Ep 36 | Matthew Hamm Part 2 Transcript

Ep 36 | Matthew Hamm Part 2 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.

Prosecutors say Matthew Hamm caused the death of his infant son by striking him in the head with a plastic mug. He said, "Are you Matthew Hamm?" And I said, "Yes sir. I am." He said, "I need you to turn around for me." My dad used to tell me growing up all the time, you do the right thing for the right reason. I didn't love her, right.

But I did love her. I cared very much about her. The villain who's a half-assed villain is never a good villain. I hope that you do get out. I don't, like I said, I got a different view now than before I interviewed you.

What the f***ck have I got myself into?

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'll 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 Part 2 of our conversation with Matthew Hamm. In the last episode, Matthew recounted a dark day in his life, the death of his 19-month-old son, Orion. His partner, Ashley, had been detained, leaving Matthew alone with Orion for an extended period.

After weeks of building tension, Matthew, in a moment of irritability, threw a cup at his son and inadvertently killed him. Devastated and unwilling to let his son go, Matthew chose to burn the toddler's body in a cabinet in his yard, and then kept the ashes close by. But as the weeks roll on and Ashley's release comes closer, the consequences of Matthew's actions are about to catch up to him.

How will Orion's mother react to her son's death? Will Matthew fight the course of justice or come clean? And six years down the line, what kind of life does Matthew have now lead? Sit back and buckle up for a challenging but moving conversation on this episode of Voices of a Killer.

So after this, you know, you put them in the cigar box and what's the next couple of days like? Well, that was probably, next to the actual happening of the event and what I just went through, the next five days were... My dad had left a lot of medication when he passed, but a lot of it, like the fentanyl patches and the time release morphine tabs, the hospice ladies came and they took all that stuff, and they took the little toilet and stuff that he had.

My dad died of Stage 3 enteric carcinoma cancer about six months prior to this.

So I had a lot of his old heart medications like albuterol inhalers and just a bunch of other stuff that, you know, a man of his age would have. I don't even know what they all were. I'm assuming a lot of them were just heart medications, just different kinds. I just started eating those. I was going to find something that I thought was going to be able to take me out.

I wrote a letter at one point and I laid it in an envelope inside the door because I thought I'm going to go to this back room and I'm going to eat all these pills and I'm going to be done and somebody needs to know what's going on. There were days where I thought, that's a stupid plan. Why would you do that?

Don't you want to see Ashley? Don't you want to tell her what happened? And then I would go through the emotion of, well, you've got to be just completely stupid. She doesn't want to hear anything from you. She doesn't want to look at you. She doesn't want to hear anything. She doesn't care about that. She doesn't want to hear anything from you, Matt, and I would go back on to trying to kill myself.

And then the next day, I would talk myself out of it, and I've got this to do. And then, of course, if m***amphetamine came around... You know, the guy from down the street, he would come up and knock on the door and you know, I would, I would talk to him and I would go out front and I would BS with him on the back of the truck there.

And he would ask me if I wanted some and I'd say, "Sure." And I'd say, "Let me come down here in a minute." I would go down there and get high and that would pacify me for the day. But on days where I wasn't doing that, I would think about killing myself again. So obviously, you know, Ashley has ways of communicating with you while you're in jail.

She's probably calling into you, right? Or did you not have communication with her? Oh no, I didn't, I didn't have a phone at all. Okay, so y'all aren't communicating. Okay, so how long until all this got discovered? She got out May 31st, and I called the police the May 31st. When she got out, you called the police and said what?

Well, she showed up, she knocked on the door, and I opened it. And of course from there, everything went exactly the way I thought it would. She went into hysterics. Well, did you tell her? Well, hold on. She knocks on the door, she comes home, you told her? Yeah, I... Well, hold on, we got, hold on, this is gonna be a whole nother thing here.

For three weeks after Orion's death, Matthew Hamm waited in his trailer alone. His son's ashes were in a wooden cigar box in a cabinet under the sink. With no cellphone and no way of contacting Ashley, Matthew waited for the day she'd come home, hoping that he would be the one to tell her what happened to their son.

It was a dark time in Matthew's life, and guilt gnawed away at him. His grief went through cycles. Sometimes, Matthew thought about suicide. He swallowed a handful of his father's cancer meds, hoping one of the unmarked pills would take him out. He even went as far as to write a suicide letter and stuck it on the front door.

At other times, a dealer would bring m*** around to his house. Getting high gave Matthew a temporary escape, where he could forget his desperation and make life more bearable. Stuck, back and forth, between shame and numbness, Matthew was trapped in a limbo state. He couldn't live with his reality, but he wasn't willing to confront the full weight of what he'd done.

The worst was still to come. Matthew still had to break the news to the person he loved. On May 31st, 2017, Ashley was finally released from her stint in jail. As she walked up to the trailer door, she was probably expecting that Orion would rush up to her feet. She was totally unaware of the truth that waited for her inside.

So she comes home. She walks through the door. Do you immediately tell her, do you let her kinda walk around the house saying, "Hey, where's Orion? I wanna give my son a hug." How did that.. tell, kind of take me through that a little bit? Okay. Yeah. No, no problem. No, I just, well, what I told her is, she was like, she's like, "Where's Orion?"

And in that moment, I chickens***ed out. I said, "He's with a babysitter." And as soon as I said it, I thought, "Oh God." And I started getting shaky. And she said, "Why are you shaking so much?" And I said, "Sit down. I got to talk to you. Sit down. I got to talk to you." She's like, "Well, let's go get Orion." I said, "Just sit down, Ashley.

Just sit down. Let me talk to you." So I sat her down and you know, at first, the shame that I had, I didn't want to tell her, I didn't want to tell her that it was my fault, so I tried to make an excuse. I tried to say that he choked on something. I said, "Ashley", I said, "I'm sorry, but he was choking. He was, I woke up and he was choking.

