00:00:00
Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences.
00:00:06
Listener discretion is advised. It shouldn't happen, it shouldn't happen. And anyway, I just wanted to be known that I didn't kill John.
00:00:22
Welcome to Season 13, Episode 342 of Sword and Scale. A show that reveals that the worst monsters are real.
00:00:30
Starting a business sounds exciting until you actually do it. Then suddenly you're the product guy, the website guy, the shipping department, the marketing department, customer service, all of it.
00:01:03
And if you're anything like me when I started, you're thinking, am I doing this right?
00:01:08
Is anyone going to actually care? That's where Shopify makes a lot of sense. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, including 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S.
00:01:20
They give you hundreds of ready-to-use templates so you can build a clean, professional online store that actually looks like your brand.
00:01:28
And once you're up and running, Shopify has tools for inventory, payments, analytics, returns, and international shipping all in one place.
00:01:37
They even have AI tools to help you write product descriptions, improve page headlines, and enhance product photography.
00:01:44
Plus, easy email and social media campaigns to help customers actually find you.
00:01:50
It's time to turn those what-ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 a month trial today at shopify.com slash sword and scale.
00:02:02
Go to shopify.com slash sword and scale. That's shopify.com slash sword and scale.
00:02:11
Cha-ching. In the early hours of May 18, 2017 in Parma Heights, Ohio, a working-class suburb 20 miles south of Cleveland,
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which sounds like a lovely place, I might add, like the rest of the state, Pearl Road cuts through the town in a long stretch of strip plazas and small storefronts.
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Hair salons, nail studios, pizza shops, you know the kind of useless strip mall that inhabits pretty much every city in America?
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Well, those shops are usually owned by locals and these businesses open early, close late and know their regulars by name.
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The strip is dark and small shops are locked up for the night. The early morning is calm except for one thing.
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A burglar is ready to do his thing. He grabs a landscaping stone, hauls it up, and hurls it at the front door of Classic Hair Studio.
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The glass explodes, the stone breaking apart into chunks across the floor. He doesn't hesitate. He ducks inside, heads straight for the counter, and yanks the entire cash register loose.
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The drawer jerks free, cords snapping, and he's out in seconds. Inside the cash register, he finds almost $300 in cash.
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And the machine itself is probably worth a couple hundred more. Where's your emergency?
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Hi, it's in Parma Heights. I'm not going to say it's an emergency, but I was driving to work and I noticed that the door on a beauty shop is totally smashed on Pearl Road.
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The address is 6412. It's called Classic Studio. And their front door is just totally smashed.
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I mean, anybody can go inside at this point. Okay. And I noticed it, and I turned around and went back thinking,
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did I really see that? And sure enough, I did. So I thought I'd record it. A few doors down, he does it again.
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Another front door smashed, this time at the nail studio. Instead of taking the whole register, he opens the drawer.
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This one has $50 inside. But it doesn't matter. Any amount of money is worth it.
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He's desperate. The glass crunches under his boots as he walks away, leaving two shops in ruins behind him.
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I'm the store manager here at Discount Drug Mart. Right next to us, there is a, it's 6488 York Road.
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There's the spa and nail place right next to the drug mart here that I'm in charge of.
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There's the glasses broken out on the front door here at the nail and spa place.
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Right, I believe we just cleared there. Oh, okay, I'm sorry. I just, I didn't know if anyone was out or anything.
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6412, I believe the address is? No, it says 6488 on the door here. Okay, then that's a different one.
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Uh-oh. It's called Spa and Nails. By sunrise, both storefronts are cordoned off with yellow tape.
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Patrol officers sweep glass into piles while the owners pull up the surveillance video.
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A white male, short, with a bald spot and tattoos on his arms. The time stamp on the camera is wrong but they already know the crimes happened overnight The owners are terrified and one vows to shut down the business She wonders how this could happen in such a family town
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Parma Heights has one of the lowest crime rates in the nation. At least, that's what the statistics say.
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Whoever the perpetrator is, he probably should have worn a mask. His face is front and center on the surveillance camera.
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Not only that, the outside cameras catch him speeding off in a white Jeep. It doesn't take long to bring in Thomas Nuff for questioning.
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Okay, all right. Do you have any idea where Parma H is here to speak with you? No?
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Well, I had a couple break-ins in my city at a spa, Nails, and then another classic hair studios.
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You know anything about them? No? Nothing at all? Alright, well I got surveillance video of the vehicle and the person breaking into their business.
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Okay, so let me pull this stuff up here. Recognize that person? Looks like it could be me.
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Alright, so let's do this. Recognize them tattoos? Yeah. Huh? Yeah? Do you remember doing this or no?
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Tom seemed like your average guy next door. He just didn't have that typical criminal look about him.
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If there even is such a thing. He looked more like a dad sitting on the bleachers of his son's football game.
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And Thomas did have a son, a good kid, who unfortunately had to be raised by Tom's sister during the last 15 years he was in prison for aggravated robbery.
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So looks can be deceiving. That's what they say anyway. You run in, you take the cash register from the one place and some cash from the second place, okay?
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And then you're in a white Jeep that looks like it's blowing to your son, but it's registered to your sister?
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Maybe. Okay. Okay. But a more recent photo would be this. What the hell happened to it?
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Yeah. Smashed the window. Did you do that? Yeah. Okay. What happened? I mean. Just went off the road, hit a tree branch.
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Did you mean to go off-road or was it kind of? Yeah. Okay, trying to hurt yourself or what?
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No, just went off-road in a spot where we used to go off-roading. Okay, so you're just going to go out there and be like, Baja or what?
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No, I don't know. You don't know? Sorry, man. I appreciate you being honest. Tom tried to be a good dad.
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Well, maybe not. But he really did love his son. And old habits die hard. that included going on benders, robbing businesses, and off-roading.
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This time, it just happened to be that he had no vehicle, so he took his son's Jeep and damaged it.
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How messed up were you during this time? I don't know, sir. Okay, all right. Well, you know what, unfortunately, you know, due to this and the video and stuff like I have of you,
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and then how it got to you is we actually, the news kind of held it because I put something on our Facebook page.
