Latest / Why Humans Lie / How a Missing Key Fob Broke a Man's Mind and Set a Murder in Motion
Transcript
- 0:03Speaker 1: At seven fourteen. On the morning of January ninth, twenty nineteen,
- 0:08Speaker 1: a retired postal worker named Jerry Johnson was walking the
- 0:12Speaker 1: eastern shoreline of Callaway Reservoir outside Dunmore, Virginia. He almost
- 0:17Speaker 1: missed it, a man's left hand, palm facing up, resting
- 0:21Speaker 1: in the cattails at the water's edge. Curled in that
- 0:24Speaker 1: palm was a small orange key fob, a cub cadet
- 0:28Speaker 1: lawn tractor key, the kind that hangs on a kitchen
- 0:32Speaker 1: hook for eleven years without anyone ever thinking about it.
- 0:36Speaker 1: The hand belonged to Gregory Coleman, thirty eight years old,
- 0:40Speaker 1: and everything about what that key fob was doing there
- 0:42Speaker 1: would take investigators the better part of a year to understand.
- 0:46Speaker 1: There is a particular kind of manipulation that leaves almost
- 0:49Speaker 1: no bruises, not on the body, not at first, not
- 0:52Speaker 1: anywhere a person can point to and say there, that
- 0:56Speaker 1: is where it started. The manipulation documented in Great Greek,
- 1:00Speaker 1: Coleman's case worked differently. It began with attention, it ended
- 1:05Speaker 1: at a reservoir, and in between. According to evidence later
- 1:09Speaker 1: presented at trial, one person spent months quietly dismantling another
- 1:14Speaker 1: person's sense of his own reality, one small, almost invisible
- 1:19Speaker 1: act at a time. Gregory had lived in the same
- 1:23Speaker 1: bungalow on Mercer Lane for eleven years. He knew which
- 1:27Speaker 1: floorboard creaked, He knew where every tool hung in the shed.
- 1:31Speaker 1: He was, by every account, a careful view. What happened
- 1:35Speaker 1: to him was not a failure of caution. It was
- 1:38Speaker 1: something more deliberate than that, and far more patient. Gregory
- 1:42Speaker 1: Coleman turned thirty eight in October of two thousand eighteen.
- 1:46Speaker 1: He had worked as a regional inventory coordinator for Pattent
- 1:49Speaker 1: Brothers Building Supply for years, the kind of job that
- 1:53Speaker 1: rewards exactness, tracking what is where, what is missing, what
- 1:58Speaker 1: does not belong. He was good at it. His colleagues
- 2:02Speaker 1: described someone who caught discrepancies that other people walked past
- 2:06Speaker 1: without noticing. Outside the office, he sang baritone in the
- 2:10Speaker 1: choir at First Lutheran. Marcus Webb, the choir director sixty seven,
- 2:16Speaker 1: a retired music teacher who had known Gregory for years,
- 2:19Speaker 1: described his voice as reliable, present every Tuesday, never late,
- 2:25Speaker 1: never needing to be reminded of rehearsal time. That consistency
- 2:29Speaker 1: was not incidental. It was Gregory. He called his sister Donna,
- 2:34Speaker 1: who lived in Roanoke, with a regularity. She could set
- 2:37Speaker 1: a calendar by He had tended a raised garden bed
- 2:41Speaker 1: in the bungalow's small backyard. He knew his neighbor Phil
- 2:45Speaker 1: Curran's schedule well enough to wave from the driveway on
- 2:49Speaker 1: his way to work. For eleven years, there had been
- 2:53Speaker 1: no serious romantic relationship, not for lack of interest. People
- 2:57Speaker 1: who knew him well would later describe it as a
- 2:59Speaker 1: kind of careful self sufficiency, a man who had built
- 3:03Speaker 1: a life that worked and was not in the habit
- 3:05Speaker 1: of disrupting it. That detail matters because the person who
- 3:10Speaker 1: arrived in Dunmore in March of twenty eighteen understood something
- 3:15Speaker 1: about Gregory Coleman before they ever met him. They had
- 3:19Speaker 1: been watching three weeks before a first Lutheran church potluck
- 3:23Speaker 1: in the spring of twenty eighteen. Glenn Read, forty one,
- 3:27Speaker 1: knew to Dunmore, renting a property on dunbar Terrace, three
- 3:30Speaker 1: blocks from Mercer Lane. Had already looked up Gregory in
- 3:34Speaker 1: County property records, had already scrolled his public Facebook activity,
- 3:40Speaker 1: had already stopped to chat with Phil Curran at his
- 3:42Speaker 1: mailbox on a Tuesday morning, asking the kinds of neighborly
- 3:46Speaker 1: questions that produce useful answers. Who lives in that bungalow?