I didn't know what to do. I didn't, I couldn't, I didn't do anything." You know, so I tried to play out the whole victim thing, and I kept trying to say that to her over, and then I don't know where it came from. I just, with the very next breath, I just said, "Ashley, I threw something. I hit him. Oh my God, I'm sorry.

I'm so sorry." And I said, "I threw a mug at him. I threw a mug. I hit him. I didn't know. I didn't see it hurt him." And I was, by this time, I start crying all over again. So you got me and her, and I'm crying, and I'm trying to call, trying to tell her. I'm trying to confess to her what I know. What is she doing?

She's just distraught. She's like any mother that you can imagine when she hears that her son is no longer alive. I mean, you can, you know, so I'm feeling, and I don't, this isn't about me, but I'm feeling all the hurt that I can see her going through at the same time. I didn't love her right, but I did love her.

I cared very much about her. She was so funny. She was so interesting to me. She was sweet. She was kind. She was daring. She was always willing to do something if you dared her to, and I always liked that about her. She was, she didn't really have a lot of fear, and, but all that just faded away as soon as I, as soon as I said something. And you could tell that when I told her the truth rather than the bulls*** that I had made up in that split second.

You could tell when I told her the truth, something different happened to her. Her crying became even more real. It's, I don't know, it was just different. Like she was crying, hysteric, but it was more angry. And then when I said, "Look, I threw something, Ashley. I threw something. It hit him. I didn't think he was hurt. I'm sorry, oh God, I'm sorry, I just, I threw it, I didn't mean to, I wasn't..." As soon as I said it like that, her crying took on a different tone. So she slumped up against the wall, and obviously I fell down next to her, and I grabbed a hold of her, and I held her for as long as she would let me. Four or five minutes, just laying there. And I was holding her, and I can feel her nails digging into my, in the back of my bicep.

She's shaking, and I'm crying, she's crying. We're both just a mess. She gets up, and she's like, "I gotta go, I gotta go. I gotta get out of here, I gotta go." So I get up, and I'm thinking, I'm still trying to soothe her. So I get up, and she goes outside, and I go outside with her. She goes out in the middle of the gravel road, and I'm standing there at the end of the driveway.

I'm like, "Ashley, I'm sorry. Just please talk to me. I need you to just talk to me, please." I said, "I'm scared. I know my life is over, but I need to talk to you right now." And, of course, she wasn't having any of it. She started walking one way. She made it 20 or so feet. And then she turned around, and there for a minute, I thought she was coming back to talk to me, but she wasn't.

She was just coming back to go the other way. And she went down to the guy that we mutually know that we got our dope from. And, I don't know, I was standing out by the side of the road where our mailbox is and I saw his truck go by and I saw her, I don't know, it was probably 50 yards from where Highway 5 goes up that I was standing.

I could see her in the truck clearly. They drove away? Yeah. Yup. I knew where, she went down. The guy's name was Steve. She went down to Steve's. And I knew that she was going to ask for a ride back into town or to her mom's or somewhere. After that happened, I went back in the house for a minute. Let me stop you for a second.

Hold on a second. At any point did you say what you did to the body? Yeah, you know, I think, hold on, I think I did, I think I did, yeah, I did, I said something to her about, I-I-I tried to cremate him. I didn't say I cremated him, I said I tried, because I knew it wasn't, you know, all the way. Okay. But I do remember saying it, so, it's, "I've got him, though, I've got him, though."

Yeah. Yeah, I do remember saying that now. I say, "Yeah, I-I-I got him, though, I got him, though." For some reason, I thought that... That had mattered to me for, you know, two or three weeks now, that had mattered to me, that I got him. And somehow I thought that would bring her solace, I don't know, but... I don't know what was going through my head, man, I'm so different than I was then. I'm just, I still got some things that I'm not happy with about myself as far as like character wise, some ways that I judge and treat people, but I'm a completely different person. I, I'm just not, I'm not the selfish individual I was back then and... But, you know, I lived in pretty rotten, selfish life for 36, 37 years. Everything led into that moment. Everything led into that lifestyle, man, that not having a car. Not being able to have groceries. Who does that? Nobody really lives like that unless you're like me. You're sick, and I just, I was just of that kind of life.

Let's pause to consider Ashley's perspective in all this. For over a month, she's been stuck in jail over a pair of shoplifted boots. During that time, she's been separated from her 19-month-old boy, who she hasn't seen or talked to in weeks. As she walks through the front door, all she wants, as any mother would, is to scoop him into her arms again.

But instead, it's Matthew who greets her, and he's about to tell her what every mother dreads to hear. Her son is dead and there's nothing she can do to bring him back. Ashley's reaction to the news was raw and intense. Shattered, she broke down and slumped against the wall. Although Matthew held her, her crying became pained and angry and she dug her nails into his bicep.

Then, abruptly, she got up and walked outside, repeating over and over, "I gotta go, I gotta go." Down the road, she caught a lift with the dealer they both knew, and she drove off, leaving Fortuna behind. Matthew watched Steve's truck pass by on Highway 5. He'd spent weeks waiting for Ashley's release. Now, he found himself alone again.

Did she run to town and go to the police station or her mom's? Yeah, yeah, she was going into town and I didn't know exactly where she was going. But I knew that she was going into town or out to High Point where her mom lived. I knew that was one of the, I knew that was an option. Once she goes that way, she's either going to Tipton or she's going to take a ride on W and go to her mom's or something.

