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The Tragic Case of Sha'Dayla Johnson · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: I want you to picture a scenario for a second.
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Let's say a twenty three year old man guns down
0:06
his girlfriend right in her own driveway.
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Speaker 2: Right. It's a horrific image.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. And if you were forced to like build
0:13
a psychological profile of this killer before even opening his file,
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you probably lean on some standard assumptions.
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Speaker 2: You know, oh, absolutely, you'd expect a long juvenile rap
0:23
sheet maybe yeah, or profound instability at home.
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Speaker 1: Exactly like severe childhood trauma, or I don't know, a
0:29
documented history of escalating violence. But what I told you,
0:33
the man who pulled the trigger was a former Division
0:35
one college athlete.
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Speaker 2: Right, which is that's totally contrary to the usual profile.
0:40
Speaker 1: Totally, And he came from a stable, supportive family. He
0:42
had absolutely zero criminal record.
0:44
Speaker 2: Wow, yeah, that changes things.
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Speaker 1: And get this, what if I told you that just
0:48
hours after executing this young woman, he walked into a
0:51
police station and casually started like flirting with a homicide detective.
0:55
Speaker 2: That is just I mean, it's chilling, it really is.
0:58
Speaker 1: It's beyond chick. Welcome to today's deep dive. Everyone. We
1:03
are unpacking a case that completely shatters, like all our
1:07
preconceived notions of what danger actually looks like.
1:10
Speaker 2: And we have a lot of really compelling source material
1:13
to work with today.
1:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, we are pulling heavily from a documentary called The
1:16
Tragic Case of Shedela Johnson by the Crime Atlas, and
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our mission today is to look past this facade of
1:23
a seemingly normal, unremarkable background to uncover something much more insidious.
1:29
Speaker 2: Right, because today we're dissecting the systematic weaponization of empathy.
1:34
I mean, this deep dive is going to challenge how
1:36
you view the dynamics of compassion itself.
1:38
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this because we need to understand the
1:40
sheer velocity of this tragedy.
1:42
Speaker 2: Right, guess how our relationship goes from a chance meeting
1:45
to a fatal ambush in just five months?
1:47
Speaker 1: Five months, it's so fast. So to get how that happens,
1:50
we have to start by analyzing the guy waiting in
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that driveway on the morning of Tuesday, December twentieth, twenty
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twenty two.
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Speaker 2: Right, So we're talking about twenty three year old Carlos
1:58
Lamont Jones, the.
1:59
Speaker 1: Second Yes, and on paper his background is just jarringly ordinary.
2:04
I mean, he isn't some kid who bounced around the
2:06
foster system or had this huge juvenile record.
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Speaker 2: Not at all. In fact, his mother later described him
2:12
as an obedient child. She said he was respectful and
2:15
you know, very loving toward his.
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Speaker 1: Sister, which is wild. When you know how the story.
2:18
Speaker 2: Ends, it really forces us just to immediately discard those
2:23
conventional behavioral models we usually rely on to predict.
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Speaker 1: Violence because the classic warning signs just aren't there exactly.
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Speaker 2: The triad of early childhood cruelty, profound neglects, or early
2:37
exposure to domestic abuse, they simply are not present in
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Carlos's documented history.
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Speaker 1: He had a really stable foundation, and not just stable,
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but he had a path, like a really distinct, tangible
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path forward.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, he was physically imposing. He stood six foot three,
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highly gifted athlete in high school football and basketball, right both,
2:57
and he leveraged that talent into a Division one athletic
3:00
scholarship to Highland Community College in Illinois.
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Speaker 1: Which for a lot of young men, that's the golden ticket.
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Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, it's the culmination of years of discipline and coaching.
3:09
Speaker 1: And family support. But this is where things start to derail, right.
3:13
Speaker 2: Because Highland Community College is where we observe the very
3:16
first critical fracture in his psychological development.
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Speaker 1: So he gets to campus with this D one status,
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but he completely fails to integrate, right like, he just
3:26
drops out after.
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Speaker 2: Only a single season. He drops out entirely and moves
3:30
back home to Florida.
