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Woman Accused of Hiring Hitman to Kill Husband Faces Judge · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I want you to picture a scene for me. Just
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: imagine it in your mind, right? In as much vivid
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: detail as you possibly can.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Okay, I'm picturing it.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: So you're sitting in a perfectly ordinary, mundane, suburban mall
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: parking lot. It's daytime. The sun is out.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Just a normal afternoon.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Yeah. Like people are walking by with shopping bags.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: They're wrestling kids into car seats. They are completely oblivious
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: to what is happening just a few feet away from them.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Right, because why wouldn't they be?
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: But inside one specific parked car, the air is just thick.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: A terrifying calculated negotiation is taking place. You have a mother,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: a confidential informant, and a man she firmly believes is
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: a professional contract killer.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: And this mother is literally negotiating the price of her
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: ex-husband's life.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: She is. They settle on a price, which is $ 5, 000. But,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: you know, she doesn't have the cash up front.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Which is pretty standard for something like this, honestly. Right.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: So she reaches into her purse. She bypasses her wallet,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: she bypasses her keys, and she pulls out her vehicle registration. Yeah.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: And she hands it over as a physical down payment
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: to guarantee a murder.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: The contrast between the setting and the action is just,
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: it's what makes it so jarring. I mean, we are
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: conditioned to associate contract killings with, like, shadowy underworld locations.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Like an abandoned warehouse or something.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Not a sprawling asphalt lot outside a retail center
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: on a random April afternoon.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: But this isn't a scene from a Hollywood thriller. This
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: is a documented historical reality. It happened on April 11th, 2024.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: And that striking reality is the foundation for today's deep
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: dive into our sources. We are looking at a really
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: staggering set of source material today.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: It really is staggering.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: We have this comprehensive transcript from the Law and Crime Network.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: It features intense courtroom details, verbatim shocking undercover audio, And
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: some really profound analysis from a digital journalist.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Justin Shepard, right. Right.
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  Speaker 1: He operates online under the moniker Justin the Nick of Crime.
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  Speaker 1: And all of this material centers on the case of
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  Speaker 1: Angelia Solomon. She goes by Angie, and she's a Tennessee
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: mother who was arrested and charged with first-degree murder for hire.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: The goal here for this deep dive is to, you know,
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: push past the sensationalism. It is very easy to just
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: look at a headline about a mother hiring a hitman
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: and leave the analysis right there.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: Oh, for sure. People do it all the time.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: But when you actually immerse yourself in the raw source material,
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: you realize this isn't simply a story about an undercover
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: sting operation. This is a forensic look at a family's
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: total catastrophic collapse.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly what it is.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: The mission for us today is to trace the anatomy
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: of that collapse. Like how does a family one that
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: was once fronted by a prominent local television news anchor collapse?
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: descend over a decade into all of this.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: It's a lot. We're talking allegations of severe abuse, the
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: scientifically baffling death of a teenage boy, wild political conspiracy theories.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: Theories reaching the highest levels of state government, mind you. Right.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: And ultimately, it ends with an attempted contract killing in
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: a mall parking lot.
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  Speaker 2: That trajectory is exactly why you, listening right now, need
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: to care about this case. It is an absolute masterclass
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: in the human breaking point.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, it really demonstrates how unresolved trauma, the volatile
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: nature of the court of public opinion, and the modern
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: digital true crime ecosystem can all just, well, pour gasoline
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: on a bitter family dispute.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: It absolutely escalates a localized domestic tragedy into a highly
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: dangerous pursuit of what Angie herself called vigilante justice.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, vigilante justice. So let's unpack this from the inside out.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: Let's start right inside that car on that April afternoon
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  Speaker 1: in suburban Nashville.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, let's go there.
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  Speaker 1: We have Angie Solomon, the informant, and an undercover agent
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, the TBI. And he
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  Speaker 1: is posing as the hitman.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: And the audio we have from this exchange is, I mean,
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  Speaker 2: it's methodical to the point of being disturbing.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: It really is. I wanted to ask you about, actually,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: because the TBI agent is really driving the conversation with
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: incredibly specific parameters. He is.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: In the undercover audio, he presents Angie with distinct options
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: regarding her ex-husband. Aaron Solomon.
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  Speaker 1: Right. And Angie initiates it by stating that Aaron belongs
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: in one of two places, she says, in prison or
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: under the ground.
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  Speaker 2: Now, in everyday conversation, people use hyperbole, right? They vent.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: They say things they don't mean.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like, I'm going to kill him, but you just
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  Speaker 1: mean you're mad.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. But the agent doesn't let that slide as an
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  Speaker 2: expression of anger. He presses her. He forces a choice
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  Speaker 2: between those two distinct outcomes.
