Ep 69 | JACOB HEARNE Transcript

Ep 69 | Jacob Hearne Part 1

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Welcome back to Voices of a Killer. This week, we're joined by Jacob Hearne, convicted of killing a close family member at 19 years old. At 21, a self-confessed video game nerd with thick glasses and pale skin, Jacob doesn't fit the mold of a would-be killer. However, Jacob is responsible for the brutal deaths of two individuals, both of which took place in his teen years.

Today, Jacob spares no detail in recounting his crimes. And as Jacob confesses to his 2022 murder for the first time publicly, we hear firsthand how an ordinary young man was pushed to the point of murder. We explore the influence of Jacob's addiction to violent video games, the deep depression Jacob dealt with, and what the news reports got wrong about his case.

Stay tuned for a story of love turned to hate as we relive the darkest hour of Jacob Hearne's life on this episode of Voices of a Killer.

So Jacob, I'm looking at this computer screen right now with your case and What I see is a 19 year old boy, a young man in a mugshot. I want to know, you had a life prior to being 19 years old. What was that life like? It wasn't much of a life, really. Did you grow up in a small town? Yes. Where was that at?

I spent the first two years of my life in St Genevieve and then the next bigger part of my life in Farmington. Yeah. So take me back to the days that you were just a young child, your family and all. All right. So. When I was a young child, most days were spent with my taking care of my mother and her boyfriends while they were getting drunk and high and my siblings while they were starving.

So you lived with your mother and her boyfriend? Yes. How many siblings did you have? I have two half siblings. Two half siblings? Your siblings are with your mother's boyfriend that you're talking about? Yes. Where was your father at? At the time, I was uncertain. He was never really in my life. Okay. Had you ever met him?

I met him briefly one summer. Did your mother's boyfriend, which is really your half sibling's father, did you have a relationship with him? Sort of. It was pretty strained. It's kind of toxic. Yeah. Did your mother and your, is it safe to say stepdad or what? Yeah, there was no marriage. Okay. So your mother's, or excuse me, your mother's boyfriend.

What was their relationship like with your mother and him? Well, it was like partying, mostly. And sometimes it would be, like, just mostly abusive, really. Like how? It was toxic. Very toxic. How was the abuse? Well, it was, there was a lot of, there was a lot of verbal and emotional conflict where they would scream at each other throughout the night and, whatever problems they were having.

It's hard for us to sleep sometimes, even siblings. So tell me about your extended family. You're, you have a relationship with your grandparents? Yes. I was like my grandma's, she was, I was a grandma's boy. She was like the one savior in my family for my whole life. Oh, really? How did she become that person?

Well, my mom would constantly dump me and my siblings off on her every chance she got. My mom would try to avoid, responsibilities as a mother as much as she could. Okay, one of those. How did your grandma, did she display in front of you guys that she didn't approve that or was she very, open arms, or what?

Oh, well, yeah, she, was very open armed. It strained her a lot, though. It was rough. It was hard to take care of three rambunctious, troubled youngsters. About how old were you whenever, about what range, whenever you were getting dumped off of grandmas? Roughly four, ages four and seven, like four, through those years.

Okay. Yeah. Then your siblings came with you? Yes, most of the time. What was the days like spending at your grandma's? Was your grandparents around, or the grandpa around too? grandpa passed away before we were born. Was that your mom's mother, I'm assuming? Yes. Was it mostly you guys just hanging out, or did she take y'all places and do fun things, or what?

Occasionally we would go to the park and stuff, but usually it was just hanging out. Yeah, what's a memory that you remember, like a good memory of her that you remember back in the day? Yeah, there was this one time that she came over to get me, right? To come over to stay with her for a few days. And my mom's boyfriend had wanted me to clean my room first.

He was just kind of being, he was just kind of being an *ss. He wanted me to clean my room, it wasn't clean enough, apparently. And so I was panicking and crying and stuff and couldn't, and I was trying to, I was, I had to cleave to stuff things and places. And our grandma calmed me down and she helped me clean my room and talked to, and she talked Frank down and, which is my mom's boyfriend at the time.

And we ended up going over and having a good weekend together. Yeah. Did you enjoy going over there? It was the only time that I could really be a kid. Is at grandma's? Yeah. So, yeah, I deeply enjoyed it. Yeah, I can't say enough about my grandparents. I have so many memories of them being very open armed to all of us, and it's, they play a different role than mom and dad.

Mom and dad are a little stricter and they, I don't know. Grandparents just have that specialness about them. And it sounds like your grandma kind of had that same thing. Would you say? Yes. Growing up in small town Farmington, Jacob Hearne idolized his maternal grandmother, Jacob's grandma whose first name was Phileas, was a stabilizing figure in an otherwise turbulent childhood.

Nurturing, open armed, and kind, Grandma Phileas took on more of a maternal role for Jacob than his own mother did. There's a warmth in his voice as he reminisces about the time spent at Grandma's. While in his mom's house, Jacob often had to care for his younger siblings. At Grandma's, Jacob could let loose and be a kid again.

It was a welcome escape where he could receive the affection and security he lacked at home. Although Jacob's account of his grandma is glowing, his mother maintained custody of Jacob throughout school. This rocky, neglectful home life began to rub off on the young boy, and he earned a reputation as a troubled kid. Did you get into drugs at all around this time?

Well, no, I was mostly just on prescription medication. What prescriptions were you on? I took a medication called Geodon. I think it was an antipsychotic. And some stuff for allergies, loratadine. What would make you take the psychosis drugs? Well, I'm not the most sane individual, am I, for my own opinion.

And my doctors shared that opinion when I was through my behavioral problems. I would have issues, my brain just didn't process things the way it should have processed things. It was like, I don't really know how to explain it. Yeah.

How'd you do in school? I was a fairly troubled kid. I didn't always pay attention in class, but I mean, I was mostly A's and B's sometimes when I applied myself. At some point, you're growing up, how was high school and growing into an adult and getting out of high school? I never actually got a chance to go to high school.

Okay. Prior cases, right. So you're okay. Seventh, eighth grade, what kind of kid are you back then? If I were to ask somebody, who is Jacob? Well, in school, I was that was the point where I started flacking off severely. So I had no interest in really going to school. And so I just kind of laid my head down in class.

I was kind of one of those troubles, but not really wanting to pay attention or do anything. I was a mess. Why did you think that? What would cause that? It was really, it was a lack of interest, and I just wanted to be at home playing my games. I didn't want to deal with people. It was one of those, I don't know. So, you started, basically, slacking off in school and all that. Did your grandma know about this? Yeah, she wasn't happy about it. And I used the excuse of bullies and stuff, and just not being able to pay attention. She knew what was really the problem though, I was staying up too late at night playing video games and didn't have the energy to focus.

That was really the problem? Video games? It really was, honestly. I can say without a fact that even though I denied it for so long, it was really the games. Yeah, and I do know that, here's the thing, I mean, I grew up with video games in the 80s, Nintendo and all this stuff, and I was really big into it.