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Speaker 1: And his excuse for walking away from a full ride
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he just claimed the environment wasn't a good fit.
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Speaker 2: Which is I mean that phrase is doing a lot
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of heavy.
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Speaker 1: Lifting and I want to stop right there. Actually because
3:43
not a good fit. It is such a massive red
3:45
flag in this context. The transition from high school star
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to college freshman is notoriously brutal.
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Speaker 2: It's incredibly difficult. You go from being the big fish
3:54
in a small pond to realizing everyone is just as
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fast and strong as you.
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Speaker 1: Right, It requires real mental resilience. So his decision to
4:02
just walk away rather than adapt it feels like the
4:04
first sign of a major structural flaw.
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Speaker 2: It is a profound failure of resilience. But more importantly,
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it's an early indicator of his relationship with accountability.
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Speaker 1: Explain that a bit more. What do you mean by
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accountability here?
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Speaker 2: Well, look closely at the phrasing not a good fit.
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It's entirely passive construction.
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Speaker 1: Oh, I see, like he's not taking the blame exactly.
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Speaker 2: He doesn't say I wasn't prepared for the competition, or
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I struggled with the playbook, or you know, I lacked discipline.
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Speaker 1: He places it on the environment.
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Speaker 2: Right in his mind, the college failed him, not the
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other way.
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Speaker 1: Around, which sets this really dangerous precedent for how he
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handles any adversity moving forward. So he goes back to Florida,
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and the downar trajectory just accelerates.
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Speaker 2: Yes, he gets a job as a laborer at a
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local manufacturing plant, but he gets fired from.
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Speaker 1: That, and then he moves to a Walmart distribution center.
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But from what everyone around him said, he had zero momentum,
5:02
not at all.
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Speaker 2: He isn't pursuing a trade, he isn't trying to transfer
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to another school.
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Speaker 1: He is just drifting, and that drifting causes massive friction
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at home, especially with his dad.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, massive friction. His father looks at his son, this healthy, capable,
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six foot three former athlete, and sees a tremendous waste
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of potential.
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Speaker 1: Which as a parent you can understand the frustration completely.
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Speaker 2: And that disappointment turns into verbal disagreements, which then escalate
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into severe shouting.
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Speaker 1: Matches until it finally reaches a boiling point.
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Speaker 2: Right, It culminates in this heated argument, and Carlos is
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ultimately kicked out of the family home. He ends up
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living out of his car.
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Speaker 1: Okay, but let's pause and really examine this, because if
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I'm listening to this right now, I'm thinking about how
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many twenty somethings drop out of college.
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Speaker 2: It's incredibly common.
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Speaker 1: Right, they get fired from tough jobs, they clash with
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their parents. I mean, failing to launch in your early
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twenties is practically a generational rite of passage at this point.
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Speaker 2: It really is just rough patch for most people.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't automatically breed homicidal ideation. It's like a
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sports car in neutral, just reving its engine until it
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breaks down. So lots of people do this and don't
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become killers. What is the missing link here.
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Speaker 2: Well, you're identifying the core mystery of the terrifying outlier concept.
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The failure itself is mundane, sure, but what makes it
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lethal is the psychological architecture of how Carlos processes that failure.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so it's not the failure, it's his reaction to it.
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Speaker 2: Precisely look at the pattern. The college wasn't a good fit.
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The plant fired him unjustly. His father didn't understand him.
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Speaker 1: Always the victim, always.
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Speaker 2: In his internal narrative, he is never the author of
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his own misfortune. He possesses this deeply ingrained, almost pathological
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inability to take accountability for his own life.
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Speaker 1: It's like his ego is this balloon with a slow,
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continuous leak.
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Speaker 2: That's a great way to look at.
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Speaker 1: It, and like a healthy person patches the leak themselves right.
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They learn new skills, they apologize, they work hard, but
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Carlos refuses to fix.
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Speaker 2: The league exactly. He refuses to do the work.
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Speaker 1: Instead, he just walks around demanding that everyone else below
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air into his balloon, and when they refuse, like the coaches,
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his boss, his dad, he views them as the enemy.