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  Speaker 1: And she chooses. She explicitly says she wants him under
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: the ground.
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  Speaker 2: She doesn't hesitate, and she doesn't stop there either. She
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  Speaker 2: is terrifyingly detailed about the logistics.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: She provides this undercover agent with Aaron's physical description. She
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: notes specifically that he's about 5'8 with shoes on. Like,
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  Speaker 1: she builds a whole dossier for him right there in
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  Speaker 1: the car.
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  Speaker 2: She really does. She tells the supposed hitman exactly where
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: Aaron lives, where he works... and even where he goes
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: to work out.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this, because when I first read that
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: part of the transcript, I initially thought the agent asking
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: if she wanted it done fast or slow was just
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  Speaker 1: a tactic.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: Like trying to sound tough.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like a character in a movie trying to play
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: the part of a hardened killer. Why are law enforcement
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: officers trained to ask these highly specific, almost movie villain questions?
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: Well, the agent's questions aren't theatrical. They're structural. Every single
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: question that agent asks is designed to build an impenetrable
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: legal wall around her intent.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: OK, that makes sense.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: The charge of solicitation of murder has a very high,
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: very strict legal threshold. If you arrest someone just for
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: venting their frustrations, a defense attorney will shred the prosecution.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Right. Because the defense's immediate strategy in a courtroom is
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: going to be to claim their client was simply blowing
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: off steam. Exactly.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: They will argue she was caught in a moment of
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: extreme emotional distress, just engaging in a dark fantasy. and
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: that she never literally intended for a human being to
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: lose their life.
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  Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, so the agent is anticipating that exact offense.
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  Speaker 1: I was just angry, but I'd never actually pull the
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: trigger excuse.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: Yes. By making her choose between prison and death, and
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: then forcing her to articulate the method fast versus slow,
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  Speaker 2: they are removing all ambiguity.
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  Speaker 1: She is no longer just a passive participant nodding along
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: to a scary guy in a car.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: Exactly. She is actively directing the parameters of a homicide.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: You've hit on the exact mechanism of an undercover sting.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: So what does she actually say when he asks fast
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: or slow?
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  Speaker 2: Her response is what truly chills the blood. She replies,
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  Speaker 2: slow is better than quick.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, my God. Yeah.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: And her justification is deeply personal. She claims on the
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  Speaker 2: audio that he likes to oppress women and drug people. Therefore,
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: he deserves a prolonged, agonizing end.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: It's just so dark. And the agent is systematically eliminating
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: every possible avenue of plausible deniability.
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  Speaker 2: He is. And the final nail in that legal coffin
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  Speaker 2: is the transaction itself. The agreed upon cost for the
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: hit is $ 5, 000. But as you noted earlier, she doesn't
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  Speaker 2: have the liquid cash on hand.
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  Speaker 1: Right, which leads to her handing over her car registration
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: as a down payment. Think about the surreal nature of
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  Speaker 1: that business transaction. It is a chillingly mundane bartering system
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  Speaker 1: applied to a human life.
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  Speaker 2: It really is. She physically hands over her vehicle registration
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  Speaker 2: as collateral.
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  Speaker 1: And she promises to pay him double the upfront amount,
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  Speaker 1: so $ 10, 000, but only after the job is confirmed to
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  Speaker 1: be done.
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  Speaker 2: Right. And she refers to this plot out loud as
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: vigilante justice. She insists repeatedly that there can be no
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: trace back to her, specifically stating she does not want
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: to go to jail.
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  Speaker 1: When you physically hand over a document, like a car title,
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  Speaker 1: it just feels like that bridges the gap between a
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  Speaker 1: thought crime and a physical action.
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  Speaker 2: That physical exchange is the crucial inflection point. Handing over
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  Speaker 2: the registration crosses the legal Rubicon from intent to action.
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  Speaker 1: It makes it real.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. It is an overt act in furtherance of the crime.
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  Speaker 2: Once that document leaves her hand and enters the agent's hand,
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  Speaker 2: the requisite criteria for a first-degree murder for higher charge
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  Speaker 2: are locked in. The TBI has what they need.
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  Speaker 1: But to understand the psychology of a mother sitting in
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  Speaker 1: a car, feeling so cornered and so consumed by grievance
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  Speaker 1: that she is bartering her car title for a murder,
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  Speaker 1: we cannot just look at 2024.
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  Speaker 2: No, this didn't happen in a vacuum.
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  Speaker 1: Not at all. We have to rewind the clock over
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  Speaker 1: a decade. We need to go back to 2013, to
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: the initial fracturing of what appeared, at least from the
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: outside looking in, to be a picture-perfect, prominent Nashville family.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: The historical context is the only way to really map
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  Speaker 2: the escalation here. The roots of that parking lot meeting...