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And then your sister actually didn't want to call him and said, hey, listen, that's my brother in my car.
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You know what I mean? So kind of let us see you. But I had some previous things that led you.
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It looks like you've had a history of Brunswick. Brunswick immediately called me and says, hey, listen, I know that guy.
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You might want to give him a call. Everything he did is what he used to do, and they used to deal with you a lot.
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So what happened, man? You were in jail for a little bit. Did you get out? And what happened?
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I just don't know, man. I just got out and things weren't like I thought it was going to be.
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You know, I had nowhere to go. Okay. No family was helping you or what? My mom passed.
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All right. You know. A lot had changed in the 15 years he was on the inside. Y'all seen Shawshank, right?
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Think about how smartphones didn't even exist in 2002. Everybody was still using a flip phone.
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There was no social media, at least not like today. Facebook launched in 2004, YouTube in 2005, and Twitter in 2006.
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Instagram came around in 2010, and I won't even mention TikTok. In 2002, when he went into prison, people were still using AOL Instant Messenger, and
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MySpace wasn't even a thing yet. If you wanted to go somewhere, you couldn't just tap on your phone and have directions
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show up or even read out to you. You had to print something out from a site called MapQuest, I shit you not, on your inkjet printer and hope that the directions were accurate.
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Kids nowadays can't even figure out what gender they are. Could you imagine if you took GPS away from them?
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If Tom repeated his little heist today, he'd be lucky to find $1 in the cash register.
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People don't even use cash anymore. Just their Klarna debit cards, which they have no intention of ever paying back.
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Another big difference in 2002 is that we weren't all spying on each other. No one was lurking nearby to film you on their phone, waiting to post it somewhere for the world to see.
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Security cameras existed, but were reserved for big businesses. No wonder Tom didn't wear a mask.
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Not only was he too shit-faced to even think about a security camera, but he just wasn't expecting these tiny businesses to own one.
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In 2002, voicemail was still a thing and people actually checked it. Tom felt like he'd been swallowed up by time
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but it wasn't just the tech that had left him behind. While he was on the inside, his world fell apart.
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His mom died. She was the family anchor. There were some rough years between him and his stepdad
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but his mom was always there for the kids Probably almost too much My mom struggled for the last three four years before she passed
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trying to keep the house afloat and still help my sister with bills and with her kids.
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And as soon as my mom dies, you know, I told my sister, well, here, take my money
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and paid a bank note off on borrowing money against it and keep the house. or her current husband that allowed it to go into such disrepair
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that she didn't want to talk with it. And so she let the bank have it. And I told her, I said, you know, I feel like you spit on their graves.
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You know what I mean? You should have let the bank have it four years ago instead of looking at all the stress she did.
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She was the only one that ever had a solid career and a steady work, you know what I mean, with good money.
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So, you know, she's paying like everybody's cell phone bill, everybody's bill, babysitter,
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sir, you and your sister got a good relationship or no? No. His sister took over the money and according to Tom, she mismanaged it.
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She also failed to get the car Tom had wrecked from the impound because it was too much trouble.
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Tom was pissed because the car belonged to his son Tommy and still had some of his personal
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belongings in it. According to Tom, his sister helped raise Tommy and had been a good influence,
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but ever since their mother passed, she was all about herself. His sister, of course, had a different story.
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There was a time when they partied together as teens and acted more like friends than siblings,
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but then Tom got a girl pregnant when he was 19, and things changed. His sister had lost a baby boy, and now she found herself stepping in to parent Tom's son.
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Tom continued to party and went to rehab at least once. It was like usually every time he went to rehab, this stuff would come out.
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Missy gets everything. Well, Missy has a job. Missy went to school. I paid for it.
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He always, I guess, felt like I got everything. But in reality, my grandparents were draining their bank account for him.
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And our whole life revolved around him and what was going on. But he always, and he still will.
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And when my mom died, he wrote Tommy letters, the same old stuff, like Missy got this.
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His sister Missy remembered that their mother practically enabled him. She was always there for him.
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And even if he stole from her, he could still come home. So she went home or backward.
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I think I told you when I found out when she died that she had all these check cashing
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loans and stuff and I found all the receipts. Commissary and things. And to people like LaTosha and LaQuisha and some of my brother's crowd, you know, and
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Akron and Youngstown and you know wherever. And it was always, well he needs hygiene products. It's like he doesn't need
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$300. We've all experienced someone in the family like this, right? It always seems like the one who gets in trouble the most
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or is the least productive gets all the attention, doesn't it? Yeah, fuck the productive one who
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pays his bills and minds his own business. Let's focus all of our baby bird attention on this idiot over here that can't get their shit together.
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Tom was about 25 when he went to prison, and now he was 42, with no home to go back to, no mommy to run to,
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and a son who was almost an adult now, ready to live his own life. He had a lot to figure out, and even more to make up for.
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And yet, here he was back at the police station. Since he got out, he'd been looking for a place to stay, but his parole had restrictions.
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No guns, no drugs, on and on. His anxiety was increasing, and the previous night's drunken binge was going to land him in jail again.
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Things were about to get worse. I don't see your son wanting to be bashful against you at all.
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You know what I mean? I think he just wants his dad around. You know what I mean?
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Unfortunately. Like I said, I mean, his mom was letting me stay there. until I got a place, and that didn't work out for me at all.
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And then she kind of wanted to start a relationship again, and then when I didn't, because I had a girlfriend, she kind of flipped on me.
00:16:39
Okay. And then, like I said, my sister, you know, me and her just... Was that girlfriend a girl we were looking for that was missing?
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Oh, no. You don't remember her? Have you heard? Do you know where she's at by any chance?
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That's just an old friend of mine. Okay. Still never heard any contact of anything where she could be?
00:16:55
I don't know. She was like when I was writing her from jail. Okay. We lost contact, but she stayed in touch with my mom.
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Okay. So when my mom died, she kind of come back in the picture. Then her mom died.
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Then she took off the text and came back and her and her friend actually picked me up from jail.
00:17:15
Okay. But who was that? Who was her friend that came with you? Some old guy, John.
