Ep 31 | Eric & Angela Mize Transcript

Ep 31 | Eric & Angela Mize
Transcript

Before we begin this podcast, please be advised that the following episode contains language that some listeners may find offensive and inappropriate. The opinions expressed by the host and guests are their own and do not reflect the views of the podcast producers. Listener discretion is advised.

Your girlfriend actually talked about robbing somebody? She didn't really say it like that. The way I understood what she wanted to do, she wanted to know if she'd like to kill somebody, I guess. So we got married a couple, a little bit after this happened. Y'all had a really strange relationship, killing people and then getting married.

There was no plot. There was no plan. I can talk for you, what do you want to tell her? I've been trying to get her to tell me why this really happened. Do you still love him? Of course I'm gonna always love him. We had a wonderful relationship that just went really fast. It just went really horrible. That's very strange. Yeah, it is. I don't know how to explain it any better than that.

You are now listening to the podcast Voices of a Killer. I'm bringing you the stories from the perspective of the people that have taken the life of another human and their current situation thereafter in prison. You will see that although these are the folks that we have been programmed to hate, they all have something in common.

They are all humans like us that admit. That they made a mistake. Will you forgive them or will you condemn them? They're currently serving time for their murders and they give us an inside glimpse of what took place when they killed and their feelings on the matter now. Here are the voices of those who have killed.

On this episode of Voices of a Killer. We bring you the tragic murders of Janice and Alyssa Owen told via interviews with killers, Eric and Angela Mize. Today's episode will walk you through the events mainly from Eric's perspective, a narrative that delves into the darkest corners of the human psyche. What led Angela, a mother and caretaker, and Eric, her supposedly compliant partner, down a path that would shock a nation?

What was the motive behind the heinous acts they committed in 2002? Acts that would eventually attract the grim spotlight of a Discovery Channel documentary? We will probe the shadowed motives in the chilling aftermath of a crime that led a child orphaned and a community reeling. We will ask why they lured Janice Owen out of her home and why the innocence of young Alyssa was snatched away from her at such a young age.

As we prepare to dive into the aftermath of this unspeakable tragedy, one cannot help but question the nature of the relationship between Eric and Angela. What dark secrets did they share and what was the true extent of Angela's influence over Eric? Stay with us as we seek answers to these harrowing questions on this episode of Voices of a Killer.

Hello? Hello. What's up? Hello, this is Eric, Eric Mize. Where are you from? Boonville, Missouri. Is that where you grew up? Yep. How would you describe your childhood? Did you have a... alright childhhood? Did you have some stress through life? I'd say it's pretty cool. I live with a lot of different family members.

Why is that? I have a lot of fun with my mom. I lived with my mom. My brother lived with my dad. They separated when I was young. Yeah. Oh, I got in a little bit of trouble here and there, but it wasn't nothing serious. What kind of trouble? A little bit of stealing stuff from the store, getting caught with the alcohol out of line, doing little stuff that kids do, breaking in windows, stuff like that. Wasn't nothing to actually trip on too much.

Yeah, did you witness any violence in your family that took care of you? No, not really. Not my dad. Yeah. It's pretty much stuff on TV, but it wasn't nothing like that. Yeah. How old are you now? I'll be 40. You'll be 40? I'll be 40, kind of like next month. I thought you were older than that.

So, did you ever get into dr**s at any point as a kid? Yeah. I smoked a lot of w**d, drank a little alcohol, messed around with some pills. I didn't really do nothing heavy dr**s, but she did. My girlfriend did, but I didn't. And, you had mentioned before that your girlfriend had actually talked about robbing somebody? She didn't really say it like that.

She more likely, she wanted, the way I understood what she wanted to do, she wanted to feel like, she wanted to feel, I guess she wanted to know what it's like to kill somebody. Okay, so she's talking about how she wanted to see what it feels like to take someone else's life? I'm pretty sure that's what she was saying.

What did you think whenever she told you that? When I heard her say it, when you're messed up on, you're not really thinking clearly. You're like, not comprehending correctly what she's saying. You're like, you hear what she's saying, but you're not really paying attention too much to it. Like, it ain't really that serious.

Are you guys doing hard dr**s? No, she probably was. But I never did touch none of that hard stuff. You don't know if she was or she wasn't? She did it periodically, but at that point I couldn't tell you if she was or not. What did she do periodically? Sometimes she'd do coke or m**h or something like that.

You never did that with her? No. So she actually told you that she wanted to take someone's else's life and you just blew it off basically? I didn't know how to think about it. I was like, maybe she's playing with me, messing with me, or maybe she's being serious. I wasn't sure. So I was just like, I don't know.

Now while this episode is labeled Eric and Angela Mize, we are mainly seeing events through the eyes of Eric, Eric's girlfriend at the time Angela was a colleague of the first victim, in this case, 43 year old Janice Owen.

Together they worked at the care home in Boonville, a small town located right in the middle of Missouri. A quiet, tranquil town just south of the Missouri River. However, if you google Boonville, one of the first things that comes up in the search results is this tragic case. Remarkably, this story put Boonville onto the national TV circuit, with a documentary being made about it by the Discovery Channel that aired in 2011.

Back in 2002, when this event happened, this might not have been the publicity that aired Eric and Angela were trying to achieve. In fact, it's hard to pin down exactly what the motive behind this initial murder was. While it's true that Angela and Janice were indeed colleagues, what drove the pair to choose Janice as their victim is unclear. I wanted to know why, as Eric puts it, Angela all of a sudden had a desire to kill, and what was the reason for it?