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  Speaker 2: are buried deep in a highly publicized divorce.
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  Speaker 1: And the target of the hit, Aaron Solomon, was not
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: just some anonymous citizen.
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  Speaker 2: Far from it. He was a very well-known public figure
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: in the Middle Tennessee area. He had a career as
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  Speaker 2: a Channel 4 television news anchor and a prominent radio
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  Speaker 2: host in Nashville.
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  Speaker 1: So he was a local celebrity, basically. Someone recognized in
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: grocery stores and at community events.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: Exactly. He eventually left the broadcasting business around 2011. And
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: two years after stepping out of the spotlight in 2013,
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  Speaker 2: Aaron filed for divorce from Angie.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: According to the extensive court records detailed in our sources,
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  Speaker 1: this was not your standard division of assets.
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  Speaker 2: No, this split was remarkably contentious and incredibly dark.
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  Speaker 1: Angie didn't just allege irreconcilable differences. She leveled devastating accusations
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  Speaker 1: against Aaron, claiming he had physically, mentally, and sexually abused her,
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  Speaker 1: as well as their two children, Grant and Gracie.
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  Speaker 2: And Aaron vehemently completely deny these claims. He didn't just
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: deny them in passing either. He went on the offensive
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: legally and sued Angie for slander.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: Right. The trajectory of that slander lawsuit is a pivotal
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: moment in understanding Angie's evolving mindset.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: It really is. The lawsuit itself was eventually dismissed. However,
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: the documentation of that dismissal contained a highly critical permanent
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: notation from the judge.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: A notation that would basically haunt this entire case.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: Yes. The judge explicitly wrote into the record that the
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: divorce court found Ms. Solomon's allegations of abuse, quote, lacked merit.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: And we should probably state here, clearly and unequivocally based
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: on our sources, that Aaron Solomon has never faced any
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: criminal charges for these allegations.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: That is a crucial fact to remember as we move forward.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's freeze right there, because I think this is
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: where the divergence between the legal system and human psychology
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: really begins.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: How do you mean?
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Well, a judge officially, on paper, rules that abuse allegations
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: lack merit. In a normal situation, in a vacuum, that
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: legal finding ends the argument, right? The gavel falls, the
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: matter is settled. But in the court of public opinion,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: does a judge's ruling ever actually stop a narrative once
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: it's out there?
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: No, rarely. That divergence exposes a massive, often agonizing rift
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: between the mechanics of family court and the reality of
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: human perception.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: Right, because the public doesn't care about court rulings when
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: they've made up their minds.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: And family court is a unique environment to begin with.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: Proving abuse allegations definitively in divorce proceedings is notoriously difficult.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: It's all about evidence, right?
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The burden of proof, the rules of evidence, the
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: required documentation, they operate within a rigid, highly specific framework.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: It is not designed to validate feelings. It is designed
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: to evaluate admissible evidence.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: Which means someone can walk away from family court feeling
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: completely gaslit by the system itself.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. If you firmly believe down to your bones that
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: you and your children were abused and a judge stands
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: a piece of paper saying your reality lacks merit, you
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: don't just say, oh, well, I guess I was wrong.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: No, you feel entirely failed. You feel abandoned by the
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: very official channels that society tells you are there to
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: protect you.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: And that institutional betrayal is a powerful catalyst. When the
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: legal system considers the matter closed, but the individual feels
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: fundamentally unprotected, a profound disillusionment takes root.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Which makes total sense.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: This is the exact fertile ground where the seeds of
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: vigilantism are planted. The internal logic shifts. It becomes, if
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: the courts, the police, and the judges will not protect
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: my family, I am forced to find another way outside
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: the system.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: And what makes this case so layered is that this
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: deep sense of a totally failed system wasn't just an
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: internal monologue for Angie. It wasn't just contained to her
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: divorce filing.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: Oh, it wasn't.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: It was loudly publicly echoed years later by their teenage daughter.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: When institutions fail you, you seek leverage outside of them.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: And in the modern era, that leverage often takes the
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: form of digital broadcasting.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: Which brings us to a highly disturbing piece of digital evidence.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: This evidence completely ripped this family dispute out of the
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: private sphere and threw it into the public arena.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: The digital footprint of this case is immense, and it
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: centers largely on a video known as the Freedom for
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: Gracie upload.