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Speaker 2: That is a highly accurate assessment of his cognitive state.
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When a person is fundamentally incapable of introspection, every personal
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failure has to be attributed to an external.
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Speaker 1: Force, So that just builds up all this resentment.
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Speaker 2: A profound resentment. He feels uniquely victimized by the world.
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He feels owed. So you have this young man sleeping
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in his car, nursing this quiet, malignant entitlement.
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Speaker 1: He's basically a void just looking for someone to fill it.
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Speaker 2: He is subconsciously hunting for someone to fill it.
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Speaker 1: Yes, which brings us to the fatal intersection of this
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whole story, because into this space of resentment walks someone
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whose entire worldview is built on healing.
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Speaker 2: Yes, we need to introduce Shedela Johnson.
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Speaker 1: Also twenty three years old living in Melbourne, Florida. But
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her approach to the world is the complex, eleete, polar
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opposite of Carlos's complete opposite.
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Speaker 2: Her best friend Tama gave this incredibly moving testimony about
8:07
her character.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, Thomas said she was just this relentless optimist right.
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Speaker 2: She described Shadela as having a pure heart. She gave
8:14
everyone the benefit of the doubt and genuinely believe she
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could lift people up.
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Speaker 1: So you have Carlos actively searching for an external source
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to repair his fragile ego, and.
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Speaker 2: You have Shadela, whose natural, beautiful instinct is to pour
8:27
herself out for the benefit of others. It is a
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catastrophic psychological mismatch.
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Speaker 1: It's so tragic, and the way they meet it feels
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like something straight out of a romantic comedy, which honestly
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makes the reality of it so much darker.
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Speaker 2: It really does. It was July of twenty twenty two
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and Shadela was working at an oldie grocery store in Rockledge.
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Speaker 1: Just doing her job, working the checkout, stocking shelves, and
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Carlos comes in as a customer.
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Speaker 2: Right, he notices her, and he initiates this very calculated,
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highly observant flirting campaign.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, he walks up to her and says, yo, I
9:02
like your nails.
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Speaker 2: And then he comes back another day, notices her hands
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again and says, oh, you ain't got your nails on.
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Speaker 1: He's paying really close attention. He actually later described his
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own behavior during this time as saucing it up.
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Speaker 2: Notice the power dynamic from the very first interaction. Though
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she is an.
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Speaker 1: Employee, right she's trapped behind a register.
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Speaker 2: She is a captive audience required by her job to
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be polite and accommodating, and he is the customer entering
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her space, monitoring her.
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Speaker 1: Appearance, establishing this baseline of observation exactly well. It clearly
9:34
works because eventually they catch each other's eye from across
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the store and Shadele is confident and outgoing. So she
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decides to approach him as he's walking to the exit.
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Speaker 2: And what does she ask him?
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Speaker 1: She asks, you got a girlfriend? And Carlos says no.
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Right that very same evening they meet up, they go
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hang out down by the river, just talking, connecting, and
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from that single night forward they are completely inseparable.
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Speaker 2: The acceleration of the attachment is blindingly fast, like zero
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to sixty yes, and that speed is a massive red
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flag that is often misinterpreted as intense romance. It moves
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fast because Carlos recognizes exactly what he's secured, right, because.
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Speaker 1: Within weeks she learns the truth about his situation.
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Speaker 2: She discovers that this charming, tall, handsome former athlete is
10:20
actually homeless.
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Speaker 1: Living in his car because his parents kicked him out.
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And for the vast majority of people finding that out
10:26
about a guy you've dated for three weeks, that would
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trigger a massive reassessment.
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Speaker 2: You would take a step back, definitely.
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Speaker 1: But Shadela leans in because that's who she is.
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Speaker 2: She does what comes naturally to someone with her immense
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capacity for empathy. She offers him a lifeline. She invites
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him to move into her apartment.
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Speaker 1: And this introduces this framework that her friend Temma brilliantly identified.
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She called it the wounded bird dynamic.