One of the biggest stories in the whole United States it's been blasted all over the TV for the last 24 years. It's old news and bad news. Have they made TV shows about you? Yes, they have. I've never seen not a one of them, but I don't really care to. Is the little girl's name, is it Alyssa Owen? Yes, it is. So they made something, like a little documentary, it's called Heartless in the Heartland, and it says... Yeah, my cousin who came to see me told me about that.

I'll read the caption for you, it says, The tiny town of Boonville, Missouri is devastated when the body of an 8 year old Alyssa Owen is found near a rural country road. When another body turns up six weeks later, investigators soon learn that the senseless brutality of this double homicide. So yeah, there's definitely some publicity out there about you.

How does that make you feel? It don't make me feel good. It was a senseless crime. It should have never happened. So, this happened in 2000 and, what year did this happen, 2002? Yeah. So you would've been like an 18 year old kid then, right? I was. What were you? She was six years older. She was six year. What was, okay.

And then from there, what happened? She actually started to try to put it together or what? Well, she went to sleep like, and then, then we woke up the next morning and then I, we got her up and we went to town. And then Was she still talking about her? She started riding around. Yeah, she said, let's go over here and look over here, and I was like, what are we looking for?

She said, find, we need to find somebody. Find somebody for what? Somebody about, you know, serious. Did she have a weapon, did she have a gun or anything to do this with? No. How did she... She really didn't have no plan about how she wanted to do it. She just had this idea in her head that she wanted to do it.

But you're actually with her looking for basically a victim. You never said like, how are we going to do this? No, I didn't ask. I was just... I didn't know what the hell she was going to do, so I was just like, whatever. And when this s*** started happening, we arrived at his house, out comes these individuals to the car.

I was just like... Why this particular house? I guess it was somebody she used to work with at some nursing home or something like that. Somebody she didn't, she didn't like? I'm not sure. I don't know if she didn't like her. I don't think she, I don't think it was that reason. I think it was just somebody she knew.

So she, y'all pull up at this house. Y'all both get out of the car and approach the front door. How does this work? I stayed in the car. I smoked a cigarette. She went into the house or whoever it was she knew and then out come this lady with her daughter. And they both got in the truck that I was driving, and we took off.

I didn't know until years later that she told him we was going to a barbecue, which I didn't know nothing about, but that's what she told me. I didn't know nothing about that. She took her out of the house to go to a barbecue, which I hadn't known. Oh, to go to, okay. Did this, this one lady, she got in the car with you to go to the barbecue?

Yeah. So we told them that we'd take her to a barbecue with the transcripts I learned later, that's how she got her in the car. So did this girl, what's her name? Janice Owens. And did she get in the back seat? And now she was in the front seat. She sat in between me and Angela.

So she sits between y'all, and y'all take off driving. What's the conversation like? It's pretty mediocre, what's going on. It was pretty much talking amongst herself, and then the lady got talking about her daughter, and then some other things, and then we drove pretty close to the country house that we lived to. Then we stopped by the county road out there, and then the lady and her daughter went down to there looking for rocks and stuff. So wait a second, hold on, hold on a second, the daughter got in the car, in the vehicle with you too? Yeah. So it was, they, they got both of them out of the house. Where did the daughter sit? In the back seat. Okay. See. In the glove cab of the truck.

Okay, so y'all get out and start just doing something outside of the vehicle? Yeah, they went down there by the Missouri River, looked for river rocks. And uh... Including your girlfriend? Including my girlfriend. Including your girlfriend? Yeah, my girlfriend got out. And she got out and she started, she grabbed this wire off the back of my truck.

Like you tie stuff down with. Yeah. It's a wire tie. She took it, she put it in her pocket. I didn't think too much of it. So, I thought, what the hell is she gonna do with that? They all get back in the car. We take off, we go down the road a few, about a mile, and I hear my girlfriend say, oh, this is just the way things gotta be, and she takes the wire, she puts it around her head, starts choking her out.

Is your girlfriend in the driver's seat? No. Y'all got back in the vehicle, who's driving? I'm driving. Okay. And then she puts the wire around the mother's neck? Yeah. And where's your girlfriend, Angela, sitting and where is the victim sitting? The victim's sitting in the center, right next to me, my girlfriend's sitting on the other side of her.

Her daughter's sitting in the back seat of the truck. Angela just tells the victim that this is just how it's gotta be and puts it around her neck? Yeah. And then what happens next? She looks at me like she wants me to help. She put the cord around her neck and she was choking. She looked at me. Asked me to help, so I pulled along the other side, so I grab a hold of her, and she's pretty much gone anyway, but I'm like, what the hell's really going on here?

So, Eric... We both know that it takes probably minutes to actually choke someone. Yeah, I know. What is her daughter doing? How old is her daughter in the backseat? She's probably like nine or ten. What is she doing when she's witnessing this? She doesn't say nothing, which is weird. If that was me, I would have been freaking out.

So she basically, Angela chokes her until she's unconscious? As he fell in my lap, I stopped the truck, and I said, we need to get her out of this truck. We stopped, we put her body in the creek and ran off into the Missouri River. What's the nine year old daughter doing while y'all are doing this? She's pretty quiet.