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: On May 12, 2021, an 18-minute and 16-second video was
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: uploaded publicly to a YouTube account holding that exact title,
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: Freedom for Gracie.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: To give you listening some context on the timeline, Gracie,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: who is 18 years old now, was around 12 years
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: old at the time she recorded this footage.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: And the allegations a 12-year-old child makes against her father, Aaron,
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: in this video are just horrific.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: She looks directly into the camera and calls him a monster.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: She states, with visible distress, that she is absolutely terrified
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: of him.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: She claims he hurt her sexually, physically, and mentally. The
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: video contains deeply disturbing specific details. She claims that Aaron
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: never allowed her mother to bathe her. insisting on doing
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: it himself.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and she recounts telling her mom that she felt
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: more like a wife to him instead of his daughter.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: Hearing a child articulate those specific dynamics is profoundly unsettling.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: It is incredibly heavy, difficult material to process. The digital
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: journalist Justin Shepard, who communicated directly with Angie during his investigation,
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: noted the mother's framing of this video.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Right, because Angie claimed that Gracie recorded this footage out
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: of an absolute visceral fear for her own life.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: The narrative was that Gracie essentially wanted her truth out
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: there in the world as a kind of digital dead
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: man switch. You know, a permanent record just in case
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: something terrible happened to her.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: There's also a really fascinating jurisdictional complication that arises from
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: these allegations, specifically involving the FBI, right? Yes.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: The jurisdictional element is a crucial layer to how this
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: case was handled or, in the eyes of true crime advocates, mishandled.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: So what exactly happened there?
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: An allegation emerged regarding sexual abuse that supposedly occurred during
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: a travel baseball tournament in North Carolina. Because this alleged
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: incident crossed state lines from Tennessee to North Carolina, it
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: theoretically opened the door for federal involvement.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see. Because it's across state lines. Right.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: It could have pulled the investigation out of Tennessee's local jurisdiction,
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: which Angie already deeply distrusted.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Did the FBI ever actually take it?
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: Well, as Justin Shepard meticulously noted in his analysis of
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: the source material, Despite this potential federal avenue, nothing has
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: ever materialized. No federal charges, no state charges, nothing has
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: ever been filed against Aaron regarding these claims.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: So we have to look at the massive elephant in
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: the room here. We have an 18-minute video of a
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: child making the most horrific accusations imaginable against a former
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: public figure. It's sitting on YouTube. It's generating views, speculation,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: and outrage.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: And yet, Aaron has remained completely, entirely silent.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: The sources note he has not gone to the media
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: to defend himself. And honestly, when I first read that,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: my immediate reaction was confusion. If someone accused you of this,
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: wouldn't you shout your innocence from the rooftops?
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: It's a natural reaction to want to defend yourself, yeah.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: Especially when it's your own child in a public forum.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: You'd want to be on every local news channel, holding
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: press conferences, aggressively clearing your name. Why choose silence?
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: The contrast between our expectation of a defense and Aaron's
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: actual behavior is is something Justin Shepard himself expressed deep
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: bewilderment over. Aaron's absolute silence is a massive anomaly in
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: today's media landscape.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: It really is. Think about the standard playbook for high-profile
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: individuals accused of terrible things. They almost instinctively initiate a
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: media blitz.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They hire crisis PR firms. They sit down for exclusive,
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: tearful interviews. They fight the narrative aggressively in the public
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: square to win the court of public opinion.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Because if you don't fight the narrative... the narrative becomes
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: reality for the public.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But we have to separate the public relations strategy
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: from the legal strategy. Because public relations-wise, yes, silence looks bad.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: But legally speaking, silence is your absolute strongest weapon, especially
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: when you are uncharged.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: Right. I guess a lawyer would tell you to shut up.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: A defense attorney will explicitly instruct their client, do not speak.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: Do not give the police, the media, or the public
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: a single syllable that can be twisted, scrutinized, or used
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: to build a case against you.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: From a purely legal standpoint, Aaron's silence is an exercise
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: in textbook discipline.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: But in the modern true crime ecosystem, that legal discipline
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: acts as an accelerant for suspicion.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: Oh, totally. To the digital sleuths, to the true crime
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: podcasters and advocates analyzing every frame of that YouTube video,
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: silence is almost uniformly interpreted as guilt.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: The internet's logic is relentless. It's basically, if you have
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: nothing to hide, you would speak. So his adherence to
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: legal self-preservation is actively feeding the public's conviction that he
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: is a monster.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: And the vacuum created by his silence was massive. It
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: was filled entirely without opposition by Angie and Gracie's narrative.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: But pulling back to the timeline for a second, there
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: is a glaring, pressing question that we have to answer.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Which is?