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Speaker 2: The wounded bird. Yes, Shadela looked at Carlos and did
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not see a man who refused to take accountability aw
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someone struggling.
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Speaker 1: Tima said, she saw an ugly broken shell of a
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human who just needed a safe harbor to heal. Shadela
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really believed his core was good.
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Speaker 2: She fundamentally believes she could fix him if she just
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provided enough love, enough.
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Speaker 1: Stability, enough air for his leaking balloon exactly.
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Speaker 2: She thought he would eventually stabilize and become the man
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he was supposed to be.
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Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting, though. We have to
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clearly define the predatory nature of this dynamic, right.
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Speaker 2: We do, because Carlos knew exactly how to present himself
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to a woman like Shadela.
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Speaker 1: He played a role.
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Speaker 2: He played the role of the abandoned, misunderstood soul to perfection.
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He projected the aura of a man who just needed
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one single person in the world not to give up
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on him.
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Speaker 1: And the devastating truth, and this is something you listening
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really need to grasp, is that Shadela's greatest strengths, her compassion,
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her empathy, her willingness to sacrifice.
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Speaker 2: We were the exact tools Carlo's weaponized against us.
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Speaker 1: It's terrifying. He didn't succeed in spite of her goodness.
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He succeeded because of it.
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Speaker 2: Helocated the most empathetic person in the room and latched on.
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Speaker 1: But the problem with this dynamic is that the illusion
12:08
can't hold forever. Shad Dale wants to heal and support,
12:11
but Carlish just wants entitlement and accommodation.
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Speaker 2: Right. He doesn't actually want to do the hard work
12:15
of being fixed. He just wants the benefits of her resources.
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Speaker 1: Which is why that honeymoon phase, that savior phase, it
12:21
evaporates rapidly.
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Speaker 2: The moment shed able requires reciprocity, or the moment she
12:26
attempts to hold him accountable, the facade crumbles.
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Speaker 1: So by the time they reach the five month mark,
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the dynamic has undergone this violent shift. It's not a
12:35
romance anymore. It's a toxic system of control.
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Speaker 2: The arguments become routine, the verbal abuse.
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Speaker 1: Surfaces, and the controlling behavior dictates everything, which brings us
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to the inciting incident. This is the event that sets
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the fatal timeline into motion.
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Speaker 2: Yes Sunday, November twentieth, exactly one month before the murder, four.
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Speaker 1: Days before Thanksgiving, Shadela has planned to visit a close
13:00
friend who is about to ship out for the military,
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and Carlos had agreed to go with her.
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Speaker 2: But the morning of the trip he abruptly ditches her.
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Speaker 1: He decides he'd rather hang out with his cousin.
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Speaker 2: He breaks the commitment casually, prioritizing his whims over her plans,
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and just expects her to accept the disruption.
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Speaker 1: But Shadela doesn't cancel her plans. She goes to see
13:19
her friend anyway, and later that evening, around seven to
13:21
zero pm, Carlos gets back to the apartment.
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Speaker 2: They share, and he immediately checks her location because he
13:27
is actively tracking her through her phone.
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Speaker 1: Of course he is, and he sees she's not home yet,
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but instead of texting her asking when she'll be back,
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he just sits there and stews in his anger for hours.
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Speaker 2: He is constructing an internal narrative of disrespect here. In
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his mind, her absence isn't about supporting a friend, It
13:47
is an active defiance of his control.
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Speaker 1: She finally gets back around two below. In the morning,
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she's exhausted. She walks in and goes straight into the
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bathroom to shower.
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Speaker 2: And Carlos is absolutely seething that she was gone from
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seven to two.
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Speaker 1: He marches into the bathroom, pulls back the shower curtain,
14:02
and flat out tells her it's time for you to go.
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Speaker 2: Let's examine the staggering audacity of that statement. This is
14:09
a man who is living in his car until she
14:11
rescued him.
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Speaker 1: She pays for the roof over his head.
14:14
Speaker 2: Yes, Yet the moment he feels his control slipping, his
14:17
entitlement overrides reality. He attempts to evict his savior from
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her own sanctuary.