And it was almost like an addiction. Of course, many of us grew out of it, but I do see that games have gotten really serious for some people, and it is like an addiction, and they play it constantly all day, and they eat while they do it, and they put the game on pause in the shower, and take, and use the bathroom, and then, and that's about it, so were you that kind of person, like addicted to games?

Yeah, it was so bad that I probably should be in a Video Games Anonymous meeting, honestly. What kind of games would you play? Anywhere from RPGs, role playing games, and fighters, shooters, horror, stuff like that, violent video games, essentially.

By the time he hit his teen years,Jacob was consumed by playing video games. Whether it began as a way to escape his difficult reality or just to blow off some steam, gaming quickly dominated Jacob's life. Since the 80s, video games have caused alarm among parents, who worry that the time spent in front of a computer screen might rot their kids' brains. The research on this is mixed, with many studies highlighting the positive skills taught by games.

However, there's also clear evidence that excessive gaming without limits can produce kids who are sedentary, isolated, and desensitized to acts of violence. This was true of Jacob Hearne, who developed an unhealthy addiction to gaming. Every waking moment was devoted to playing video games at the expense of his sleep, schoolwork, and general well-being.

Although naturally intelligent, Jacob found himself disengaged and slacking off in class. Preferring to expend his energy in front of his computer instead. Underlying Jacob's apathy towards school was also a long battle with mental health. Earlier in our conversation, Jacob mentions taking Geodon, an anti-psychotic drug usually prescribed for serious mental health conditions like bipolar or schizophrenia.

Although Jacob doesn't explicitly state what disorder he was being treated for, this gives us a glimpse into his dark inner psyche as a child. And Jacob wasn't alone in this, it was a struggle he shared with his grandmother. We'll hear more about that after the break.

So did your grandma ever sit you down and have a talk to talk about your mother or, any serious talks about anything, or she just always kept it to where just babysitter and grandma? Well, my grandma, she was a firm believer in not sugar coating things. Even when we were little. So she tried our best to, to kind of play therapist, but it wasn't her strong suit because she also struggled with that.

Yeah. Did your grandma have any kind of illnesses or anything like that? She was sick or, how old was she around the time you were growing up? She was 45 years old when I was born, and she had a lot of mental disabilities and physical disabilities from the diabetes and the neuroarthritis. What kind of mental stuff?

The mental stuff, she had hearing, chronic anxiety. She suffered from major depression and like, oh, sometimes it would be critical depression sometimes. What are the signs of the depression? Did you notice? Was it like depression? She would get really down sometimes. There would be days where she just, it was like a, she would be like almost a black hole of emotion, Wow. Wow. That's sad. She had a rough life growing up. Yeah. Did she ever seek help for that? Did she seek help? Oh, yes. She did. She went to this place called BJC Behavioral Health in Farmington. Yeah. Social workers and therapists and stuff. Sure. So, did you ever have any kind of, before this, what you're in prison for, did you ever have any kind of fallouts with your grandmother where, it was a pretty big fight where you got really upset with her and she got really upset with you or vice versa?

We butted heads a lot and so yes, there were times where we would get very verbally aggressive with each other. There was a few times where she got a little physical with me. And I did my best never to get physical with her, because she was so old, and she had so Yeah, she would have like, like wooden spoons and metal spatulas and whack me with them, or she would, maybe she would slap me, but it was nothing. So what would prompt her to do that? Me being disobedient and really not wanting to do my chores, giving her a hard time about going to school. I was a mess, I was never really wanting to do anything. Yeah. But this, we woudln't classify this as... This is just grandma back in the day, kind of, reprimand, this is not anything serious. Was she really beating you or just grandma stuff? She wasn't physically capable of a real beating I would never classify as a serious, but it would, so would grandma stuff, essentially. I just wanna make sure that we're not tryna say grandma was doing something crazy, but, so, you never got physical with her when she would do something like that? Yeah, there was only one time where I ever really got physical with her, and I was, I felt horrible after I did it. It was, I was really little, we were having a shouting match about, I think it was about my games, me and I wanted to go to bed or something, and I, kicked her in the knee, and I knew she had mad knees, and I felt, right when I did it, I felt, horrible.

Like it was like, oh, and she was, she fell on the, she fell onto her chair and I was like, man, I was, yeah, I was, yeah, that was not cool. I, and I wonder, cause you explained her as being, very important in your life and you're very close to her. And I've got, I got four grandparents that I've never even crossed my mind.

Even my parents, I just never even thought about striking either one of those. What would you think that would cause you to do that? Honestly, letting go of the fact that I played a lot of violent video games, and I was just angry anyway, for all of the crap that I dealt with growing up. But it was also just watching, people just be abusive to other people in general.

So I feel like a lot of that, just, seeing that growing up, just, it just fueled that. Yeah. Violence. Yeah. Although Jacob loved his grandma dearly, their relationship wasn't all smooth sailing. Often during his visits to his grandma's home, Jacob would misbehave and be reprimanded. While contending with numerous physical ailments and a crippling depressive disorder, Grandma Phileas' battle to keep the rambunctious boy in line.

One incident stands out in Jacob's memory. During a particularly stormy argument, Jacob kicked his grandma in her bad knees. The force causing her to fall back into a chair, shaken. Despite being an affable grandson, Jacob had developed anger problems and a concerning propensity for violence. Although the moment was quickly forgotten in hindsight, it sits as a dark foreshadowing of what Jacob might be capable of.

Next time on Voices of a Killer, we hear more about Jacob's darker and violent side.

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I'm your host, Toby, and we'll see you next time on Voices of a Killer.

Ep 69 | Jacob Hearne Part 2

Welcome back to the second installment of Jacob Hearne's story. Last time, Jacob detailed a turbulent home life that set the stage for murder. But as we're about to hear, there's more to Jacob's case than what was reported in the news. Now, Jacob details his first violent offense and run in with the law in this episode of Voices of a Killer.

So, at what age were you and what grade were you in whenever this crime occurred? I was 19 years old and I was currently on house arrest and not allowed to be in school. What grade were you supposed to be in? I would probably have been close to graduation, actually, so probably close to senior, most likely.

So what would cause you to, you're not, you know, doing illegal drugs, but you obviously have some kind of issues, you know, family life and things like that. What would cause you to be on house arrest? Well, when I was 14, a woman was trying to murder my mom, and I stabbed her with a letter opener. So When you were 14, someone tried to rob your mother?

No, she was, well see, they were in the process of kidnapping me and my mom was just trying to get me away from them, and the woman tackled her and was beating her into the ground, and I had a letter open in my hands that was eight inch blade, and I stabbed her in the back. Once. But, unfortunately, that was enough.

She died later on in her life. So you actually killed her as well? Yeah, she, I wasn't trying to kill her, I was just trying to get her off my mind, so. Well, obviously, no, but yeah, you. Yeah, she did die. So what, yeah. Part of why I'm here. That's, oh, I thought you were here because of your grandmother. Oh yeah, that's the, I have two burner cases.

