had in high school.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
The boys were a little feminine and had the flock of seagulls hair or the trench coats or the new wave stuff or whatever. But I had no idea what gay was. And so I started going to these conventions and I made friends with a lot of gay men. And I found out how terribly gay men are treated in our society.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And I became an activist in the not only the queer rights community, but also civil rights community. And the more the activist in me came out, the less I could stay in the church. It got harder and harder for me. And then one day in 2006 or seven, they had what's called a joint meeting. Normally the women go to Relief Society and the men go to priesthood on Sunday after sacrament meeting.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
So everybody goes to sacrament meeting, takes the sacrament, then you break off into groups. Well, today we had a joint meeting.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
it it mormonism is um i call it a we call it in the community the highest of the high demand religions it is the hardest outside of being amish perhaps to be mormon so we're sitting in this group meeting and the bishop comes in and he's going to talk to us all and behind him is his first counselor pulling uh like a dolly a moving dolly and on it is a bunch of yard signs
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And I'm thinking, what's going on here? Because first off, Mormons are not supposed to get involved in politics at all. We're not supposed to discuss politics with each other. We're supposed to vote our conscience. You're not supposed to discuss politics at church. And the church is never supposed to get involved in politics.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
There is supposed to be a very hard line between we believe in the Constitution. We don't believe in church and state. They should be separate. And on this sign, on this dolly, these signs, The bishop pulls one of them out and he says, brothers and sisters, we have been instructed by the first presidency.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Those are the leaders of the church to ask you to put these signs in your yard that say vote no on prop eight.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
California was the first state to put gay marriage on the ballot. And we were being told as Utah Mormons that California Mormons look up to, because, you know, being a Utah Mormon is the best of all the Mormons to put these signs in our yard. So word would reach Californians that Utah Mormons did not want gay marriage to pass.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Oh yeah. Really? Oh, there are so many Mormons in Arizona and California. It would shock you. Yeah. Arizona is full of Mormons. Yeah. California too. Lots and lots big, big pockets of them, you know? So I, I can, I still remember when I think about this, like I, I can still see the sunbeams coming in through the window. It was kind of dusty in there.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And in the church, you're taught that there's only that he told one story and it was that he went into the woods to pray as a 14 year old boy and that God and Jesus who in Mormonism, God and Jesus are not the same person. Mormons don't believe in the Godhead. So God and Jesus are different people. God and Jesus appeared to Joseph Smith and told him none of the churches on earth are true.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And I felt my face start to get really hot because I had worked for my dad and I had enough legal expertise. My father is a judge. And I had enough legal expertise to know, first off, marriage, even though I didn't really understand gay marriage at the time, I was like 35 or 36. Marriage is a civil right. It's not a church right. Your bishop doesn't sign your marriage license. The government does.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
So that makes it a civil union. And so I had talked to my dad about this when I started hearing these rumors. And my dad said, my dad is the most Mormon, Republican, straight-laced guy, but he understands the law. And he said, yes, gay people should be allowed to get married because marriage is a civil union.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
So my father, as devout as he is, has such an understanding and respect for the law that he was willing to overlook what his church was saying to follow the law. So knowing this, watching them do this, I don't know what happened to me. Something took over my body. I could feel like the heat rising on my face and I got real sweaty and I had my quad on my lap. Your quad is your scriptures.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
It has the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price and the Doctrine and Covenants all in one book. And it's like this thick. And I had my quad, the other three books besides the Bible are Mormon books. Those are books only Mormons use. I slammed it shut and I reached down and shoved my scriptures in my bag, my church bag, and I yanked it up off the floor.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And I stood up and just, I remember I looked down at this poor neighbor of mine and I said, move, really loud. And he got out of the way and I stormed past him in the aisle and out the door and slammed the door behind me. And I never went back to church. That was it.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
He came scrambling out after me. And, and the next week he was like, are we going to church? And I said, no, we're not. I said, you can go if you want, I'm not going. And then the next week came and the kids were like, are we going to church mom? And I said, no, I'm not. You can go if you want. And nobody went, nobody ever went back.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