So I went back in the house and it's stupid, but I grabbed the dope pipe out from under the bed and I try to light it and I'm seeing if there's anything in there I can smoke. And I go in the back room and I find another handful of pills. And I take a bunch of them and then I walk off down the street and I go up to this other guy's house and I ask him if he has a gun I could borrow and he's, "Whoa," he's, "Who did you wrong?"

And I said, "Oh no, I just, I'm just wondering, do you have one? If I need to come back tomorrow and borrow one, do you have one?" That was just me trying to see if he really had one. I was going to try to talk him into letting me see it. But he told me no, and he said he had something to do, he was getting ready to leave, so he chased me off.

I went back down to the house, and I grabbed a little throwaway phone that we'd had for, I don't know, a year, and I figured maybe 911 worked. So I called 911, and I said, "Yeah, I need to be connected to the police, or something." And they said, "What's your emergency?" And I just, I told them, I said, "It's been some time ago, but I hit my son with something. He's dead, and his mom just came home, and I talked to her, and she left."

And I found out later that she had called right before I did, so I don't know if she used his phone on the way into town or if she made it somewhere and called, but, so there have been multiple calls about the same thing. I sat out in the front yard. I threw a stick to my dog. These pills, all they were doing is making me throw up.

I couldn't hold anything down food-wise or even coffee. I just threw everything up. So I was throwing a stick to my dog, feeling real nauseous. And it took them, for some reason, it took them like 40 minutes to get there. And I stayed out in the yard the whole time when they showed up. They went to the wrong house.

And I actually lifted my hands up and waved them. And I said, "I think you guys are supposed to be here." How many cop cars were there? Well, at first it was only, if I remember correctly, it was only one SUV. But then I saw a couple others a few minutes later pull up and they all parked, like I said, about a block away.

And they got out and I thought they were coming down the road a little bit, but they went to the house next door. And then I just, once I saw them... Yeah, once I saw them come back... They had been over there, obviously been told they were at the wrong house and that they were walking back towards their cars.

I had my hand up and I said, "I believe you guys are supposed to be over here looking for this." Did they get out guns drawn and everything? No. He said, "Are you Matthew Hamm?" And I said, "Yes sir, I am." He said, "I need you to turn around for me." I just, you know, the typical procedure from there. Whenever they brought you to, you know, the jail and everything, how long was it until they actually sat you in a room and asked you all the details?

Oh, it was within, if I remember correctly, it was within a couple hours, it was two or three hours. It was a couple of guys from the Missouri Highway State Patrol, the Investigations Unit or something. I was put in a dry cell. I didn't know it at the time, but it was actually a suicide watch. They had me on suicide watch. Yeah. I was in there for, I don't know, it felt like just a couple hours. They pulled me out to an interview room. And that was the end of that. On May 31st, cops from Moniteau County received a call from a distressed mother. It was Ashley, calling to report the murder of her son. Not long after, a second call came in, this time from Matthew himself.

He was turning himself in to the police department. All Matthew's options had run out, and three weeks after Orion's death, he had little choice but to come clean. The law had finally caught up with Matthew Hamm. Matthew's arrest took place quietly. 40 minutes after the call, cops pulled up outside the wrong house in Morgan Street, Fortuna, and Matthew had to wave them over to where he stood in the yard of his home.

He was cooperative. The handcuffs were clicked shut, the cars drove off, and Matthew was taken to a dry holding cell. Just a few hours later, Matthew found himself seated in an interrogation room facing down a cop. Killing a child is a heinous crime. Naturally, most people feel sickened when they hear it. So, I wondered, what did the police see when they looked back at Matthew that day in the interrogation room?

In this news report from KRCG, we get insight into how the media handled Matthew's case. Prosecutors say Matthew Hamm caused the death of his infant son by striking him in the head with a plastic mug. Court documents indicate Hamm became upset with his 19-month-old son while babysitting alone in his Fortuna home on Morgan Street.

Court records show Hamm admitted he hit his son in the temple with a plastic mug that broke into two pieces. Prosecutors say that's when the boy appeared to have a seizure and died. Hamm told authorities he placed his son's body in a two drawer filing cabinet. Court documents indicate Hamm burnt his son's body in the filing cabinet outside of his home.

I contacted the Missouri State Highway Patrol Division of Drug and Crime Control and asked for their assistance with the investigation. They arrived. We typed up and executed a search warrant for the property. Wheatley says this infant murder is an emotional strain on his staff. It hits all of us hard, especially when we have to go on an investigation involving children.

And it hits us really hard when it involves a death of a child. Boone County medical examiners are performing a forensic analysis of the boy's remains to determine the time and cause of death. Prosecutors say Hamm burnt his son's body to prevent any suspicious odors coming from his home. Reporting in Moniteau County, Mark Slavit, KRCG 13.

You know, Matthew, one of the reasons that I do this podcast is, a lot of the people that hear about these crimes, like yours for instance, you know, the news likes to hype things up for numbers and viewers, viewership and all that stuff. I think it's easy to tell after talking to you that it's not like you woke up that day and said, "You know what, I'm going to kill somebody" or, and you also didn't throw the object at Orion thinking, "I want to hurt you or kill you."

So that's part of the reason why I do these because it kind of clarifies things. You know, obviously you're, you know, you're, you're guilty. You did something that you shouldn't have done. But a lot of times when people hear about these crimes and they read them in the paper, listen to it on the news, they portray it as a certain way.

And now that we've got the information from you, it shows that you were a guy spun out on drugs, you came up in a, in a family that you didn't really learn what family was in a way, you know what I mean? And how all that functions. Even people that do come up in good families and stuff still struggle.

Somebody that comes up in a, you know, in a family that is a broken home and there's drugs and alcohol and there's abuse, the cards are f***ing stacked against you, you know what I mean? But I am glad that I interviewed you on this. Whenever you did speak to the authorities and they actually asked you about all the details, would you say that you explained it to them just as you explained it to me?

