Ep 56 | KRISTOFER WARDEN PART 1 Transcript

Ep 56 | Kristofer Warden Part 1 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. I didn't want to kill him.

I wasn't going to kill him. That wasn't my intention. It seems like the sum of everything here is just you being, feeling like you're really put in a position where somebody kind of had their foot on your throat. I got arrested for being involved in a car that that kid took on a joyride and I got charged with stealing it.

He co-signed a bond to get me out of jail and he later used that bond to force me to have sex with him. So whenever he blackmailed you,

And he asked me. He said, "Is this where you're gonna kill me?" The dude asked me this two days, three days before this happened. I had no intention of killing him. I had no intention to hurt him at all. 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 are 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 hear a harrowing story of m***, assault and murder. This week's guest, Kristofer Warden has one of the most traumatic backstories we've heard on this podcast so far. And after staying silent for many years, Kristofer is finally opening up on a public forum about the sexual abuse that has crippled his life and ultimately culminated in the death of a 57 year old man. We'll hear about Kristofer's chaotic childhood and his early exposure to the U. S. prison system. At various points in this conversation, Kristofer reveals how several institutions failed him, effectively setting him down a dark and criminal path.

Why was Kristofer sent away from his family at 10 years old? What led to him consorting with a school principal? And what are the headlines get wrong about his grisly crime? Stay tuned for the answer to these questions and more on this episode of Voices of a Killer. Okay, Kristofer. So, are you born and raised in Springfield, Missouri?

No. I was actually born in Wichita, Kansas. Okay. How long did you stay there? I was born in Wichita on June 20th, 1976, and I lived there with my grandmother and my mother until I was nine, nine and a half years old. Okay. So you had a childhood in the 80s like me. What was that like growing up around Kansas and then wherever else you went in the 80s?

So I was mega stable with my grandmother. My grandmother raised me as my mother. I didn't know that she was my grandmother. I thought she was my mother and my aunt was my sister. I had, uh, what, I was later not diagnosed with ADHD. My grandmother was able to take care of me and raise me stably until I was nine years old.

I was in trouble in school in first and second grade and things like that, but she was very patient. So life was extremely stable for those first few years. I just didn't have any father figure whatsoever. So what happened to your parents? Usually when we hear about grandparents, you know, raising the kids, something happened to the parents.

Did something happen? Yeah, my mother was 15 when I was conceived. 16 when I was born. And she just went off, you know, doing what 15, 16 year old drug addicts do. She was addicted to drugs, and so my grandmother kind of took over. I think my mother raised me a little bit when I was a baby, and then my grandmother took over and realized that... I was the first son.

My great-grandmother and my grandmother, I was the first boy to come along, so they were all excited. Have you ever met your father? No, I don't know who my father is. I've never been, and I'm not sure who he is. So what made you leave Kansas at nine and a half? My grandmother thought it would help my mother, who was 24, 25 at the time, to center herself if she took me in.

I was taken to Tulsa, Oklahoma in the summer of 1985 to live with my mother. Was that a lot of turmoil then after that? Yeah, yeah, because my mother couldn't handle me. I mean, I actually just read a report today that my mother called my great-grandmother and asked her to come get me, or she was going to put me on a bus to nowhere.

Were you pretty rough to deal with, you think? Absolutely. I was extremely hyper, very rambunctious. I believe I had severe ADHD and, you know, in the mid 80s that stuff hadn't been diagnosed yet, so I was very hard to deal with. Did you go back to your grandma's? No, my grandmother told my mother when she called that, hey, I told you, if you were going to take him, you were going to keep him. I think my grandmother was dealing with some potential health issues. So my mother contacted my great-grandmother. My great-grandmother came and took me from there to Lampe, Missouri, and that was my first introduction to the state of Missouri. What was that feeling like, such a young kid, you know, being pushed off onto other people, you know, other family members?

Do you think that had an effect on you? Yeah, yeah, in hindsight. I don't recall exactly what I felt. But again, I read some reports recently that whenever I got up there, I felt like that they didn't want me, that my mother, who she told me was my father, they got rid of me and abandoned me. So yeah, I felt that way.

You know, being tossed around from grandmother to mother to great-grandmother, obviously, you know, the stability that I had was shaken and I, at that point, I felt like nobody really cared. Yeah, looking back at whenever great-grandma got you, looking back now, what do you feel like great-grandma thought about everything? And was she very loving and caring or was she kind of bitter about having to take you or what?

No, my grandmother loved me. Like I said, I was the first boy to come along, and I think she was extremely interested in raising me. However, my grandmother was, you know, a great-grandmother from, you know, the 40s and 50s, you know, and so... And she was all spitfire, and she was the type that would snap out on a waitress if there wasn't enough ice.

Kristofer Warden went through his childhood knowing he was not wanted by the adults in his life. By and large, kids just need a handful of things: stability, attentive parents, and unconditional love. Kristofer had none of them. Every second of his childhood was turbulent, with a drug-addicted mother who was not equipped to care for her son and had little interest in trying.

Over the years, Kristofer was tossed from home to home, from grandma to great-grandma. From Wichita, Tulsa, and Lampe, Missouri, Kristofer was ripped out of states and schools, never settling in one place for long. It's always the kids who pay the price for unstable homes. And Kristofer recalls feeling like a burden that his parents had discarded.

Little surprise then, that as Kristofer got older, he developed problems with his behavior. So now you're becoming like a, you know, an adolescent and a young teenager in Missouri, Springfield, right? No, I hadn't gotten into adolescence yet. I was nine. These things happen, so, I mean, so quickly, the transition from grandmother to mother.

Well, hold on a second. Go ahead. Once you came to Springfield, that's where you grew up as a teenager, right? No. No. No, I got to Lampe at nine years old, and my great-grandmother put me in Charter Hospital. I was in Reeds Spring Elementary School. Why would you go into Charter...? What is Charter Hospital? Is that mental?

Yeah, it was a mental hospital. I was there for a diagnosis. I had been sent to a Dr. Lutz, an outpatient doctor and he recommended that I go into inpatient. And they sent me a month for a psychological evaluation at Charter Hospital, because I was... At what age? Nine. And you were in Lampe, Missouri with your great-grandma?

Yes. And what would prompt her to send you there? School problems. Behavioral problems in school. I was cheating and I was causing problems, stealing in the neighborhood, doing things that a child feels abandoned and, you know, begins to do. Seeking attention and stuff? Yeah, sure. Seeking attention and just, yeah.

So this mental place, had she ever sat you down one-on-one with a therapist or anything? Yes, I'd been seeing a Doctor Lutz prior to going to the Charter Hospital for the month for the psychological evaluation, yeah. But that was only like four or five times prior to. Yeah. What's the worst thing you think you did, like, before you became, you know, a teenager?

Any kind of major crimes? Well, I did go into a neighbor's house and steal some of his Hot Wheel cars and GI Joes, so probably, I mean, basically a nine-year-old burglary. Right. Had you ever tortured animals or anything like that? No, no, I never got into anything like that. I was just behavioral. You know, in school, I caused problems and acted out, and I just was restless, constantly restless. Where did you live whenever you became, you know, a young adult or teenager, you know, 13 to 18? LUC Boys Ranch. I was moved to LUC Boys Ranch. It's in southwest Missouri. It's called Lives Under Construction, and I got there right at the end... right after, out of the Charter Hospital, my great-grandmother placed me at this boy's ranch.

It was a Christian boy's ranch, and... Yeah. I've heard of them around here. Right, right. You went in there at like, what, 9 or 10 years old? I went there at the end of, I believe it was 1985. It was either spring, around spring, or summer of 1985, I went there, so it would be right before I turned 10 years old, yes. You're just too much for your grandmother?

Great-grandmother? Right. My great-grandmother, yes. She was trying to find some stability for me, and I think that she thought this place with, you know, with all the boys, and the Christianity of the place, that that would help me, because she was... all my family is, you know, my grandmother and my great-grandmother have been Christians all their lives.

And this is a Christian organization. Do you feel like that right there helped you? No, not... It stabilized me, because I worked there, and they were very stable, I don't believe that that the actual... Yeah, that's what I'm talking about, the actual ideology there. No, no, not, none whatsoever. They took us from church to church and just simply, it seemed like they used us as poster boys so that they could get donations for the ranch.