That's how I left. So and it was.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Oh, yeah. They tried to get me back a lot. I had lots of visits from the Relief Society presidency. What's called the home teachers to men are partnered up and they are assigned families to go and check on their families once a month. I got a letter from the bishop. I got letters from other ladies in the neighborhood that were worried for my immortal soul. It comes from a good place.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
So when I left, it caused a little bit of heartache. But growing up in the church in the 70s and 80s was a lot different than it is now. It's always hard to know how much detail I want to go into. There's a lot of conversation right now in Mormonism about bishops' interviews.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
I feel like I'm talking about a different person right now. I'm fidgeting in my chair because it's so odd and so uncomfortable to talk about this. I was a different person. I was a different person back then. And when I left... In Mormonism, there's a metaphor and it's called your shelf. So you're either a Mormon that has a shelf or you're a Mormon that doesn't.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
If you have a shelf, you have a shelf that hangs on the wall. And every time you have a question that there's no answer for, you put that issue on the shelf. Now, some Mormons don't have a shelf because they don't have any questions. They follow, they believe. My mom is like this. She is a faithful person. She doesn't need to ask a question.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And you have been chosen to start the true church. I don't ever mean to be disrespectful, but I just have to giggle a little bit because this is literally how every cult starts. Every cult is started by a man who says God speaks to him and only him and that no one else is right. And he is the only one with the full truth.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
If this is the way it is and God says it's this way, this is the way it's going to be. But some people have a shelf and every time they go, well, the Joseph Smith story is really weird. Put it on the shelf. Well, he had sex with a 14 year old girl. Oh, no, put it on the shelf. And the metaphor goes that for a lot of us, you put so many things on the shelf that the shelf breaks.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And then you go down the rabbit hole. And once you go down the rabbit hole and you start learning about actual church history, your mind is broken. I want to say literally, even though that's not correct, your mind is blown.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
When you find out everything you've been taught is not true, and then you find out the real truth, the anger and the rage and the sadness that you feel, I don't think it's possible to describe it to people that have not left Mormonism. It's...
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
You find out I've been betrayed my whole life by the people that love me the most because they were betrayed by the people that love them the most and on and on and on. Nobody did it to you on purpose. They thought they were bringing you into the most wonderful thing on Earth. And my family still believes it's the most wonderful thing on Earth.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
It's a different word. You're labeled this person.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Yeah. I can't remember what the exact word is. Yeah.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Like it was like- That's heartbreaking.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
So Joseph goes into the woods and then later on he comes out and the story goes that an angel appears to him and tells him that there are these ancient golden plates buried in the hill and leads him to these gold plates. Now, Joseph Smith never imagined the Internet. He never imagined science. He never imagined what would come later on.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
It's like Leah Remini. She says the same thing. Yeah.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
I love it. I mean, I love it. And I don't understand. There are a lot of women my age that I'm associated with that have left the church. And it's about 50-50 whether or not their parents still talk to them. I'm very, very fortunate. I have a wonderful relationship with my parents. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that they're actually good Christians.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
They actually follow what Jesus taught. I'm not a believer in Jesus, but if Jesus was a real person and those are the things he taught, love your neighbor, forgive, you know, treat those who harm you. Well, my parents have done all of those things. And I think my dad being a judge, too, he saw a lot of destruction in families. He was a juvenile judge.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And so he saw a lot of destruction in families. And he knew it was like, if I push my daughter away, I'm just going to lose my daughter. And he didn't want that. So to their credit, they have kept me in their life, even though a lot of people in their positions would not have.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
In fact, there are people that have told me my dad was probably going to be called to be a general authority or a member of the Quorum of the Seventy. And he cannot be now because he has an apostate daughter.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
but he's never he's never put that on me but there are other people have it's not good yeah it's it's it's quite it's the it's quite a fun label to carry for your whole life i i call myself an apostate because that's their word for me and people oh that's such an ugly word why do you use it and i said because that's what they call me if you take the word back it loses all its power you know they used to what does that mean