You know, there's still a certain measure of it... When I tell it, there's still a certain measure in my mind, it's like, why does it sound like I'm churching it up so much? And I really don't mean for it to be like that, but when, one thing that I've found, when you tell, when you tell something truthfully, it's just there and it's easier.

There's not as much, I don't know, it just doesn't seem as wishy washy. So when I told them, I don't, I don't know that they, I guess they probably never believed a thing I said. But when I told them, it was fairly, it was pretty easy. It was easy as far as clarity goes. You know, they've got the good cop, bad cop thing going and they'll say they know things that they really don't to get you into a mess.

I think that kind of angered them a couple of times. I wasn't really going for what they were trying to sell, but, you know, I think I probably explained it to them just like I did you. It's a little bit easier for me now. I suffer from a little less shame than I did then, so I was probably a lot more, actually, I know I was a lot more incoherent about things back then. But as far as what happened I never had an issue telling them. You know, it wasn't with ease that I told them I tried to cremate my son, Toby.

That was never an easy thing. But for them to actually know the truth and me to be... You know, the whole, the truth will set you free thing, somewhere down inside the dark, you know, the darkness back then, I believed that. I thought, you know what, I'm going to tell them the truth. They're going to understand.

And that required me telling them not just half of the truth or three quarters, but everything as it really was and how it happened. Even with the accelerant of the insulation. That wasn't something that I liked. I didn't relish in the idea that it was, you know, it was never a good thing or a, hey, look at me, here I am thing.

It was like, that just really needs to be known, because without that, then what other kind of liar are you going to have to make up? And I didn't want that, so I just told it like it was and, you know, I just... My dad used to tell me growing up all the time, you do the right thing for the right reason. And for some reason, that's the day I just decided to stand on that.

But I lost a lot of my hope for the future, too. I didn't think I would be alive, like, let alone this much longer later. I didn't think I'd be here. So I just, I come to terms with, hey, I'm going to tell them the truth. And I don't need them to offer me a deal. I don't need them to give me any specific number, I just want them to know the truth and they can sentence me accordingly.

I just, that was my thought going into it, so I think that was, made it a little bit easier. So whenever you laid it all out for them, do you feel like they were dissatisfied with your answer? Yeah, I absolutely do. Why? What did they want from you? Well, okay, the villain who's a half-assed villain is never a good villain.

And I don't believe that they heard me tell them what really happened versus what they wanted to be the truth. And I think that's probably just society and our need for exciting or dark or destructive things. Like, you know, just our society as a whole, you know, I think that we have a sensationalization about things.

And like you said, when they hear it, the news never reports something like that as it really happened. It's like a I take your breath away moment when the news anchor comes on and says, "In breaking news, in the town of blah blah blah blah blah blah." When they say that, it's got this overtone, and I believe that they just wanted that to be there.

They wanted me to be the guy who viciously went out and murdered his family, and you know, they, I think they just wanted me to be that. It was easier to treat me like that than it was to treat me as a drug addict who was suffering with his own ability to live life on life's terms and not able to function as a normal human being.

I wasn't, you know... That all leads back into me trying to play a victim stance, and I'm not that. I wasn't a victim to anything except my own dumbass choices. But I just wasn't the villain they wanted me to be, Toby. I just don't think they didn't want to believe me that it was an accident because, well, all these things that go along.

And there's also the idea that, you know, when you try to burn or cremate a body, there's an initial thought of, "Whoa, hey, whoa, what are you doing?" And I knew, I know why I did it. And in my mind, I know exactly why I decided to do that, but in their mind, they didn't have that thought. They were like, oh no, you're destroying evidence.

You're doing this to hide something. And I think that definitely added too, so Media outlets often paint individuals as heroes or villains. Stories are sensationalized to get more clicks. Short sound bites oversimplify what really happened. The media feeds us one-dimensional narratives about the world, with little nuance or context, because it's easier to digest a story about a vicious killer than it is the truth.

However, reality is more complicated. In this conversation with Matthew Hamm, we've met a complex human being. He had a rough start to life marked by some deep-seated problems. He battled an active addiction and struggled to function day by day. Of course, he was a flawed and irresponsible man, and Orion's death was a consequence of all his bad life decisions.

But it's also true that Matthew was a loving, caring father, and hurting Orion was a terrible mistake. Matthew's father used to say do the right thing for the right reason. Those words rang in the back of his mind at the police station. Despite the many wrong choices he'd made in his past, on that day, Matthew chose to own up to his actions and tell officers the full truth.

Though he couldn't change things, he made a life-defining decision that would help him break from his past. After the break, we'll hear more about Matthew's time in court.

Did they try to give you a kind of plea deal or anything like that? How did the whole whole court thing work out for you? Well, yeah, I went into court. There was a couple of times where I went into court and they just wanted to give me a second-degree murder and they, the wording, and I can't remember exactly what it was, but you know the legalese that they type up those papers with, they're made up of sentences constructed into paragraphs that describe a particular amount of crime, or they call it mens rea, the pre-existing conditions, or the premeditation.

And there was a certain amount of that, that, it's okay, well this says, you know, second-degree murder. I still, I forget exactly what it was worded as, but I didn't, okay, second degree murder, that's fine, but it doesn't say what happened. It doesn't, I was hardheaded and I wanted it to say exactly what happened.

I wanted the legalese to match up to what really happened. And that's hard when you have all those, that whole paper, the paragraphs are built out of sentence structure that, you know, dictates what you're charged with. That's actually what turned it into a second-degree felony homicide or felony murder charge, was the idea that if I throw a cup and it strikes my child, they call that abuse.