You know, we went to a different church every week. Sunday morning, Sunday night. Every now and then they would take us to a similar church there in Blue Eye, Missouri. But most of the time we just went to different churches and they would solicit donations for the ranch. The ranch was privately funded. It wasn't state funded because they were a Christian.

Hmm. I wonder how that gets all broken up. So, what's it like, you know, growing up with... now, I mean, because nine, man, I'm gonna be honest with you. I'm looking back at my nine-year-old self, and I just couldn't imagine being away from my parents. That would be very, very, very difficult, but you actually really didn't have parents. Your grandmother, yes, I'm not saying that she wasn't, but that's not traditional, I guess, and you didn't have the father figure. In actuality, your grandmother, you know, she sent you to the mother. The mother sent you to the great-grandma. Great-grandma sent you to the boy's home. Dude, this is like, I think a lot, that's like, I can't, picture myself and anybody listening to this s***, you know, to go through that.

That's big. The boy's ranch, because I spent three and a half years there, and as we get into this, you'll understand more. The boy's ranch, okay, probably the worst thing that ever happened to me. Sure, sure. The best thing that ever happened to me originally, but the worst thing that ended up happening to me.

The Lives Under Construction Boys Ranch sits below the Ozarks at the southern perimeter of Missouri. The property is tucked away within 180 acres of sprawling forest and is near conservation sites that offer some of the most impressive natural beauty in the country. The ranch opened its doors in 82 by founders Ken and Sheila Ortman with the goal of helping troubled boys turn their lives around.

Many of the foster kids have nowhere else to go, so the ranch takes legal custody of them for the duration of their stay. It's worth noting that Ken Ortman is qualified as a wildlife manager, not a youth counselor, and the ranch promotes a Christian ideology to rehabilitate the boys. There are two main arms to this program.

One, the boys are given biblical teachings, and two, they are put to work around the ranch. If the ranch website is to be believed, the program has been a success story over the years, helping many boys build character and self-discipline and find a new lease on life. At least that's the official line the ranch runs.

Many former residents would tell you a different story. Over the last few years, a thick cloud of controversy has hung over the LUC Boys Ranch as rumors of child abuse, toxic work conditions, and cover ups have leaked into the public. Take the double murder of a Michigan couple that happened in 2013. The two teens responsible were under the ranch's custody when they ran away and stabbed the couple to death.

A lawsuit to hold the ranch accountable ensued. During the proceedings, it emerged that the ranch management had denied the teens the psychiatric medication that might have prevented their violent behavior. The lawsuit was dismissed, but it put public scrutiny on the concerning practices that took place at the facility.

And then there's the sexual abuse allegations. Multiple victims have come forward with stories of being molested and r***d while living at the LUC Boys Ranch. These victims claim that there was a systemic culture of sexual assault at the ranch, and that it was treated as an open secret. Was the ranch management involved in a cover-up?

We can't say for sure, but there are stories of boys being punished for speaking out, and an employee being fired after reporting an assault. All these allegations paint a picture of an irresponsible, unregulated environment where young, vulnerable boys were exposed to sexual predators on a daily basis.

As you might expect, the LUC Boys Ranch has completely denied the allegations even though so many voices are now raised against them. One of those voices belongs to Kristofer Warden. So, how long did you stay there? Three and a half years from right around ten to thirteen and a half years old. My great-grandmother did not have custody of me and so she had to relinquish custody to the boys ranch for me to be able to stay there.

So I stayed there for a seven-day trial while my great-grandmother tried to go get custody of me in Stone County. The judge gave custody of me to the boys ranch and I sat three and a half years there before my grandmother actually went and tried to finally get custody of me because I was begging her to get me out of the boys ranch because I didn't want to be there anymore.

And here's the thing, like, I'm sure there's some good intentions about the boys ranch. I'm not going to take that away. Absolutely. And I'm also certain that this is also a place where, you know, young adolescents get preyed on. No doubt about that as well. But I would see this as a place that, besides the abuse or anything, but like a place that you'd spend 30 days and get some good counseling and you know, therapy or whatever it is, whatever angle to help you positively.

But after 30 days, it's like, man, some kids have been there for years, that's like a little prison for you. You don't want to fricking be there. You want to be around someone that loves you like truly, not just, you know, just trying to push an ideology on you. Well, I consider it my first institution.

That's what I'm saying, I can imagine it's like a prison. Well, it was a slave camp also because all they did was make us work. We went and worked and mowed yards. We would mow timberland in the resort every two weeks. We mowed a community called Clearwater and we would mow grass all day on Sundays. We would mow grass afternoons. We would go pick up rocks. We would bale hay.

It was very, very good for my work ethic, but I didn't get paid for it and in a country that's extreme on child labor, we were definitely abused. Right. Yeah, no, I-I... That's crazy really if you think about it. So three and a half years, you're really trying to push to get out of there? Well, I mean, not originally. I was... They hired out help there. They would bring in different people that were quote-unquote Christians to help with the boys and they hired on a mechanic.

Am I allowed to use names here? Yeah, go ahead. They hired on a mechanic. He's since passed, but his name's James Bryan Jr. They hired him as a mechanic, a small engine repair mechanic. He would help rebuild the motors and he would take the boys out to do different things and they eventually bought a flatbed trailer and a diesel truck, an old international diesel truck. He would drive the truck to and from South Dakota to pick up alfalfa hay for the ranch's livestock. The ranch had horses, cattle, and they just continued to expand the 86 acres they originally had there. We originally lived in trailers. They built a storm there years later. So this is the guy they hired to do the, like, the small jobs?

Yes, however, James, eventually, he became a father figure to me. I called him "Dad". And then he began to sexually abuse me and r*** me. So, he got put with you a lot? Well, I mean, I was drawn to him because he just showered me with attention, everything that I had never had from a father figure. He took me hunting and fishing and would praise me for being the hardest worker there, pound for pound.

I remember he used to say, "Pound for pound, you're the best worker here." And he had a dog, a Labrador named Julie. How long from the time that you met him, to the time that the abuse happened? Or in advance, how long did he wait? I couldn't say specifically, but I recall... I'm thinking that I met him when I was around late 11, early 12 years old. And the first abuse happened when he took me on a road trip on the diesel truck, and the diesel truck broke down outside Kansas City, and we had to stay in a motel for a week, excuse me, while they had to wait for parts. And that's where he began r**ing me. And-and-and other things. I mean, he'd already started with kissing and things like that at the, at the ranch, the trailer that he lived in. And I began to be r***d at the, at the, at the, at the motel. Would he ever have a talk with you to not tell anybody and, or anything like that, or he threaten you?

I don't recall that, but I think it was just a given. I was so enamored with him as my father. I called him Dad. And I was so enamored with him as a father and fell in love with him as a father, that I just never was going to tell on him. I didn't even tell my family until I became almost 18 years old. And so yeah, I just... I don't think he ever even had to. I think he knew that I was never going to tell it.

You know, I just... It was such an uncomfortable deal, but I dealt with it because I loved the father part of it. I-I was so overtaken with the actual father figure that he was to me that the sexual stuff I became quickly desensitized to, even though I know I didn't like it. I knew I was a heterosexual when I was... I mean, I didn't know it, but I mean, I, looking back in hindsight, I know I was a heterosexual when I was at the Charter Hospital.

I mean, girls started fooling around, and I just was, oh, I was so excited by that, right? You know, as a kid, and I know I'm a heterosexual now because, I mean, obviously, I've never fantasized at any time that I've ever, you know, masturbated or done anything like that about a man. I've never ever looked at a man or been attracted to a man. I've always been attracted to women. However, I've been abused by more men and been r***d more than I've ever been with any woman. Wow. 

Kristofer reveals that he was sexually abused while under the custody of the LUC Boys Ranch. This is an allegation that he has never made publicly until now.

We can't overestimate how much courage it has taken Kristofer to share this on a public platform, but by doing so, he adds his voice to the many others who have exposed the rampant abuse that took place behind closed doors. Thanks to these victims, there is now mounting evidence that sexual predators targeted the boys at the facility.

And it's safe to say that the LUC boys Ranch, although responsible for the well being and safety of its kids, enabled the systematic violation of young boys, sometimes by members of its staff. Sexual groomers are incredibly manipulative. Looking back, we can see how James Bryan Jr. carefully orchestrated a plan to exert his control over 11-year-old Kristofer.