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: Why did a 12-year-old Gracie suddenly feel that her life
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: was in such imminent, terrifying danger in 2021? that she
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: needed to record an 18-minute video as an insurance policy,
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: what triggered that sudden acute level of absolute terror.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: Right. And the answer to that is the shocking, violent,
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: and honestly scientifically baffling tragedy that had just befallen her
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: older brother, Grant.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: The death of Grant Solomon is the event that truly
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: severed this family from reality and sent the entire situation
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: spiraling into a totally different stratosphere.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: So on July 20th, 2020, Grant, who was an 18-year-old
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: star high school baseball player with a bright future, died
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: at a baseball training facility in Gallatin, Tennessee, located in
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: Sumner County.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: And the official narrative provided by local authorities is that
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: this was a tragic, freak vehicular accident.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: The sequence of events, according to the official report, is
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: that Grant was getting his baseball bat out of his truck.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: The vehicle was a five-year-old automatic Toyota Tacoma. Right.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: And the story posits that the truck somehow popped out
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: of gear on its own. rolled backward while the gear
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: shift was still allegedly in the park position, dragged the
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: young athlete into a ditch, and killed him.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: But there is an immense, overshadowing complication to this entire
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: official narrative. The detail that has fueled years of intense
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: local and internet speculation.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: And that is the fact that Aaron Solomon was the
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: one and only witness to this event.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: The sole witness to a mathematically improbable accident happens to
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: be the father, who is already accused of horrific abuse.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: The 911 call from that day, which we have details
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: of in our sources, is harrowing. Aaron is heard frantically
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: telling the dispatcher that the truck backed over Grant, rolled
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: over him, and he uses the specific phrase that the
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: truck drugged him into the ditch.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: But when you apply forensic scrutiny to the scene, the
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: narrative really starts to fracture. Justin Shepard, the digital journalist,
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: methodically analyzed the crime scene photos that Angie had managed
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: to obtain and post online.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: And Shepard points out severe physical and mechanical anomalies that
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: wildly contradict the official story of a runaway vehicle.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: First, in the photographs taken immediately after the incident, the
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: truck's gear shift is visibly sitting in the park position.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: Now, think about a magic trick where the outcome makes
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: no logical sense based on the setup. You have an
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: automatic truck in park. If you put a car in park,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: you are engaging a parking paw, which is a literal
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: metal pin that locks the transmission. Right.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: For a truck to violently roll backward down an incline
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: while in park, That thick metal pin has to catastrophically
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: shear off or fail.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: But let's look at the secondary evidence Shepard highlights, which
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: to me is even more damning than the gear shift.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Shepard notes that in these crime scene photos, items sitting
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: on the passenger seats of the truck had not tipped
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: over or moved.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: Wait, really? Not even tipped over? Not at all.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: And that detail totally defies the basic laws of physics
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: governing a heavy vehicle violently rolling down into a ditch.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: It completely does. If a five-year-old Toyota Tacoma violently rolls backward,
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: gaining enough momentum to drag an 18-year-old athlete over uneven
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: terrain and down into a ditch, the inertia alone is massive.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: A coffee cup, a notebook, or a gym bag sitting
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: loose on the passenger seat does not remain perfectly upright
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: and undisturbed during a violent bouncing descent. It is a
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: physical impossibility.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: It really is a puzzle missing half its pieces.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: And expanding on those physical anomalies at the scene, Shepard
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: points out a glaring corporate anomaly that simply cannot be ignored.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: What's that?
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: Well, Toyota, as a global automotive manufacturer, is incredibly sensitive
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: to liability regarding transmission failures.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: Oh, right. Recalls and stuff.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: Exactly. If a relatively new five-year-old automatic Toyota Tacoma suffered
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: a catastrophic spontaneous manufacturing defect that caused it to slip
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: out of park, bypass the parking pole and kill a teenager...
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: you would expect an immediate, massive, multi-million dollar investigation by
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: Toyota corporate.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, car manufacturers issue massive recalls for minor sensor issues.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: They definitely do not ignore fatal gear slippage defects.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Yet there was absolutely no investigation initiated by Toyota
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: regarding this vehicle.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: Which suggests there was likely no mechanical failure to investigate
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: in the first place. Right.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: And despite all of these glaring, screaming questions... The undisturbed items,
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: the gear in park, the lack of corporate panic, the
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: sole witness with a fraught history. Aaron was never charged
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: with anything related to Grant's death.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: The local police effectively closed it as a freak accident
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: and moved on.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: To the public, it was baffling. To Angie, it must
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: have felt like the universe was gaslighting her.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: What we are observing in the aftermath of Grant's death
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: is a textbook, tragic example of investigative inertia.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: Tell me more about that.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: Well, think of a local police department's initial assessment of
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: a scene like a massive cruise ship moving at full speed.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: When law enforcement arrives and the first responding officers quickly
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: categorize an event, in this case, an unfortunate vehicular accident,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: that sets the ship's course.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: And turning a ship like that takes a lot of time.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The bureaucratic momentum required to stop that ship, reverse course,
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: admit a potential mistake in the initial assessment, and reopen
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: the case as a complex homicide is incredibly heavy. It
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: takes an overwhelming, undeniable amount of new evidence to combat
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: that initial inertia.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: And without a smoking gun, the ship just keeps sailing
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: in the wrong direction.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: Furthermore, you have the presence of a single witness. While
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: that single witness is the subject of deep, dark familial suspicion,
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: without secondary witnesses or video footage, the police are left
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: with a he-said, she-said scenario involving a deceased victim.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: But for true crime advocates and internet sleuths, A single
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: witness death featuring physical anomalies is a massive catalyst. It
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: is the ultimate red flag. It turns a closed case
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: into a digital crusade.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: So put yourself in Angie's psychological shoes for a moment. Yeah.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: We have to map the emotional state that leads to
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: a mall parking lot. Right. You have just buried your
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: teenage son after an accident that defies physics. You have
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: a terrified 12-year-old daughter who is so scared she's posting
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: YouTube videos begging the world for help.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: And you have an ex-husband... whom you already believe is abusive,
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: standing as the sole witness to your son's inexplicable death.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: And on top of all that, you have a local
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: police force that looks at undisturbed items on a car seat, shrugs,
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: closes the case, and walks away. Where does a grieving,
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: highly suspicious, utterly devastated mother direct that overwhelming volume of
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: rage and helplessness?