With abuse being the cause of death, the commission of a felony being the abuse, that is the commission of death during the commission of a felony. And technically, they're right. Technically, that's exactly what happened. But my hardheadedness took it from a second degree-murder, which looks like I murdered somebody, to a felony murder in which it looks like I abused somebody to cause a murder.

So that was, you know, the reason it was that is because of me, but that was me going into court saying, it's not, it doesn't say what really happened. What did you ultimately get found guilty of? I got found guilty of second-degree felony murder, and I was sentenced to a life sentence with the possibility of parole.

So you actually have the possibility of parole. And I'm going to go ahead and say it. I think that if the parole board heard this podcast, they can hear your sincerity and that may actually help you. Because I do hear a very strong sincereness in your voice. This may turn out to be something good for you.

I'm not saying that the parole board listens to this, but I would hope that this does, you know, get to their ears. But what was it like in the courtroom? Was Orion's mother there, Ashley? Yeah, it was, and it might, I don't know how it's gonna sound, but I'll say it the way I feel it. Everything that had happened really hurt.

It really tortured my soul that my life ended up the way it did because of what I did right? But in that courtroom, she couldn't read her own statement. The prosecutor had to take over reading it. She was obviously still soul crushed two years later, and I couldn't stop crying. I just told her, I didn't even say the things that I thought were important to say to her.

I just I don't know. In my mind it's, "Hey, Ashley, I apologize. I'm so sorry. I would give my life in a heartbeat." But I couldn't really articulate those things. I just, I was back to that state of shock that happened after I realized my son was not alive anymore. It was just surreal. I couldn't really function correctly.

I was shaky again. The cop kept telling me I got to calm down and compose myself, but I couldn't even breathe out of my nose. I had snot running down my face. I just wanted her to know that I never intended to ruin her life. I never intended to ruin my son's life. I never intended to cause ruination.

And it was probably, next to the actual happening of what happened to my son, probably the darkest time I've ever been through in my life. And I've been through a lot of dark s*** in my life. I've put myself in a lot of positions to feel a lot of pain externally and internally. And I've never felt anything like that.

Nearly two years after Orion's death, Matthew sat in a courtroom. The wheels of justice had turned and Matthew was facing the legal consequences. In the end, Matthew was charged with second-degree felony murder. Unlike a homicide, a felony murder isn't intentional. It occurs when somebody commits a felony, such as a burglary or arson, and a person dies as a result of that felony.

In Matthew's case, hitting Orion with the cup constituted abuse. Orion died as a result of the felony of abuse, fitting the legal definition of a felony murder. But the legalese is technical and confusing. And Matthew at first took issue with what he saw on paper. He wanted his charge to align exactly with what had happened,

for the documents to say that Orion's death was an accident, not a murder. It took time for him to accept the technicality. By the day of the sentencing, whether he had come to terms with it or not, Matthew was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole. Before the sentencing of a defendant, family or friends of the victim are given the floor to read out a victim impact statement.

It's a chance to give a voice to the victims to express how the crime has impacted their lives. Sometimes it's an appeal to the judge to consider the suffering the defendant has caused and decide on an appropriate punishment. Beyond that, it allows victims to find closure and healing. Ashley took this opportunity to deliver her own emotionally charged victim statement.

Seeing her again after two years was crushing. As Matthew says, quote unquote, "It was the darkest time I've ever been through in my life." That day is still probably the hardest day I've ever sat through in my life. So... The sentence didn't mean anything, but seeing Ashley after two years... She looks so beautiful.

She looks so, she just looked like Ashley, except there was a dimness to her eyes when she stood up and started walking towards the podium, and I just couldn't hold it in anymore. I just, I lost it. I just, yeah. Really hard day in my history. Was it a victim impact statement that she had approached to do all that?

Yes, yes. And she wasn't able to do that because she was emotional? No, she got about five or six sentences in and she just, she said, "I'm sorry, I can't, I can't read it, I can't. You know, she said that what I did was very unfair, very selfish, and that all she had left was a little locket that she wore around her neck with her son's ashes in it.

Now that's all she had left." And all of those things are very true and I couldn't take any of those feelings away from her. They were warranted. I-I, you know, the thing is I still, I think about her every single day and I hope and I know it's, I know it's a useless hope, but I hope I didn't lend to her living a harder life than necessary, because I would give nothing more than to know that she went on and she was happy.

But her and I both struggle with addiction through different forms, and I think about every once in a while, hey, I wonder if I could have my brother look her up or just see how she's doing. But I thought, you know what? Don't do that. Don't do that to her. She doesn't care if you're getting better. She, her life f***ing sucks.

Her life is never going to be the same again, and you're the cause. So I just never think, I never actually do anything more than that. But I hope she's okay, and I hope she's doing as well as possible. Matthew, if she were to hear this, which is very possible, I want you to say now. What would you want to say to her as if she's listening right now?

Okay, well, well let's see. I'm sure a lot of what you already said is out there, but now you actually like talking directly to her. I'm going to give you the floor. I would just apologize sincerely for not, not helping on her journey to a happy and fulfilling life. You deserved somebody that was going to love you and cherish you and take care of you and your family.

And I was unable to do that. For whatever reason, I was unable and I apologize from the bottom of everything that I am. And I would do absolutely anything in the world I could to go back and do everything over again. I would never put myself in a position where those things could happen. I'm sorry. I know that I destroyed your life.

I know you're never going to be the same for it, but I also want you to understand that you deserve a level of happiness in your life, and I hope that somehow you can find those little moments and grow them, nurture them, and find things to be grateful for every day. Because that's the only way that your life won't look back and be a regret, and I-I would never want anything different for you except just happiness, and I'm just, I'm, I'm so extremely sorry, and, you know, I hope you go out and, you know, get the life you deserve, which is just one of happiness, joy, contentment, and peace. And oh, I love you.