00:17:20
John Mann? Yeah. In that clip, they were talking about the mother of Tom's son. when he got out of prison he was hoping to stay at her house but that didn't work out because she
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wanted to rekindle the relationship and he had long since moved on with two different women
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49 year old regina capo bianco was one of them about 15 years earlier she had signed up for a
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prison pen pal program where she met tom yeah she was one of those weirdos they constantly
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wrote each other and promised they would meet up once he was out The problem for Tom at least was that he was looking for stability And before he even got out he started to see that she had issues
00:18:07
I wonder how he found out. Could it have been maybe the fact she was writing inmates?
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Maybe that was it there, Tom? Maybe that was the whole problem? Anyway, Regina had been living at home with her mother,
00:18:20
but at some point in their friendship, her mother also died, leaving her without a home. Her life took a downward turn into alcoholism. This was the last
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thing Tom needed, and besides, he had already started seeing someone else. These inmates can
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really pull some puss, if you know what I mean. When Tom was released, Regina was living with a
00:18:43
partner, an older man named John Mann. This was a quid pro quo situation, if you know what that
00:18:51
means. A friends with benefits sort of relationship, where she would help take care of him and his
00:18:57
house in exchange for, you know, a place to stay. She was a house whore, basically. Regina and John
00:19:04
had generously offered to let Tom stay there too, until he got on his feet. But Tom could already
00:19:11
see the writing on the wall and knew this would be the worst environment possible for him.
00:19:17
It was true that he accepted Regina and John's offer to pick him up from prison upon his release,
00:19:24
but he told him he planned to find his own lodging. The last he'd heard of Regina, she was about to celebrate her 50th birthday.
00:19:33
911, what's the address of the emergency? So we have a neighbor across the street, and they just got home,
00:19:38
and there's a lady that's on the ground and can't get up, and they're hovering over her.
00:19:43
In the front yard? In the front yard, yeah. She's an older lady in her 50s with dark brown hair.
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Wait, you know what? They're picking her up and carrying her into her. White female?
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White female. She can barely stand up. So they're walking her and carrying her. Now, it's one thing to get a little carried away for your 50th birthday.
00:20:05
But when was the last time your neighbors called 911 on you because you were passed out in your yard?
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And I hope you weren't in your 50s. Tom remembered warning Regina to get up that day,
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but when she wasn't able to, he and John literally had to drag her into the house.
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I'm like an old lady and saw that. And I told her too, I'm like, please get up. You know, you're laying in your puke.
00:20:50
I'm like, it's a nice area. Someone's going to call the police. No sooner than I said it, there come a couple of cops.
00:20:57
And yeah, so. And it looked crazy. Like, you got an older guy and you got this guy with tattoos dragging this girl in the house.
00:21:03
I mean, especially after all that shit that happened in Cleveland. With them girls being born for all them years.
00:21:09
You don't know. She's always been like that. She's a good heart, good girl. through writing like for as much as we wrote in prison.
00:21:17
Regina may have had a good heart, but she was a wild card. Though he did stay at Regina and John's a couple of times since he got out,
00:21:26
he mostly bounced around hotels with his current girlfriend. He was right to steer clear of Regina as much as possible.
00:21:34
The last thing he needed was to get roped into another bad situation. But Tom, the guy just trying to keep his head down and reconnect with his son, was about
00:21:45
to be pulled into something a lot bigger than a stolen cash register in a wrecked jeep.
00:21:51
Something that would change his life forever. Starting a business sounds exciting until you actually do it.
00:22:26
Then suddenly you're the product guy, the website guy, the shipping department, the marketing department, customer service, all of it.
00:22:32
And if you're anything like me when I started, you're thinking, am I doing this right?
00:22:37
is anyone going to actually care? That's where Shopify makes a lot of sense. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world,
00:22:48
including 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. They give you hundreds of ready-to-use templates
00:22:52
so you can build a clean, professional online store that actually looks like your brand.
00:22:58
And once you're up and running, Shopify has tools for inventory, payments, analytics, returns, and international shipping all in one place.
00:23:06
They even have AI tools to help you write product descriptions, improve page headlines, and enhance product photography.
00:23:14
Plus, easy email and social media campaigns to help customers actually find you.
00:23:20
It's time to turn those what-ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 a month trial today at shopify.com slash swordandscale.
00:23:32
Go to shopify.com slash swordandscale. That's shopify.com slash swordandscale. It was late June 2017 in Parma Heights, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb with a reputation for safety, not violent crime.
00:24:11
In the last few weeks, police responded to a string of late-night burglaries. The suspect, Thomas Nuff, was quickly caught.
00:24:19
He admitted to everything, saying he was broke and desperate. Hotels were getting expensive.
00:24:26
Tom had just been released from prison after serving 15 years. Since then, he'd bounce between hotels, old girlfriends, and temporary stays with people willing to help,
00:24:36
including a pen pal named Regina Capobianco. She and her boyfriend even gave him a ride from prison.
00:24:44
He stayed at her place a couple of nights, but mostly kept his distance. She had a good heart, but she was a little unpredictable.
00:24:53
Then Regina stopped answering her phone. Her sister worried. I miss her every day. I miss sending her pictures of the girls of my grandkids and calling her.
00:25:11
That was all taken from me and her. We can't do that anymore. I call Regina Reggie. Reggie had a contagious laugh.
00:25:22
If you would ask anybody what they remember most about Reggie, it will be her laugh.
00:25:27
The police had been to her house already, but they didn't execute a full search.
00:25:32
Neighbors had seen stickers on the door about a potential foreclosure and just assumed John was evicted.
00:25:38
Now weeks had passed. They go back. And what they find inside is worse than anything anyone's imagined.
00:25:47
What they walk into is a hoarder's nightmare. Trash bags. Boxes. Rotting food. The air is thick and sour.
00:25:58
The kind of stench you think is garbage until you realize it's not. Specialized agents are called in along with cadaver dogs, but even the dogs refuse to go inside.
00:26:12
The odor of decomposition is overwhelming. They stubbornly sit outside like, no way, man, I ain't going in there.
00:26:22
We ain't touching this. That's kind of what I imagine dogs sound like, if you can get into their head.