- 3:51Speaker 1: What does he do? Is he ever home during the day.
- 3:54Speaker 1: Glenn claimed a background in commercial real estate. Glen was
- 3:57Speaker 1: attentive in a way that Gregory, according to people who
- 4:00Speaker 1: knew him, was not accustomed to. A seed catalog appeared
- 4:04Speaker 1: a companion, planting book attendants at choir rehearsals, small gestures
- 4:10Speaker 1: consistently delivered, aimed precisely at the life Gregory had built.
- 4:15Speaker 1: He fell in love with the attention before he fell
- 4:18Speaker 1: in love with her. By July of twenty eighteen, Glen
- 4:22Speaker 1: had moved into the Mercer Lane bungalow. By September, something
- 4:26Speaker 1: small had gone missing, an orange cub cadet key fob
- 4:30Speaker 1: from a hook in the kitchen. Gregory noticed, he mentioned it.
- 4:35Speaker 1: What happened next, according to testimony and records later examined
- 4:39Speaker 1: a trial, was not a search for the key fob.
- 4:42Speaker 1: It was a reframing. Glenn suggested, according to those accounts,
- 4:46Speaker 1: that Gregory's concern about the missing object might itself be
- 4:51Speaker 1: the problem, that perhaps he was losing track of things
- 4:55Speaker 1: that perhaps the issue was with him. Gregory Coleman was
- 4:59Speaker 1: a man who caught discrepancies for a living, and someone
- 5:03Speaker 1: had just begun, very quietly, to convince him that he
- 5:08Speaker 1: could not trust what he noticed. The orange key fob
- 5:11Speaker 1: was gone. That was the first image that refused to leave.
- 5:15Speaker 1: It had hung on a hook in the kitchen of
- 5:17Speaker 1: the Mercer Lane bungalow for eleven years. Gregory Coleman used
- 5:22Speaker 1: it every time he started the riding mower. He was
- 5:25Speaker 1: a man who noticed discrepancies, who counted inventory across three
- 5:29Speaker 1: counties and caught what other people missed. If the fob moved,
- 5:33Speaker 1: he would know it moved. And now, according to testimony
- 5:37Speaker 1: presented at trial, he was being told that his knowing
- 5:41Speaker 1: was the problem. Glen did not suggest they looked behind
- 5:45Speaker 1: the cushions. Glenn suggested Gregory might be losing his grip
- 5:48Speaker 1: on small things, that perhaps his perception was unreliable, that
- 5:53Speaker 1: the fob's disappearance was less about the fob and more
- 5:56Speaker 1: about what it revealed in him. Gregory had spent even
- 6:00Speaker 1: years building a life in that bungalow. He had a
- 6:03Speaker 1: baritone part in First Lutheran's choir. He raised vegetables in
- 6:08Speaker 1: the front garden. He had a sister in Roanoke named Donna,
- 6:12Speaker 1: who had been listed as his emergency contact at Patten
- 6:15Speaker 1: Brothers for nine of those years. That contact was not
- 6:20Speaker 1: as of November two thousand eighteen, Donna anymore, and Gregory
- 6:24Speaker 1: did not know it had changed. The Patent Brothers Employee
- 6:28Speaker 1: portal allowed registered users to update personal information remotely. Someone
- 6:33Speaker 1: with Gregory's email credentials and password could log in from
- 6:36Speaker 1: any device. On a Tuesday night in October twenty eighteen,
- 6:41Speaker 1: at eleven seventeen in the evening, a device linked to
- 6:44Speaker 1: Glenn Reed's account accessed that portal. Gregory was at Choir Rehearsal.