Okay, so this, so okay. We're gonna back up a little bit. The day the stabbing happened, what were you doing that day to be with your mother? Where were y'all going? We were planning on going to the river. Just to hang out, you know, with some friends. A little river party we had with her and her boyfriend and They're friends.

And where were y'all at whenever this occurred? We were in this back wooded area close to off, close to Farmington, off highway H. What? What kind of area? It was like a wooded area. Like a Backwood flight. Okay. So y'all are out there. Okay. So. And this lady that got stabbed, where did she come from? Okay, so her name was Alicia.

Her boyfriend, Danny, I don't remember his last name, he worked with my mom's boyfriend, Sam Swalensberg, and his business, All About Trees. We were at their house, at my mom and her boyfriend's house at the time, just hanging out, getting ready to go, and Danny showed up at the house, in his truck, looking for a chain to pull Alicia's car out of a ditch, because she had just gotten into a crash.

Apparently this was all just an elaborate scheme. But anyway, I volunteered to help them pull the car out of the ditch with the chain and his truck and yeah, so that's how that led to most of that. You said elaborate scheme, was there no really, there was not a car actually pulled out? Is that what you're saying?

There was a car accident, but the car I think was placed because the way it was crashed, it looks like way more totalled than it should have been, considering what she crashed into. The whole car looked like she had rolled, but according to her, she had just turned really sharply, lost control of the vehicle, and landed in a boulder. Did you get in the car and go out there and help them? Like, Alicia wasn't with him at the time, she was talking to a state trooper on the road. Yeah. Yeah, I went with him. I pulled, helped him pull the car out. Like, I hooked the chain up for him and he pulled it out and I just kind of helped him direct it a little bit off the road. Where's your mom at? And my mom was, she was busy still packing stuff.

She had, a previously, she just yelled at me. I was apparently bugging her. She was looking for a case of beer. And I was supposed to be there for her to grab and take with us, but yeah, she was frustrated. She told me to, in her words, to "f*ck off," essentially, for a few minutes. That's what I did, in a productive way, I thought.

Yeah, so after they pulled the vehicle out, what happened after that? So, yeah, the, she finished, Alicia finished talking to a state trooper, and he left, apparently accepting her BS story. She was, she made up this tale about a mini hurricane coming on the road and distracting her, whatever, but she was drunk off her ass, and also high on Xanax, apparently.

But yeah, so we hopped in his truck, and I thought we were done, he was just trying to take me back home, but they took me to their house. Which they shouldn't have. Well, so do you think at this point they were they being like sexual towards you or what? Well, Alicia had just lost custody of her kids and she had taken a weird interest in me, so my mother had noticed a previous night at a fire, a campfire.

We were, she came. She came on to you? Well, not Okay. Not interest in a sexual way. At least not that I know of, but I'm oblivious to such things. I don't know, she seemed like overly friendly, but like I said, I'm not an expert on romance. Well, I mean, Jesus Christ, she tried to kidnap you the night before. She's in some kind of way.

I mean, what's... right, yeah, I'm not sure. Jacob, it's time to open up her eyes. She was, you know, trying to It sounds like to me, I mean, what else? I mean, come on. Well, the reason that I wouldn't, I just, I have really poor self esteem and confidence. So I was back then, I was like a really overweight, nerdy kid.

So I never saw myself as... No, I understand all that, but there's got to be a reason. So let's keep going and figure out, maybe we, you know, as I ask the questions. So, they take you over to, what are you saying on the drive? "Hey, that's not the right turn." Honestly, I was actually kind of like meek about it. I was just quiet.

She told me that she was going to take him, that She was taking me to get some Lunchables and some soda. And how are you at this time? 14. Okay. Yeah, it was, odd. She was, but I mean, I just kind of went with it because one of my main vices was gluttony, food, so. Yeah. I understand. So I'm also a very naive person at this point.

It's, I can see that. When I first dialed Jacob up, I was expecting to interview him about the murder case he caught in 2022. But Jacob catches me off guard by revealing that he has not one, but two murders to his name. This first murder case took place 5 years earlier after a kidnapping gone wrong. Jacob tells me that an acquaintance by the name of Alicia concocted some convoluted ruse to fake a car crash and abduct Jacob.

Once she'd isolated him, Alicia then lured him back to her home with the promise of Lunchables. Without hesitation, Jacob complied. The whole incident Jacob recounts is deeply strange, and Alicia's motives remain unclear. Was she delusional and spun out on drugs? Did she have a perverse sexual interest in her friend's son?

Whatever her true intentions with Jacob were, He willingly rode in their car home, genuinely accepting Alicia's story and oblivious to whatever danger he was entering. It strikes me that, at 14, Jacob was just a kid, gullible and off guard as he waltzed into a trap. Only when Jacob's mother hurtled onto the scene, accusing Alicia of kidnapping, did the reality of the predicament dawn on Jacob.

So y'all take, y'all go over to their house, do you actually get out and go inside? Yeah, she was showing me their, they had a horse and she had a cat, and she was showing me some of her animals, it was, weird. And I was starting to kind of pick up, that something was off. Yeah,I was going to ask you, did you start to feel something like she was getting too weird and too into you? At that point, my mom had realized that I was gone and had shown up.

She was like yelling outside the property line on the road. So she came over? So mom came over? Yeah, she came over. Yeah, she was yelling and stuff at the house, with y'all in it? Yeah, she was yelling for me and my name, calling, telling me to get in the car and let's go. And did Alicia come out and kind of defend herself and yell at her or what?

Yeah, there was, like, my mom wasn't trying to be physical with her, she was just worried about me. But Alicia, like, she started acting really weird, like, she got, like, super hostile. And I sensed danger, you know, honestly, I saw her go around and at my mom at a weird angle. She tackled my mom and Pulled her to the ground.

Mom didn't resist or fight much at all, which was really strange. So she actually tackled your mom to the ground? Yeah. Was very forcibly. Where's Daniel or the guy that's her boyfriend? Where's he at? He was like back a few paces, just kind watching with his arms crossed, like laughing kind of. Yeah. I amusing to him apparently, but I was freaking out.

So you freak out enough. You actually go, you have something on her. You look located this, you know, sharp object. Yeah. I had a. A letter opener in my pocket because a friend of mine had given it to me because he was obsessed with Assassin's Creed and whatever, and he had this whole, like, he had this whole, like, background story.

I think he had some issues, but he told me that I was part of his creed, and he wanted, he gave me this letter opener, and I don't know, and I kind of held on to it because, I don't know, I really respected this particular friend, but anyway, yeah, I had this letter opener on me, and I sense danger, Alicia was beating my mom into the ground with force and bleed, you know, and choking her out, and I thought my mom's life was in danger, so without any hesitation, I pulled the letter over and out, rushed forward and stabbed Elise one time and pulled the knife out and backed up. Where did you strike her at in the back? It was right below her right ribcage and at a kind of upward angle. And apparently it accidentally nicked one of her lungs.

Whenever you approached to stab her, was her head closest to you or did you approach from behind? It was closer to the side. Yeah, like it was, she wasn't facing me, I was directly at her back. Okay, and you actually, you didn't actually hit the rib, you went underneath it in the back? Yeah, like, it was like a lucky hit, I guess.

