Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Pastor's Kid Gets Arrested, Scams Prison Girlfriend & Beats the System
05 Jun 2025
Alex Gruber explains how he manipulated a woman in prison by pretending to be in love so she’d send money and take care of him. He shares how he grew up in an extreme religious household, got locked up, and used people to survive.Get 50% sitewide for a limited time. Just visit https://GhostBed.com/cox and use code COX at checkout.Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://forms.gle/5H7FnhvMHKtUnq7k7Send me an email here: [email protected] you extra clips and behind the scenes content?Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime Follow me on all socials!Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrimeDo you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopartListen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox Check out my true crime books! Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCFBent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TMIt's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5GDevil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3KBailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WXIf you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69Cashapp: $coxcon69 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
What you want to do when you're in there is find a bigger girl. Convince him that you're in love. If they fall in love, he's gonna be like, I don't know what the hell they're thinking. This is probably gonna get me banned. My dad was our youth pastor. We went to church three days a week. We had a Thursday service, a Wednesday service, and a Sunday service. It was excessive.
It was super excessive. We were taught that if you swear you go to hell, you burn an entire sin. I mean, very extreme religion. So we were educated to believe that if you step out of line— I mean, you're going to burn in hell. Right. And so throughout the years, my dad sober, doing good. He started drinking again. And very quickly, my mom did not like that.
She said, if you keep drinking, I'm going to leave. And he said, then get out. And so the next day he had a new girl over. I think we were, I think I was like 11 or 12 at the time. I was 13. Did your mom leave or the new girl? No, my mom was staying downstairs. So then the new girl, my dad knew her from a cage fighting gym. They were both cage fighters. This is very pastoral.
It happened the next, it wasn't even like a week later. It was the next night. I mean, the next day we were waking up to this lady. Jennifer's here. Yeah. She's now moving in. So my mom freaked out, was like, F this, I'm out of here. Packed up her stuff, moved out because she was like, this is crazy. Throughout the time of that happening, my dad let us do whatever we wanted.
He caught me stealing his bud and he was like, hey man, just don't steal too much of it. Like if you want to smoke it every once in a while, that's fine. Just don't get crazy. My dad ended up building his dream house. We were, when I was way younger, we lived in Star. We dirt biked up in the foothills. We're sitting on a plot of land and my dad tells me I'm going to build a house here one day.
Eight years later, he ends up building a house on that plot of land. He designed it himself. It's 3,500 square foot. And so, I mean, that's where we lived. It was his dream home. And this is what he – this is all he – He owned an alarm company. I was going to say, this is from alarms?
Yeah, so he was super successful, super successful. While we were living in Star in the beginning, before he got back into drugs, he owned a very successful alarm company. So he was able to build that up. And, I mean, we went to Hawaii every year on vacation. We were very spoiled.
Uh, so the change from the spoiled life to the drug addiction life, it happened quickly and he ended up losing everything. But so we, as he's running the business, builds the house. Uh, so then we're partying at the house. It's 3,800, 3,500 square foot. He lets me do whatever I want. All the kids from high school are coming over.
So I'm, I'm selling, uh, and we sort of start to escalate things at this point. My sister's boyfriend's coming down, selling stuff, uh, He ends up getting wanted out of Twin Falls. They post two $100,000 warrants out for his arrest. My dad buys him a plane ticket out of Boise straight to California. So he gets out. He's now on the run from Idaho, living in California.
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