00:26:28
Yo, bro, we ain't going in there. That's all I'm saying, dog. The search stops here.
00:26:35
I think it's kind of cute. Imagine a Doberman talking like that. Anyway, fortunately, agents come prepared with full protective masks and oxygen tanks.
00:26:46
This is a full hazmat situation we got going on. They enter through the back door of the ranch home, past the shattered window.
00:26:54
Dead flies carpet the floor. The second bedroom is by far the worst. Flies swarm in the air.
00:27:03
The stench pools in the room. Maggots wriggle in a disgusting puddle at the foot of the bed.
00:27:11
A puddle they trace to a mound of trash and blankets. When they start to move it, they see skin.
00:27:19
Then bone. Then what looks like a leg. Then a skull. The hallway carpet has been cut away and blood stains stretch from the kitchen into the living room,
00:27:33
where the carpet has also been removed. Under trash and clothing in the second bedroom, they find John Mann's body,
00:27:42
a mire of decomposed, rotting flesh, unrecognizable. and behind them, up against the wall, they find a second figure wrapped in a wet Harley Davidson blanket.
00:27:55
The blanket is form-fitting. They can see the outline of Regina's head before it's even pulled back.
00:28:03
She's face up, sweater rolled up above her eyes, one foot exposed and the rest of her body hidden beneath layers of filth.
00:28:12
A purple condom wrapper is found near her head. At first, Tom wasn't the obvious suspect, even though he had a criminal background.
00:28:23
His crimes didn't involve violence against anyone. And he had a son he desperately wanted to reconnect with.
00:28:31
Why would he risk throwing that all away? He already messed up by getting stupid drunk and breaking into the salons.
00:28:39
Stupid and sloppy, but not murder. but because he was one of the only people who had a connection with both Regina and John,
00:28:49
they started to dig. Where else had Tom been staying since he got out? Who else was helping him?
00:28:56
And that's when his current girlfriend came up, Alicia Stoner. She wasn't just his girlfriend, she was a social worker at the prison.
00:29:07
Imagine that. You realize how serious certainly a blast going on with him? And we understand that. We talked about that yesterday.
00:29:15
So we understand if things don't come back to you at certain times. But we just want to have that line of communication.
00:29:23
Hopefully we can get through some of this information today, most of it. Alicia was working at the same prison that Tom was serving time in.
00:29:33
Tom was attractive to her for some reason. Probably for the same reason why some women write to inmates.
00:29:42
some particular crazy bitches take that extra step and get a job at the prison. It's one hell of a world we're living in. I'll tell you.
00:29:52
Maybe it was the bad boy prisoner thing Maybe it was his charming gift of gab Who knows Who cares Whatever the case he was writing to multiple women including Regina and they were all falling for it With Alicia
00:30:09
he had the added pleasure of interacting personally. That is, until she quit due to an
00:30:14
obvious conflict of interest. She chose Tom over her job, and they continued the relationship.
00:30:23
Imagine choosing a criminal over your job. These two lovebirds wrote poems to each other.
00:30:32
Long, handwritten love letters. They were soulmates. When detectives interviewed Alicia for the first time, she didn't want to say much.
00:30:43
But after she realized that she could be implicated and ultimately serve time, that's when she started to talk.
00:30:52
I just want to clarify some things that I wasn't direct with. Okay. Okay. But maybe this dream of minimizing some of this so that it's a lesser issue.
00:31:01
I avoided, I minimized, I rationalized. I did all the defense mechanisms I know.
00:31:06
It just comes down to telling us the truth. On paper, Alicia didn't look like the kind of woman who'd ever be connected to a double homicide.
00:31:14
She was a mental health worker. And she was married. But somehow she was charmed.
00:31:21
by this asshole. After his release in April 2017, Alicia became more than just his girlfriend.
00:31:28
She was his driver, his banker, and his safety net. When parole rules barred Tom from living with her,
00:31:36
she paid for his motel rooms. When he needed money, she wired it. And when he called her in the middle of the night, she came.
00:31:47
On May 12, 2017, Alicia drove to pick him up. after he made a desperate phone call.
00:31:54
She remembered his left index finger was badly cut, a fresh wound he couldn't easily explain.
00:32:00
When we discussed about initially me getting the phone call from Thomas, and he called me and he did say to me,
00:32:08
if I ever need you, it's now. And I know he gave me, this is where I'm going to tell you,
00:32:14
I know he gave me directions. at some point and here's what i see when i'm driving and i'm crossing over meander i'm on
00:32:22
the phone with him and he tells me regina and john are dead okay did that help spark some
00:32:27
memory of the conversation and of him telling you when you got there was there anything more than
00:32:33
there's more okay so it's accurate with him with the hood coming out and he gets in my car where
00:32:39
i tell you and we park where i tell you and just let me say this the story i was supposed to tell
00:32:45
was that he got into a bar fight for the finger. Because he says to me, all you know is that I got into a bar fight for the finger.
00:32:51
Okay, so that's what I told you. Tom's version started with his relationship with John.
00:32:57
He felt sorry for John because Regina was taking advantage of him. What started as a partnership had turned into a one-way street
00:33:05
that ended with Regina being the only happy partner. She came and went as she pleased.
00:33:11
She took John's money and did little in exchange. she even started seeing other guys and bringing them back to the house so when i met john you know
00:33:23
he might have been dirtbagging a lot of things but i just took him as an old hippie nice guy
00:33:29
he was going to get kicked out of the house soon but he needed someone to mow the grass and
00:33:33
first of all you know i want everybody to know that you know i've never had any sexual relationships
00:33:39
with Regina. We met in 2005 as pen pals. And for about a year and a half, we kind of were writing
00:33:48
a lot and had ideas of getting out and being together. Of course, then I felt a lot different
00:33:54
than I do now about what I wanted in life and a woman. And she's always been super wild,
00:33:59
told me a lot of crazy stories. I never realized, and of course, she's probably progressed and got
00:34:05
worse, you know what I mean? So I never realized, you know, like until her 50th birthday, how she
00:34:12
was drinking. If he wasn't convinced at her 50th birthday party that she was an out of control
00:34:18
partier, an incident that happened at a gas station confirmed it. She'd been drinking. He says she
00:34:26
came out of the restroom with toilet paper hanging out of her pants. When he politely brought it to
00:34:32
her attention, she says, watch this. And she pulls it out and plasters it on the chest of a little
00:34:39
old lady who's walking by. Gross. So we didn't talk for a while, you know, a few weeks. And I
00:34:47
ended up when I needed a place to stay. And I knew that, you know, they were still entertaining
00:34:53
that idea when I was in jail. So I called her up and she said, well, you know, she was mad at me,
00:34:58
but I said, hey, you know, what are you mad for? You know what I mean? The way you were acting
00:35:02
and I can't have that. Well, so I met John a few times, and he had confided in me that he kind of wanted her out.