I always will. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Ashley. I'm so sorry. God, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You deserved so much more when you needed me. The one person you should have been able to depend on, you couldn't. I'm so sorry.

I guess if I had any consolation at all to give you, I would say that I know that we named our son Orion because we believed he was a gift from way up where the stars are, and, I just know that if it's possible, he's always looking down at you and loving you. I know I miss him. And you miss him, I'm so sorry.

In every case like this, it's the family of the victim who suffers the most. That day, Ashley lost a 19-month-old son who she loved deeply. She was robbed of a million little moments: watching Orion grow up, taking him to buy shoes for the first time of school, taking a road trip on a summer break. Every day, when Ashley wakes up, she'll have to carry that loss.

Her life will never again be the same. Matthew's apology to Ashley is heartfelt. His pain is raw and palpable, and I find myself crying together with him over the phone. Although it's impossible to ever fully know the extent of Ashley's pain, Matthew is acutely aware that he's caused irreversible damage to her life, and he would do anything to undo the harm he's caused.

After the break, Matthew talks about his own path to healing.

Okay. Get my s*** together too, hold on a second. Alright. What tf***uck have I got myself into? I don't normally, that's not something that I do a lot of. You're the first person actually to ask to actually have it done like that. But I go through my story and what happened with the clients that I, that I teach here in the ITC and I do that pretty regularly, because they need to know that the decisions that they make will result in that kind of a lifestyle. And I always tell them that I never just decided that this was my life, and it was good, and I was happy with it. I never made a decision to hurt anybody, but every choice that I had made from the time I was old enough to start making my own choices. And I rebelled and didn't like being controlled, and I went out and did my own, all that s*** led to the lifestyle I had when this happened. And so it's very important for me to let them know that this can happen to you. This, your life can turn out like this.

So, I really try my best to do that with these guys. We're actually, today is Phase Up Monday. We just had With 36 new phase ones come in and, you know, I'm trying to help them. It's a psychological and behavioral health program where we're pretty intense. We give them peer driven confrontation. And I call them on their s***.

And they don't like it. I'm an inmate just like them. And I'm saying things like, "Hey, pull you up for your attitude or pull you up for neglecting responsibilities" when they don't do their extra duty on time. And they don't like that at all. But it's what I've chosen to do because I think it just, it helps me.

It gives me some kind of purpose, you know. I took a life. If I can help try to restore life to people, that's what I'm going to do. So, I've been doing that for, I'm going on three years now. I went through facilitator training and I've been a full fledged facilitator for about a year and a half now, so. Do you feel like facilitating those classes helps you do, you know what I mean, that helps your psyche and everything?

Yeah, it's very hard, it's very stressful. Of course, because it's a voluntary program, the people come over here and as soon as you do something they don't like, you know, they say things like, "Man, you're making me do this", and I say, "I'm not making you do s***. I'm asking you to follow the rules to a program that you signed up for to come over voluntarily to."

But it's... for me, when I-I teach everything. I've taught every phase a couple of times. I teach substance abuse, criminality, anger management. I teach ICVC, the Victims Panel. I teach self-esteem. I teach tactics, thinking errors, power of consequences. I talk about violence in Phase 2. I also teach AA Steps 1 all the way through 12, and I've done every one of those many times.

I teach rational and emotive behavioral therapy. I teach good intentions, bad choices, fear the anger trigger. I teach pretty much everything they would teach you somewhere where you need help. And I would never have carved out this life for myself, but as far as being in prison, it's probably the best life that you can have.

I live in the spiritual principle of 7, 12 every day at service, and that's 16, 18 hours a day. I get up at 5 a.m. I get ready for my day, and I come out when the door's open at 7:30, and I go to bed at 10 o'clock at night. If I'm lucky, I'm asleep at 11 or 11:30, unless like tonight or last night. Last night, I didn't sleep at all.

Tonight I'll probably sleep even less. Do you ever have nightmares? Yeah, yeah, but I don't ever have nightmares that involve my son. I know that one of the ways that we deal with trauma is nightmares. I've, I had something happen to me in 2002. I almost died and I had these really strange, strong, vivid nightmares and I was told that was how your body recovers from the trauma.

Do you recall very vivid and strong nightmares or are they just dreams or what? I don't really, I can't really say that I have any nightmares. The nightmares I do have, I actually just had one the other night, but it involved a couple of the clients from the lower phases here. And my brother was there and I remember being in a truck and something happened and then I remember the truck swerved and the next thing I know I was out and running.

And there were shots being fired, and they were being fired at me, and I remember running and I kicked, and I woke myself up. That's the last one I remember having. It's been a while. As far as surrounding, you know, my crime, I don't really have any nightmares that pop up in that form. Now, I have lots of dreams with my son in them, but I don't ever wake up panicked from any of those.

A little morose maybe, but never panicked. Prison has given Matthew an opportunity to rewrite the narrative of his life. Through the 12 steps of AA, he's finally broken free of the addiction that wrecked 35 years of his adult life. After years of reflection, he has greater insight into his past choices.

And now his dark past with addiction has actually become his greatest strength. He's committed to helping others who are struggling and preventing them from making similar mistakes. As someone who's been to rock bottom, Matthew can relate to what they're going through. He works as a facilitator in prison, teaching classes to other inmates and helping others make healthy life choices.

Of all the possible paths in prison, Matthew has become a model inmate. He's carved out a life of service and self-improvement for himself, and he's changed from a lost young man to a constructive inmate with a clear sense of purpose. Orion is never gone from Matthew's life. He still appears frequently in Matthew's dreams, a reminder of what he's lost and where he never wants to return. Although Matthew can't change his past, he has been trying to make the best of his present reality.