Like, I just barely missed her rib, apparently. Did you feel like you put a whole lot of, you know, strength and pressure into it, or you did it just to kind of, you know, stop her? It's a letter opener, so it can't be that sharp, unless you guys sharpened it, maybe? Yeah, no, I didn't sharpen it myself, but it was kind of like a, it kind of looked like a prison shank, honestly, it had black duct tape, and it was a really jagged Japanese blade.

I mean What was her reaction when that went in? Did she immediately stop, or was she raging, or Yeah, she, it was like a bucket of cold water got dumped on her. She kind of, she was surprised, you know, and like, she didn't yell out or anything, but she got off my mom and backed up. She got off your mom, you said you pulled it out and backed up, were you still holding on to it?

Yes, I was afraid that she was going to turn around and jump on me. She was a well built lady. And what is her boyfriend doing after he sees you stab her? Well, at first he doesn't do nothing, he's surprised. But as I back up, seeing my mom's okay and she's getting up, and where I turn around and head back towards, and start heading towards the car, and Danny tackled me.

And you're 14 years old? 14. Well, let me ask you this, Alicia that got stabbed, did she say anything or fall back to the ground or she just backed up and stopped and looked at you? She got off, my mom backed up, and then she kind of stumbled, and sat down, and then she kind of laid down. She was still breathing, and she was conscious, but she seemed like she was in some pain.

She had a light stream of blood coming down her back. And then what's your mother doing? Is she watching her do all this, or is she looking at you, or she's, what she's She went from surprised, to panic, to stumbling to her feet, and then she rushed to the car. She got into the car real quick. She wasn't really, Too worried about anything else at that point.

She kinda just went with And where did you head to? I, like I said, I was, I turned around and after I know, knew my mom was all right and my mission was, you know, get out successful, protect my mom. So I was heading towards the car when Danny, like he came to and attacked me. He came at me, so we started wrestling and he punched me a few times and he was clearly just trying to get the letter opener for me.

Did you stab him? No, I was just, I mean, I probably would have, cause I kind of thought he was trying to attack me, but I was trying to get away. So, he tackles you, what's the end result of him getting you to the ground and basically does he get the knife from you or what? Yeah, he got it from me and like I said, for a second there he kind of hesitated, he kind of looked like he wanted to use it on me for a second, but he thought better of it and kind of tossed it into the woods by his house and then he got off me and went to Alicia.

And what was Alicia, now, but this time, what's Alicia doing still? She's still just on the ground kind of She's just kind of laying there with labored breathing. Yeah. She's also kind of wheezing, but she's conscious. Did you get up and leave? Yes. We, me and my mom just kind of, we hopped in the car and just, we went, back to her house.

So that's a pretty tough situation. 14 years old and you see your mother in danger, obviously, you know, it could have been handled differently, but that is not a good decision you have to make and every boy loves his mother. So, you happen to have, you happen to have something on you, probably never realizing that, you know, obviously you're not out there running the roads thinking I'm ready to use this thing, but something did come up where you had to take action, that's a really tough one for judges and prosecutors and society to kind of swallow, you know, If they really take everything into consideration.

Jacob's decision to stab Alicia came as a shock to everyone, himself included. Taking a glance at the 14 year old bespeckled teenager, you wouldn't have guessed he had it in him. But Jacob describes a strong instinct that came over him to protect his mom. Being a physically powerful woman, Alicia easily tackled Jacob's mom to the ground, which Jacob interpreted as an imminent danger to his mom's life.

In a hot surge of adrenaline, facing this do or die moment, Jacob pulled out a letter opener he carried with him, a cheap piece of merchandise from the Assassin's Creed video game franchise. As if mimicking a hero in a video game he'd played, Jacob stabbed Alicia once in the back, giving his mom an opening to escape.

According to Jacob, this wasn't a premeditated attack on Alicia's life. It was a desperate attempt by a 14-year-old to rescue his mom from a dangerous situation. Jacob recalls the panic as he and his mom fled the scene. With their last glimpse of Alicia, however, she had been fully conscious and neither suspected that the wound was life-threatening.

After the break, Jacob learns the severity of Alicia's injury in police custody.

What's the discussion like? Whenever y'all are riding back in that vehicle, do you remember? I don't remember the exact words. I'm on adrenaline rush at the moment, so I'm kind of like panicky. No, you're, you don't understand, I mean, well, you probably do understand, but that little incident you just went over with me, when you're driving away in this car, you just got a new memory stamped into your brain for the rest of your life, something tragic like that happens, man.

Your brain goes through some weird stuff. So, do you remember any kind of discussions that you guys had on the way back? Well, you know, like I said, I'm not, I don't remember the words very well, but I know that I was kind of, I was put on the front of bravado and like bravery trying to sound tough, you know, but really I was like freaked out.

I don't remember exactly what I was saying, but I was trying to like pump up myself, you know, feel better about it. Did y'all discuss anything about, police or the victim dying or hurt or anything like that? Yeah, I remember mom said we were going to go back home and we were going to wait like a couple hours or so.

She was going to call, she called my grandma. My grandma came like 15 minutes later and we were just sitting there. We waited for an hour for the police to come, but they never did. And then my grandma left. We left and went back home. You told your grandma what happened? Yes, she was. Yeah, I told her exactly what happened in bitter detail.

Did you get any news of her passing, Alicia? Yeah. So on our way back home, we, well, we actually finally passed the police cruiser. They were, he was. The police guy was, the officer was booking it back towards, I guess, where they were living. Right. But he stopped us. We got home, we ate dinner. I watched, I was watching YouTube and there was a knock on the door and an officer was at the door.

He asked me if I was Jacob Hearne. I said yes. Told me to step out. You know, the whole routine. He arrested me. Apparently he was with a, he was with a marshal too. We went back to the station. My grandma followed. They interrogated me. I told them what happened. They actually told me that they didn't tell me correctly at first.

I was waiting for them to start the interrogation, but he was on the phone and the marshal guy was telling that things that he had just grabbed me and brought me in and they mentioned that Alicia had died and my first reaction was, "she's dead?" Like I, and I started crying. I didn't like, I was, I didn't want her to die.

Yeah. I was really upset and I like, I believe all life's precious. It's like, I was honestly just trying to get her off my mom. I was not trying to kill her. Well, you're a 14 year old kid. Like I said, it's not like you were a killer before and that's why. And what you did was wrong, but that's really difficult for, like I said, judges, society and all that to start trying to wrap their head around what we do, what do we do about that?

It's a tough one. At first they didn't suspect me for as being the one who did it. Apparently they didn't have the whole story yet. At first they were really suspecting my mom of doing it, which was surprising. Yeah. Not that surprising, but I don't know. Did her boyfriend basically, you know, pin you to it?

Yes, he was, he had this whole spiel like he told them about like how it was like some crazy dramatic movie scene, there was rain, I was doing some crazy knife maneuver trying to make the wound bigger or something, I stabbed her several times, but there was only one stab wound. Did you have any nightmares from what happened or anything like that?