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Speaker 1: The arrogance is stunning, so Hideali gets out of the
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shower and starts packing her bags. She probably realizes this
14:28
is untenable, but she isn't packing fast enough for him, so.
14:31
Speaker 2: His anger boils over into physical aggression. He starts violently
14:36
grabbing her belongings, throwing them out of the apartment.
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Speaker 1: He's raging. He literally punches a hole straight through the drywall.
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Speaker 2: Which is a classic intimidation tactic. The introduction of property destruction,
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punching walls, throwing possessions. It's a physical demonstration of the
14:51
violence he is capable of inflicting upon.
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Speaker 1: Her body temporarily displaced onto objects exactly.
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Speaker 2: It is designed to induce absolute terror.
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Speaker 1: And it works. Shadela is a young woman in a
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small apartment with a massive former athlete who is destroying
15:07
the room. She is terrified, so she tries to establish
15:10
a boundary.
15:11
Speaker 2: What does she do?
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Speaker 1: She retreats to the kitchen, grabs a knife, and turns
15:15
to face him. She says, don't come any closer or
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I will hurt you. Didn't I tell you if something happened,
15:20
I would take a peace with me.
15:21
Speaker 2: It is a textbook self defense posture. She is attempting
15:25
to equalize a massive physical disparity to prevent an assault.
15:29
Speaker 1: But Carlos is completely unfazed. He drops her bags, lunges
15:32
at her, grabs her wrist, and just easily disarms Here
15:35
go overpowers her. Yeah. He forces her out onto the balcony,
15:38
locks the door, and then this defies all logic. He
15:41
calls the police.
15:42
Speaker 2: He dials nine to one one to report a domestic disturbance,
15:46
positioning himself as the caller and the victim.
15:48
Speaker 1: The police arrive and Carlos gives them his spin. He
15:52
says he was just trying to get her to leave
15:54
and she suddenly attacked him with a deadly weapon.
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Speaker 2: He claims he was terrified she was going to cut.
15:58
Speaker 1: Him, and because Shadela was the one holding the knife
16:01
when things peaked, the officers put her in handcuffs. They
16:05
arrest her for aggravated assault.
16:07
Speaker 2: The system fails her in real time.
16:09
Speaker 1: Wait, I really need to pause here, because this is
16:11
the pivot point of the whole case. He initiates the aggression,
16:14
He destroys the apartment, she grabs a knife purely as
16:17
a visual deterrent, right, and she ends up in the
16:20
squad car. How does a perpetrator flawlessly manipulate law enforcement
16:24
like that?
16:25
Speaker 2: This raises an important question, and it introduces a psychological
16:28
tactic known as DARVO.
16:30
Speaker 1: Wait, what does that stand for? Again?
16:32
Speaker 2: It s ends for deny, attack and reverse victim and
16:34
offender darvo.
16:36
Speaker 1: Wow.
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Speaker 2: It is incredibly common in domestic abuse dynamics. First, Carlos
16:42
denies his own aggressive behavior. He downplays the punched wall.
16:46
Speaker 1: Second, he attacks Shadela's reaction.
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Speaker 2: Yes, focusing entirely on the fact that she held a knife.
16:53
And finally he reverses the roles. He presents himself as
16:57
the vulnerable victim and paints her as the unpredictable aggressor.
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Speaker 1: And when cops show up to a chaotic hy adrenaline scene,
17:05
they look for tangible evidence. The tangible evidence was the knife, exactly.
17:09
Speaker 2: But the real danger here isn't just the wrongful arrest.
17:12
It is the psychological lesson. Carlos learns from.
17:15
Speaker 1: It because nine days later, the prosecutor drops the charges
17:18
against her entirely right. They see the self defense context.
17:21
Speaker 2: They do, but the dismissal doesn't matter to Carlos. The
17:24
arrest itself was the victory.
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Speaker 1: It taught him he could control the narrative.
17:28
Speaker 2: It proved he could weaponize the very authorities meant to
17:30
protect her. That grants him a terrifying sense of omnipotence.
17:35
Speaker 1: It empowers him. But for Shadeala, spending the night in
17:38
jail because she defended herself, that was the final straw.