James was the mechanics instructor at the ranch, which put him in the position of a trusted authority figure. Possibly it was during one of the classes that James first singled Kristofer out. After all, Kristofer made an ideal victim. He had a long history of neglect and sorely needed the attention of a parental figure, a fact James capitalized on.

When James took Kristofer on hunting trips, he isolated the boy from his peers and showered him with praise and kindness. Just pause to imagine what that would have felt like. The kid, who has felt unwanted all his life, now matters to somebody. Gradually, James won over Kristofer's trust, and that's when the sexual abuse started.

Sexual abuse is insidious because it's nearly impossible to escape from. Young victims might not realize they're being abused at the time until they reach adulthood and have to reckon with their traumatic past. James would have been careful to coach Kristofer into keeping their relationship a secret.

But in any case, Kristofer would not do anything to risk losing the father figure who had now become an indispensable part of his life. So, I mean, now that there's adding another traumatizing thing to your life, when did this abuse and how did it finally come to an end where you're separated from this guy?

Actually, because he became a father figure to me, I would go and cry to him that I didn't want to be at the boys ranch any time I would get in trouble or be punished there. I would go to him for resolve and he went to my grandmother and told my grandmother, "Hey, maybe you can get him out of here." And she went to the judge, found out that the judge that had originally sentenced me there had since passed. And she petitioned to get custody of me. Because she had moved to Branson, so I would have family on the holidays and weekends to go and spend. And she fell in love with the Branson area, moving from Wichita down there. And he convinced her to get custody of me. And then he moved in directly beside her, and the abuse continued there.

Oh, he purposely moved in beside your grandmother? Yeah, and just continued the abuse. Wow. And then he began truck driving for MNX out of Joplin, Missouri, and I would go over the road with him, but the abuse continued. And my family always let me and they never questioned, because I never had a father figure, they looked at him like a gift horse, I guess.

Well, that's always, I mean, that's very common. Usually the one that's abusing is the one closest and the less likely. Our world right now, we all seem to be focusing on trans and cross dressers as if they're the ones out there that we have to worry about. But if you line up the list, it's all people at church camps and hospitals and doctors and teachers and coaches and the list goes on.

It's always the one closest. It's crazy. Well, they always come in a white robe, you know what I mean, and they're just dark on the inside, you know. It's just... What I've learned now over the years is it's a grooming aspect and I don't know that he was trained or something that comes natural to some of these predators.

Obviously, he came to that boy's ranch because he liked boys. Well that's what I'm saying. If I'm going to hunt ducks, I'm going to go to the water, you know what I mean? That's common sense. So, is this boy's ranch still running? Yes. Wow. You know, every time I hear about one of these places where kids congregate, it's like I just know that, like somewhere in there, doesn't matter where, somewhere in there is somebody that preys on them, preys on the kids, you know what I mean?

Yeah. Cause it's everywhere, it's like only the ones we catch. Yeah. Especially in Missouri. Well, I mean, I think it's everywhere, you know? Well, I've heard Missouri has extremely lax regulations for these boys homes. There's all kinds of reports of abuse at numerous boys homes in Missouri I've seen on the television for years, so. Sure. And I, you know, and I don't wanna take away from the whole thing 'cause I'm sure there's some people that really, really truly like, want to help and love kids and would hate to hear that. I'm certain of that. But at the same time it's like, you know, they're freaking everywhere. And it's like, which one are you?

Is it you? You know what I mean? Yeah. Because that's how they go. They make sure and they surround themselves with children. I've established myself as such a close relationship with the two people that run this boys home, Ken and Sheila Ortman, that I had not ever pursued any type of, you know, civil legal recourse for what had happened to me there.

And now that I am actually finally coming out with this stuff and finally opening it up and starting to talk about the stuff that happened to me, I can't even pursue legal recourse against them because I can't get a frickin' lawyer that'll do it. I don't know if the statute of limitations are up, but recently I've contacted different lawyers and it seems like all they want is these big state cases. They don't want to take on these small cases where they don't feel like they're going to get any money, so it's... Or they don't want to mess with someone in prison for murder, I don't know. Yeah. Let me ask you this. You know, the guy that abused you and took you everywhere and became your father figure, you probably have these weird mixed feelings where you actually do care for him, but you know deep down he did something really wrong to you, but he was your father figure at the same time, so you have these really strange, and it tears you up probably. Well, I mean, after I got charged with this crime, my lawyer did a bunch of research on him, and I found out that he died in 2001 around the same time that my grandmother died, and I actually, freaking mourned the guy.

Yeah. There was a part that was sad that he was dead. And I was like, "What the eff, you know, how can you feel this way?" But because I was so, yeah, because there were so many good times with him as a father figure, it's kind of like a female that goes back to their abuser and you're like, you know, I don't know.

That's the best way for me to describe it as a man. You know, it ended up getting taken out on not just my victim, but just all kinds of people throughout my life and myself. You know, I beat myself up about it. And it seems like at places like that, there should always be a rule.

Gotta have two adults with every kid. Can't ever be alone with a kid. You hear about priests, these Catholic priests molesting kids, it's like, you've heard so many stories of this, why in the hell would you leave your child alone with a f***ing priest, of all people? Jesus Christ, a guy that ain't having sex. I mean, it's crazy, man, it's like... Absolutely, yeah, it's religiously intent not to. I mean, if they're seen out with women, they're gonna lose their priesthood, you know what I mean?

But you put them around young boys and wonder why they end up abusing these boys. I'm not saying that it's an excuse for the priests. I'm just saying it ends up happening. And at what point in time does humanity just become intellectual enough to say, "Hey, man. We put these people around men that have these high, crazy sex drives, and this stuff happens just consistently."

You know, they constantly say this stuff just destroys our lives, and it does. There's so many people that are in these prisons that just don't want to open up about what's happened to them. There's so many men that don't want to. Because it's not masculine. Boys don't cry, you know what I mean? No, I know that, yeah, society shapes us like that, you know?

Yeah, that's one of the reasons that I've just now, 47 years old, started to talk about this stuff. And it's just, it's, it's wrenching. I finally told my fiancé the other day about some of this stuff, and I was able to break it down with her. And it's just... It's cathartic, but at the same time, it's, it's so hard to reach back into this past that I've kept buried in my gut for so long.

Kristofer says it best. Sexual abuse destroys lives. Until recently, Kristofer has suffered silently for most of his adult life, trying to repress what happened to him. Only now that his adult brain is fully developed, can he start to fully grasp the cruelty that he was subjected to as a young boy. We know from scientific research that the impact of abuse is far reaching.

It can lead to anything from depression and PTSD to gastrointestinal problems and chronic physical pain. The shame survivors carry can complicate every relationship in their lives. In Kristofer's case, this abusive relationship is part of the reason why he's in prison today. So why doesn't Kristofer take legal action against the ranch?

There are avenues through which he could hold the ranch owners accountable and pocket some compensation for his ongoing trauma. Kristofer has found out that it's not that easy. A couple of times, Kristofer has contacted lawyers, but nobody seems interested in taking up his case. Possibly these lawyers see a lawsuit as a lost cause, a waste of energy that's unlikely to produce a result.

Firstly, James, the perpetrator, is now dead. Holding the LUC Boys Ranch liable is a bit trickier in legal terms. Secondly, it will be challenging to prove in a court of law that the abuse happened without any hard evidence. All the jury has to go on is Kristofer's word and the ranch will flat out deny the allegation.

But there's also the emotional cost of going to trial that Kristofer has to consider. Besides the legal stumbling blocks, Kristofer will have to be poked and prodded by the prosecutor's questions when he takes the stand. He'll have to relive a painful period of his life over and again and withstand an onslaught of people discrediting his character.

It's a hard pill to swallow, but Kristofer may never get the justice he deserves. What he can do, however, is to take ownership of the past that has tormented him for so long. After burying his painful memories for years, Kristofer has just started to open up about his trauma and invite healing into his life.

And as we're about to find out after the break, there's still a lot more left of it to hear.

So now he's moved next to you. How old are you now? 13 and a half, 14 years old. When did this finally come to an end now with him? How did you finally get disconnected from this guy? Well, I continued to live with my grandmother. And then at some point in time my mother tried to get back into my life and I went to live with her. And that was just unstable and so. Where at? It was a back and forth thing and then I... In Kirbyville, Missouri. I actually went to Hardin in Texas. My mother was living in Hardin in Texas and I went down there with her but she was unstable. She was using coc***e and living in the ghetto down there. And so I went down there and just for the few, little bit of time that I was down there, she got arrested and Jim, James, and my grandmother came and picked me and my sister up, and took us back to Missouri. And then my mother came back up there, met a man, married him, and tried to become a Christian mother now.