You know, surprisingly, I didn't, which was also like, that was part of the reason why I started to believe that I was genuinely nuts. Because, compared to most people, like, normal kids, that, you know, you don't think you would process this, kind of, that well, or think about things like that and function very well afterwards.

At least not after a certain period of time, but I was, like, surprisingly alright. Let me ask you this. Do you play video games where there's people getting shot and stabbed? Yes, like there would be, like I said, a very violent video games, so I was kind of desensitized, or not kind of, I was. Do you feel like whenever you pulled out that knife and ran over and stabbed her, that was just another video game?

If I really think about it, I probably was thinking this is just another, you know, moment, you know, I could just save and reset here, and if everything turns out wrong, you know, I was probably in a Honestly, a childish mindset of that. You know, it's, if we really think about how the mind works, we're all just ready to be shaped on the information that's provided to us and how we, you know, take that in and come up with our assumptions and that's going to shape a lot about us.

You're sitting in front of video games all day long and playing that, you know, it may become your reality in a sense, you know, and then you're, something exciting happens to where you feel like your mother is in danger. It's pretty easy to react. And then you just so happen to have an object, you know, that can get the job done.

Where does a 14 year old kid learn to stab someone? Jacob attributes this to his history of playing violent video games. By 14, he'd played so many shooter and horror games that had normalized violence and taught him to defend himself by force. Unfortunately, while video games come with reset buttons, NPCs regenerate after they're killed,

and the heroes always have a second life. Real life was less forgiving for Jacob Hearne. His one act of real world violence had serious repercussions. Finding out that Alicia had passed away from the injury he'd inflicted, left Jacob speechless. Now, he had her blood on his conscience, and a second degree murder charge etched into his criminal record.

Typically, juveniles in the States are tried differently from adults, with the belief that they're more likely to rehabilitate. If a case is extreme, like murder, however, minors can be tried as adults instead in order to face the full brunt of the law. This was a dilemma the state faced in the aftermath of Alicia's death.

How to punish a 14 year old Jacob for taking Alicia's life. So, let's fast-forward. You know, do you get a charge over this? Yeah, at first they were trying to charge me with murder second and armed criminal action. And they put me in juvenile detention center for 10 months before they tried me. It was actually, honestly, compared to what I've heard about other juvie centers, it was really like a more secure residential.

Compared to other juvenile centers, it was really chill, laid back. They had done reformations I guess. And they were, trying to treat it like kids as opposed to criminals. So you get, you do your 10 months there. What happens after that? So I was, I had just turned 15 and we were, like, our last court hearing

happened, and we knew it was gonna happen, but they, the judge lady, decided to charge me as an adult so I could get moved to adult court and they could wash their hands of me and not, you know, deal with me. They didn't know what to do with me. You know, 14-year-old, you know, not well, 15 now.

So yeah, I get put into adult court, spend a couple days in county jail before I'm put on an ankle monitor and released to my grandma on house arrest. And I'm still on house arrest for six years, you know, waiting for that final date. So six years on house arrest, that's a very long time. Is that whole six years with an ankle monitor?

No, only, they actually only kept me on there for three months before they took me off of it. The person who was in charge of it, she was trying to exploit people, you know, she was trying to get more money than she was supposed to. We had to pay her. It was like a private firm that was running me. That's awful, man.

So she was basically doing things to keep you on the monitor and make more money? Yeah, and also me and my grandma just, we really couldn't afford it. She was on disability. Yeah, because you have to pay to be on that. The US, right? Yeah, so that, that's an, I've just, that's crazy because a third party, you know, they're, they make money for you to be on those things.

So now they're going to have the incentive to try to fudge things and that's crazy. So. Yep. What's that like, being on House Arrest for so long? At first, you know, being a kid who wanted to be at home playing video games, it was really antisocial and awkward, socially awkward in general, not having very many friends or social life.

I was cool, you know, I was playing games, you know, but I was also like shell shocked, depressed, not really knowing what kind of life I was going to have now, thinking I was going to be spending the rest of my life in prison. Where's your grandma at this time? Oh, she was staying at her home, at her house.

And your home too? Yeah, we were close. She was my legal guardian for 10 years. Okay, well, what's your relationship like with your grandma as you get older and you're on house arrest and you're with her? Is it starting to get more rocky? Yeah, for real. I mean, it was rough because she had to Support me, you know, 24/7.

It was one thing where, you know, it was just breakfast occasionally, and then, you know, dinner and stuff. And she had an eight hour break from my, you know, Andre, you know, troublemaking butt and stuff. But then the moment we were there 24/7, it was just rough. yeah. It was just, she was used to doing her thing.

You know, she's, she sees at home, she's a hermit. She watched tv, put video and stuff. And I go, I stay in my room all the time playing video games. Sure. Catching the 2017 murder case upended Jacob's Young life. Although he was eventually released from county jail and his sentence was downgraded to house arrest, the world Jacob returned to had sharply and irrevocably changed.

Thanks to a change in his custody, Jacob was placed in the full time care of his grandma Philly's. To his horror, however, the home that had once been a sanctuary away from his mother now felt like an oppressive prison. In America, a house arrest sentence is an alternative that puts offenders under strict surveillance.

Offenders pay a monthly fee for an electronic ankle bracelet that confines them to their homes. Wearing the bracelet, Jacob was physically confined to his grandma's home, where he squandered his time away playing video games. Now forced to drop out of school, and with no prospects for his future, Jacob wallowed at home, without any hope of rebuilding his life.

Welcoming Jacob to her home put significant pressure on Grandma Philly's. Now, Jacob's grandma had a second mouth to feed off her meager disability benefits and a young teenager to discipline, despite her old age. Jacob became yet another of his grandma's many burdens, which placed a wedge between the two.

Next time on Voices of a Killer, we hear how Jacob's greatest hero, his grandma, became his enemy.

That's a wrap on this episode of Voices of a Killer. A big shout out to Sonic Futures who handled the production, audio editing, music licensing, and promotion of this podcast. If you want to hear more episodes like this one, make sure to visit our website at voicesofakiller.com. There you can find previous episodes, transcripts, and additional information about the podcast.

Lastly, if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback helps us improve and reach new listeners. Thank you for your support and we can't wait to share more stories with you in the future. Thank you for tuning in.

I'm your host, Toby, and we'll see you next time on Voices of a Killer.

Ep 69 | Jacob Hearne Part 3

Welcome back to the final part of Jacob Hearne's story on Voices of a Killer. Last time, we heard how Jacob's relationship with his grandma deteriorated after staying in her home. As the years wore on, tensions grew to the point that both were quick to snap. Now, we hear the moment Jacob's temper finally wore thin in this episode of Voices of a Killer.

So, you know, Jacob, I actually, when you initially called me, I basically was thinking about only your grandmother's death, not this other girl, which leaves us now, you have, you know, two things we need to talk about, and that's the fact that, according to the courts, you're responsible for your grandmother's death.