00:35:11
But she told him, like, well, I get mail here. So you've got to evict me. And then he was kind of like, well, I've known her for a while.
00:35:17
I kind of love her. But at the same time, he's like, you know, she don't suck my dick no more.
00:35:22
She don't do this. And for her, you know, I'd seen her drunk. Like, you know, you can't get it hard.
00:35:27
Real nasty. You know what I mean? So I'm like, I feel bad for him, you know. He felt bad for John, so he started coaching him on how he could get rid of Regina by evicting her.
00:35:39
It would be a bonus that he'd get to live there with John. In effect, he planned to replace Regina.
00:35:46
Tom said he didn't have much, but he would help him in any way he could. Just not sexually.
00:35:53
John wasn getting that anyway I ended up you know taking some of my stuff there because you know she didn know at the time that John was going to try to So after the 50th birthday you took some stuff there Okay
00:36:05
All right. So I took my blue bin that had my clothes in it. Okay. And I had like a duffel bag that had like my little homemade tattoo shit in it, little brown tan bag.
00:36:14
And, you know, I wasn't like trying to like move in or nothing yet because I didn't know what the status was going to be as far as John getting her out of the house.
00:36:21
I kind of was like, I'm not going to lie to you. I said, you know, I can get you good blood.
00:36:28
I'll keep you smoking. I'll give you 50 bucks a week, but I can't live here with her.
00:36:33
And another reason why I really blame myself is just for entertaining the idea and telling him about the stuff about being elderly and being able to evict her.
00:36:40
That's, I guess, why she bugged the fuck out. You know what I mean? And, you know, I hear them outside yelling and arguing,
00:36:47
and the dogs are barking, and, you know, they're loud. and I'm like, I could hear it outside.
00:36:52
So the day this all went down, John had confronted Regina. She laughed it off and said she was going to go out and meet a guy at a bar
00:37:00
and they might come back to the house. While she was out, John had fallen asleep,
00:37:05
so she texted Tom asking him to put the dogs away because she was bringing this guy back.
00:37:12
Tom didn't want to be around for that, so he says he left. Well, I just chose to leave.
00:37:17
You know, I took a walk in the neighborhood because I didn't want to be there listening to them have sex, whatever was going on.
00:37:23
Well, I had come home and whoever the guy she had there was gone and her and John were arguing.
00:37:30
And she's drunk. I mean, probably didn't take her much to get drunk anyway. She's such a little person.
00:37:38
You know what I mean? And they're fighting and I'm outside in the backyard. Dogs are going crazy.
00:37:43
I'm surprised nobody called the police, you know. and something just changed in the tone and I come in you know what I mean I didn't come in
00:37:52
really I didn't want to interrupt nothing I didn't know what was said and I came in and Regina was
00:37:57
attacking him with a knife and I stopped her um I actually got pictures it took me believe me as
00:38:05
little she is she was pretty strong you know what I mean and um I had a little mark here where I had
00:38:11
a little cut and I got a bunch of cuts on my hands trying to pull the blade from her and that's
00:38:15
actually how I ended up cutting my finger so bad. This is when the lies started. Every person he saw
00:38:22
got a different explanation for why he got this cut on his finger. From his own son, to his ex at
00:38:29
the house with his son, to his girlfriend, Alicia, and finally to the police who interviewed him the
00:38:36
night of the burglaries. By that point, his finger was barely hanging on after he tried to superglue
00:38:42
it. Gross. But he knew it was bad because it was turning green and starting to smell funny.
00:38:51
You know what I mean? I know shit happened that shouldn't happen. And anyway, I just wanted to
00:38:58
be known that I didn't kill John. The one part of the story that always stayed consistent was that
00:39:03
he didn't kill John. He freely admitted he killed Regina, just like he freely admitted several weeks
00:39:10
later that he robbed the salons, but he was adamant. He didn't kill John. And none of this
00:39:18
shit was planned or premeditated or anything, but I ended up ripping the knife from Regina,
00:39:23
and I threw it behind the chair, and she took off, and I went and I checked John, and he was still
00:39:28
making sounds and on the floor, and she ends up coming back with another knife, and I don't know,
00:39:36
regular steak nice whatever from the kitchen and that's when she ended up you know stabbing at me
00:39:41
it cut my finger real bad um again i'm tussling with her and uh i get her to the ground and i'm
00:39:50
trying to hold her down and you know her other hand she's clawing at my face and my eyes and
00:39:55
i've ended up getting a knife and using it on her you know what i mean and i don't
00:40:00
i'm having nightmares about it you know i mean it's so much to fucking live with you know and
00:40:06
I wish I would have ran out of the house, you know what I mean? Because now I've got to live with her.
00:40:09
She was a friend, you know what I mean? And, I mean, I'd be stupid to even tell my parole officer I'm about to stay here at this house.
00:40:17
Tom maintained he never meant for any of this to happen. He just wanted to get out of prison and start over.
00:40:23
Be a good dad. Continue his relationship with Alicia. Except, she was still married.
00:40:29
And get back to what he loved to do. Tattoos, of course. But he also loved drinking and talking.
00:40:38
Those two traits somehow led to him committing crimes and then involved the very people he loved most in the aftermath of those crimes.
00:40:47
Even his young son. It was my phone. I was letting him borrow it for the night. That night, the next morning I woke up, my phone was gone,
00:40:55
my keys were gone, and my Jeep was gone, and I didn't talk to him for a couple of days.