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: When local authorities repeatedly fail to validate such a profound
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: existential sense of wrong, The grievance doesn't just dissipate into
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: the ether. It demands an outlet. It scales up.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: The human mind seeks a narrative large enough to encompass
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: the pain it is feeling. And in Angie's case, that
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: narrative scaled up into a massive, sprawling, almost incomprehensible conspiracy theory.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: Which brings us to the concept she dubbed the good
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: boy network.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: Okay, yes. In the undercover audio from the sting operation,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: Angie doesn't just tell the TBI agent she wants Aaron
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: dead because she hates him. She explains exactly why she
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: believes Aaron has been able to operate with total impunity,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: getting away with what she claims is rape and murder.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: She doesn't just blame a lazy local police detective. She
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: alleges a massive, highly organized cover-up orchestrated by this shadowy
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: good boy network.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: And she does not keep the scope of these allegations
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: small or localized. She claims this network isn't just protecting
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: Aaron from a murder charge. She claims they were deeply
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: involved in statewide sex trafficking and pedophilia rings.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: She explicitly implicates incredibly high-level, powerful figures in the state
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: of Tennessee. On the audio, she points the finger directly
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: at Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, the State Attorney General Committee,
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: and the pastors of large, influential church congregations.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: Wait, really? The governor? Yes.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: She claims they are all actively, knowingly protecting her ex-husband.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: The scale of that is breathtaking. Justin Shepard notes in
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: his review of the sources that Angie genuinely believed Aaron's
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: influence stretched 40 miles across county lines, from his home
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: in Williamson County all the way up to Sumner County,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: specifically to exert pressure on local police to brush Grant's
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: death under the rug.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: And she attributed this impossible level of influence to his
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: family's wealth and their supposed church connections with the governor himself.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: But here is the absolute bombshell of this entire deep
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: dive into the source material. This was revealed by police
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: sources and corroborated by the broader TBI agent audio.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: Aaron was not the only name on her list that day.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: Angie was allegedly looking to hire this hitman to assassinate
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: two other high-powered individuals in the state of Tennessee who
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: were strongly alluded to in the reporting as being politicians.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: Okay, we need to take a hard, deliberate pause right here.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: It is critically important that we state this clearly for
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: you listening.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely. We are neutrally reporting the claims, allegations, and
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: the recorded statements made by Angie Solomon exactly as they
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: are documented in the provided source material from Law and Crime.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: We are not taking sides in a political or legal dispute.
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: We are absolutely not endorsing these wild allegations of sex trafficking, pedophilia,
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: or corruption against the governor of Tennessee, state politicians, or
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: any church leaders.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: Right. We are strictly unpacking the stated mindset and the
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: exact verbiage of the defendant as they were captured on
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: police tape during a sting operation.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: That is a vital distinction to maintain. Our goal is
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: to analyze the anatomy of her alleged plot and the
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: psychological framework that built it, not to validate the sprawling
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: conspiracy theories driving it.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: With that firmly established, I have to challenge the internal
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: logic of her plan here. Justin Shepard points this out
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: brilliantly in the source material, and it's the first thing
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: I thought of.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: What's that?
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: If Angie's ultimate driving goal is solely to get justice
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: for her kids, to avenge Grant and protect Gracie, why
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: in the world would you order hits on two politicians?
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: It seems counterproductive.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: Doesn't ordering a triple homicide targeting state officials basically guarantee
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: that you're going to bring the full weight of the
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: federal government down on your head? it seems to wildly
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: dangerously overcomplicate the primary goal of just eliminating Aaron.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: The contradiction you're pointing out perfectly illustrates the psychology of
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: what we call conspiracy expansion. This is a phenomenon we
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: often see in deeply radicalized online communities, but here it's
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: happening on an intensely personal level.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: How does that work?