17:41
Speaker 2: The relationship is permanently severed.
17:43
Speaker 1: She moves out, leaves them behind, and goes to live
17:46
with her father Tie on Colbert Circle. She is done,
17:50
but Carlos can't accept being discarded.
17:53
Speaker 2: The loss of physical proximity almost universally triggers an escalation
17:58
in psychological harassment. When an abuser can't control the victim's physical.
18:02
Speaker 1: Environment, they try to colonize their mental space licely. So
18:06
for the next month, November twenty to December twenty, Carlos
18:09
launches this relentless campaign. He bombards her phone with vulgar, hostile,
18:14
threatening calls and texts.
18:16
Speaker 2: And we have to acknowledge her strength here.
18:18
Speaker 1: She ignores every single message. She completely ghosts him.
18:21
Speaker 2: Attempting to starve him of the attention he's craving, which
18:24
is the recommended course of action, but it also rapidly
18:28
accelerates his desperation.
18:29
Speaker 1: He's losing his primary source of ego regulation. Now. During
18:33
this month, Shanella does consider getting a restraining order, but
18:37
she's caught in this devastating dilemma.
18:39
Speaker 2: She had just started a new job, didn't she.
18:41
Speaker 1: Yes a job she loved. She's trying to rebuild her life,
18:45
and the idea of walking into her new manager's office
18:47
asking for time off to sit in a courthouse and
18:50
detail her domestic trauma it was just too much.
18:53
Speaker 2: It felt entirely overwhelming, and it is crucial that we
18:56
do not judge that decision with the benefit of hindsight.
19:00
It is a profoundly human calculation.
19:02
Speaker 1: You're trying to project stability, and admitting you need a
19:05
restraining order feels like admitting defeat.
19:08
Speaker 2: Victims often minimize the danger because legally addressing the threat
19:12
requires disrupting the very normalcy there fighting to maintain.
19:16
Speaker 1: She chose her future over her fear, which makes the
19:19
morning of December twentieth almost unbearable to talk about.
19:22
Speaker 2: It brings us to the driveway on Colbert.
19:23
Speaker 1: Circle seven am, five days before Christmas. Shadela finishes getting
19:28
ready for this job she loves, says goodbye to her
19:31
dad Tye, and walks out the door, but Carlos is there.
19:34
Speaker 2: He has positioned his vehicle to physically block her car
19:37
in the driveway, trapping her, and he is armed with
19:39
a nine milimeter handgun.
19:41
Speaker 1: Sedla sees him blocking her in and she just asks him,
19:45
what's up with you? But as she realizes the danger
19:48
and tries to retreat to the front door, Carlos opens fire.
19:51
Speaker 2: He doesn't hesitate.
19:52
Speaker 1: It's an ambush, and it really highlights this tragic statistic
19:56
you hear all the time, right yes.
19:58
Speaker 2: Law enforcement constantly highlights that the most dangerous time for
20:01
a victim of domestic violence is not during the relationship.
20:05
The highest risk of lethality occurs immediately after the victim leaves.
20:10
Speaker 1: When darvo fails and the harassment is ignored.
20:13
Speaker 2: The violence escalates from coercion to annihilation. If he cannot
20:18
possess her, he will erase her.
20:19
Speaker 1: Her dad. Tie is inside. He hears the gunfire roughly
20:23
ten shots. He rushes out, but the shooter is gone.
20:25
Tie finds his daughter on the carport floor.
20:28
Speaker 2: The ensuing nine to one calls are pure chaos. Paramedics
20:31
try everything, but the trauma is too severe. She is
20:34
pronounced dead at the hospital.
20:36
Speaker 1: And while this strategy is unfolding, the police are immediately
20:38
on it. They canvass the neighborhood, and a witness gives
20:41
them a massive break.
20:42
Speaker 2: A nearby worker heard the shots bumb bom bom bomb,
20:45
estimating six shots, and saw the fleeing.
20:47
Speaker 1: Vehicle, a black twenty fourteen Nissan Ultima with black rims
20:52
and dark tint, speeding away.