- 6:49Speaker 1: Digital access logs confirmed the session. The IP address confirmed
- 6:54Speaker 1: the location. The changes confirmed the intent. Gregory's emergency contact
- 6:59Speaker 1: was dated to a name he had never mentioned to
- 7:02Speaker 1: anyone who knew him, Brenda Taft. Brenda Taft did not
- 7:06Speaker 1: exist as any part of Gregory's life. The phone number
- 7:10Speaker 1: attached to that name traced to a prepaid cell purchased
- 7:13Speaker 1: at a Walgreens in Lynchburg, Virginia, in August of twenty eighteen,
- 7:18Speaker 1: two months before the portal access. Someone had built the
- 7:21Speaker 1: contact before they needed it. Donna Coleman in Roanoke had
- 7:26Speaker 1: no idea she had been removed. Gregory discovered the change
- 7:30Speaker 1: in November, according to accounts from people who knew him,
- 7:34Speaker 1: he did not call Donna. He did not file a
- 7:36Speaker 1: complaint with Padden Brothers. He told no one except eventually
- 7:41Speaker 1: Marcus Webb, and not until December, when the conversation had
- 7:45Speaker 1: already shifted to the four hundred one k. By early December,
- 7:49Speaker 1: the beneficiary on Gregory's four hundred one k had also
- 7:53Speaker 1: been changed. Glenn Reed named as primary. A partial savings
- 7:58Speaker 1: withdrawal had been initiated, one Gregory had not started. It
- 8:03Speaker 1: remained incomplete, but the structure was there. A portal that
- 8:07Speaker 1: had been entered without him, a retirement account redirected toward
- 8:12Speaker 1: a person he had met in March, a stranger's phone
- 8:15Speaker 1: number standing in for his sister. There is a pattern
- 8:19Speaker 1: that forensic accountant Janet Ferrell documented in late February of
- 8:23Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen, after the County Prosecutor's office engaged her.
- 8:27Speaker 1: She pulled rental records, employment records, utility accounts across four states.
- 8:33Speaker 1: A fingerprint match tied Glen Reed to a woman named
- 8:36Speaker 1: Gwen Radcliffe, who had spent eight months as the girlfriend
- 8:40Speaker 1: of a man named Arthur Simms in a Charlotte suburb.
- 8:44Speaker 1: Arthur Simms died in two thousand six. Gwen Radcliffe had
- 8:48Speaker 1: been named as beneficiary on his life insurance six weeks
- 8:52Speaker 1: before his death. The case was closed as accidental. Six
- 8:56Speaker 1: years later, in the Knoxville area, a woman named Glenna
- 9:00Speaker 1: Rourke spent five months with a man named Dennis Hollis.
- 9:03Speaker 1: Hollis was hospitalized after a fall on an icy step.
- 9:07Speaker 1: In the week before his fall, his bank account was
- 9:10Speaker 1: accessed three times Glenna Rourke, same fingerprints, same documented pattern,
- 9:16Speaker 1: three names, three states, one person. Marcus Webb was sixty
- 9:21Speaker 1: seven years old and had been directing choir at First
- 9:25Speaker 1: Lutheran for longer than Gregory had been a member. He
- 9:28Speaker 1: had watched Gregory sing baritone for years, watched him arrive
- 9:32Speaker 1: early to set up chairs, watched him become the kind
- 9:36Speaker 1: of man a congregation relies on without thinking about it.
- 9:40Speaker 1: In December of twenty eighteen, Marcus watched Gregory closely for
- 9:45Speaker 1: a different reason. Gregory had come to him with questions
- 9:48Speaker 1: about his four hundred one K should he withdraw early
- 9:53Speaker 1: Glen had suggested it might make sense. Marcus, a retired
- 9:57Speaker 1: music teacher who had managed his own retirement accounts with
- 9:59Speaker 1: ca considerable care, told Gregory to talk to a financial
- 10:03Speaker 1: counselor first. Gregory nodded, he did not book the appointment immediately.
- 10:08Speaker 1: What Marcus noticed, and what he would describe later as
- 10:12Speaker 1: a co author of the victim impact Statement alongside Donna,
- 10:16Speaker 1: was that Gregory seemed uncertain of himself in a way
- 10:20Speaker 1: that was new. He had always been precise, a man
- 10:24Speaker 1: who kept spreadsheets for garden planting schedules. Now he second guest.