The general public has this view of prison is, you know, if you've done something to a child, you're just going to get killed in there. But, you know, I know that sometimes you can have it rougher, but it's not like people actually think it is. And you're, I bet anything, if we went to a news article on the internet about you, that there would be people commenting like, "Oh, he's going to be killed in there because he did this and all that."

And you probably get some hard time here and there, but that's usually not the case, am I right about that? Well, I would say yes and no. I think it really depends on the person and how thhandleeel themselves. If you go in, you know, one thing I will say is prison can be pretty unforgiving, whether you hold yourself accountable to what happened or not.

They don't I don't think the most of the general population doesn't care about that. You set yourself up to be a victim just by having charges that have to do with children or families or something like that. I've had a couple of run-ins. I've had a couple of incidences, but most of the time, once I open up and I start sharing with people about, you know, the real me and what happened I've never really had anybody say, "Oh, you're just full of s***" and they don't believe me.

Most everybody's pretty open and receptive. Most people actually learn to like me pretty well. I've been told I'm the facilitator on the facilitating team that guys want to talk to when they're having real bad troubles, when they're having struggle. And I think that probably comes from my ability to understand and be sympathetic and empathetic to the pain that they have

as a result of the way they've lived. I never really thought I was much of a criminal, but I know what it's like to be in turmoil mentally, and I know what it's like to, to have a foot and a knee down in your neck, and not understand why it's happening, and then one day realizing that it's your own f***ing knee that you've got in your neck.

I know what that's like. So I think a lot of guys come to me about that. The environment I'm in currently, it's not sheltered, but it's pretty straight forward. This wing, A wing, and the wing next are all ITC, and then the C wing has got launch code, computer programming unit, and also, the dog program, the K9s For Camos and Puppies For Parole.

D Wing has a program called Re-Entry, and I'll tell you now, I don't like it at all, but it's pretty much a program oriented house. Everybody over here is for a program of betterment, so while I am GV, I'm also in a house that is pretty reserved for clients that want to do things to better their future. I don't get high.

I don't start fights. I don't join a gang. I don't steal from people. I don't manipulate. I don't sell drugs. I don't have anything to do with that lifestyle, and pretty much nobody in this house does. There are a few that come over and try to do their thing, but I don't partake in any of that, so I think that kind of helps with my... Are you in an honor wing?

You could call it an honor wing. Currently there are eight facilitators, two elders, and the rest are all lower phase guys, phase one, two, and three, and there's different levels of involvement for them. But everybody in here is a client or a co-worker in my mind. They're co-workers. We're all facilitators or clients, and we run the wing and they listen to us.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but this is pretty close to how Missouri prisons work. A prison will have divisions of people that are troublemakers, people that are neutral, and then people that are PC, and then the honor wing. Is that kind of, kind of the gist of it? They kind of, they kind of populate all the people that are, you know, f***ing really crazy all together in a housing unit.

And then sometimes you'll get a couple of guys that really don't want to be in there. They're not crazy like that, but they just are because they just need to put them somewhere. And then they're always trying to move to the honor wing or somewhere a little more neutral. And then you got the PC, the guys that are just, you know, either they got a target on them or they're scared, you know what I mean? Is that kind of accurate? Yeah. Yeah, I would say that's probably fairly accurate. The PC house happens to be next to us and they've got two wings, I think, reserved for PC. And then, they've also got... it's called a step down program for the whole.

So, guys who commit bad crimes, like attacking an officer or something like that, they go, like, directly to 8 House. And then, once they step down from that, they go to 7 House, which is, like, a very controlled environment. It's whole. It's, like, administrative segregation or disciplinary segregation. And then, if they act accordingly, they can step down even further into 6 House.

And then they get, they can buy certain things from the canteen, and they get a certain amount of time out of their room every day, but it's very restricted, and it's like a rehabilitation. In the short time that you're in the hole, can you rehabilitate to earn your privileges back? I feel. And then the other side is pure chaos, pretty much.

3 House being the worst of it. I used to work in canteen, and I would take their bags in, because they don't even let them come out to the yard and get their canteen like the other houses. Everything's restricted?

Yeah, you take their stuff in the wing to them and as soon as you walk in, all you smell is burning paper. People are just in there smoking K2. You know, they're, I don't really want to use too inappropriate a language or lingo, but they're what they call gunning down the guards, and that just means that they're in their room, you know, masturbating when a female guard walks in, and they do that pretty regularly over there.

I can't ever imagine just being okay with myself enough to do that, but apparently they even take turns at the window over there. They do that kind of stuff. I'm just not really, I'm not really cut out for prison, so if I'm going to be in prison, I need to be doing something productive, a job, or doing what I'm doing now.

I would never be able to go over to 3 House and live comfortably. My case aside, I don't, the chaos, it's just, it's like living in the eye of the storm, 24/7. You can go from the big dog one day and somebody's gonna stab you up the next day because they want the power that you currently have. I'm just not about all that.

I just don't have that prison mentality. If I wasn't here, there's a very good chance that I would just put myself in a PC. Prison isn't for the faint of heart. There's an underworld that operates in prison with gangs and drugs and violence and if you're not careful, the criminal justice system can spit you back out as more of a criminal than you were when you came in.

But Matthew has kept out of the world as much as possible. He's tried to put his past behind him and make the best of his new reality. I keep coming back to the words of Matthew's father, "Do the right thing for the right reason." This piece of advice has become a guiding light. Matthew has taken hold of every opportunity to become a better man that prison affords, trying hard to do the right thing for the right reason.