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: Think of it like an autoimmune response in the human body.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: An autoimmune disease happens when the body's immune system, meant
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: to fight off a localized infection... gets confused, and starts
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: attacking the body's own healthy organs.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: It overreacts to the initial trauma and destroys everything else
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: in the process.
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: Precisely. When an individual feels deeply, profoundly wronged, and the
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: conventional systems, the police, the courts, the investigative bodies, refuse
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: to validate their reality, their internal worldview is threatened.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: They cannot accept that it's just a localized failure, a
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: lazy detective, or a simple lack of physical evidence.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: To protect their own sanity and their conviction that they
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: are right, they deduce that the entire system must be
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: fundamentally corrupt.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: The enemy has to be inflated to match the size
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: of the injustice they feel. A local anger getting away
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: with murder doesn't make sense unless the governor is helping him.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: The scope of the enemy inflates rapidly to fill the
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: void of logic. What starts as a bitter, localized, domestic
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: dispute over abuse allegations morphs, year by year, into a
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: war against an imagined, omnipotent cabal.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: By deciding to target politicians, Angie's grievance had fundamentally shifted.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: She was no longer operating just as a grieving mother
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: seeking revenge against a specific ex-husband.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: In her mind, she had become a righteous crusader against
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: a statewide network of evil. The logical fear of getting
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: caught or bringing federal heat down on herself vanishes because
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: she believes she is fighting a holy war against an
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: entirely corrupt state apparatus.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: And in a holy war, collateral damage and personal risk
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: are justified.
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: It is breathtaking how fast and how far the human
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: mind can escalate a narrative to make sense of unrelenting trauma.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: The mental gymnastics required to go from a divorce court
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: in 2013 to ordering a hit on a politician in
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: 2024 is staggering.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: And all of this psychological escalation, all of these digital
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: conspiracy theories finally collided with harsh physical reality inside a courtroom.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the visual and emotional climax of
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: our source material, the courtroom drama and the collapse of
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: the media ecosystem surrounding this case.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: The visual tableau of this courtroom scene, as vividly described
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: in the sources, is utterly surreal. It is a pressure
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: cooker of every theme we've discussed.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: You have Angie Solomon, now a defendant, sitting at the
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: defense table. Sitting directly across the room from her, representing
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: the state, is the TBI agent.
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: The exact same man she had just recently sat with.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: in a mundane mall parking lot, confiding in him, believing
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: he was a contract killer there to solve her problems.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: And sitting just a few rows back in the gallery,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: watching the entire proceeding unfold, are Aaron and Gracie sitting together.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: Just put yourself in that room. Imagine the psychological tension
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: in that space.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: The air must have been thick enough to choke on.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: You have the woman accused of trying to orchestrate a murder,
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: the man who was the primary target of that hit,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: the daughter who had previously called that same man a
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: monster in an 18-minute YouTube video. And the undercover cop
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: who manipulated the entire sting operation and caught it all
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: on tape.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: All of these people, with a decade of hatred and
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: trauma between them, breathing the exact same air in one
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: enclosed room.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: At this hearing, Angie pleaded not guilty. And the sources
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: note a fascinating detail. As she was leaving the courtroom,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: she looked towards someone in the gallery and silently mouthed
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: the words, I love you.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: During that specific hearing, the judge agreed to lower her
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: bond from $ 500, 000 down to $ 250, 000, stipulating strict house arrest
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: conditions if she were to successfully make bail.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: And to support that bail reduction, we saw the introduction
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: of a character witness for Angie. A woman named Melanie
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: Hicks took the stand.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: Hicks is a notable figure here because she was a
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: friend of Angie's and actually a former co-defendant in Erin's
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: original 2013 slander suit.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: So she has been in the trenches of this family
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: warfare for over a decade.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: Yes, she is deeply embedded in the history. Hicks testified
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: to humanize Angie. She stated that Angie is deeply rooted
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: in the Franklin community.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: She emphasized that Angie provides the sole emotional and structural
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: foundation for Gracie, noting for the court that Gracie is
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: a thriving student maintaining a 4.5 GPA.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: And she added a detail clearly meant to tug at
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: the court's empathy. stating that Angie regularly, devotedly tends to
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: her son Grant's grave, which is located just five minutes
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: away from her home.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: It's a portrait of a devoted grieving mother, which starkly
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: contrasts with the audio of a woman ordering a slow
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: death for her ex-husband.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: It really does. But while this defense was being mounted
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: inside the courtroom, outside the courtroom, the massive digital support
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: system Angie once had seemed to be collapsing in real time.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: Justin Shepard revealed a really fascinating behind the scenes look
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: at the deterioration of his relationship with Angie.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: He, along with several other prominent true crime creators, had
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: initially rallied fiercely around her. They amplified her voice. They
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: investigated the anomalies in Grant's death. They genuinely tried to
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: help her get legitimate justice.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: But Shepard says they were eventually completely alienated and actively
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: ghosted by Angie. Why?