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Apostate means that you are cast from the eyes of God. In Mormon's eyes, if they're true believers, they believe that I am what's called a son of perdition and I will be cast into hell. I will never be able to be in the presence of God because I have denied my testimony. They believe that I had a testimony at one point. I went to the temple. I was a believer and now I'm not anymore.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And so I'm an apostate and I'm a son of perdition and will never be in the presence of God. So it's pretty heavy. If you, you know, if I were to still believe all of that, Mormons have a really high suicide rate. Mormons have a really high, I think we have the highest addiction to opioids in the country. Utah does. We have the highest use of antidepressants in the country.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And we have the highest amount of teen suicide. I think it's, I don't even think it's teen. I think it's under the age of 21 suicide in the country, in Utah.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Because anyone who's gay or queer is, they're killing themselves.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
If the golden plates were to actually have existed, they would have weighed, I think, almost 1,000 pounds. It would have been for there to be enough gold there to write out what was written. There's a story of him picking the plates up, wrapping them in a dishcloth, and then running from people that were trying to take them from him. It would not have been possible.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
You'd think with all the blood on their hands, but they haven't done that so far. Yeah.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
It's, you know, they come out and they say things like, everyone is welcome here. Well, no. As long as you don't get married, if you're queer, as long as you don't bring a partner to church, as long as you stay celibate and live your life alone and don't tell anyone you're gay. I mean, the amount of gay friends that I have, I have all my most of my friends are gay men that are closest to me.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
I do have some girlfriends, but I've had a lot of gay male friends over the years, and I have not known one that has not had multiple married Mormon boyfriends.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
He was going because in this small Southern Utah town where we live, it's not as much like this anymore. It's, it's changed a little bit, but your kids are, um, not invited to some parties if you're not Mormon and not active. Your kids are not treated the same by some school teachers if you're not active Mormon. We wanted our kids to be good kids and make their lives easier.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And in doing that, you know, we subjected them to some things that they're now having to deal with as adults and religious trauma of their own. I didn't know I was doing that at the time. I was just doing what I thought was right, just like my parents did what they thought was right and still think is right.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
It's just hard because I tell people it's unfair to birth a child into something that controls their whole life when that child never agreed to be part of it. You know, I never made the choice to be part of the church. And I was forced to claw my way out of it as an adult when I never agreed to be a part of it. And that is very unfair to me.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
So even if they were real, which I do not believe they were, he would not have been able to run with these plates. Now, as a child growing up in the 70s and 80s, I was taught that Joseph Smith used a tool called the Urim and Thummim. And it's basically a pair of spectacles and like a breastplate. And he would put these spectacles on and read the golden plates.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And these spectacles would translate from the ancient language into English. That is actually not what Joseph Smith told people. That is a whitewashed version of the church because the church doesn't like what Joseph Smith said.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Did you get your ass chewed?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
i i yeah you're it was what's what do they say from friends we were on a break we're on a break oh ross um yeah they really run your life oh yeah oh yeah it's it's the same in mormonism you're you're expected to counsel with your bishop you're expected to pray you're expected to um Go to your leaders if you have questions.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And the problem is, as I was talking about these interviews that happen with children, why it's become such an issue is a lot of times these bishops are giving psychological counseling and they don't have any training. They shouldn't be giving people life counsel and life advice and career advice and marriage advice and psychological advice. They're not qualified.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And no grown man should be locked in a room with a small child, asking them questions about kissing and that just shouldn't happen. Um, and there's a man named Sam young, um, who has started a crusade, uh, it's called protect all children. And, um, It's a crusade. He walks around with like a protect the children flag tied around his neck and he marches up and down in front of the temple.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And he was once a stake president and a bishop and very high up in the church. And his daughters came to him and had very similar experiences to some of mine that I haven't gone into the details of here. but he was horrified because he was a good man. Like my dad was a good man and would never ask a child something like that, that there are men that really take advantage of those situations.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And as we know, there are a lot of fricking sickos and pedos and creeps. And, and when they get in a position where they've got a little bit of power, boy, they, they Lord that over you, you know, and he was horrified by that. And he has left the church and started this big crusade to stop these closed door bishops interviews. And I hope they do stop because they're inappropriate.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Joseph Smith told people, and there are actual versions of this and documentation of this, that he had a magic rock and he would put the golden plates on the table in front of him. with a screen so the person transcribing could not see the golden plates because only he was allowed to see them.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