- 10:29Speaker 1: Small things He paused before answering questions that would not
- 10:32Speaker 1: have required pausing before. Marcus invited Gregory to arrive early
- 10:37Speaker 1: for Tuesday practiced the week before January eighth. He wanted
- 10:41Speaker 1: to talk without the pressure of rehearsals starting. Gregory left
- 10:45Speaker 1: the Mercer Lane bungalow on the evening of January eighth,
- 10:49Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, at six forty p m. He did not
- 10:53Speaker 1: arrive early. He did not arrive at all. Glen reed,
- 10:56Speaker 1: when later questioned, said she had been home alone that evening.
- 11:00Speaker 1: Cell tower data presented on the fourth day of trial
- 11:03Speaker 1: placed Glen's phone within three hundred yards of First Lutheran
- 11:07Speaker 1: Service entrance at the time, Gregory would have been walking
- 11:10Speaker 1: or driving there. She was not home. The tower did
- 11:14Speaker 1: not negotiate. Jerry Johnson, a retired postal worker who walked
- 11:19Speaker 1: the eastern shoreline of Callaway Reservoir each morning, found Gregory
- 11:23Speaker 1: Coleman at seven fourteen a m. On January ninth. The
- 11:28Speaker 1: body was in the cattails. Gregory's left hand was open,
- 11:32Speaker 1: palm facing upward, resting in it an orange cub cadet
- 11:36Speaker 1: key fob. Only Gregory's fingerprints were on it. The fob
- 11:41Speaker 1: had been missing since September. Someone had kept it for
- 11:44Speaker 1: four months and placed it there. Picture the portal session
- 11:47Speaker 1: at eleven seventeen on that Tuesday night in October, Glen's device,
- 11:52Speaker 1: Glen's credentials, Gregory singing baritone across town. If the intent
- 11:57Speaker 1: was only financial access, the ac count redirect the beneficiary
- 12:02Speaker 1: position for a claim, then the emergency contact change is redundant.
- 12:06Speaker 1: You do not need to erase Donna to collect a
- 12:09Speaker 1: four hundred one K. You erase Donna for a different reason.
- 12:14Speaker 1: You erase her so that when something happens to Gregory,
- 12:17Speaker 1: the first call does not go to Roanoke. That detail,
- 12:21Speaker 1: the prepaid phone, the August purchase state, the two months
- 12:25Speaker 1: between buying it and using it is not the behavior
- 12:28Speaker 1: of impulse. It is preparation. Someone decided before the leaves
- 12:33Speaker 1: changed that Donna Coleman needed to not exist in Gregory's
- 12:37Speaker 1: official record. But consider the version where this ends at fraud.
- 12:42Speaker 1: Glenn enters the portal, redirects the retirement account, completes the
- 12:47Speaker 1: savings withdrawal, and disappears before January eighth. That version is
- 12:52Speaker 1: consistent with the Knoxville pattern Dennis Hollis's bank accessed then distance.
- 12:58Speaker 1: It is consistent with the Sharkarlett pattern. Gwen Radcliffe named beneficiary,
- 13:03Speaker 1: Arthur Simms dies case closed accidental, Gwen moves on. That
- 13:09Speaker 1: version collapses the moment you place Glenn's foam within three
- 13:12Speaker 1: hundred yards of First Lutheran on the night Gregory walked
- 13:16Speaker 1: out his front door. A financial crime does not require presence,
- 13:21Speaker 1: it requires access. Glen already had access, had used it
- 13:25Speaker 1: in October, had changed, the beneficiary, had positioned the account.
- 13:30Speaker 1: There was no financial reason to be within three hundred
- 13:33Speaker 1: yards of a church on a January evening. The cell
- 13:36Speaker 1: tower data is not evidence of a coincidence. It is
- 13:40Speaker 1: evidence of a decision made about something other than money.
- 13:44Speaker 1: The key fob is the last piece that will not
- 13:46Speaker 1: fit any version except one. It had been missing since September.