She ain't really said nothing. I'm pretty sure she ain't stupid, so I'm pretty sure she knows what just happened. Yeah, I'd say nine years old, she knows. Yeah, but I'm kind of thinking she's wondering what's going to happen to me now, you know. So y'all basically carry this limp body and put it in the water in the Missouri River?

Yeah. Do y'all push it out, or do you just put it in the edge of the water and does it sink? It kind of went down and barreling underneath for a while and then I didn't see it anymore. Does all this make you nervous that somebody could be driving up or that you just committed this murder? It didn't make me so good at all.

Angela, manipulating the trust of a fellow mother, lured Janice Owen out of the sanctuary of her home under the pretense of a barbecue. Eric recounts with an eerie calmness how Janice sat between him and Angela in the truck. Her daughter Alyssa, seated in the back, oblivious to the nightmare that would soon unfold.

As they continued driving, the terror erupted. Angela wrapped the wire around Janice's neck, committing the act with a chilling matter of factness, turning to Eric for assistance. And in those agonizing moments that followed, as life was brutally snuffed out, Eric was pulled into the act, sealing his fate alongside Angela's.

Having just witnessed this horrific incident, I wanted to know how the innocent little 8 year old Alyssa reacted to the whole situation. I was also confused by Eric's decision to go along with the events that followed. Unfolded that night. How was he so quick to involve himself with, according to him Angela's decision to murder. Why didn't he try to stop or question her actions? To me, the whole situation didn't seem right.

Alright, so y'all basically put the mother in the water, and then what happens after that? Do y'all run back to the truck? Yeah, we go back to the truck, and then we leave, we go to the house that we lived in that wasn't about a mile up the other direction.

With the daughter in the back? Yeah. What's she saying along the drive? Is she crying or anything? No, but I'm pretty sure she wants to, she didn't say nothing. What's her demeanor like? Is she breathing heavily? Obviously, she just watched her mother get choked to death. I thought about this for 21 years, and I really don't remember her doing too much of anything.

We're here to make you wonder, yeah, definitely, I mean, if that was me, I would have been trying to break out the car and go somewhere, and I don't know, that's something I never even in my life thought about doing, it just happened that way, but we got back to the house though, and I was trying, I picked her up out of the car and I took her in the house, trying to keep her away from my wife, well until we got married later, she was my girlfriend then.

But, uh, I'm trying to keep her away from the kid. I was like, man, she don't need to be part of this. Just leave her alone, right? What are you thinking is going on with your girlfriend at this time? All right, you're trying to talk Angela, you're trying to talk Angela out of hurting this little girl, the daughter?

Yeah, because I didn't understand why she was even there. It's like... And what is Angela doing? Is she trying to persuade, I have to kill her too? Yeah. Okay, so what happens? It gets weird, and I'm just like... Really don't understand why it had to happen, but she took it. I would put her in the bedroom. Probably was the worst place to put her at, but that's where I put her at.

This is... You do realize that you're putting a lot of this off onto your girlfriend as if you were just complete bystander. It's your voice, you get to tell how you want it, but it's almost like as if... I get that. I know it sounds that way, but I'm... I know I played a big part in this. I could have stopped it at any time.

I could have never happened. I could have stopped the whole thing. You know, I get that. I think what I want to clarify, and whatever you want to say, it's your voice, but are we saying that you had no intention on this happening? This was completely 100% Angela's idea? It was her idea, because it wasn't mine.

Okay. I had no intention. Okay. My ex old lady, she's got her own issues. Some women like to do things that probably ain't real nice to do to certain people. They got weird fantasies and stuff like that. So what kind of fantasies? Some people got weird things going on in their head and she's just acting out with this kid.

Is she wanting to do something different besides kill her or is she trying to s*xually abuse her? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, that's what she was trying to do and I was just like, ah, I can't be a part of this. And I didn't allow that to happen and she just got mad at me and told me, go get the bag, go get a black trash bag.

I went and got a black trash bag and we both put the trash, she said, put the trash bag over her head. I was like, okay. I feel real bad about a lot of things I've done in my life and this is not funny at all. This is probably the worst thing I ever took a part of in my life. I can tell you right now that being a part of killing a child is, it really doesn't get much worse than that.

Whether that was your idea or not. From the point you participated, it's basically your idea from there. It's very unfortunate that you guys did what you did, but I think the biggest question is why? If you had to guess why this happened, what would you say the reasoning for? I don't see a reason. I understand that.

Answer me this, do you think it was s*xually motivated? Probably in part. But the other part of it, I don't understand. I've been trying to figure out, I've been over the years, I can't get the other party to ever tell me things I need to know. Every time I bring it up, I don't get an answer. I don't know.

The mother, did y'all do anything s*xual to her? No. And there was no report of that? No. She was, hold on, it was just something that just happened. Okay, so... Apparently, in the moment. I was just like, what the hell? So, Eric... She's, y'all are back at the house with this little girl, and she tells you get a bag and y'all put it over her head, is that what you did?

Yeah. And who put it over her head? You or her? We both did. And what are you thinking when you're doing this? Do you think that maybe you can stop now and save this girl's life? Or you just continue to do it? It was a possibility at one point. I was like, how long is this gonna take for this to happen? But now, I don't think it's gonna come back from this one.

How long does it take from the time you put that bag on her till she stopped moving? I don't think she actually died from that. I think when we took her and put her out in the woods somewhere, I think she died from exposure. You're the one that put her out in the woods? Yeah. When you put it out there, did you feel like she was still alive?