You know, Kristofer, there hasn't been, like, two seconds yet where you haven't had some kind of crazy s*** going on in your life, and we've made it to, like, f***ing 14 years old, dude. I mean, it's not done. And this is a thousand percent, a hundred percent true. And if an investigative reporter or anybody can check these things out. It's been a story.

So I'm still waiting for you to tell me, you know, when exactly you got officially separated from the sexual abuser. When I was 15 years old. Living with my mother and my stepfather, and I was rebellious at this point. I'd started smoking cigarettes. My mother was trying to just continue to put the Christian clamp down on me, you know. When she became my mother, she just tried to control everything that I did. And not let me watch the Simpsons, you know what I mean, just all kinds of different things that she learned in church, and anyhow, James was over the road. And James and I had already previously, while I was at the boys ranch, he always said, "If you ever see a yellow ribbon tied around the mailbox, that means I'm in the area." And he was intending to take me and another boy that was at the boys ranch, I'll leave nameless at this point in time, because I don't know exactly what occurred with him and James, however, his intent was to take both of us away from the boys ranch. And I had gotten in trouble because my stepfather had given me a marijuana joint and I had taken it to school and given it to a girl and then she turned me in and I got caught with the joint.

So I was on in school suspension and I've been put on probation for six months as a juvenile. I was 14 at this point in time, when Jim called the school and pretended to be a detective and told me that he was in the area, but I was still allowed to go and I left with him consensually. He took us to Joplin. We sold the motorcycle that he bought me, and he had his truck, we went to Hot Springs, Arkansas, where I started working on the backside of the Oak Lawn racetrack as a 14-year-old boy walking horses. And then he took me to Daytona Beach, Florida, where I was introduced to crack coc***e, and he began to sexually traffic me. So now you're growing into your young adulthood, 16, 17, 18, where are you at in life now? Well, I turned 15 in Daytona Beach, Florida with James. And then we went to Seattle, Washington, and the sex trafficking continued, and the coc***e... Was he like selling you off to people?

He began selling coc***e to people in Florida, and he began putting me on the street to work at different parts on Main Street in Daytona Beach, Florida. The first place I was ever arrested was, I was arrested as a 15, 14, 15 year old kid under the alias Glenn William Bryan in Daytona Beach, Florida.

Well, I was going to ask if you ever, if the cops picked you up, just being out like that, so young, and they come by there, I was going to ask. They picked me up twice. Yeah, they picked me up twice, but for loitering and prowling and for trespassing. I was in a cemetery when I wasn't supposed to and I was hiding in this alley doing a cr*** deal in the middle of the night.

And I was 14 or 15 years old and I gave them an alias and told them I was 19. I told them I was born in 72 instead of 76. And they actually put me through to the Volusia County jail system as a teenager. I even told them that I was a juvenile and they sent me to the juvenile system and they just let me go to some strangers, some cr***head strangers that came and picked me up. But I even had the cops go to James, who was living in a trailer, selling the coc***e out of a truck that had a camera on it. They went to him and said, "Hey, how old is this kid?" And he told them, "Oh, he's 19." And I was trying to get them so I wouldn't go to jail.

I was trying to be the juvenile and they took me to jail anyway and the judge finally said, "Oh, I can't see this kid, he's a juvenile." So yeah, I went to the Volusia County System the first time when I was 14 or 15 years old. I believe I was 15 at that point. Wow, that's crazy. So, when do you make your way back to Springfield?

He took me to Seattle because I was trying to get away from the coc***e. I weighed like 105 pounds. Then I found the bus system and made my way down to downtown Seattle and started smoking coc***e down there. And then at one point in time I just said, "Hey man, I gotta get out of here." And he allowed me to call my family and allowed my family to send me a bus ticket.

And I never told them that I was with him. And I rode a bus back to Missouri and my grandmother and mother came and picked me up at Kansas City. Man, your whole life is like by the seat of your pants. Just everywhere, just like craziness, man. You might find it hard to keep track of Kristofer's movements throughout this story.

Keep in mind that while it's been a wild ride so far, Kristofer is just 14 years old. And at this point, chaos and turmoil have characterized every turn of his life. Kristofer tells us that he exited the boy's ranch, was flung back and forth between family members, and winded up in trouble at his school.

And all the while, his sexual assault continued as James moved in next door, and established himself as a permanent fixture in Kristofer's teenage life. Little did Kristofer know this sexual abuse was about to get much worse. When Kristofer was 15 years old, James abducted Kristofer from school and drove him to Florida.

Previously, James had assaulted Kristofer when they were alone, in the controlled environment of the ranch. Now, James inducted the teenager into a world of coc***e and sex trafficking. He exploited Kristofer for profit, setting him out to do sex work on the streets of Daytona Beach, Florida. A few years down the line, Kristofer emerged from Florida with a coc***e addiction, a criminal record, and severe sexual trauma.

He made a break and hitched a bus back to Kansas City, but his life had been irrevocably changed by James, his first sexual predator, but not his last. You take the bus back to where? They drove to Kansas City and picked me up in Kansas City and drove me back down to Branson. And I was in Branson for like a month or two and my grandmother said, "Hey, if you're ever gonna run away again, make sure you tell me."

And my mother and I got into it one night. My mother said, "Hey, why don't you just run away again?" And so I Went to my grandmother's house and told my grandmother, "Hey, I'm going back to Florida." And then my mom showed up and called my juvenile parole officer and they took me to Mountain Grove. And I spent a little time in Mountain Grove juvenile detention and they sent me to a drug rehab.

And I went up there and I ended up assaulting a boy. I punched him in the face. I spent eight months in Division of Human Services at a youth center in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. So you get out of this place, what happens now? Yeah. Well, I kind of just bounced back and forth from Branson to Wichita using drugs.

I turned 16 at Sears Youth Center and I got out my mother and stepfather and took me back to Kirbyville. And of course, you know, I started smoking cigarettes immediately again and smoking weed when I could. And I just started bouncing back and forth from Branson. You couldn't control me at that point.

At one point in time, I even took a bus and went down to Daytona Beach, Florida for a month and caught the tail end of Spring Break in 1993. And then I called back home and they sent me a bus ticket and I went back home. Sounds like you're pretty good at knowing how to get around now in the United States at a young age. Oh, I was a crazy young adult, street smart at this point in time. Yeah, I bet. But at the same time, I was just, I would use... Men would be attracted to me for what I could get at that point in time. And, you know, that's what it became. I... yeah, I've been drugged through that so much that now I'm so desensitized to it.

They had me down as being in relationships with people, but I wasn't in relationships. I couldn't consent to that stuff. I was a kid, you know what I mean? So, these weren't relationships. These were people that were taking advantage of me, and I was taking advantage of them for whatever it was at one time.

At 18, I got in trouble for the first time in Branson, Missouri, for felony stealing. I had taken my roommate's car, and it had broken down. I left, and I got charged with two counts of felony stealing and a count of felony burning. They send you to prison? A couple weeks after I turned 18. Well, this was a couple weeks after I turned 18. No.

Because they gave me five years probation and sent me to an alcohol rehab and I ran off and scouted through Kansas and caught, I started smoking crack again and I caught two armed robberies, one armed robbery against a previous abuser and one against an older bandit that was home. I just was making horrible decisions at this point in time. Yeah.

I've been in prison in Kansas for six and a half years and I've not been out the nine and a half months since. That w1994. Yeah. And Kansas Prison was just a gladiator school of just complete total violence. You learn how to protect yourself in there from the predators. I went in there with long hair, 19 years old.

1996, I landed in Hutchison, which is like the Shawshank Redemption. Predominantly black offenders. I was being, on a homosexual basis, they said, "Hey, you get down." And if I told them no, they'd be like, "Oh yeah, you get down." And so I've had to consistently fight in prison to protect myself. And that violence was positive for me.

Every time I got in a fight and I didn't get r***d, I was happy. I was okay. How big are you? I weighed about 165 pounds when I got to prison. Back then I stayed about the same... How tall are you? 5'11. I'm 5'11. And about 175 pounds right now. I'm going to say something. At this point in your life, I would say that our system is not equipped to try to deal with people in your situation.