I would never, I mean, I think about my little granddaughters now and I'm like, oh, if somebody ever told them they had to go in a room and answer to some strange man, I'd probably go to jail.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Yeah. I mean, during COVID, all of that died out. And what's happening now is really weird. People don't realize to live through COVID, musicians live either here or here. There's no gray area. You're either up here making money, you're famous, or you're down here struggling, barely getting by. I'm lucky enough to have a husband that supports my career and things like that.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And I've always done other things on the side. I've always painted and and had a little side job, side gigs here and there. But what happened during COVID is all the people that are down here on this level sold all their equipment to get by. So now, even though COVID has been over for a few years, people are just still rebuilding their equipment.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
So the live shows are still slow in coming back because a lot of people sold off all their gear in order to feed themselves. And so the scene is still a little bit slow. The circuit that I play on. So I have a circuit. There's one up in Salt Lake. We're all going hit like Provo, Salt Lake, Logan, Southern Idaho, sometimes go over to Reno, Wendover.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
You know, there's another circuit that's, you know, Vegas to Reno to Southern California, go all around through San Diego and. San Jose, all of that. And some of those places just never reopened. So the circuit is kind of building itself back up again and that's taking some time, but I'm, yeah, I'm back on it. And even at my old age, I still like to do it.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
I don't do it as much as I used to because I'm old and I got sick of humping gear, but yeah, I still do it. So I'm, I'm still plugging along and, and probably going to do another album in the next year or so. And, and, despite what the Bishop said, I think I turned out to be a pretty good mom.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
So, you know, but yeah, it was pretty crushing when I left the church to find out I'd given all of that up for something that turned out to be a story. It was, it was heartbreaking. I was angry for a long time and then I got tired of being angry and I just decided not to be angry anymore. You know?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Yep. True crime, mysteries, cult stories, conspiracies, any dark story. I started it because of COVID. I literally was sitting at home tearing my hair out. I was like, I can't sing. I can't perform. There's no art shows going on. There's no gallery showings. There's nothing because I paint too. And I was like, well, I love true crime. I'm fascinated with it. I know I read everything.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
I watch everything. I'm like, and you know, and also my husband and I had restaurants. And so I'm like, what if I did true crime and food? And everybody was like, Stacy, that sounds very weird. And, but that's what I started doing. So I would tell a true crime story that had an element of food to it, a murder that was conceived of in a pizza parlor.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
He would take this magic rock and put it in the bottom of a top hat and you can find paintings of this online and then put his face into the top hat and the rock would glow and would show him in English what the translation was. So as the church grew, the church decided that story was just a little too crazy. And so they came up with the Urim and Thummim.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And then I would make a pizza, a mobster that was killed in a restaurant. And then I would cook the food from the restaurant. And after about a year and a half, two years, I was like, the channel's growing a little bit, but it's a little niche. And people said, yeah, it is a little niche. And then I decided to branch out and just go straight true crime and mysteries and cult stories.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
conspiracies even though i'm not a conspiracy theorist i do really enjoy talking about him and just being a former member of a high demand religion you know cults are very interesting to me so um i have a friend whose girlfriend was saying one time a good podcast or or it would be to
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
So I had a whole playlist on Dining with Death that was called Dining with the Damned. And it was, I would tell the crime story and then eat the last meal before the execution. So there's a whole playlist on my channel. All the videos are still up on Dark Hearts with Stacey Lee, but there's a single playlist now called Dining with Death and all of the food episodes are on that playlist.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
But yeah, you can see me eat the last meals of... Gosh, how many of those episodes did I do? I mean, at least 50, 75, somewhere around in there. So everything from giant meals of, you know, buckets of fried chicken and two pizzas and eight cheeseburgers and fries to Victor Fager, who asked for an olive, you know. So it was it was interesting.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