I didn't think so, no, but, uh, the people that do all the autopsy, the field tests and stuff like that, they told me that, but I told them I don't believe that. I mean, I could be wrong, I don't know all the type stuff like that. I never did trip on her. Did you and Angela s*xually assault this little girl after you killed, after you...

Uh, put the bag on her head? No. But immediately after that happened, I put her body in the back of my truck and I took her to a county road and left her by the side of the road. How far did you have to drive to do that? About six miles up the road. Did Angela go with you? Yes. What is the conversation like as you're driving a, a child that you just killed to the woods?

Didn't say, I didn't have nothing to say, but he didn't talk too much. After that. You realize that the storyline that you're telling us to where all of a sudden your girlfriend says, we're doing this, and you're just participating out of the middle of nowhere. That's very strange. Yeah, iiry ts, but that's the story that happened.

I don't know how to explain it any better than that. The following day, 8 year old Alyssa's body was discovered by sawmill workers. Police rushed to her mother's home to find that she too was missing. But it was only six weeks later, Janice's remains were found in a creek bed. The Discovery documentary, an episode of Nightmare Next Door, which has the subtitle of Heartless in the Heartland, the story leans heavily on the accusations that Eric and Angela abducted Janice and Alyssa to use Alyssa for their own s*xual gratification.

This is something that Eric strongly denies, and while we are yet to speak to Angela, Eric suggests that Angela may have had some weird fantasies. Now, we won't jump to any conclusions here, but there is evidence of Angela having five children of her own, a few of which were taken away from her by family services prior to this tragic event.

The long gap between the discovery of the second body and the lack of evidence surrounding the case meant that police had little to go off of. It also meant that Eric and Angela flew under the radar, and I wanted to know what they did when the long arm of the law eventually caught up with them. They told me when I was arrested, they said there's never in a million years where they suspected it was me.

We find out about that after the break.

How long after this happened did the police show up? How long did y'all get away with it? About four months. Four months. Between that four months, what was your life like? It wasn't very good, I'll tell you that. What did y'all do? What was your day to day routine between the time you killed and the time you got caught, that four month span?

All I did was get high. Get high on what? Anything I could get my hands on, w**d, pills, d**e, whatever it was. During that four month period, did you ever sit down and see the news come on and they say, Hey, these people are missing or we found them deceased or anything like that? Yeah, it was like the next day.

You saw it all over the news? Yeah. How'd that make you feel? Yeah, I was messed up. I didn't leave the house for three days. Did anybody ever come by, cause you were miles from where it happened, knock on your door and ask if you saw anything? They waited a couple more months until they found the second body and they opened it back up and they started talking to people around the area.

Did you ever get questioned? Yeah, I did. They freaked her out, so I said, I'm going to go down there and talk to them. I gave them hair samples and all kinds of stuff. Were they wanting those things from you? Yeah. So they questioned, they questioned y'all wanting that stuff? Yeah, she wouldn't give it to them, and then when she heard I gave it to them, she gave it to them too.

And later on, after we was arrested, they was like, they was shocked that I gave it to them. But you said that Angela went and confessed to it, is that right? Yeah, in June, yeah. So, they asked, before you went and did the hair samples, they actually came to you and questioned you? Did you feel like they thought, they knew it was you, or they were just questioning everybody?

They was questioning everybody. They told me when I was arrested, they said that never in a million years would they suspect that it was me. So, whenever you're getting questioned, and they don't think it's you, but you're, what does it feel like to get questioned when you're the person they're talking about that killed somebody?

You're nervous already, and I was already on probation for a first degree assault, so it's, you're already under the gun, so you're like, man, what's going to happen with this? Something serious. Yeah. And I knew something was eventually going to come, and I had no idea as it was, I was just waiting for something to come.

So, you're saying Angela actually went in there and said, okay, this is what happened, and she told them everything? She didn't actually tell them the truth, and she never had. She tried to implement it and say my brother, my dad, and her ex old man had something to do with this. But they didn't. When they locked me up, I told them, I said, I'll tell you the truth, but you're gonna have to let all these people go coz they don't have nothing to do with it.

As I listened to Eric recount the months after the murder, I found it strange how little he questioned Angela's motives. They spent those months in a blur, trying to numb themselves with dr**s, as if that could somehow erase their crime. When the news broke about the bodies being found, Eric locked himself away, not from guilt, it seemed, but from reality.

What struck me as particularly odd was his almost indifferent cooperation with the police. Without a second thought, he handed over hair samples, an act of transparency that didn't quite fit with someone hiding a dark secret. Even when questioned by the authorities, he didn't seem to consider that they may see through his facade.

Angela, on the other hand, was a different story. Her confession to the police was a twisted version of the truth, shifting the blame away from herself. When Eric was finally arrested, the reality of the situation hit him. He had no choice but to admit what he had done. No longer under Angela's shadow, it was a moment of clarity in the chaos that had become Eric's life.

But the question still remained, if Angela was the mastermind that Eric was truly painting her to be, why did he just go along with everything?

And to most people, myself and most people that would hear this, is they would ask you why did you participate? I participated because I felt, you gotta understand one thing, uh, I wasn't really with a very lot of women.

That was the fourth woman I've ever been with in my life. When you think you're, you think you like somebody so much. You can do just about anything for them. I get that. Well, yeah, and that's why they have the just about part. Because I've been there where I want to win a woman over. I'm not going to sit here and justify what I did just because of that.