Is it possible to ask you a yes or no question? Are you responsible for your grandmother's death? I am, yes. Now, the one I want to know, first off, is, you know, I don't really read too much into the news. I'll get some information and then I have basically, I keep the news at an arm distance. Let's put it that way because I just don't feel like it's always accurate or they may be trying to drive me into a way of thinking that I don't really need to be thinking that way, but it states something and you can tell me your thoughts,

that your grandmother wanted to commit suicide and you doing this was to help and aid in that? That's what they, that's the way they wanted to display it, but the truth of the fact is a little bit more unfortunate. So let's go back to around the Period of time this happened, why would friction and this turbulence start to occur to where something major like this happened?

Anything in particular? Well, it was, mainly it was just, I was so depressed and just kind of stuck and shocked and I didn't want to do anything, you know, I didn't want to, I didn't want to get up out of bed sometimes, I didn't want to, clean the house, I didn't want to do chores. Were you s**cidal? Yes. I was. I didn't really have any plans or make too many attempts. I had a couple. I actually spent some time in a few mental hospitals because of it. What did you do to plan this? Well, like I said, I didn't do a whole lot of planning. I was just. She had a lot of pharmaceuticals around the house. Sometimes I would try to overdose. Other times I would try to cut myself, but, yeah, it didn't, it was mostly, it was just attention grab, so it really wasn't, did you ever see, did you ever see a therapist or get, you know, professional help?

Yeah, from like ages 8 to, you know, present day, or, well, not present day anymore, but I was always going to BJC with her, you know, going to see a therapist, psychiatrist. All that stuff. Worker. Do you feel like the medications that they put you on, did you abide by them and take them like you're supposed to?

I did. But they really didn't help. And I don't know if it was really my, it was, I don't know if it was my fault or if they were just, they were theirs or if it was just, I don't know what it was. Maybe I just didn't communicate well enough, most likely, but I didn't help very well. So, at this point in time, around the time this happened, is she still a loving grandma that gives you love, or is it completely turbulent now?

It's turbulent. She went from a really loving grandma to, like, almost like a Wicked Witch of the West type thing, but it was, I can't blame her, if I was, I wouldn't be reading something like that. And you know why? Because, here's basically the short answer. You're an adult now. You're not 14, you're not 13, you're 19, right?

Is that the age? Yeah, I was 19 at the time this all happened, yeah. She's still grandma, she just has a little more expectations because you're supposed to be, you know, handling your shit. It was a little bit more. But Yeah, no, she was But in reality It was a little bit more than that. Right. But in reality, if we really break things down and look at it, not, you know, just You know what's right there in front of us, but a little deeper, we can see that you had a lot of shit going on, you're on house arrest, you stabbed somebody defending your mother, that's a lot going on for a kid from 14 all the way to 19, but you're telling me that the news is wrong, that your case has nothing to do with your grandma wanting to commit suicide and you helping her?

Oh, she did want to commit suicide, but wasn't actually trying to commit suicide that day. Did she actually express to you that she wanted to kill herself, your grandma? She actually expressed to me on three separate occasions that she wanted me to kill her. Like she made, she would make weird comments, so she wanted me to take her off to the woods to shoot her because she was just tired of life, tired of all these things.

Yeah, that's grandma and just kind of older people talk. I mean, I could see, you know, we could take that out of context. Do you really think that she was being serious or just being grandma? No, I didn't, that's concerning. I was actually, Trying to talk to her therapist, and my cousins, and other family members, trying to get them to talk to her, because she was just, I mean, she was also taking a lot of Xanax more often, there was, I don't know, a lot of years.

And Xanax can be pretty strong, was she getting pretty loopy? Yeah, she, there was, I had to actually call, I actually called the, I made a 911 call one time, because she took 20 Xanax. And she was making a bunch of crazy comments about how she just wanted to die, and I was like, "what in the world?" I called 911, and so she was alright, but she refused, you know, care, but, yeah, it was just, I was, I panicked.

know, I cared deeply for her, despite all the, you know, turmoil. Yeah, no, I get it. I'm sure you do. It's your grandmother. At this point, are you completely just lost all hope? You're mad as hell at your grandmother? Extreme? Actually, I mean, so, for the first couple years of the house arrest stuff, like I was saying, I was in a very depressed, I don't want to do anything kind of state.

The last, like, few years After all that and stuff, I was actually making a serious attempt at getting my shit together. I was trying to do what I could to, you know, make her happy, but it was just not enough. Nothing I did was enough. Years after his initial house arrest, Jacob continued to occupy his grandma's home indefinitely.

But the tenuous living arrangement put their relationship under major strain. Where they'd once been as thick as thieves, now Jacob and his grandma argued constantly. Creating a wall of resentment in the small trailer home they shared. Most of the arguments centered around Jacob's unemployment.

Following his first murder charge, Jacob had fallen into a pit of depression, wasting his days away playing video games. While cooped up in his room. And while things improved towards the end of his tenancy, Jacob was without an income for many years making him financially dependent on his elderly grandma.

Under this pressure, Jacob's grandma grew resentful towards her grandson for leeching off her generosity. More than once, she accused Jacob of being ungrateful for the sacrifices she'd made. for failing to contribute to the household and for falling short of her expectations. To make the situation even more unlivable, Jacob's grandma battled severe mental illness that caused her to make s**cidal threats.

In this home, Jacob felt like another failure added to her already overburdened life. Although Jacob loved his grandma, living with her had become intolerable. He had lost his independence and was constantly reminded by his grandma of his failures. Desperately, Jacob looked for an opportunity to escape the toxic living situation.

So this day that this happened, what's the day like the day, you know, this happened? Well, actually the night previously is really where it started. There was some stuff going on. We had a bit of an argument. I got really depressed and she had told me that she hated me. She hated my siblings, that she failed, that we were, she failed us and we weren't what we didn't turn out the way that we were supposed to.

And that I, everybody just hated her. And we were all useless. And it was a really big thing, a big emotional, you know, climactic thing. And I was gonna actually gonna run away, that day. But my boss had called me and he told me to come over, convince him to go back home because it was gonna be like 60 degrees below at night and stuff or something like that.

Like it was gonna get really cold so he told me to go back home and I did. And it was alright for a few minutes but then I was still depressed so yeah anyway, I'm sure, she went out after we got done you know arguing and you know bickering about the stuff that was driving her nuts and things that were driving me nuts that were out of my control.

But anyway, I was depressed and I was, this was the first time where I was actually seriously, you know, trying to kill myself. So, I had read online that if you combine high amounts of Xanax and a painkiller like ibuprofen or etalonol or something like that, or even aspirin, you know, you get a chemical, you know, a component in your body that would, you know, cause death.

Yeah, at this point where you're trying to go and find out a way to kill yourself, is it because your grandma is upset with you, basically? Yeah. Yeah, she, nothing I did was enough for her. I was doing my best to find a job, but there were so many walls, I couldn't make money for her, because I mean, I was causing, it was a lot of money to, you know, for, her disability just wasn't enough to pay for the bills and our food and stuff, so I was trying my best to find a job.