I also did a series where I talked about Dining with the Departed. where I would talk about famous people and eat the meal they had right before they died or their favorite food. We'd do rock stars and movie stars and things like that. So it was interesting, but it was very niche.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Dark Hearts with Stacey Lee. which is just true crime without the food element, just true crime stories, much deeper dives, 30 to 45 minutes, true crime stories, scripted mysteries. I do a lot of cultural phenomenon stories. Like, I don't know if you've seen like the scandal about mom talk about the Mormon ladies that were swingers. They were all like sleeping with each other's husbands.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Do you know anything about that? No. It was a big scandal on TikTok. And so like I do stories like that that are dark, but maybe not true crime. You know, maybe nobody dies, but they're still like very dark stories. I do a lot of, you know, mysteries and people really, really, really like the conspiracy stories and they love the cult stories.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
The cult stories tend to give me what I call the church giggles, you know, where you're like trying not to laugh, but you're laughing and you can't stop. That happens to me a lot when I talk about cults because they're just... Especially like the UFO cults and the people that believe like they're going to go live on a star or something like that. Like Heaven's Gate?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
There are some that are so much worse than Heaven's Gate. Like the people honestly think they're made out of starlight and they can live on oxygen. And then I cover people like Teal Swan. I don't know if you know who she is. She's like a modern day con artist. Very, very, very bright. Very, very manipulative. Very pretty. Has a lot of people that follow her, but she has some very dangerous ideas.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
She tells people to kill themselves if they're not happy because it's setting the reset button. Um, there's another guy named Bentino Massaro, really good looking guy has all these followers and he, he tells them the same thing, you know, hit the reset button if you're not happy, um, dangerous, dangerous stuff.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And then there's just wacky, goofy cults that, you know, these two idiots from my hometown that, um, started this cult and took their kids out into the desert and it started out really goofy and ended up really sick and dark with the kids marrying each other.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And that was the story that was then spread. Joseph Smith was a folk magic believer. And if you know anything about that time, it's not unusual. But it is unusual to believe in those things now. He also was arrested dozens of times for telling people he was a water witch, that he had this special power by God where he would hold the, I can't remember what they call it.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And yeah, I love talking about that stuff because it's, I truly believe the only way we can prevent monsters is by studying the monsters we know about. There are things all monsters have in common and it's the psychology that interests me. That's, The human condition, the mind, why do people do this?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Why do people are 40 years old, an accountant one day and go, God just talked to me and told me that I'm a prophet and I'm going to go start a church. Why does somebody grow up with an abusive mother that turns into a great guy and another guy that grows up with an abusive mother turns into a monster?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
like what what is the you know what i mean a lot of us are abused as kids i wasn't but a lot of us as a people were abused as kids but we don't all turn out to be monsters but there is this segment that does and and the abuse is always there and i that fascinates me so i love talking about stuff like that did you ever read the book uh survivor by uh chuck poholnacek
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
No, but it's in my husband's book collection. It's a great book.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
I'm sure he has. My husband reads those 1400 page Elf and Wizard books and anything that gets popular or he's interested in. He's a reader, so I'm sure he has if it's on his shelf.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
That's where I've heard the name. Yes. That's why my husband has the book because he's obsessed with Fight Club. It's one of his favorite books.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Spread out all over, like wherever they're working.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
It's like a stick that looks like a Y. And you find water and the stick drops down and points to our waters in the ground. And he was arrested many times for swindling people and telling them that he could find water on their property. That was a big deal back then to have a well on your property. He was arrested for writing bad banknotes. He was arrested for selling magic rocks and crystals.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Are you like, yeah, I'm fine. Well, this explains why my husband has this book. Cause he did his senior thesis in college on Jonestown.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Listen, it's with Jonestown.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Yeah, I'm not the greatest reader in the world because my ADD is like all over the place. But I'll I'm going to read it.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
That's my kind of story. I'm not into the 1400 page wizard books. I can't I can't do those.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Have you been tested for ADD, Matthew?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Because you have some of the symptoms. I like to call it for myself. I would never say this about anyone else. I got a touch of the tism. It's a little touch of the tism, and I get bored real quick.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
I love it when people can find their community. That's really what I lost when I left the Mormon church. You lose everything. You lose your community. You lose your family for a little while. I mean, I got mine back, but it's nice to find community. So if you've got somewhere that you feel at home, I think that's amazing. Yeah.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