Yeah, I understand. Don't ever take that away from me. I'm never going to say that. They deserve more than that. They didn't deserve, they don't deserve that. Yeah. At all. I take responsibility for everything. I take responsibility for everything I ever did. And that is the worst thing I could have ever done.

I take spine, I own it. I understand. I appreciate you opening up, but my next question is during that four months, did you all spend most of your time together? You and Angela? Yeah. We didn't separate from one another. We didn't want to be apart, we thought we was somehow apart, we end up going to jail or something bad would happen or something. The killer part? go ahead. She went and talked to the police and got us locked up. Really? Yeah! It was a cold case, and I'm not saying they should've had justice. She did the right thing, it took me a long time to come to terms with that.

Let me ask you a question, we'll go back to that in a minute. During this four months, y'all are getting away with it, did you ever go back and look to see if the body was still there or check on it or anything? Not one time. Not one time. Did Angela go back and check on the body at any time? I don't know.

She'd be drawing, she used to draw, right? She would draw pictures. And it looked like one of the victims, the older woman. Before or after the crime? After the crime. She would draw and, okay. I'd be like, man, I was like, why do you keep drawing pictures of this woman? I mean. I was like, I don't want to remember that stuff.

And I know what happened. I know I keep reminding myself of that. Yeah. During that four months, did y'all talk about what y'all did? No.There was just no discussion whatsoever. She never, y'all never talked about it one time. We tried to forget it, it didn't even happen. That's really hard to forget. It is, it's impossible.

I'll tell you right now, this, even now, this is the hardest thing for me to ever talk about. Especially when I'm trying to, when I'm being honest about stuff that I really don't like talking about. Sure, sure, and I appreciate that. This is the worst topic you can talk about. I'm in the open wing talking about s*** that I don't even want people to know about.

Sure. I don't like this s*** because very few people like people that are in here for this type of s***. I know, I know. I don't condone that for anybody coming here for doing that type of s***. You know what I mean? So I own what I do. I, I tell people what, I don't try to hide nothing from people because that's bulls***.

Did you feel like I know what I did you feel like Angela, Angela had control over you? You could possibly say that, but I'm not. I'm not going to say no and I ain't going to say yeah, there's a good, there's an in between there. I had a little control that she probably shouldn't have, but I ain't going to say she had a whole lot, she had enough.

Yeah, here's where I'm coming from is, you know, I actually interviewed a girl that almost has the same exact scenario as you, except it was her boyfriend's idea and she followed along. And it's almost the same exact thing. I don't think you realize how closely resemblance this is, but her, from her standpoint, it was like she, her boyfriend had all this control over, and he was saying, we're going to kill this person.

And she's just falling alone, but not really thinking it's going to happen. And then all of a sudden it does. And she's a part of it. And it almost feels like the same role for you. Is that Angela has all these plans and you're just like, okay, whatever. And then all of a sudden y'all are picking somebody up and you're okay, whatever.

And then all of a sudden you're actually killing someone. And then you're like, okay, I'm doing this with them. That's exactly how you're explaining it. Is that accurate? That's kind of like how it happens. I know it sounds weird, but it's PC in the state of Missouri. The first three murder has to be a plotted out thing.

Sure. I'm not saying that just to be funny, but I'm saying there was no plot. There was no plan. s*** just happened as it went along. If we was really planning this stuff, it would've been different, but I was not in any way wanting to get involved in this stuff anyway. Well, I, here's the thing. It's, I would say that it is somewhat planned.

Killing was a plan, whether you planned to do it the way you did it and all those things. Yeah. Like, might have been spurred the moment, but the killing was a plan to me, if you, the way you just explained it now, the way the laws are written are completely different than my opinion, so that my opinion really doesn't matter, but I think that we can say that you definitely, not you, but the way you're explaining it, somebody was planned to be killed. Yeah it means I'm just as guilty so it doesn't really matter. Yah So to move one a little bit, you're telling me that during this time after the killing, it took four months for y'all to get apprehended because Angela told and y'all never talked about it one time? Okay.

Listening to Eric describe his relationship with Angela during the aftermath of this crime, I can't help but draw parallels between this case and episode 13 of Voices of a Killer, the case of Amanda Bennett.

There is a remarkably similar level of submissiveness that occurred in both cases, and it's confounding to think that what made both Eric and Amanda go along with these murders. If you want to find out more about that, go back to episode 13 after this episode and you'll see exactly what I mean. For Eric, it's hard to ignore the possibility that he was completely infatuated, or maybe on her spell, to the extent that he became a participant in such a heinous act.

His admission that he would do anything for someone he believed he liked so much hints at a vulnerability that Angela may have exploited. It's highlighted by their decision to get married. It's odd how Eric just went along with this too in Angela's effort to thwart the authorities. It's both fascinating and disturbing how emotions can cloud judgment to such a catastrophic degree.

I'm curious if, after all this time, Eric still has a relationship with Angela and how his feelings have evolved. Does he still feel the same pull, or has the weight of their actions and the consequences severed? What connection they had? The fact that he doesn't shy away from talking about his responsibility in the crimes suggests a level of self awareness.

But I have to ask, does he regret not just the crime, but the hold Angela seemed to have on him? There's a palpable tension as I consider these questions. Eric's silence on the subject after the crime, his assertion that they never once talked about it, indicates a shared denial, a mutual pact to bury the truth as deep as they could.