00:40:59
Tom's son thought he was helping his father. but every time Tom took more the next morning Tommy's phone his jeep and even his trust were gone
00:41:12
when he did move there he cut his finger open and he said it was from the hedgehog but my mom and
00:41:19
my aunt both said it was too clean of a cut to be not a hedgehog but like hedge clippers and my mom
00:41:25
and my aunt both said it was too clean of a cut they think it was from a knife or glass or something
00:41:29
What do you think? I'd like to believe him, but I don't know. I haven't seen a cut like that before.
00:41:34
It was cut pretty bad. It was like hanging off and stuff. Yeah, he said he was going to try gluing it back together.
00:41:41
But when he was in the hospital, they just took it off for him. Tommy Jr. would later learn the truth if he didn't already suspect it.
00:41:50
The story was shady. So was his story about why he needed Tommy to buy him duct tape and garbage bags for the finger Poor Tommy Since his dad got out of prison he was invading all aspects of his life
00:42:05
And Tommy let him because he loved him. Yeah, since he's been out, my life's been so stressful.
00:42:12
Like, I've been afraid at my house. Why are you afraid? I don't know if, like, he got dropped off by someone and he owes them money and they're going to, like, come inside or something.
00:42:21
I don't know. Okay. I just don't know. I thought I knew him a little bit, but I guess I didn't.
00:42:27
Tommy had a right to be afraid. His dad was a criminal, a murderer. The only thing the police didn't know was exactly why he murdered.
00:42:38
We think you know more, Tom. Someone's telling us that in that conversation, things were brought up about what your dad did that were pretty serious.
00:42:46
And if he told you what he did, then we need to know, Tom. He did tell me he hurt two people.
00:42:50
didn't say he killed anybody. He said he heard them, though. Tell us what he told you.
00:42:56
He said that he heard them, and he said he cut his finger on the hedge clippers and that he was trying to fight them back,
00:43:04
and that was it. He told me that he took Regina, they got her a hotel, and then two black people came and were beating them up
00:43:13
and that he was trying to defend themselves. Say that again. When was this? Did he give you any time frame on when this happened?
00:43:20
He said it happened late at night. Late at night? Mm-hmm. They were sitting, he was in the, he said he was in the basement cleaning, and he heard
00:43:27
John yelling, and he went upstairs and he started, like, trying to fight him with them,
00:43:31
and then they left, and that's what he said. A couple black males? He said two black men.
00:43:35
He didn't, he didn't use those words. He used the, like, the racist term for them.
00:43:40
Okay. And then he was fighting with these black males? Mm-hmm. He said that's how, he had a scratch on his head.
00:43:46
He said that's how he got a scratch on his head was from them. This was just one more version of Tom's lies.
00:43:53
And when he couldn't cover his tracks with his lies, he simply told Tommy not to look.
00:43:58
Like the time he asked Tommy to pick him up at John Mann's house. This time it was to get rid of the dogs inside.
00:44:06
He went back to the house, he went in and grabbed the dogs. I didn't see the dogs, he told me not to look and we drove out there.
00:44:12
He had me pull over on the side of the street and he shushed them out. Yeah, he just told me they were John's dogs and that he didn't want them anymore and that John was going to hurt them early, kill them and get rid of them.
00:44:21
So he was going to give them a chance at life and just let them go. The detectives didn't want to have to press Tommy.
00:44:28
They knew he was a good kid. In fact, one officer had also been Tommy's rugby coach and had nothing but great things to say about him.
00:44:38
Somebody did something right, but it sure wasn't his dad. And the last thing I want to see is anything.
00:44:46
And this isn't not trying to pit you against your dad, but you're in this position.
00:44:50
Sadly, he put you in this position. He did. And it's sad, and we feel for you. You know I do.
00:44:57
You know what I think of you. And it's wrong. But I just want the truth, 100%. And you walk out of here, and you know your conscience is clear.
00:45:07
If I tell you guys now. Tell us now, and you're not in any trouble. He said he killed him.
00:45:12
Kill Regina and John. Just Regina. He said he was in the basement cleaning, and he heard John upstairs screaming, saw Regina stabbing him, tried to get the knife away from him, and then he said he took the knife and stabbed her.
00:45:27
Tommy's story matched the version his father gave police. That Regina had attacked John.
00:45:34
That Tom wrestled the knife away and stabbed her. There were no other people at the house that day.
00:45:41
black, white, or otherwise. If they could just get Tom to admit to killing both Regina and John,
00:45:49
it was their gut feeling, and the coroner's reports backed it up. John Mann's body was pierced with multiple sharp force injuries,
00:45:57
including to the neck, ribs, collarbone, and defensive wounds on his hands and arms.
00:46:05
Regina stood under five feet tall and didn't weigh much. Besides, Tom's version was that he intervened after only one or two stabbings.
00:46:14
Then there was the elaborate cover-up, including commissioning a guy named Delugo to burn the house down after he'd removed the dogs and the carpeting.
00:46:25
He used Alicia for contact because he was already in jail. Delugo said no, he wouldn't do it.
00:46:32
And the defensive wounds on Tom indicated a serious altercation where Tom lost control of the blade.
00:46:39
Not to mention the lies. The overwhelming number of lies. So, detectives had one more card to play with Tom.
00:46:50
The polygraph. And when the subject turned to John Mann, Tom's story started to crack.
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00:48:34
Cha-ching. It was May of 2017 in a suburb of good old Cleveland, Ohio, the home of the Browns and a whole lot of killers and even worse Ohioans Thomas Nuff had been out
00:49:06
of prison for just a few weeks he was drifting between motels borrowing from his sons and
00:49:11
leaning on his girlfriend Alicia Stoner who drove him gave him money and even picked him up
00:49:17
the morning after he killed at least one person inside the house on Nellwood Road so yeah you know
00:49:24
Tom was just living his best life. John Mann lived in that house with his partner Regina Capobianco.
00:49:32
By then, Regina had long since given up her part of the bargain for living there
00:49:37
and was dating other men. She had also been writing to Tom while he was in prison.