- 13:52Speaker 1: No forensic link placed it in Glen's hands. Only Gregory's
- 13:56Speaker 1: fingerprints were recovered. But Gregory did not put it in
- 14:00Speaker 1: his own palm. Someone else carried that object for four months,
- 14:04Speaker 1: someone who understood what it meant to him, someone who
- 14:08Speaker 1: had watched him notice its absence and then worked methodically
- 14:12Speaker 1: to make him doubt that noticing returning it, placing it
- 14:16Speaker 1: there in his open hand was not practical. It carried
- 14:20Speaker 1: no evidentiary purpose for the person who placed it. It
- 14:24Speaker 1: was something else, a signature or closing of an account.
- 14:28Speaker 1: The inventory coordinator, who had spent his career finding what
- 14:32Speaker 1: was missing, was left holding the one small thing that
- 14:35Speaker 1: had gone missing from his own life. Glen red denied
- 14:38Speaker 1: every charge through eight months of pre trial proceedings, through
- 14:42Speaker 1: jury selection, through the prosecution's entire case in chief. On
- 14:46Speaker 1: the fourth day of trial, when the digital access logs
- 14:49Speaker 1: and the cell tower data were presented together, the device,
- 14:53Speaker 1: the credentials, the IP, the tower, the timeline, Glen looked
- 14:58Speaker 1: at the jury, then looked at the floor. The following morning,
- 15:01Speaker 1: before the defense began, Glenn confessed. The jury deliberated for
- 15:06Speaker 1: four hours. The verdict was unanimous on all accounts. The
- 15:10Speaker 1: sentence was life without parole. After the confession, the County
- 15:14Speaker 1: Prosecutor's office filed the formal record. Glenn read also Gwen
- 15:19Speaker 1: Radcliffe also Glenn or Rourke, had moved through four states
- 15:24Speaker 1: and at least two prior targets before arriving in Dunmore
- 15:28Speaker 1: in March of twenty eighteen. The pattern was documented survey approach, isolate,
- 15:36Speaker 1: extract exit. Gregory Coleman was not the beginning of that pattern,
- 15:41Speaker 1: he was the end of it. Janet Ferrell, the forensic
- 15:45Speaker 1: accountant brought in by the Prosecutor's office in late February
- 15:50Speaker 1: of twenty nineteen, spent weeks tracing the financial architecture Glenn
- 15:55Speaker 1: had built inside Gregory's life. What she found was improvised.
- 16:01Speaker 1: The beneficiary change on the four oh one K was
- 16:04Speaker 1: executed through the Pattent Brothers employee portal using Glenn's device,
- 16:09Speaker 1: Glenn's email credentials and an IP address consistent with the
- 16:12Speaker 1: Mercer Lane Bungalow on a Tuesday night in October at
- 16:16Speaker 1: eleven seventeen in the evening, while Gregory was at choir rehearsal.
- 16:21Speaker 1: The prepaid phone registered to Brenda Taft was purchased at
- 16:24Speaker 1: a Walbreens in Lynchburg, Virginia in August of twenty eighteen,
- 16:29Speaker 1: three months before Gregory discovered the emergency contact anomaly and
- 16:34Speaker 1: said nothing to his sister. Donna Coleman had been Gregory's
- 16:37Speaker 1: emergency contact for nine years. She was removed without his knowledge.
- 16:43Speaker 1: In her place a name attached to a phone that
- 16:45Speaker 1: did not exist as a person. It was not careless,
- 16:49Speaker 1: it was architectural. Glenn had understood that in a medical emergency,
- 16:53Speaker 1: in a moment of crisis, the person most likely to
- 16:56Speaker 1: ask the right questions had to be unreachable. Arthur Sids
- 17:00Speaker 1: died in two thousand six in a Charlotte suburb. His
- 17:03Speaker 1: girlfriend of eight months, Gwen Radcliffe, had been named beneficiary
- 17:08Speaker 1: on his life insurance six weeks before his death. The
- 17:12Speaker 1: case was closed as accidental. Dennis Hollis was hospitalized in
- 17:16Speaker 1: twenty twelve in the Knoxville area after a fall on
- 17:19Speaker 1: an icy step. His girlfriend of five months, Glenna Rourke
- 17:23Speaker 1: had accessed his bank account three times in the week
- 17:26Speaker 1: before the fall. No charges were filed. Two prior targets,
- 17:31Speaker 1: two prior identities. Neither case resulted in prosecution. Fingerprint records
- 17:36Speaker 1: tied Gwen Radcliffe to Glen Reed. Rental records, employment records,
- 17:41Speaker 1: utility accounts across four states confirmed the pattern. The aliases
- 17:46Speaker 1: were not improvised after the fact, they were prepared in advance.