Yet, despite this shared silence, Angela was the one to break it, telling investigators that Eric was solely responsible for the murders leading to their capture. As a narrator and an observer, I can't shake the need to understand the dynamics between Eric and Angela better. It's not just about the crime anymore, it's about the human condition, the power of influence, and the cost of misplaced loyalty.

How does Eric view Angela now, knowing that her actions led to their downfall? Can he still separate the person he was infatuated with from the person who ultimately turned them in? So we got married, a couple,a little bit after it happened. So Y'all, before you got caught, you got married? Y'all had a really strange relationship, killing people and then getting married.

Did you propose to her? No. What? All of a sudden she says we should go ahead and get married so if we get caught they can't make us testify. That's what she said. Oh the marriage was a plan to thwart the authorities? That's what she said. I was like, whatever. So where did y'all get married at? In Howard County Courthouse. Courthouse. And... Yeah. February 27th. This is really crazy. Y'all killed some people and then went and got married at the courthouse to basically thwart the authorities.

Like two weeks later. Two weeks later. That was the plan, get married. Did y'all have a honeymoon? Mmm, probably a small one. Where'd y'all go? Home? We went to the cross from where the Old Bobber's truck stop used to be in Boonville and stayed at the motel. Gotcha. What was that night like? That was weird, for real.

Do you still love Angela? I don't hate her. I don't think, I'm never gonna say that. I don't hate nobody. I just don't understand things sometimes. How do you think Angela feels about you? I don't know. She was right, but I don't know her intentions when she wrote me before. She always wanted something. So, there's always money.

Once I sent her the money, she didn't want to mess with me anymore. Where's she at now? Where's Angela? She's in Chillicothe. Chillicothe. I talked to many people there, so I'll probably get her on the phone as well. What's her last name? Same as mine. I'm actually going to reach out to her. Yeah, do you talk to her still?

Oh, she hasn't wrote me. They won't allow us to write each other or anything. I, I, I can talk for you. What do you wanna tell her? I've been trying to get her to tell me why this really happened. I tell you what time I bring it up. Here's, she don't ever wanna tell me the why. I don't wanna tell you really why I went along with it.

Hold on, Eric, hold on a second. I'm gonna give you a chance. I want you to talk in this recording as if you're talking to her. And tell her and ask her whatever you want. And I'm going to play that recording for her. Go ahead and go right now, as if you're talking to her. All I want to know is why this had to be done? Why we committed this crime? What was the whole purpose of us doing it in the first place? And that's it. That's all I want to know. What do you think Angela's going to tell me that happened? She's going to say that she did it, or she's going to say that it was your idea? She's going to probably say it was my idea, but I'm just saying I took a joint part in that, and I played a big part in that, and I know I played both sides of that.

I'm not going to sit here and say that I didn't do something. I know I did a lot of stuff. Here's the deal. You're definitely saying that you're part in it, but whenever you exclude yourself from the idea and you act like it almost just occurred in front of you, that is disassociating yourself in a big way.

Do you think that she's going to say that maybe it was her idea, but you were on board, or it was your idea and you were on board and she was just following along? What do you think her scenario is going to be? I don't know. She's told so many stories about this situation, I couldn't tell you which one she's gonna tell you.

I'm going to talk to Angela and I'll get back to you on what she says. Okay? Oh, I appreciate your time, man. All right now. Thank you for using Securus. Goodbye. After the break, we speak to Angela and I'll play Eric's message to her.

I'm sorry. What's up? I said I haven't heard from him in a while. Is he okay? Eric is okay. Angela, one of the things that we talked about was just you guys, aside from what you're in prison for, we talked about how was your relationship at the time and how is it now, and you guys don't even talk to each other anymore.

How does that make you feel? We're not allowed to. It sucks. We're not allowed to. Do you still love him? Of course I'm going to always love him. We had a wonderful relationship. It just went really bad. That was horrible. Yeah, the crime that you guys have been accused of is, it's pretty bad. Did you plead guilty or not guilty?

I plead guilty. There's no way that I can change anything that we have done, and I feel horrible about it. But I do teach and facilitate a class in here called CIP. It's the updated version of ICBC. It's really the only way that I can give back for what I have done, and I tell my story, the true story, um, to a lot of people, and I'm one of the only females, actually, who will facilitate it in the position that I'm in.

Yeah, so it looks like you're trying to do good. I am. Absolutely. I'm, I'm glad to hear that. There's nothing I can do to fix it. All I can do is try. Yeah. So, one of the things that I'm having a little trouble understanding is, whose idea was all that to, for that to happen? Yeah. What do you want to play for me first?

Alright, let me know what you're talking about. Okay, so I'm gonna play something for you here. Now, at this point in the story, I played Angela Eric's message to her. It's important to note that during the investigation, Angela's story changed. Initially, Angela claimed that Eric had killed Janice and Alyssa, and that she only witnessed the murders.

However, after detectives linked vital information that only she knew about, including a missing button from Alyssa's dress, and the buckles from her shoes that were found in Eric and Angela's home. She eventually admitted her involvement in them. So, with that in mind, I press play on the tape for Angela.

How does that make you feel? You just listened to that. That makes me so hurt. That is not the way this happened. If you look at Eric, Eric had already been convicted of a child s*xual assault, he was on MOSOP in Columbia. He was convicted of something in Fayette or Howard County. This was not my idea.