Like when you're still an adolescent, like you've been through so much, who is going to fix this issue unless it's like serious, serious, like really getting in there and you know what I mean? Ask yourself, what could somebody have done? What institution or what program or what anything, anybody could have done that could have helped you?

Anything that you think? The system that they used, the model that they had for rehabilitation at Sears Youth Center is the same model that they're using in the prison system and the program that I'm in right now. It's a push up, pull up system to hold each other accountable. Those staff sat there and told all of us. They stood there over us, Toby, and they told us, they said, "Most all of y'all are going to end up in prison anyway."

And I of course told myself, "No I won't." But that's what they told us, and I guarantee you, most all of the people that I was in that group with, I've seen all of them in prison. I've seen most of all of them in prison. It's a hard question to answer, it's like, what do we do? Cause there's all those other kids that have been through all, some bunch of s*** you've been through, maybe different little ways and stuff, but. Right.

I mean, that's a really tough question to answer, it's like, what do you do? Well, it's obvious that our model doesn't work. It's obvious that they're telling you, "Hey, y'all are fixing to end up in prison." But they're still using the same model. It's like, at some point, you gotta try something different. You get out of prison, where do you go?

I got out of prison and I had to come back and do the five years, the five year probation I got out of Missouri Prison on August 3rd of 2001. I went back to Wichita to my grandmother's who had just had a stroke and I moved in with my aunt and uncle on their land, Clearwater, Kansas. So, how do you make your way to Springfield?

This victim is from Springfield while you're in prison. Well, I did good for six months out. However, I started smoking marijuana again, and that led to me hanging out with my family. They had all graduated to the crystal m***. I've never messed with crack coc***e ever again, but I graduated to the crystal m***.

And my uncle asked me to start going and getting it for him, and I got it for him, and he freaked out one night. My cousins had shotguns in the living room of the house, and I shot a hole in the wall trying to scare him to get him to leave the house with me. They called the cops. The cops showed up and next day I got a parole violation.

I went back to prison for seven months and then Kansas sent me to Missouri. My time ran up in Kansas for parole. Missouri had parole over me. In an attempt to stay close to Wichita because I had a family paternity issue going on with a child that was born while I was in prison from a consensual conception on a visit in Kansas at a minimum security visit where we had just, you know, if there's a will, there's a way, me and my current fiancé had had sex. And the child was conceived and I was trying to continue to be a part of his life.

My parental rights were being potentially revoked. And so I called an old friend in Springfield and moved out with an actual old abuser, but I wasn't worried about being abused by him now. I'd done, I done went through prison. Wasn't nothing gonna hurt me anymore. And I ended up in Springfield when I was 26 years old, where I met Gaylen Terrill for the first time, the man that I killed.

Let's take a beat. At this point in the story, you might have picked up two patterns in this period of Kristofer's life. One, Kristofer was getting in trouble with the law regularly, and two, he continued to suffer sexual assault from other inmates while in prison. This next phase of Kristofer's life as a young adult had the same chaotic, unpredictable tone as his childhood.

Although no longer under James' thumb, Kristofer was making a string of bad life decisions that had gotten him entrenched in the prison system, racking up a long rap sheet in Missouri and Kansas jails. I can't help thinking that the prison apparatus failed Kristofer as a teenager. Time and again on this podcast, we've seen how the U. S. criminal justice system is broken. It's a retributive system that's not designed to reform offenders, but to punish them. The recidivism rates in U. S. prisons are some of the highest in the world, meaning that incarceration just reinforces the behavior that gets people put back in jail, rather than correct it.

Rehabilitation programs do exist, but they're often underfunded and understaffed. And Kristofer tells me that prison did not give him the professional help he needed to process his traumatic childhood and break out of the cycle he was in. Prison staff treated him like a criminal so that, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, Kristofer acted like one too.

By 26 years old, the man who emerged from prison in 2003 was a tough and hardened criminal. It came as a surprise then when Kristofer began associating with an unlikely person, a former school principal called Gaylen Terrell. So you get into Springfield. You're 26 years old. Now you've had a, I mean, just insane life. And now you're pretty much hardened to, you know, prison life and stuff like that.

If I would to ask somebody what you were like at 26 years old, what do you think they would have told me? That I was just struggling. That I was trying to find my way. The first time I got out, I wasn't using any drugs or alcohol whatsoever. I was offered it the first night I got out. I'd spent the last year of my prison time going to college in Boonville, Missouri, and I scored straight As through 15 credits of college.

First time I'd ever applied myself to anything. I'm in my head trying to do everything I could. Because I told myself, "Hey man," I saw all these old timers in here and I said, "Man, I'm just like these guys. If I don't do something, I'm just going to come back to prison." So I began to, it was State Fair Community College out of Sedalia, Missouri was offering the courses there, Boonville.

And I took those courses. I started working out every day. So Kristofer. Now you're in Springfield, 26 years old. The first thing I think about in Springfield is m***, especially for somebody that's, you know, in your situation. I can see you drifting towards that. Did you get into m*** in Springfield?

Absolutely, yes. Yeah? Yeah. The victim in your case, he's a principal at a school. I mean, that's a pretty far stretch from somebody that I would think you would associate yourself with. How did you know a principal? Well, he was a retired principal. And I moved in, like I said, with an old abuser and I got me a job framing houses.

I was trying to stay as close to Springfield, or excuse me, to Wichita as possible so I could have my girlfriend come and pick me up and take me to my court cases for the custody hearings. I went out one night going to get a bottle of beer from the local derby. And I saw activity down Commercial Street, Old Town, Springfield. So I walked down there, and I walked past a bar, and I saw a girl sitting at the bar, and I decided I had a pocket full of dimes, nickels, and quarters, and I said, "Hey man, go in there and buy a draft beer."

I'd really never been in a singles bar or anything like that. I've been locked up. And I thought, man, go in here and chat this girl up, you know, see what happens. I turned around, and when I walked in the bar, I realized that I'd made a mistake. It was called the Metro Station. And the bartender turned around and immediately said, "Hey."

And I realized that it was potentially a gay bar. And the girl that was sitting at the end of the bar wasn't a girl. It was a guy dressed as a girl. Gotcha. So I didn't want to just be immediately rude. And like I said, I'm not homophobic and I'm not frightened of gays or defensive. And so I sit down a couple stools from the drag queen. And I ordered a draft. And the bartender smiled. And I was wearing, I was dressed nicely in a tank top and slacks and dress shoes with my hair, with a bandana around my hair, and my hair draped over. And I sit down, and the bartender kept filling my drink, saying, "Hey, why don't you dance for us tonight? I'll give you 25 dollars and all the tips you can make." And I'm like, "No, I'm not gonna do none of that." And that's where I met Gaylen Terrill, in that bar.

The principal. Yes, sir. Or retired principal. So, did he approach you or did you approach him? No, I was, as I became more inebriated, I agreed to dance and I began to dance with the bartenders and he introduced me to Gaylen Terrill. He introduced himself to me as not being gay originally. He said, "Oh, I'm not gay. I'm gay. I'm trying to help bartenders get this bar off of the ground. They just opened it up." And I said, "Well, I'm really not even supposed to be in here. I just got out of prison." And he said, "Well, I've got some work. What do you do?" I told him I ran houses. He said, "Well, I'm trying to sell my two houses and move to Atlanta, Georgia.

Would you be willing to work for me?" And so I originally started working for him voluntarily. Went to his insurance agent, got permission for me to drive his vehicles. He wanted me to do work on his houses so that he could put them up for sale and sell them and go to Atlanta is what he said. To me, this was just his way to get me closer to him.

Did you feel like that's what that was at the beginning or did you think, well, okay, I got a little side job set up there now? I wasn't actually certain. I just took his phone number home and put it in a pile of phone numbers because I would ask females for their phone numbers constantly and my girlfriend had cheated on me prior to me getting out, so.

So I was just kind of done with that situation and I was back down there around some old girlfriends down in Branson that were coming up and visiting me. And so I used that phone number whenever the person that I was living with, their family were going to come up there and they didn't know I was staying there.

And so I got lost. I took his lawnmower and left and went and did some work for Gaylen who he paid him way more than what was worth for the work. And then started making comments like, "Give my home the presence it needs from a man." And, "You looked real good while he was mowing the grass." And I was like, Oh yeah, this guy's gay because he wasn't effeminate.