Somewhere down the road, Matthew will sit in front of a parole board and present a case for why he should be released. According to the U.S. Constitution, parole is a privilege, not a right. It's a compelling incentive for inmates to rehabilitate while they're in prison. But the parole board also carries a lot of responsibility to make the right call.

When Matthew's turn comes, they will tally up Matthew's prison record, his contributions in prison, and the sincerity of his remorse. They will weigh up the risk of Matthew re-offending if he's let out into the outside world. Much like you, listening to this podcast, they will judge Matthew Hamm for themselves and decide whether he's deserving of a second chance at freedom.

Matthew, when is your, when do you see the parole board? I see them, somewhere right now I'm currently slated to see them in the year 2042. I don't have a particular date or a month, just a year. How do you feel like this is going to go for you? Well, you know, I don't, I try to manifest good things when I think of things.

I understand the power of suggestion, especially by yourself, it's pretty powerful. So I try to think of good things and reasons why they will be able to look at me that long down the road. What do I want them to really see? Do I want them to see a rehabilitated person? Do I want them to see me for what I am?

Do I want to be, you know, of course I'm going to be open and honest with them. That's one thing I'm not going to ever change my stance on. This is how I handle my crime and my accountability for it, but I believe that it's going to go better than it could go. I don't want to be overly optimistic, but I'm not going in there because I was, you know, drunk driving and I accidentally crossed the center line and killed somebody.

I'm going in there because I threw something carelessly and made a choice to throw something with my son in the room and it hit him and it killed him and I didn't do anything in the immediate moment to help him. And then on top of it, I tried to cremate him myself, which looks like I'm trying to get out of s*** in general. Going in there with that accountability, it's purely up to them what they believe to be about me.

I know one thing, I'll never have the life that I had prior to coming in prison, Toby. That's one thing I know for sure will never be the same. My life is going to be different from here on out, no matter what it takes. I don't know, I'm, I-I-I hope that I will get a day, I would like to be out before I die of, oh, I don't know, diabetes, or a heart attack, or a stroke.

Cancer seems to be in one out of every three people you talk to. About how old will you be when, how old will you be in 42 years? Eh, that's gonna be around 61 years old ish. Yeah. Now, if it's long enough to get out and enjoy a couple years with my brother and my niece and maybe do something positive, I would like to stay involved in talking to troubled people that are not necessarily teens, but just people that struggle with the disease of addiction and just knowing what that's like for me, what it did to my life.

I can't imagine me not paying that forward. So that's another thing I'm very sure of. That's always going to be a part of my life. Whether it's just going to AA meetings and sharing there, or if I could possibly be in a position to have a job at a counseling center, or, I mean, actually, I'm even thinking about signing up for Lincoln University the next time they come through.

Do that. And joining university. They have a... Yeah. Well, let's see. One, two, four, four of the other guys, two of them are former facilitators and two of them are current facilitators who are enrolled. And it's actually legit college courses, and I'm thinking about doing that because in the first semester they do psychology, and that's something that's always been really, you know, fun to me.

So hopefully, I know one thing, I'm going to always be getting better. I don't know exactly what the future holds, but I know it's not going to be what it was. Yeah. Well, Matthew, this has been an experience for me. I'm glad that I went through with it and interviewed you. I know that people are going to listen to this and they're going to be shut off and not care about, you know, anything else, but the fact that a child died in your hands.

But I think it's good that we uncovered the details and that, you know, it was negligence. It wasn't, you know, like I said, when you threw it, your intention wasn't like, "Hey, I'm going to throw this. I'm going to throw some so someone dies." There was negligence involved, obviously, and you did wrong, and you're saying that you did wrong.

I hope the best for you, man. I hope you do get a parole date. I hope that you do get out. I don't, like I said, I got a different view now than before I interviewed you. The problem was, is I did exactly what I don't like to do is I... And I have to, I had to go to the f***ing news and read it about what happened to you, but that's the places where we get it, you know, and, and then it's, it's like exactly why I'm doing this because, you know what I mean?

I read the news and I, and I made, I made a determination and then I was like, wait a second, this is exactly why I'm doing the podcast. You know what I mean? So yeah, I thought, I thought there was a chance that that was going to happen. Because I thought, you know, when I tried to call again the next time we had set up, I didn't get an answer, I thought, "Oh, well, you know, that's exactly what happened there. He went, he did his research like he's supposed to. That's exactly what I did. And he just said, "You know what, there ain't no f***ing way I'm putting that guy on my show for any reason, even if it's to make him look worse.

Yeah. And I didn't really know what to be prepared for. The only thing I had heard was from Matthew Jennings when I asked him the next day. He said you seemed very kind. You didn't really have any kind of preexisting judgements about anything. Yeah. I thought, "Well, he probably hasn't looked me up yet, probably." Yeah.

That's a big thing for people to swallow. Yeah. Well that's exactly what I did. I was about 95% out. I was like, "I don't wanna talk to him right now." So, but I did. So I wish you the best of luck, man. But anyway, Matthew, I appreciate you reaching out to me. It's been real. Like I said, if you ever need anything, give me a holler and I wish you the best of luck.

Okay? All right. Absolutely. Thank you, Toby. I appreciate it. Have a good one. Alright, man. Take it easy. Bye bye. Alright. Later.

On the next episode of Voices of a Killer.

No violence. No drug or alcohol abuse from your parents. Went to church. Everything was perfect. Oh, m*** turned me into a monster. He was like beating his head off the steering wheel when I got there. She looked at me with this look of love, frustration, fear, compassion. I've never seen a look like it. She believed that he would have killed her if I hadn't have stepped in.

I spent my whole time in here really wanting to be mad about not getting off free. That's a wrap on this episode of Voices of a Killer. I want to thank Matthew for sharing his story with us today. His 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 https://www.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 handle 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 https://www.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.