00:49:44
In fact, it was Regina and John who picked him up on the day he was released. Regina may have expected to carry on a relationship with Tom,
00:49:52
but he already had Alicia. And he also realized that Regina's drinking and other bizarre behaviors could land him right back in prison on a parole violation.
00:50:04
John was fed up with her, too. He wanted her gone. And Tom was all too happy to help.
00:50:10
If Regina were out of the picture, it meant Tom could move in and finally have a stable place to reconnect with his son and have a girlfriend.
00:50:19
On the night of May 11, 2017, something violent happened inside that house. Don and Regina were both killed, their bodies hidden away.
00:50:29
Police wouldn't discover their decomposed remains until June. In the meantime, Tom was getting rid of evidence and roping his loved ones into helping him cover his tracks.
00:50:40
You know, I've always tried to tell them, even though I've done fucked up shit or I've been in jail,
00:50:45
I always try to, you know, do the right thing. A lot of things that, you know, I did in the past was reckless, you know, out drunk and doing stupid shit
00:50:53
and just being wild, but, you know, for the most part, you know, he knows to do the right thing,
00:51:00
you know, so that's, I just, if I can only be that example to him, you know what I mean,
00:51:03
that's what I want to do for him. What he wanted to do for his son and what he actually ended up
00:51:08
doing were two vastly different things. By May 17th, his life was spiraling. He was walking around
00:51:16
with a finger that was barely hanging on, and his freedom was also barely hanging on. In the
00:51:23
weeks that followed, Tom didn't lie low. He went right back to his old ways. He broke into two
00:51:30
salons, leaving a trail that would put him back on police radar. At the same time, he told everyone
00:51:36
a different story. He told his son, he told Alicia, he told the police. A story about a drug dealer,
00:51:43
a fight, Regina stabbing John and Tom stabbing Regina in self-defense. But there was one part
00:51:50
he never changed. He swore he didn't kill John Mann. You know how you've heard that polygraphs are unreliable?
00:52:01
Well, police departments across the country insist they yield a success rate of 86 to 100 percent,
00:52:09
and Brunswick police were counting on its reliability. And listen, man, I don't want your son to be in the middle of this,
00:52:15
but right now he is half smack in the middle of it. and that's why listen i know but that's why as much as i you know he's telling us you confided
00:52:24
in him that you know you killed two people and then he you know his you're confiding in him as
00:52:29
both both the people we found in the house okay i told him the black people and then when i ended
00:52:35
up telling him the truth after the truck incident i told him what it was and i told him i was just
00:52:41
embarrassed because i had killed a girl and that's when i told him the truth of the matter
00:52:46
Now, I want to bring this thing back up from this machine here, okay? It says you failed.
00:52:51
I'd say that you'd stay exempt. Right. So I want to talk about some similarities and some stuff from the injuries of both.
00:52:58
Both are big. Right. I want to talk about them. This is going to be exactly what I was told.
00:53:05
Okay. All right? Yep. Okay. Regina, stab wound in the back. Two stab wounds to the right side of the neck.
00:53:13
Crushed Adam's apple. Right carotid artery was cut. Her left hand near her index finger, the webbing was cut.
00:53:23
Causes death. I know, I told you. Causes death is a sharp force injury and a crushed abs apple.
00:53:30
Neck compression strangulation All of these injuries included or were in addition to the stabbings and the polygraph had confirmation You mentioned that several times that John was over there making gurgling whizzes like that and stuff like that
00:53:48
This machine says that you had stabbed John. Let me ask you something. John had one stabbing right here.
00:53:57
did you help him stop everything by doing that? Did you do one stay-up wound in the john to help him out to put him out of misery?
00:54:07
If you did, that's completely understandable. Detectives kept giving Tom an out.
00:54:13
They told him maybe it was an accident, an act of mercy, self-defense, and maybe things got out of control.
00:54:20
Any of those versions could have given him a softer landing, even a shot at claiming self-defense.
00:54:26
but Tom wouldn't take it. He stuck to his one line over and over. I didn't kill John.
00:54:35
You've got to help yourself out in this. You've got to tell us what the hell happened in that house.
00:54:41
You know, he brings up a good point. I'm going to let you explain to him about when he thinks something happened in the argument.
00:54:46
I'm going to let him go ahead with that. You know, he brings up a good point as we talked.
00:54:52
You don't like women getting beat up, do you? Tell me a little bit about your stepfather, right?
00:55:01
And your mom? Yeah. Abusive relationship? Yeah. Something about that happened quite frequently?
00:55:07
Well, when we were younger. All right. What were your feelings on that? I just loved my mom, and I hated him at the time.
00:55:14
Even though there were times where he was a good guy, and I liked him for certain things.
00:55:20
he would drink and use drugs and you know he took all his aggression out on her and
00:55:26
yeah you know she's just such always a good person and being a kid you know that really hurt
00:55:33
you know and to see her go back to him you know how did that make you feel it hurt me you know
00:55:40
make you angry well sure i mean who wouldn't be angry you know i was angry that you know she put
00:55:45
up with it but I mean obviously she felt that you know she loved them and worked through it
00:55:52
you know and they had separated for like a year and we got back together and what do you think
00:55:57
should happen to somebody that beats their their wife or their girlfriend a woman in general I
00:56:02
stand with you and it was such a woman right I mean what do you think should happen to somebody
00:56:06
I mean I don't feel like they should die you know I mean I can understand why some women do that
00:56:12
you know because they feel like there's no other way out they feel trapped yeah you know
00:56:18
I feel like you know women even deserve that when a man does that you know what I mean
00:56:25
that they should be able to so what was John doing to Regina what was John doing to Regina
00:56:31
he wanted her out he wanted her out he wanted her out was he hurting her? I don't know
00:56:38
was he hurting her? I don't know did you see him hurt? I never seen him hurt Did she tell you he was hurt?
00:56:45
No. She told me many stories about punching on boyfriends. You know what I mean?
00:56:51
She never said John hurt her. You know, she said he was dirty and never changed his clothes.
00:56:57
I think you know that he hurt her. I think she confided in you. And you were trying to protect her.