So Angela, do you, are you saying that basically he reversed the roles, that it was his idea and you were following along blindly? I have my own accountability to take for this, because these are people that I knew, because I drew a cab. I'm not saying that I'm innocent in this at all, but this was certainly not my idea.

Look him up. This is not my idea. I was the PTA mom, the church mom, for God's sake. I had five kids. So Angela, this wasn't anywhere near say, Hey, I'd like to, to be able to have s*xual encounter with a child. Is that what he, is that how this started? No, it actually started with, we went to town and he tried to pick up a girl in the grocery store parking lot to try to ask her if she needed a ride home.

I asked him, I said, what are you doing? We can't be the. Hold on. You said Wait, what? I have to go, Angela. Hold on. I have to go. It's so long count time. Okay. Can you call me back, please? I can't stay on the phone. I don't. I have to go. Thank you. the caller has hung up

listening to Angela speak. It's quite shocking to hear the allegations she brought against Eric. While, initially, we had been led to believe that Angela was the one in control of the situation, she points the finger at Eric, painting herself as the PTA and church going mom with 5 kids. It's also hard not to listen to this without recognizing the emotional strain that comes with reliving these moments.

Angela has had a tough life. She came from a strict Baptist family and was also a victim of s*xual assault at the hands of her own father. Despite the tragic nature of this case, it would be wrong for us not to ignore this fact. I would also like to mention that while in prison, she facilitates many programs, strives to better herself, and is extremely sorry for what she took part in.

I have also heard from other inmates that she takes her courses very seriously. It also became clear that Angela no longer wanted to participate in our interview. So with the information in hand, I called Eric back up to see if any of it was true. Eric, I talked to Angela. Yeah. Let me give you an idea of how that call went.

I reached out to her and I said, I have, I got some questions for you. She reaches back out to me via phone and I told her I spoke to you and she got really excited. She cares about you a lot. She was like, really, how, how is he? She was really concerned about how you were and obviously has feelings for you.

She's not able to reach out to you and you're not able to reach out to her. But then I said, Hey, I've got something to play for you. And I played the audio between you and me, where you're saying that it's her idea, and she broke down crying, and she did not like that whatsoever. Yeah, truth hurts. Here's the thing also she mentioned, and I'd like to hear what your side is on this.

She pointed out something that I wasn't aware of. She said, you know, obviously she said that it was your idea, and she said if you look at your history, you actually had a s*x crime against you before this happened. Yeah, she's full of crap, too. So if I look it up, you're not gonna be on MOSOP? Nope, I've never got anything to do with no MOSOP.

Missouri s*x Offender? You're not on there. I mean, I can Google it right now. You can look it up. I ain't on there. So why would she say that? I don't know. That's what I'm saying. It's like you can't believe s*** she says. That's what I'm saying. She says so much s*** to the police. When we got arrested, it's unbelievable.

I quit believing s*** she says anymore. The one thing in life I learned, what you let come out your mouth, it better be true. You better stand on what you say to me. I'm a lot of things in this world. One thing, I ain't a piece of s***. I'm not a rat, and what I say I want to do, that's what I mean. So, that's one thing these people can't take from me.

I may be in all this other s***, but I'm not that. So, you've never been prosecuted for a s*x offense? Nope. So, what I'm going to do is, I'm going to just do some research and see, but she was actually really hurt that after I had said, hey, I talked to you, she was excited about that and she wanted to know how you were.

And then when I told her your side of the story, she obviously disagreed with that. She broke down crying and was very hurt by the fact that you accused her of being the mastermind of this. Haha. That's messed up. I'd really want to go out and just do that on my own. Yeah, right. And so you stick by what you say that you basically just went along with everything she wanted to do and obviously her plan was to kill the mother and do something s*xually to the little girl?

That's right. Minus her part. Just take her whole part out of the whole situation. There wouldn't even be one. See what I'm saying? If we took her out of it, we wouldn't notice even being here. They'd still be alive. So did you do anything s*xual to that little girl? No. You realize that Statistically, men are the ones that commit those offenses.

And obviously, there's a large population that doesn't do that kind of stuff, and they don't have the propensity to do it. But, it's really hard to believe that, with statistics, that you're, you were just a bystander, and she did something s*xual to some little girl. You see where I'm coming from? Oh, I understand that all.

I get it. I do. But you gotta understand her history and everything she went through. She ain't telling you all that. Yeah. She's had a whole history of her being molested by her family, all this other s***. You need to look there. I didn't have that problem. She did. Yeah. What happens? Hurt people come back and they hurt other people.

It's normal. Yeah. I don't really anticipate her calling me back, but while we were talking, she got those things out that I just told you and she had to go. It was count time. I don't think she's going to call me back, but if she does, is there anything that you would want me to tell her? I don't have nothing against her, and she knows that, but the truth is the truth.

And if she wants to keep hiding behind this little bulls*** reality she's created for herself to block out the truth, then I don't know what else to say. I know what happened, and I ain't got no reason to lie about it. I know where I was at. I know what I did. I know what she did. I know what happened.

Because I was there. It's pretty much up in the air because she was there as well and yeah, but her, her reality is distorted. She would go get all the statements she made to the police, you see what I'm talking about. At the end of the day, we can back up what Eric has said to be true. A deep dive on both MOSOP and Missouri court records reveals that Eric was never convicted as a s*xual offender.

Now we can obviously label him accordingly. Both Eric and Angela pled guilty to and were convicted of two counts of first degree murder and they are both serving sentences of life without parole. Nevertheless, we can't forget about the tragedy of this case. The loss of both Janice Owen and her daughter Alyssa will forever remain as a senseless act.