20:53
Speaker 2: In modern law enforcement, a description that specific is like
20:57
a digital tracker.
20:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, they cross reference it with their flows cameras. Those
21:01
license plate readers on traffic.
21:02
Speaker 2: Polls and within moments it flags a match. The registration
21:05
comes back to Carlos Lamonto's.
21:07
Speaker 1: The second a below goes out across Bervard County. He's armed,
21:11
mobile identified. You'd think this leads to a huge manhunt
21:14
or a standoff.
21:15
Speaker 2: But the resolution defies all expectations. It happens shockingly fast.
21:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it leads into the most psychologically chilling part
21:23
of this entire.
21:24
Speaker 2: Deep dive, the surrender and the interrogation.
21:26
Speaker 1: At eleven to beighto am, just four hours after the murder,
21:29
Carlos drives to the Palm Bay Police department, walks in
21:33
and peacefully surrenders. No lawyer, doesn't ask, Tormain silent.
21:37
Speaker 2: But we must set the stage carefully here to understand
21:40
the bureaucratic reality.
21:41
Speaker 1: Right, he surrendered in Palm Bay, but the murder was
21:43
in Melbourne jurisdiction, so.
21:45
Speaker 2: The Melbourne homicide detectives have to drive over. Well, Carlos waits.
21:49
He's in a standard interview room and mirandized, and a
21:53
female detective from Palm Bay is sitting with him just
21:55
to monitor.
21:56
Speaker 1: Her job is literally just to sit there. And the
21:59
video of this half hour wait it is pure cognitive dissonance.
22:04
Speaker 2: He is relaxed, conversational.
22:06
Speaker 1: He leans back and says, this ain't like the thing
22:08
I've seen on television. Man, He jokes about his life choices,
22:12
saying he shouldn't have done some wicked stuff because he
22:15
thinks he'd be a good cop.
22:16
Speaker 2: I would have been cool with catching suspects. It is
22:18
a breathtaking display of detachment. He's treating an interrogation room
22:23
like a career counseling session.
22:24
Speaker 1: But it gets worse. He starts actively aggressively flirting with
22:28
the female detective guarding him. He asks her age her ethnicity,
22:32
and then leans in and says, would you date a
22:34
twenty three year old?
22:35
Speaker 2: If she handles it brilliantly, she remains neutral deflects it,
22:39
allowing him to fill the silence.
22:40
Speaker 1: Because he just keeps going. He promises her free dates
22:44
beach and probably like sip some wine at my place.
22:47
He says if he saw her in a grocery store,
22:49
he'd approach.
22:49
Speaker 2: Her, which is exactly where he mention Adela.
22:52
Speaker 1: It's like watching a sociopath at a networking event. But
22:55
then she asks him about his friends, and Carlos admits
22:58
he doesn't have any. He says, I lost everybody when
23:01
I got back from college.
23:02
Speaker 2: And when she asks why, Carlos delivers the skeleton key
23:06
to his pathology. He says, I got a personality that changes.
23:09
Speaker 1: A personality that changes. It's so passive.
23:12
Speaker 2: We must pause on that phrasing. Remember his failure at college,
23:16
he blamed the fit. Here he blames a mysterious, fluctuating personality,
23:21
like it's a parasite.
23:23
Speaker 1: He remains the perpetual victim. Well. Eventually the Melbourne detectives,
23:27
Tom and Jesse arrive. They read him his rights and
23:30
Carly's just gives it all up.
23:32
Speaker 2: He lays out the timeline mechanically.
23:34
Speaker 1: He says, she asked what's up with you? And he
23:35
just started firing. He estimates he shot her fifteen times.
23:39
But when they probe for premeditation, that's.
23:41
Speaker 2: Where it gets disturbing. He admits he bought the nine
23:44
millimeter three days prior, right.
23:46
Speaker 1: He waited the three day period, but he denies he
23:49
bought it to kill her. He claims he just woke
23:52
up that morning and decided to do it. He told
23:54
them I woke up and just said, man, you know, really,
23:56
what else I got to lose.