So when you're a kid, you have somebody that is assigned to be when you're a Mormon, you have someone that's assigned to be the bishop of the ward. And it can be like the guy that owns the tire store or the UPS driver. And the church regional directors supposedly are inspired by God to call who they want to be the bishop. And when you're a kid, you have to have bishops interviews.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
It's your weight loss program.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
One of my big beasts with Mormonism is that they do have $160 billion. A whistleblower came out and blew this wide open like five years ago. And then it was 120. Now it's estimated to be more like 160 billion. And they don't have any soup kitchens, no homeless shelters, no domestic violence shelters. They do not touch the unwashed masses. That's the way that they they look at it.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
He was a con artist. He was a folk magician, you know, and the church doesn't like that origin story. And so they changed it. The other thing that the church changed, and I did not find this out until much later on in my adulthood, is that Joseph Smith actually told 12 different versions, 10 or 12, depending on who you ask, different versions of what is called the first vision.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And it it's frustrating for me when I left the church. We lived in Las Vegas and I lived downtown Las Vegas and like a block from Fremont Street. And so for my church, I called it my church. I would go down and feed the homeless. And and my husband, I almost got arrested a couple of times because it's illegal to feed homeless people.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
But they got to know me down there and I got to hear a lot of their stories and things like that. And I just thought, you know, the church, the Mormon church could end world hunger with that kind of money. They could go to every junior high and elementary school in the country every year and pay off all of the lunch debts to make sure no kid ever went without lunch again. And they don't do that.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
They could they could buy housing for the homeless. They could get water to places that doesn't that don't have water and they don't do any of those things. And so that's a real big gripe with me. The Mormon Church, by its own admission, has donated a little over a billion dollars in the last 50 years. Well, when you have one hundred sixty billion dollars, one billion ain't nothing.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
You know, churches should not have massive wealth. That is my opinion. And and I would like to see them do more. So I would like for them to be doing more of what your church says it's doing. And the church does do things they do. They send hygiene kits and supplies during hurricanes and things like that. But with one hundred and sixty billion dollars in the bank, they need to be doing more.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And that is when he goes into the woods and God and Jesus appear to him. First, he said it was a pillar of fire. Then it was an angel. Then it was an angel and God. Then it was God and a pillar of fire. He tells all these different versions. And the version that the church teaches is not a version that he actually told.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
So when I got about 14 years old and I was already kind of in trouble at school sometimes and stuff, I just I just was a bad kid. Later on, I was diagnosed with ADD and high functioning autism, and I just didn't know how to act in school. And I remember going to church one Sunday and there was a kid in our ward. He lived across the street from me named Sean Williams.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
He passed on in a very tragic accident years later. But I used him as an example. And they were telling this story. And I said, so if Sean went into the woods, went into Cedar Mountain and said he saw God and Jesus and came back down off the mountain and told us all that he is the one and only true prophet and we all have to follow him, you guys would laugh at him.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And I remember my Sunday school teacher's face, like the color kind of drained out of his face. And he stood up and grabbed me by my arm and yanked me out into the hall. And he was a great big bear of a man and stood over me like, you know, pointing down at me. I just I remember his face being right in my face. How dare you compare Sean to the prophet? And how dare you question this story?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And how dare you this? And it was just this kind of breakthrough moment for me that just never left me. I just was like, oh, okay, I'm not allowed to question anything. I'm not allowed to... Or theorize or say, what if this happened again? Or it's keep your mouth shut, toe the line and keep your head down, do the work and don't ask questions. And I'm not wired that way.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And as I grew, it just got worse and worse. I just thought, wait a minute, let me get this straight. So having sex before marriage is bad, which is what you're taught in Mormonism. But Joseph was married, and then he started having sex with all these other women. So he would send these men on missions if he was attracted to their wives, ship them off to England, and then start boinking their wife.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And his wife found out about it. And then all of a sudden, oh, it was because he had a revelation. God told him he was supposed to have more wives. He was supposed to have engage in polygamy. So that's how he talked his way around getting caught with like 14 year old girls in the barn. You know, he was.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Classically, this makes people very angry when you say it, when they're in the church, he was a pedophile. They want to say things were different back then. People got married younger back then. 30, mid 30s year old men having sex with a 14 year old girl was never accepted in America. That was never a thing. The other thing that I really always had a problem with was the word of wisdom.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Mormons are told not to drink coffee or tea, but they guzzle Diet Coke and Coke. And in Utah, I don't know if you've heard here, but we have these soda shops now. Have you heard about the soda shops?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