The aftermath left her son growing up without a mother and care in a small town in Missouri reeling from the shock. It leaves us with the question. What can we learn from this story? Well, perhaps we have to look at the complexities of human frailty and the sometimes destructive power of relationships.

And how this affected the perpetrators of this crime. For Angela, the disconnect between her former identity as a nurturing figure and the reality of her current circumstances is a source of palpable cognitive dissonance. It's a reminder of the duality within people, the conflict between the roles we assume and the actions we take.

And for Eric, the struggle to reconcile with his past actions and the consequences is a lifelong journey marked by regret and the quest for redemption. With that in mind, I wanted to end our call with Eric by asking him how he thought he could redeem himself from behind bars, and whether he was responsible as Angela was in the motives for these murders.

Without any more information from Angela, it would have to be his voice that ends this episode of Voices of a Killer. I try to do more now to give back to other people. I'm trying to be a better person than the, I'm not the same person I was that came in here. You gotta understand. She did mention that. I know, I, she said that you sounded different when I played the audio for you.

She said you sounded like your dad. You know, I know who I was when I came to prison, but I'm not that guy. I matured, I grew up, I understand the things I did. They're unrepairable. There's nothing I can do to correct what I did. What's wrong? That's wrong. There's no going back to that. Yeah. So I can't, I can only move forward.

I have to go with God and move forward. I can't dwell on what I've done. I just gotta remember it and never repeat the same thing ever again. But I've been, I look back on all the stuff I did that was wrong, that was bad, and inside this prison, I've learned to do something better with myself. Like what?

I've facilitated classes in restorative justice, I give back to St. Jude every month, I send them $25 a month, I don't have to, but I plead like I owe. I work in a factory to learn to trade. I try to help people when I can, even though if I don't care much about them, I try to do what I can for other people.

Because I got a paralegal degree. So, I do need some help. You got a paralegal degree? Yeah, I got my GED, got my paralegal degree, I got an advanced paralegal degree. I got an apprenticeship in woodworking. Have you appealed your sentence? No, I never did it because I didn't feel like I had a right to do anything like that after what I did.

And I tried to, years later, I tried to do the Form 40 thing, but it was just a lost cause. I said, I don't even need to proceed in this area. I was like, if anything was to change, the law is going to change. Yeah, the Form 40 and the 2915 is a long shot. What is the feeling that you have when you sit in prison and you realize that You'll die in prison.

I get what I deserve. I probably should have been on foot on death row if you asked me. I'm just being serious. That's where I should have been. I shoulda have been sent to death row. So yeah. Yeah. I get live out my life in prison, which is probably, I don't know. I don't know which ones are better. Living in agony, year after year. Getting older or dying, or just dying in general, I don't know which one's better. Yeah. And I guess I get to see things happen, but you see my victims never got to see nothing either? So that don't make it right either. Eric, I appreciate you being open with me, I know that the system that you're in doesn't like the crime that you've been accused of, and it's really difficult to talk about. I feel at this point in your life, you're probably at a big regret. 18 years old is not very developed in the brain.

Most scholars would agree with that, but what you did was wrong. And I think most of society would rather you not be out. I feel like you're not really going to fight that too much, but I appreciate you opening up to me. It's really hard for me to envision a woman wanting to s*xually assault another little girl while a guy looks on.

I don't know. I just remember her saying this stuff when we were laying in the bed the day before. Came out of her head. I didn't bring, I didn't make it up on my own. I don't know how in the world it came from or why. That's all, that's really what I want to know. Why did this come out of her head? Why did she think about doing that?

If she calls me back, I'll ask her. I'm not saying we're going to get them answers, but I appreciate everything you've done. I thank you for what you're doing out there, man. You might not believe it, but I hope you do some good out there, man. Appreciate you, man. All right. Thank you for calling, Eric. Talk to you later.

I know. Bye-Bye bye-Bye.

On the next episode of Voices of a Killer. People have a hard time believing my story when I tell it to 'em. Do you recall what his face looked like when you raised that gun to him? It happened so fast that I'll be honest, I couldn't tell you. The guy's been to prison before for beating somebody. He's threatening you.

He's at your residence. Yeah, actually everything slowed down in that second. They had a dummy car in the dummy routes for taking me back and forth to the courthouse. I had to wear a bulletproof vest. They had snipers on the roofs surrounding the courthouse. If I was in Jackson County, I never would have saw the inside of a jail cell.

Have you lost hope? Not entirely, no, but some days it's really hard. That's a wrap on this episode of Voices of a Killer. I want to thank Eric and Angela for sharing their story with us today. Their ability to be open and honest is what makes this podcast so special. If you would like to listen to the raw recordings of these interviews, you can visit patreon.com/voicesofakiller By becoming a patron, you can access not only this, but hours of bonus recordings, correspondence, and you can contribute to the way the show is produced. A big shout out to Sonic Futures who handled the production audio editing. Music licensing and promotion of this podcast.

If you want to hear more episodes like this one, make sure to visit our website at voicesofakiller.com. There you can find previous episodes, transcripts, and additional information about the podcast. Lastly, if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Your feedback helps us improve and reach new listeners. Thank you for your support. And we can't wait to share more stories with you in the future. Thank you for tuning in, I'm your host Toby, and we'll see you next time on Voices of a Killer.