23:58
Speaker 2: From a psychological perspective, this is a defense mechanism. He
24:02
wants to frame the intent as a spontaneous whim rather
24:06
than confronting that he coldly calculated an execution, and when.
24:10
Speaker 1: They ask if he feels remorse, he says, right now,
24:12
I don't feel nothing. Maybe while I'm sitting in prison,
24:14
I think maybe that's when I feel it.
24:16
Speaker 2: An absolute, empicky.
24:18
Speaker 1: Void, and then he casually drops a bombshell. He confesses
24:22
his original plan was to murder Shedela's father Tie Too,
24:25
just because he was angry about perceived slights.
24:28
Speaker 2: A perceived insult from a protective father is punishable by
24:31
death in his mind.
24:32
Speaker 1: They ask him, if you could rewind the clock, would
24:35
you do it again, and Carlos says, if I'm being honest,
24:38
I probably would have did it with her dad and
24:39
not her, both.
24:40
Speaker 2: Of them staggering. He's lamenting missed opportunities for vengeance.
24:45
Speaker 1: He gives a full confession, tells them where the gun
24:47
is in a storm drain, where his cloths are in
24:50
a dumpster. It's air tight, which brings us to the
24:53
trial in September twenty twenty three.
24:55
Speaker 2: And the jury's verdict adds a really perplexing layer.
24:58
Speaker 1: Here, right, Because he's not convict did a first degree
25:00
premeditated murder. He's convicted of a lesser included offense, second
25:05
degree murder while discharging a firearm. How does a jury
25:09
look at the three day wait blocking the car and
25:12
say that's not premeditation.
25:14
Speaker 2: It is incredibly frustrating for the public, but juries can
25:17
be unpredictable when instructed on semantic legal definitions. The defense
25:21
likely leveraged his claim that he just woke up and decided.
25:24
Speaker 1: To do it, framing it as a crime of passion
25:27
from the breakup.
25:27
Speaker 2: Yes, they introduced enough ambiguity to make the jury separate
25:31
buying the gun from deciding to pull the trigger that
25:33
specific morning.
25:34
Speaker 1: A semantic victory, but thankfully a hollow one because it
25:38
carried a mandatory life sentence. Carlos Jones will spend the
25:41
rest of his natural life behind bars.
25:43
Speaker 2: The structural integrity of the justice system held, He'll never
25:46
weaponize someone's empathy again.
25:48
Speaker 1: But I refuse to end on him. We have to
25:50
pivot back to Shadi La Johnson. Her kindness drew her
25:54
to Carlos. She chose compassion over judgment when she saw
25:57
a man living in his.
25:58
Speaker 2: Car, and it is absolutely idle. We recognize those qualities,
26:01
her empathy, her optimism, her desire to heal. Those were
26:04
her greatest strengths as a human being. The tragedy is
26:07
that she encountered a predator who systematically exploited them.
26:11
Speaker 1: This case destroys our preconceived notions of a dangerous person.
26:15
He wasn't a monster in the shadows. He was a
26:17
charming former athlete in a grocery store telling a girl
26:20
he liked her.
26:20
Speaker 2: Nails, Which is exactly why this knowledge is so vital
26:23
for you to absorb. You have to recognize the incities
26:27
difference between someone genuinely struggling and someone weaponizing their victimhood
26:32
to drain you.
26:33
Speaker 1: The dividing line is accountability. If they can't own their failures,
26:36
your compassion becomes their ammunition.
26:38
Speaker 2: Accountability is the armor that protects empathy.
26:41
Speaker 1: Perfectly said, and that leaves us with a final lingering
26:44
thought for you to mull over. We're taught from a
26:46
young age that compassion is the ultimate virtue. We're conditioned
26:49
to fix broken things. But at what point does our
26:52
empathy become our most dangerous blind spot? How do we
26:55
balance our beautiful human instinct to heal a wounded bird
26:58
with the absolute, uncompromising boundaries required to protect our own lives.
27:03
Thank you so much for joining us for this deep dive.
27:06
Stay curious, stay vigilant, and stay safe.