He didn't come off as originally gay. He's older. He was 57 years old. And he just didn't come off to me as immediately. He didn't have the stereotypical homosexual, you know, the feminine voice or anything. So you're a guy that's been through a lot and also on drugs, did you try to use that leverage to get money from him for trading sex or anything?

Well, no. No, not in that situation. It was just, he continued to shower me with money any time I would work for him. I started working at his houses after I would get off work from the front end of the jobs. Gaylen Terrill might be described as a model Springfield citizen. A retired principal, he was a well-respected, upright member of the community.

Gaylen had had a long and distinguished career as an educator in the Springfield Public School system before choosing to retire early in 1996. He had never married, but lived alone in a small white house on North Summit Avenue. His only long time companion was a Maltese dog called Princess. Gaylen's life changed when, at 57 years old, he introduced himself to a newly released convict at a gay bar in town.

The exact nature of Gaylen's relationship with Kristofer was ambiguous. It started out as a working arrangement when Gaylen hired Kristofer to help out around his properties. But as the months wore on, Gaylen made it clear that his intentions were romantic, and he often made suggestive comments to the younger man.

Kristofer didn't reciprocate Gaylen's advances, however, he found their relationship convenient. At the time, Kristofer was a m*** user and needed money to fund his addiction. What developed was a sort of two-way street. Kristofer would tolerate Gaylen's flirting and Gaylen would pay Kristofer handsomely for his work.

The power dynamic shifted, however, when Gaylen started taking part in the drug use too. During the next part of our conversation, Kristofer tells me that Gaylen took an interest in the injection marks he saw on Kristofer's arm. The Springfield principal, who had so far lived a quiet retirement, wanted to experience some thrill for once in his life.

He saw the marks on my arm and asked me about them because he told me, he says, "I've just never really lived. I've always just been sheltered. And I see how alive you are." And he said, "Do you think I could try that stuff?" And originally I didn't want to give him any drugs at all because he was 57 years old.

He had heart problems. But in my mind, I thought, well, if I give him the drugs and he likes them, then he'll purchase the drugs for us. Let's back up a little bit. What's the first drug you gave him? M***amphetamine. M***? Were you there when he did it with you the first time? I introduced it to him the first time. I gave him a shot of m***amphetamine.

You shot the principal up with m***? Yes. Holy s***. So here's the way, I grew up next door to my principal all my life. So when I'm hearing this story, it's like, I'm, you know, it's... I don't know. My principal, obviously he's not like that at all. I knew him all my life, but it's just, you know, it's insane. But you shot him up.

What did he do? Well, I gave him a very small amount, because I was worried that it might hurt him and I might go back to prison if he died. I knew he had heart issues. He took heart medication. Right, right. I gave him, like, a 10 unit shot, where I normally do a 30 or 40 or 50 unit shot. He originally lied to me and told me that it didn't affect him whatsoever, but I could tell it did.

You know? Then he wanted to go to St. Louis, and I told him, I said no, because m*** was so expensive. It was so expensive in Springfield compared to just 300 miles away in Wichita, I could get it for just very cheap. So now, let me ask you this, you're shooting m*** with this retired principal, so now y'all are just like, you know, basically running roads together?

Y'all are like a team going out and doing drugs and stuff? Well, no, it was just there at his place. I would go out and get drugs where he would drive and he would get money out of his bank account, drive me to the drug house. It was a hundred dollars a gram back then and 500 for a quarter ounce.

And we'd go back to his house and I would do these big shots and just give him a little bit, you know? So that was what it was. And then I would sit in the living room and watch pornography for hours and hours while he would go in his bedroom or whatever. And that's what ended up happening.

And at this point in time, I went down to my stepbrother's house in Branson, Missouri. And a youngster showed up in a 2000 Z28. He said, "Hey, you want to go ride around with me?" And we went riding around. He was driving the car. We got pulled over. He was 14 years old with his mother's car that he took without permission.

I thought he was like some 17, 18 year old kid that didn't, you know, his people had bought him a nice car. I got arrested for being an adult riding in that car that that kid took on a joyride. And I got charged with stealing it. Gaylen co-signed a bond to get me out of jail. He later used that bond to force me to have sex with him. Gotcha. He blackmailed me to have sex with him while we were in Wichita, Kansas. This is where the story gets long. It's like a two hour story, Toby, but I can be as straight as I can and give you the answers the best I can. What makes it a two hour story? Because of all the things that happened. I mean, for me to explain the progression of what happened to the use of the drugs, to the trips to Wichita, multiple trips to Wichita, to my brother's death, to... I mean, all of this coincides within a period of a two month period.

So, let's get near the week of this crime. What's going on that week? Are y'all mad at each other, or what? No, the blackmail happened in Wichita, Kansas. I came back to the hotel room that we'd been staying in. I took him down there and I went and got drugs, came back, gave him a little bit. I would go and drop him off at gay bars and pick him up, and then I would burn out and go and spend time with all my friends and family.

My little brother and I are very close, and I went down there to see my little brother. I came back one night, he's on the bed, masturbating, watching heterosexual porn, and that's when he came on to me for the first time and asked if I would let him go down on me. And I told him that I wasn't gay, that I didn't mess around like that. So we spent an hour and a half arguing in the motel room, the Hyatt Regency in downtown Wichita.

He ran out of the room, and I ran out of the room and had to chase him down and talk him into not running off. I said, "Hey, there's all the drugs in your room. The room's in your name." And we argued all the way back to Springfield. That's the first time I called the bondsman and told him, "Hey man, this guy, he's trying to blackmail me into having sex with him.

Can't he do that?" And the bondsman said, "Don't worry about it. I got it. I got your bond." So I felt comfortable in that. A few days later, he contacts me again and says, "Hey, you want to get high?" So I started using drugs with the guy again. This continued on. My little brother died and I went back to Wichita to deal with my brother's death.

He got mad that I didn't let him know that I had left the state because I was on bond. When I told him my brother died, he got sympathetic because he had met my brother once and my brother's just... My brother had a standing room at his funeral. My brother was very popular. My brother's death just destroyed me.

I lost my grandmother right after I got out of prison in 2001. And she was my number one and my brother would be, you know, my number two. And then I lose him when I get out of prison and he dies in a serious car accident unexpectedly, on June 11th of 2003. I would kill Gaylen on July 16th of 2003. Anyways, Gaylen found out, he came down there, stayed at the La Quinta Inn in downtown Wichita, and called me over there with money to buy meds for him.

When I got over there, he did it, and then he blackmailed me again and I had to have sex with him. He told me that if I didn't have sex with him, he was going to come to the funeral and tell everybody that I was a homosexual. And he did come to the funeral. He was present at the funeral, signed my brother's guestbook, sent flowers to my mother, and then bought my brother's cemetery plot.

Oh, he bought it. Yeah, he purchased my brother's cemetery plot. It was in agreement for me having sex with him the night before the funeral. Wow. So, is this making you irritated that he's, you're having to cut deals like this? Well, I mean, obviously. Sure. I mean... Is it making it, I guess I should rephrase that.

Is this making it to where you're wanting to like seek revenge? Not so much revenge. I'm just trying, I was trying to get away from him. I was trying to figure out a way to cut the cord. I had talked to my uncle about taking over my bond. I was trying to get out from under this guy's thumb.

I've been in prison all this time and I've been able to fight and protect myself and now this guy's got me under his thumb where I'm being assaulted. Somehow Kristofer had wound up in another sexually abusive relationship. In many ways, we can draw parallels between Gaylen Terrill, and James, the mechanic at the ranch.

Like James, Gaylen used his money and status to impose his control over Kristofer and illicit sexual favors. Over time, Kristofer had become dependent on Gaylen for his drug supply. Then, when Kristofer was released from jail, Gaylen signed the bond. The bond gave Gaylen leverage over Kristofer and he forced him into having non-consensual sex.

The blackmail continued after Kristofer's brother died when Gaylen threatened to expose Kristofer as gay in front of his family. Kristofer tells me that Gaylen also forced Kristofer into sex in exchange for paying for his brother's gravestone. Increasingly, Gaylen demanded sex and Kristofer found himself in a position where he couldn't refuse. Like a boiling kettle, pressure built.

Kristofer looked desperately for a chance to escape the sexual assault that he had been terrorized by since he was an 11-year-old boy. After the break, we hear the moment that pressure broke.