You felt like the walls were coming down around you with your grandma? Right, yeah, I couldn't get a job, I couldn't get my GED because no programs would accept me for whatever reason, like I was being blocked from every corner. Yeah, so you find out some stuff on the internet, do you try to attempt it?

Yeah, I did. I tried, I took her whole bottle of Xanax and her aspirin, her really hardcore aspirin, and I took it all, but I unfortunately woke up the next morning. Oh wow. But it was So you took it and passed out? Yeah, I took it. I locked my door to my room and I just, I said goodbye to my friends on the game that I was playing.

We're online at the time, and I just went to bed that night. It was after a long day at work, too, so I was already exhausted. You woke up the next day. I'm surprised you didn't sleep longer than that. Yeah, I know. Yeah, it was, I was surprised, too, honestly. The place I work at was, I was working with a friend of mine who was starting his own business as a landscaping construction type thing and stuff.

And so we worked pretty hard. It was just me and him doing stuff for this lady. Yeah, but I was exhausted that day, so I should have slept a lot longer than I did. I only slept for like 7 o'clock, 10 o'clock in the morning. So you woke up, and what happened? Yeah, I was really disappointed, you know, honestly, but I also was like, kind of glad too, because I was like, you know, wanting to die and stuff, you know, I was kind of glad God gave me another chance.

So I got up, and I realized it was like 10 o'clock, I was late for work, you know, I also was late to talk to my lawyer about some stuff. We had, we were gonna talk, have a meeting about where, potentially living somewhere else, you know, giving my grandma a break for a little while. But yes, I missed all that, and I came out to work, and I was gonna grab some food real quick, and I asked my grandma if I could use the phone.

She said no, that I couldn't use the phone, that I had to, I couldn't call anybody. She had this whole, like, high and mighty air about, like, how I was useless and didn't care about her. And I had to go out and ask one of the neighbors if I could borrow their phone to call my boss, my lawyer. And this is where everything just kind of reached a point for me, you know.

I felt at a loss, I felt trapped. She wouldn't let me leave. She wouldn't let me stay. I wasn't enough. Apparently, I didn't love and care for her as far as she, as far as she was concerned, despite how hard I tried with so much manipulation, so much toxicity. Yeah, and she had a lot of issues on her own, too, you know what I mean?

Yeah, there was like so much trauma between my mom, between her and her son, like my mom's brother, like there was just so much like family problems between those three and also like just her childhood growing up and her relationship with her father, her mom, and her sister. She had a lot of baggage that she tried to drown with alcohol from between like ages, like late teens, like until she was 45.

She stopped drinking when she was 45. Yeah, definitely. It's hard to watch. She had a major panic attack when she was like 50, I think, and she had to stop working. She never got a chance to, she became unable to work. She just couldn't handle stuff because of all the toxic themes. Yeah. Yeah, she was dealing with my mom and Everybody else, you just can't handle it anymore, so it's just stopped working.

So you come to that breaking point, what happens next? So, like I said, I blacked out. Like anger blacked out, or drugs blacked out? Rage. Emotional rage. Sadness. And what do you do? There was this meat cutting night that was sitting in front of me, and I think I actually had done the dishes that day. Anyway, but yeah, I grabbed it.

I rushed forward, she was sitting in her chair, you know, with her back to me, she was up taking her morning meds, and I just started stabbing her. Didn't mean to stab her, as many times I did. You know, I thought I only stabbed her a few times. She was facing away from you? Partially, she was kind of looking sideways in her recliner.

Where did you stab her at? The first stab wound went into her back, like her upper back area. And then her shoulder, she turned around facing me, she was trying, she asked me to stop. I remember her saying, she was like, "Jacob, please stop. Oh, you're hurting me." And then she said, "I'll give you the phone" and then I just couldn't hear.

I mean, I heard what she was saying, but I couldn't, I wasn't processing what you were saying, but I couldn't really stop. I couldn't control myself. That's an extraordinary. You can ask her if she ever started calling me for help and her last words were "Heavenly father." Wow. So I finally, I wasn't completely all there and stuff, but I backed up breathing heavily.

And I said the most horrible thing, and I don't know why I said that, but I immediately regretted saying it right afterwards. It was the last thing I ever said to her, and she was already dead at that point, I'm pretty sure, but I don't, I, but yeah, I said, "may you burn in hell" is what I said to her. And I was like, I was disgusted with myself.

So Jacob, how many times would you say you stabbed her? Well, I, like I said, I had only thought I stabbed her a few times, but according to the police report, she was stabbed 33 times. And that probably shows you how much you really actually did, you know, black out and not really there. Yeah. You know, it's starting to get to where I'm really understanding this now, unfortunately.

And when I say understanding this, I mean that people really do have some type of like a point where they just reached where once they reach that point, they or something in them shuts down and they're only operational for one thing is reacting to whatever emotion is at the highest and that's anger towards a person and then That's going to be at its highest.

And what you explained really, I've heard it before to where they're doing something and they're literally, it's just almost like somebody else doing it because they're, obviously you love your grandmother. You didn't wake up that day and say, today's the day I'm going to take her life. You just were pushed to a position to where your body made the wrong decision. And when I say wrong decision, I mean, you know, it is the wrong thing to do. There's no way to look at it because you didn't have to defend yourself from her. However, with that being said, I really don't think it was Jacob that did it. I think it was just somebody that, you know, had reached a point to where.

Your mental illness and combined with her mental illnesses just took over you and 30 something times, that's a lot of stabbing. Do you think about that a lot and have dreams about that situation? Every day. Every single day. On the morning of April 19th, 2022, Jacob Hearne killed his grandma, stabbing her 30 times with a knife cleaver.

It's hard to square the horror of what Jacob did with the little boy who once adored his grandma Phyllis. But by listening to Jacob's unflinching account, it becomes clear that this wasn't a calculated killing, it was an eruption of wild rage in an unthinking moment. As Jacob tells the story, it's fragmented made up of short flashes of images and sounds that have survived in his memory.

That mirrors Jacob's state of mind at the time of the murder. He recalls being so consumed by rage that he lost control of his senses and detached himself from his actions. When he thrust the knife cleaver into his grandma, he was acting on a primal instinct to inflict pain. The years of resentment he'd felt towards his grandma crystallized in this one irrational moment.

All it took was one trigger, his grandma refusing to allow Jacob to let him use the phone, and Jacob's anger was unleashed in one fell, devastating swoop. Today, Jacob is haunted by recurring dreams of that gory day. With a pang of remorse in his voice, he recalls his final, cruel words to his grandma Phyllis, "May you rot in hell." As he awakened from his rage and saw the bloody scene in front of him. A wave of regret flooded through Jacob. What he had done could never be undone. After the break, we hear how Jacob came to terms with what he'd done

After you stabbed your grandmother like that, you know, and she said her last words. Do you remember like the feeling that you had at that time? At first it was just like, like the rage was starting to like melt for me, you know, and then it was just like surprise, pain, severe pain, shock, like I can't believe I just did that.