You would die. Everywhere you go on every corner, Swig, Gulp, Fizz, Bubbles, you know, they have all different kinds of names. And it's just giant 64 ounce sodas pumped full of like vanilla syrup and coconut syrup and, you know, Red Bulls. And so because Mormons don't drink alcohol, these are their versions of cocktails.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
You have to go in and talk to the bishop and he asks you questions. You're alone with this man in this room who can just be, like I say, a school teacher, you know, anybody. My dad's been a bishop several times. And most of these men are very good men.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Here is the real answer to that question. So my way I brought this up was as I grew, I kept asking this question over and over and no one could answer it for me. And the reason is there's not an answer. The answer is something they don't want to talk about. Joseph Smith was a tobacco chewer. He had a plug of tobacco in his lip at all times. And he also liked to smoke pipes and cigars.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Every time he had a priesthood meeting after he formed the church, the men would gather and congregate at Joseph's house and spit their tobacco on the floor. His wife, Emma, his first wife, would then have to clean it up. So she told Joseph, I am banning all tobacco from the house. Well, Joseph loved, I'm sorry, Emma loved coffee and tea.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
She was a coffee drinker, a tea drinker, and she had several times a day she would have tea time. just like her ancestors were from England. So she was used to having tea. So Joseph said, well, if you're going to take away my tobacco, I'm taking away your coffee and tea. And all of a sudden there was a revelation. These revelations are very convenient.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
A revelation that Mormons could no longer drink coffee and tea. So the word of wisdom came about over a domestic dispute. That's why there's no answer. That's why there's no answer as to why Mormons can drink Tons and tons of Coke and Diet Coke, but not drink coffee, which is better for you than Coke. Right. The word of wisdom also says that you should not eat meat unless in times of famine.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
But the Mormons don't want to talk about that. You know how religious people like to cherry pick their scriptures and the parts they're going to listen to and the parts they don't. It also says no meat except in times of famine, but they don't pay attention to that. So I struggled with that as I got older. And then, um, as was my duty as the Bishop's daughter, I got knocked up in high school.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
They always joke, you know, that the Bishop's daughters are the wildest kids. I got pregnant when I was 17. Um, my first husband was 23. at the time. Uh, so we got married, I dropped out of school. I was the drill master on the drill team at the time I was the, um, you know, involved in all kinds of school activities, uh, had this whole future planned out and laid out for me.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
I always, it breaks my heart a little bit when I see people really bashing the church because the church is, everyone always focuses on the bad people in every situation. You know that. I don't have to tell you that.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
And suddenly I was a 17 year old with a baby. And, um, I dragged my husband to church with me. He had never really gone. He's what we call inactive. He was a member of the church, but wasn't raised in the church. He didn't go to church. So then we went through the temple. And I don't know how much you know about the Mormon temple. Have you seen any of the videos online?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
No, the church is where you go every Sunday for church meetings. The temple is where you're only allowed to go if you have a temple recommend. Now, this is also a very important hallmark of a cult. A cult always has an unquestioning leader at the top that you cannot go against. You cannot backtalk them. You cannot ask questions of them.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
Another hallmark of a cult is that there is always a segment of glory. deification or superiority that not all members have access to. And Mormonism is very much a cult in this way. In order to go to the temple, you have to be a full tithe payer. So you have to give 10% of your gross, not your net income, to the church. You know, the Mormon church has like $160 billion. Mm-mm. Yes, it does.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
This just came out a few years ago. The church, the internet for the Mormon church has been very, very bad.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
A hundred percent. There can be, you know, 10,000 good people and 1,000, people that are not so good, or even a hundred people that are not so good. And that's what gets all the focus. And it's the same way in Mormonism. Well, growing up, I was a wild, kind of a wild child. I've always had a very loud voice. I'm, you know, I sing and I was a performer and I was a little boy crazy.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Why I Left The Mormon Church...
But so you have to give 10% of your income. You have to be monogamous or celibate if you're single. You have to be straight. You have to be no alcohol, no coffee, no tea, church every Sunday. You have to be completely devout. Mormonism is not your religion. Mormonism is your life. You are a Mormon before you are anything else.