- 17:51Speaker 1: Glen was indicted in April of twenty nineteen on one
- 17:55Speaker 1: count of first degree murder and two counts of financial fraud.
- 17:59Speaker 1: The denial held through eight months of pre trial proceedings.
- 18:02Speaker 1: It held through jury selection, It held through the prosecution's
- 18:06Speaker 1: entire case in chief. On the fourth day of trial,
- 18:10Speaker 1: the digital access logs and the cell tower data were
- 18:13Speaker 1: presented together, the device, the credentials, the IP, the tower,
- 18:18Speaker 1: the time stamp, the geography. Glenn looked at the jury,
- 18:22Speaker 1: then at the floor. The following morning, before the defense
- 18:26Speaker 1: called a single witness, Glenn confessed. The jury deliberated for
- 18:30Speaker 1: four hours. The conviction was unanimous on all three counts.
- 18:34Speaker 1: The sentence was life without parole. There is a detail
- 18:38Speaker 1: that does not appear in any court filing in any indictment,
- 18:42Speaker 1: in any forensic report. It came after the trial. The
- 18:45Speaker 1: orange cub cadet keyfob recovered from Gregory's left hand, cataloged
- 18:50Speaker 1: as evidence held through the proceedings, was returned to Donna
- 18:53Speaker 1: Coleman after the trial concluded. She drove from Roanoke. She
- 18:58Speaker 1: did not display it, she did not frame it. She
- 19:02Speaker 1: carried it to the bungalow on Mercer Lane, walked to
- 19:05Speaker 1: the back, and pressed it into the straw mulch of
- 19:08Speaker 1: the first raised bed in Gregory's garden in January, the
- 19:13Speaker 1: same month her brother had died. Marcus Webb, who had
- 19:16Speaker 1: spent eleven years directing Gregory's voice every Tuesday night, co
- 19:20Speaker 1: wrote Donna's victim impact statement. He described Gregory as a
- 19:25Speaker 1: man who found what was missing, a regional inventory coordinator
- 19:29Speaker 1: who could account for every bracket, every hinge, every line item,
- 19:33Speaker 1: and who had not been able to account for the
- 19:35Speaker 1: slow disappearance of his own life. The thing that is
- 19:38Speaker 1: hardest to hold about this case is not the violence
- 19:41Speaker 1: at its end. It is the length of the middle
- 19:44Speaker 1: ten months, ten months of a man noticing things that
- 19:47Speaker 1: did not add up. A key fob gone from a
- 19:50Speaker 1: kitchen hook an emergency contact. He did not recognize a
- 19:54Speaker 1: retirement account being redirected, and each time he noticed, the
- 19:58Speaker 1: noticing was turned back on him. His attention to detail,
- 20:03Speaker 1: which had defined his professional life, was reframed as anxiety.
- 20:08Speaker 1: His memory was made to seem unreliable. His perception was
- 20:12Speaker 1: the target. This is what manipulation of this kind actually does.
- 20:16Speaker 1: It does not erase a person's reality in one stroke.
- 20:20Speaker 1: It dismantles it incrementally, peace by piece, until the person
- 20:24Speaker 1: doing the noticing begins to distrust the noticing itself. Gregory
- 20:29Speaker 1: Coleman was a careful man. He was careful in the
- 20:32Speaker 1: worst possible circumstances, circumstances sipistically designed to make carefulness feel
- 20:39Speaker 1: like a symptom. Donna placed a key fob and the
- 20:42Speaker 1: frozen ground of her brother's garden, a small orange object
- 20:45Speaker 1: under january straw, where Gregory had planted things with the
- 20:49Speaker 1: expectation of return. That is the image. This case leaves,
- 20:54Speaker 1: not a Courton, not a verdict, a garden in winter
- 20:58Speaker 1: and one thing returned and too late to the person
- 21:01Speaker 1: who had been looking for it. This show is made
- 21:04Speaker 1: by Oba Media,