So the day that this all happened, did you wake up that morning saying, "Hey, I'm gonna take care of this guy?" Oh, absolutely not. Gaylen had given me some property to, to exchange for drugs, and I went and exchanged it with the drug dealers. I came back to his house to do drugs. When I did it, he came on to me again, and I tried to leave the place, and he called the police and told them I stole his stuff. And I was racing back to the place to get rid of the stuff out of these drug dealer's motel room when I had a car crash. I told the cops, "Hey, I just came from this guy's house. He's a homosexual and when he comes on to me I try to get away from him. I'm trying to get away from this situation." But my bond had been broke so I go to jail. I get out the next morning after 20 hours and Gaylen's there to pick me up.

He takes me to get drugs. We spend the day together. The next day I go and get my girlfriend and bring her over there. And he says, "Oh, I see the love that you two have for each other. I'm going to help you all out." I said, "Man, just let me pitch a tent in your backyard while I work with this roofing company."

And he says, "No, I can't do all that." But he lets me take her to go back home and not get arrested again for driving on a remote. And I go back to jail. He picks me up again. That day we go and get drugs. And that night he came on to me and that's the night that I... He, he... He was coming on to me. When he'd get high, he would come on to me, and I refused.

And he sat down on me in his living room. He sat down on me, and he got in my face. His breath stank so bad. And it just disgusted me. It reminded me of something from when I was younger. And I told him, I said, "I can't even perform. I can't even get a hard on." And he said, "Well, I got Viagra." And I said, "Well, go get me a Viagra."

And he went and got me a Viagra. And I went in the bathroom, and I dropped the Viagra in the toilet. And I pulled open a drawer there. There's a razor, a loose razor that you put into a replacement razor. And I put it in my hand and I said, "Alright, let's go to the bedroom." When we went to the bedroom, I said, "Lay down. I'm going to give you a back massage." And I climbed up on him and I put the razor against his neck. And I said, "Hey, don't move or I'm going to cut you." And he started to struggle. And so I nicked him. I cut him. And he said, "Oh, I'm bleeding." I said, "Well, don't move or I'm really going to cut you." And I put him on his hands and knees and I walked to his closet.

I put him in his closet, and I put his dresser in front of the closet, and I asked him where his keys were, and where his wallet was. All I wanted to do was go and get money out of his bank account. How bad is he bleeding right now? Lightly. A few drops on the... Okay. On the sheet. So you're asking for money?

What's his demeanor with you now? Is he seeing that you mean business? And it's a complete turn, the usual relationship you have, so. No, he's not freaking out or anything like that. He's in the closet being quiet. I don't remember if he told me where his wallet was or if I just found the stuff, but I went and got his wallet and his keys to his car, and I came around into the dining room and saw that he was pushing the wall out of the dining room, trying to get out into the dining room. And I ran and grabbed a knife and pushed it back into the closet, and then I ran and got some duct tape and I duct taped his hands and his feet while he was in the closet.

I actually set the knife down and he grabbed the knife and I had to go get another knife to get him to give me the other knife. Because now he's, he's scared and I gave, got the other knife and then I taped his wrists up, taped his legs up. When you're taping him up, what's the look on his face? He's looking at you like, holy s***, you mean business?

I mean, I'm sure at this point in time he's freaked out, but the crazy part is, is I swear to God, a day or two before this, when he picked me up from the county jail, and he took me to get some food, and we went down to this park. Like three days before this, these kids had taken this drifter and had murdered him down in this park.

And Gaylen went down here with me, and we went down here, and he said, "This is where them kids murdered that guy the other night." And he asked me, he said, "Is this where you're gonna kill me?" The dude asked me this two days, three days before this happened. I had no intentions of killing Gaylen. I had no intentions of hurting him at all.

Karen and Jeremy, this, like I said, this is a two-hour story. Karen's boyfriend Jeremy comes to Springfield, and they try to convince me to kidnap this guy three weeks before this. They try to convince me to kidnap Gaylen. And I was like, "Man, I'm not going to do that. I'll go back to prison for the rest of my life."

So while you're tying him up and taping him. At that moment, do you feel like murder's on your mind or just? No, no. I'm just trying to get my car out of impound. Everything that I own was in my car when I had that car crash. So this is just for, to tie up so you can get the s*** that belongs to you? This is for me to get away from him.

Yeah. So does he refuse for you to give all the stuff back or is he not working with you after you tie him up? No, I, he's doing everything I say at this point. Once I put the duct tape around his wrist and his ankles and let him out of the closet, I take him down to the basement and I lay down a blanket and a pillow.

Is he pleading with you? I don't remember if at this point in time, because I was under the influence of drugs also. We'd purchased drugs right before this. I was under the influence of drugs. So I think I remember telling him, "Hey, just stop talking or I'm going to hurt you," at some point in time. I didn't want to talk to him anymore.

I just wanted to do what I did because a person under the influence of m***amphetamine is what they call, tweaking out. I just tied him up, and I tied him up with just all kinds of different things. Yeah, just got him going out of control, tying him up? Cause the paranoia is he's gonna get loose while I'm gone, and I just didn't want him to get loose while I was gone getting this money.

I wanted to be able to go get the money and come back and tell him what I was gonna tell him. "Hey, you're gonna leave me alone. I'm taking this money and getting my car out of impound." How long does he stay tied up in the basement? Overnight. It's been so long, I'm guessing it's 10, 30, 11, 12 o'clock at night when I go to the ATM machines and begin to withdraw money.

At first, he gave me a bad number and I came back and I roughed him up a little bit to get him to give me the real number. And then I went back and I got money out of the ATM, but I... How did you rough him up? I hit him a couple times and I grabbed him and thrashed him around a little bit. He'd been trying to get out of the bonds too, I could see.

And I was just so afraid he was going to get loose and call the police on me before I could get the money and come back and tell him what I was going to do. What all did you tie him up with? 50 foot of orange extension cord. I wrapped his wrist with a, what you would see as like a radiator clamp. It wasn't like tied down.

The duct tape was cutting off his circulation and just different extension cords and different pieces of, I don't remember if it was rope. But I tried to tie him where he couldn't move his legs and he couldn't move his arms so he couldn't struggle out of the bonds while I was gone because I was going to let him go.

I put a blanket down and a pillow down. I even, I brought a mason jar down there for him to urinate in. And I pulled his pants down and let him urinate, let him try to urinate. I fed him his heart medication while he was down there. I didn't want to kill him, I wasn't going to kill him. That wasn't my intention.

So, that's pretty big. I mean, that shows that, you know, you're not, murder's not on the mind. It doesn't sound like. But he sees that bit of goodness out of you, and he takes that medication. Does he look at you and reason with you? Like, "Hey man, come on. Let's cut this s*** out." Toby, I-I can't remember.

At some point in time, I think he's... At some point in time that night, he probably did, but I was so intent on just getting done what I was trying to get done, that I think at some point in time, I just got, basically, not brutal, but, you know... I mean, to be fair, besides the lifelong of bulls*** you went through, there was a lot of pressure from this guy, you know, of leveraging you with, you know, your freedom.

So that's a lot of pressure and tension. And I'm not, I'm definitely not saying what you did is right, even up to this point. I would probably want to, you know, punch somebody, I know that's not right, but not, you know... I mean, I think this was.... But I also didn't have the life you had, you know what I mean?

Well, I remember that there was like a ratchet wrench down there or something like that. And there was a couple times I told him, I said, "Man, just shut up. If you keep talking to me. I'm going to beat you with this wrench until you shut up or something like that." You know, just get him to be quiet while I was doing what I was doing.

After the crime, the press ran headlines that painted Kristofer as a monster who had killed the beloved principal. But our conversation with Kristofer gives us a different angle of that day. This was not a deliberate, cold-blooded murder. It was a robbery gone wrong. Kristofer's intent was not to hurt Gaylen Terrill, but to break free from a man who was extorting him for sex. He bound up Gaylen, then stole his credit card to draw cash. Kristofer's primary goal was to get the money to retrieve his car from impound, find a place with his girlfriend, and escape Gaylen's steely grip once and for all.

What was it that went wrong? You finally got the right number and you went and it worked. How much cash did you pull out? Probably somewhere between 500 and 700 the first time, if I recall. I think I had to go... Several different ATMs? Several different ATMs. What was the accumulation of the money? How much? 700 to 900 is what I had in my pocket when I came back. Enough for me to get my car out of impound. Enough for me to get an apartment or something like that.