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: Because they started asking basic journalistic questions for accountability, specifically
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: They wanted transparent updates on where the massive amounts of
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: GoFundMe money were actually going.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: This is a critical point that bridges the digital world
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: and the criminal plot. Shepard notes that she effectively kicked
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: out and silenced the very people who are trying to
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: help her navigate the system legally and legitimately.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: And her refusal to answer questions about the crowdfunding brings
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: up a glaring, massive financial mystery at the heart of
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: the murder-for-hire plot.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: Let's look at the math on this. If Angie could
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: not afford a $ 5, 000 upfront down payment for a hitman
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: to the point where she was forced to use a
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: car title as collateral, and she is currently utilizing a
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: public defender in court because she lacks funds, how on
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: earth was she planning to pay the promised $ 10, 000 to $ 30, 000
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: total on the back end for a triple homicide?
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: That is the million-dollar question. Where was that back-end money
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: supposed to materialize from once the hitman came to collect?
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: Justin Shepard speculates on two chilling possibilities in his analysis. First,
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: he notes there was a financial trust fund set up
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: for Gracie. He speculates that this trust would theoretically activate
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: or become accessible to Angie if Aaron were to die.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: Second, and perhaps more disturbingly in the context of the
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: internet age, he speculates she might have intended to use
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: the crowdfunding money.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: The GoFundMe donation.
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The very GoFundMe donations that the true crime creators
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: and thousands of sympathetic internet strangers had helped raise... ostensibly
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: for justice and legal fees regarding Grant's death.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: The idea of using GoFundMe money raised by well-meaning people
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: who thought they were helping a grieving mother fight a
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: corrupt system to literally pay off a contract killer. That
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: is a terrifying intersection of the digital age, unregulated crowdfunding,
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: and violent crime.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: It really highlights the precarious ethical tightrope that true crime
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: creators and internet sleuths walk every single day.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: It perfectly illustrates the inherent danger of the true crime ecosystem.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: What happens when an advocate, a podcaster, or a journalist
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: realizes that the subject they have fiercely championed, the person
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: they have raised money for, might not be the flawless,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: righteous victim they portray them to be?
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: Justin Shepard's evolving view of Angie is a stark, cautionary
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: tale for the digital age. It demonstrates how crowdfunding and
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: the unchecked amplification of public digital platforms can sometimes inadvertently enable, insulate,
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: and even financially fund deeply toxic and dangerous situations.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: The creators thought they were funding an independent investigation into
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: a tragic truck accident. They may have actually been funding
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: a dissent into vigilante violence.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: Let's pull all of these complex threads together.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: We have traced a path from a bitter, contentious 2013 divorce,
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: navigating through abuse allegations that a family court judge said
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: lacked merit.
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: We've examined the horrifying, scientifically baffling loss of an 18-year-old
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: boy in an impossible truck accident.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: We've analyzed the desperation of a 12-year-old daughter making a
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: plea for her life on YouTube.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: We've tracked the psychological spiraling of a mother who expanded
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: her localized grief into sweeping allegations of political sex trafficking
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: cabals involving the highest offices in the state.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: And we watched as all of that trauma and paranoia
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: culminated with a mother trading her vehicle registration for a
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: murder in a sunny suburban mall parking lot.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: It is a profound, multi-generational tragedy of compounding errors, unresolved grief,
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: and absolute systemic distrust. It shows how the failure of
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: institutions to communicate reality can drive people to madness.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: But as we close this analysis, I want to leave you,
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: the listener, with a lingering question that builds on everything
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: we've unpacked today. And it focuses on the one person
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: who hasn't had a say in any of this.
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: When an individual becomes so entirely consumed by the pursuit
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: of what they justify as vigilante justice that they cross
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: the moral and legal lines to becoming a predator themselves,
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: what happens to the actual victims caught in the crossfire?
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: If Angie Solomon is convicted of solicitation of murder and
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: goes to federal or state prison for decades, and Aaron
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: Solomon remains shadowed by unproven but horrific public allegations, who
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: is actually left to protect Gracie?
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: That is a profoundly heavy, sobering thought to leave on.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: But asking those difficult questions is exactly why we do this.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: Thank you for taking this incredibly intense deep dive into
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: the sources with us today. Stay curious. Keep questioning the
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: narratives around you. Remember to look past the headlines and
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: we'll see you next time.