I was overwhelmed at that point. Like I started shutting down a little bit there. Did you feel like your life was over because you knew that, you know, doing something like that, you're not going to be able to really get away with it? Yeah. After you'd stabbed her, you said you went and washed your hands?

Yes, I walked to the bathroom numbly and I washed my, there was some blood on my right hand, and as she said, where I had also got cut too if I, she scratched me with her nail, just a little bit. She tried to stop you from stabbing her? Yeah, she was, she had tried to, yeah. After you washed your hands, did you go back and just check on her to see if she was, you know, still there?

I did, briefly. I almost thought that she was still alive. She was kinda, it kinda seemed like she was still breathing but she wasn't. Blood was still coming out of her and she was like having after death shocks. She died from cardiac arrest. So after you, yeah, after you washed your hands, did you leave or you said you let the house on fire?

Yeah, I put some, some of her medicinal alcohol around the area of her recliner, and I grabbed a coke, you know, I just, I don't know, she wanted, she had told me in the past she wanted to be cremated, and I wasn't thinking clearly, so I lit the coal on fire with the oven, and I just kind of, I just threw it by the chair, and just, I walked out the door and locked the door, and I walked out, locked it, and just kept walking.

Did you take any belongings with you? No, I was just wearing a t-shirt and shorts, I slept in, I wasn't wearing shoes, I had my glasses on my face, my clothes on my back, my glasses on my face, that was all I had. So you didn't grab anything on the way out? No, I was just like, like I said, I was shell shocked and numb.

That's what I was, that's why I was asking, because it gives the listener an idea of It's not as calculated. You know, you, it's not like you burned it and took all the things you liked and made sure that, you know, your life after this was going to be good and with the wallet, you just let all the money burn.

Cause that's where you were at in your head. So you leave, where did you go when you left? I wound up walking about like a half mile or so to this church that was close by to where we lived. It was a church I walked past a lot, but I never really got in there. I went behind it and sat by this tree. Did you pick a church for a reason?

Were you religious? Yeah. I follow the Christian faith. I don't really, I wouldn't Did you follow it then? No, definitely not. Most likely not. Okay. Definitely not. So what did you do after you went and sat up at this church? Did you turn yourself in? Yeah, I sat at a church for 8 hours. I wasn't processing time.

I didn't realize how much time I had. I heard sirens in the distance and I started walking back home. Like, at first, like, I stopped at the street. So, I kind of looked towards the direction of my house. And I looked to the direction in the distance and I thought of either walking the other way and keep walking until I fell and couldn't walk any further.

Or, to turn around and turn myself in, and so I, I decided to ultimately turn myself in, because it's just that I didn't, she just didn't deserve that. You walked back to the house? Yeah. And you walked up to the police and said, "hey, I'm responsible for this?" Roughly. At first I tried to make this make it seem like I had gone and I didn't know what was going on.

You tried to try to get some smoke and mirrors at first? Yeah, at first I tried to, and then I had the officer, he knew, they were just, they didn't know what was going on, there was just, there was no way, yeah. Seconds after killing his grandma, Jacob's mind raced in a panic. Not knowing what to do next, he decided to burn his grandma's body by lighting one of her jackets on the gas range.

A chair was engulfed in flames that began spreading to the rest of the trailer. As the home he'd inhabited and harbored many resentments and steadily burnt down, Jacob fled to a nearby church. Despite not being religious and despite hearing sirens blazing in the background, Jacob prayed. In that poignant moment of calm before the storm, Jacob paused to reflect on his last few moments of freedom.

It's clear from Jacob's actions that he didn't consider running away a viable option. He tells me he lacked the presence of mind to plan any escape. Instead, with a heavy sense of inevitability, Jacob returned to the scene of the crime, where police and firefighters had by now gathered, and turned himself into one of the officers on duty.

In spite of Jacob's willingness to talk to the police, it's worth noting that, for the past two years, Jacob has maintained a kind of half truth about what happened to his grandmother. From that first interrogation on April 19th. Jacob told police that his grandma had requested assisted suicide, had taken Xanax pills, and then told Jacob to burn her sleeping body.

It's this misleading version of events that headlined the news articles, and it's this story that Jacob stuck to when he accepted a plea deal. Our interview today is the first time Jacob has come clean about the truth of what happened to Grandma Fillies on a public forum. Now facing years of jail time ahead of him.

His confession marks a turning point, one in which he will hopefully take full accountability for his crime and seek repentance during the long wait he has until his parole date. So whenever they cuffed you and brought you back to the, you know, the police station, did you confess or did you tell the story like you told me or did you lie?

At first I tried to make it seem like there was some suicide involved and stuff, but I never actually, you know, I told them that I helped her by lighting the house on fire, helped her commit suicide at first. Yeah. Never actually told the whole story. I didn't actually completely let out the whole story until I was working a program in prison, the ITC program.

How did your mom feel about you killing her mother? I don't know. She was off in one of her long debaucherous treks. I haven't talked to her for four years. I don't know if she's okay. I don't know where she's at. She's been very abusive to herself and to everybody else for a long time. So did you take a plea deal or did you go to take it to trial or what?

It was, I took a plea deal, 24 years, 85 percent second degree murder. 24 years? Yeah. You got off good. You made out well with that compared to a lot of people. How does that feel knowing you're going to grow into a, you know, into your, well, into your adulthood until you get out? Honestly, it's. I feel it's good to know that I'm going to, you know, serve some time to, you know, not that I could ever pay fully for what I did, you know, but it's good to know that I'm going to be in here, you know, trying to do better, to work on myself and be a better person when I'm in the greater society again, if I ever get that chance.

Yeah, well Jacob, I appreciate you reaching out to me and I hope that, you know, you know, become the adult, that you are able to come out and be a productive member of society. You know, I can tell that you're not a monster, but you definitely, you know, maybe, you know, well, yeah, I mean, but you already knew that.

It's just a shame that it all unraveled the way it did, you know, but yeah, I hope that everything works out for you and I hope you do your time. Okay. All right. Thank you. Bless you. All right. All right. Cool. Talk to you later. Bye. All right. Bye bye. On

the next episode of Voices of a Killer. You were 16 when this murder occurred? Yeah, just about a month into being 16. She had actually, because I had done one of my teenager rants, like "I could just kill them," and she said, "well, why don't you?" Do you think she was kind of intrigued with the fact that you might kill your grandparents?

Probably, I question sometimes whether she was just like a role play girl that like maybe was trying to live out a fantasy, but I really don't know. And you never got a chance to have sex with this girl? No. So you went grabbing a belt or you took your belt off or you went found one and put it around his neck and cinched it?

Yeah, I had found one from my room, cinched it, and I had gone outside. And this entire time your grandmother's just laid over dead? Yes.

I want to thank Jacob for sharing his story with us today. His ability to be open and honest is what makes this podcast so special. That's a wrap on this episode of Voices of a Killer. A big shout out to Sonic Futures who handled the production, audio editing, music licensing, and promotion of this podcast.

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

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