It was in my mind. That's what I was going to do with it. Probably I would end up spending some of it on drugs, of course. Sure, sure. So you get back from getting the money out. Did you get your car first or you went back to him? No, I went, I didn't go and do anything over the night. I went to his drug house and came back.

I gave a couple of homeless kids that were on the side of the road 50 freaking dollars for some weird reason. I don't know if it was to make myself feel better about what I was doing. You were on m***. How old were these kids? Probably late teens, mid teens. I was leaving the Circle K there that I used the debit card at. And I had a stack of money, and they were sitting there on the side. And I asked if they had a place to stay, and they said no. And I said, "Come here." And I just gave them 50 dollars and drove off.

You saw those kids as yourself. So, do you go back, I guess, to him? What's his condition now, after all this time? I had placed a bowl of CLR Lime Cleaner in an open bowl on the top of the furnace down there. And I had tied a string around it. I had slipknotted the orange extension cord around his neck, and I tied it over a rafter, and then I tied this string to that. And I told him, "Hey, if you move, this stuff's gonna fall off on you, and it's gonna burn you."

So don't struggle. And I tied the slipknot so that if he did move it would tighten up and he wouldn't be able to move. So I came down there and I had a pair of scissors with me to cut all of this stuff off of him and let him go. And I said, "Hey, I'm fixing to let you go." I said, "I've gotten this money out of your bank account and I'm fixing to go get me a place with Christine.

I'm going to get my car out of impound with all my stuff in it." Everything I owned was in that car. Everything that was my brother's, all the videotapes of my brother's eulogy. I was just, everything I owned was in that car. Did you cut him loose? I was going to, but what he said... Oh, you just, you just cut out. Hold on.

What he said, what? No, I stopped, because I'm getting emotional. Oh, okay. What he said, what he said is what tipped the scale for me at this point in time. He said, and I remember it almost verbatim. He said, "Look at everything that I've done for you. We're going to know each other forever. Just let me go." And I loaded a syringe with CLR Lime Cleaner and put it in his vein and attempted to kill him.

Did he see you prepare the syringe? No, no. You told him it was m***? I told him it was m*** and I, it was my version of the lethal injection. I put it in his vein and I started shooting and it registered. I started to shoot in his vein and he said, "It's burning, it's burning." I said, "Oh, it's just m***. I'm missing."

And then after I did that, I stood above him and I looked down at him and I said, "What do you feel?" Because in my mind, this is instantaneous. Wow. When you take a shot of m***, as soon as you inject it in your veins, you hit and you feel better. Yeah, and you know when it's m*** because you probably have the same feeling.

He's not getting that feeling. Is he looking at you like, what did you do? No, he just said, he said, "You did give me something." And when I realized that, I realized that I was torturing him, I realized I was hurting him, and so I just, I undid the, I, I undid the, the knot that I had tied around the rafter. It was a short basement, just about as tall as I was. And I just pulled, I just pulled the cord, and it lifted him up off the ground. And he said, "No."

That was the last thing he said, and... Man. And I just tied, I just tied the cord off, and it left him lay where he was. I left the room. Did you watch? No, I didn't watch. I just, I came back. I mean, he didn't really struggle. He was probably unconscious within 7 to 10 seconds. The artery had cut off then. I came back in the room and because the m*** caused his paranoia, for some reason, I thought he was faking, like he was still alive.

And I took a knife and I poked him in his chest and I poked him in his eye. And he didn't move and then I just covered him with a blanket and I left the room and I came back a few days later and I cut the cord. Gaylen's death seems to be a very dark day in Kristofer's memory. As he relives Gaylen's last few moments in his white Springfield home, Kristofer gets choked up with emotion.

The former principal was bound up in his basement for hours, injected with a cleaning agent, and then asphyxiated using a cord hung over the rafter. It was a slow and agonizing way for somebody to die. Kristofer insists that he hadn't meant for this to happen, that he hadn't wished any harm against Gaylen Terrill.

It was the m***, he says, running through his veins that made him act compulsively that night. What's more, Kristofer says that he was provoked by Gaylen's final words when he said that, quote unquote, "We're going to know each other forever." Did that make Kristofer angry? Was he afraid he'd never escape from Gaylen's clutches if he let him live?

Did this inspire him to levy punishment against Gaylen for blackmailing him, as if Gaylen represented all the sexual abusers that had haunted Kristofer before? Whatever it was, something in Gaylen's final words infuriated Kristofer enough to take away the life of the man with whom he had a long, complex relationship.

Whenever you came back, you said a few days later? Yeah. Did it smell in the house? Absolutely. What did he look like at this point? I didn't look at him, Toby. I just went down there and cut the cord. He was covered with a blanket. At this point in time, I was, I had made the decision to go to Kansas and tell my family goodbye.

I tried to generate some money, and at the same time, I was getting high with my girlfriend. And I told her I was going to get her an apartment. Did you tell your family what you did? No, I told Christina, my girlfriend. And I went and picked her up that morning. And I took her out to one of Gaylen's houses, and I sat down and I told her what I'd done. And I told her not to tell anybody, and she said she wouldn't.

I told her I was going to get her an apartment and a car, and I was going to take her to Florida and I was going to get her a bus ticket or a plane ticket back and I wanted her to find somebody and settle down and get off the drugs. And she cried and said she wanted to be with me and I told her she could. And then we spent the days trying to generate the money. And then I realized that he was starting, his decomposition was gonna, you know, tell the neighborhood.

So I tried to get a person that I, a guy that tried to get me to kidnap Gaylen three weeks before. I told him I'd give him some money just help me move Gaylen so I can get him out of there so that... And you went back again after that? Yeah, I went back to the house a few times. Man, each time that had to be the most terrible smell, right?

Well, I had them in the basement, so it was cool. The house had a small cell to it. I didn't really go down into the basement. I just went in the house and started profiling the house for property to sell to generate money for Christine and to generate money for my trip to Florida. Yeah. So you went back and tried to sell stuff here and there and just emptied out his house?

Yeah, and I kept hitting ATM machines as I could and calling up the ATM people when they shut the when they shut the stuff off, because I'm just constantly going to these ATMs and erratically drawing money out. You know, for drugs and for the.. It was like, in my brain, it was like, well, this is my last little hoorah and then I'm gonna go take my life, you know, and just be done with all this craziness and drama.

And I was gonna go to Florida and tell my family goodbye. I was gonna visit the east coast of Florida, Daytona, and watch the sun rise. And I was going to drive across the state of Florida to the west coast of Florida, the Gulf, and. I was going to watch the same sunset on the Gulf, and I was just going to take a handful of pills and go be with my brother and my grandmother.

And so at that point in time, I never tried to hide anything. This episode is drawing to a close, but Kristofer's story is far from over. We've traced our way through Kristofer's deeply traumatic childhood and criminal history, all of which culminated in the murder of Gaylen Terrill. But there's still a lot more left to hear.

In Part 2 of this story, Kristofer takes us through the legal proceedings that followed and reveals the woman who's had his back through it all. Join us as we talk prison reform with Kristofer and seek to answer one very challenging question. Should Kristofer Worden ever be given another chance in the free world?

On the next episode of Voices of a Killer. I wish I could go back and take it back a million times over. The recidivism rate for men who kill is the smallest recidivism rate on the planet, if I'm not mistaken. They do not look at men as if men are supposed to get any type of relief for what they went through.

We're supposed to be masculine. We're supposed to get over it. Because I'm as broken and hurt as Gypsy Rose Blanchard. Because I'm as broken and hurt as Mary Winkler. And these are people that have been given an extra chance after they've killed. You met a girl while you were in prison, you're actually married now, right?

No, we're, we're engaged at this point in time, yes. That's just not the type of person that he is. I don't see him as a monster. I don't see him as a cold-blooded, heartless animal, like they wanted to. That's a wrap on this episode of Voices of a Killer. I want to thank Kristofer for sharing his story with us today.

His ability to be open and honest is what makes this podcast so special. If you want to listen to these episodes weeks in advance, you can now do so by joining our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/VoicesofaKiller. There you will get access to raw interviews, unseen news coverage, and unique correspondence with the guests of Voices of a Killer.

Head over to https://www.patreon.com/VoicesofaKiller to support the podcast. Your support is what keeps us passionate about bringing these stories to you. 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.