00:57:03
And then she got angry with you for what was going on with you and John. Is that what happened?
00:57:10
Listen, man, I get it. This was their best hypothesis. It was the only time they'd seen Tom get this emotional, other than when he was talking about his son.
00:57:24
They had tapped into his past to find a trigger. John was abusing Regina, and Tom was going to stop him.
00:57:32
But Regina was used to the chaos and abuse, so she tried to stop Tom. You do realize come Monday morning during this ring, the media's going to be there, man.
00:57:42
They're going to pinch you as a monster, don't you? Yeah. Do you want them to pinch you as a monster?
00:57:47
Do you want you? They're going to anybody. The difference is if we can tell our story, we're going to have a news conference.
00:57:52
We're going to give a press conference Monday morning before your arraignment. We're telling everybody you're here, you're being arraigned.
00:57:58
The news is going to be there. How's it going to be? You know what I mean? Did you sit in this chair with us?
00:58:04
Did you talk to the detectives and did you tell us everything that happened 100% to the team, which right now I don't believe?
00:58:11
Correct. Okay? And your son is going to watch this news conference. Sure. You know what I mean?
00:58:17
Your son is going to watch this news conference. Pretty soon, he may be watching it with you somewhere else because of the trouble he's in.
00:58:24
And Alicia as well. They're both in trouble right now with this. Too much is going on because you put them in this position.
00:58:31
the only way for you to help them and to not paint yourself as a monster i mean come on i i know that
00:58:38
you love your kid and your kid does love you okay he does but he's gonna have to live with this cloud
00:58:44
of the media painted my father is a monster and people know that you're his father would you
00:58:49
rather just have them him be known as it might might make my dad made a mistake he fessed up to
00:58:54
it he did he did exactly what he is i still talk to my dad in jail do you want that or do you want
00:58:59
Everybody going, look, your kid's a monster. If Tom had accepted their version of what happened,
00:59:06
would he have gotten away with it? I mean there was no way he wasn going back to prison He robbed two salons and killed a woman These were indisputable facts But was it chivalry gone way wrong
00:59:22
Or was it a premeditated attempt to secure a place of his own? It's possible no one will ever know, but the jury would seal his fate.
00:59:33
No matter what, Tom would probably spend the rest of his life in jail. But Ohio also has the death penalty.
00:59:40
Which is a good thing, but they should use it a lot more. The relationship Tom wanted with his son was never going to happen.
00:59:48
At least not outside of prison walls. Thomas E. Nuff Jr. was convicted of two counts of aggravated murder for killing John Mann and Regina Capobianco.
01:00:00
along with multiple other charges, aggravated burglary, gross abuse of a corpse, kidnapping, conspiracy, tampering with evidence, and theft-related offenses.
01:00:11
There was, of course, a jury recommendation that the sentence of death be imposed.
01:00:17
The court finds by proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the aggravating circumstances the offender was found guilty of committing outweigh the mitigating factors.
01:00:27
therefore on count two the sentence of death will be imposed upon the offender this meant tom's son
01:00:35
lost a father well and that's what i hope just by being you know straight up with you guys that
01:00:40
the things that you can't control to help with you know i'd appreciate so i'm not here to fuck
01:00:46
nobody around or be a bad guy and no no nobody's nobody's said at all you know what i mean i'm
01:00:53
I say it's enough to have to live with my faults and all the mistakes I've had in the past and letting my family down and, you know, not being there through my son's high school years when, you know, other people had their dads there at the football game.
01:01:06
Because of Tom's actions, he would never get the chance to go to one of his kids' games and walk him out onto the field.
01:01:15
But his son wasn't the only one who suffered. Two lives were lost. Regina may have been a bit of a wild card, but she mattered to her family, to her friends.
01:01:27
She was a person. And no matter what her life choices, she didn't deserve what happened to her.
01:01:33
This monster took my sister from me. My heart is broken. I don't know if it will ever repair.
01:01:46
I miss her every day. She will not get to see her sons get married. She will not get to call her grandma.
01:01:58
And it's all because of trying to help somebody that I told her that I thought she should stay away from.
01:02:08
I have horrible visions that I hope someday will get out of my head of the murder.
01:02:20
And no one should ever have to have these visions of a family member. I am glad he has the death penalty.
01:02:30
I think he deserves the death penalty. He's had a chance to plead for his life. and I'm sure my sister pleaded for her life that he chose to ignore.
01:02:44
John Mann's son and sister both gave incredible heartfelt statements, and John's son spoke for more than ten minutes.
01:02:52
My dad was a goofy, bright, and sensitive man. He loved the Cleveland Browns, watching match reruns, and doing community theater.
01:03:01
He had a full scholarship offer from Heidelberg University in astrophysics. He ended up floating into electrical contracting from his interest in solar power.
01:03:10
He loved the idea of cheap renewable energy. He even studied to be an architect because he thought it would help him develop solar power cells.
01:03:18
Later in life, he became a computer programmer. He truly had a gifted mind and could do just about whatever he wanted to with properly motivated.
01:03:27
People tended to like my dad. He had a gregarious and colorful personality with an oddball sense of humor.
01:03:33
you took my dad from me you robbed him of the golden years of his life and the time we had together
01:03:41
I miss him terribly he proceeded to lay out how Tom had failed as a man as a human being and as
01:03:49
a father he sympathized with Tom's son and thanked him for his bravery and enduring the
01:03:55
trial and doing the right thing by testifying against his own father whom he loved
01:04:01
but then he surprised everyone you do not deserve to live you do not deserve a humane death
01:04:08
you butchered two people for reasons i cannot begin to comprehend i have wanted you to die
01:04:14
yet i am faced with the reality that it will not and cannot be enough in order to heal i must
01:04:21
accept this and find a way to reconcile it against my own feelings i will continue to beg for his
01:04:28
life to be spared however possible. I want you all to hear it from a man that wanted him dead.
01:04:34
As a son to a man whose life was ended. His father. I will beg to anyone who will listen to spare his life.
01:04:45
I don't think we should do it for me or him. I think we should do it because it the right thing to do for our society Of course Tom is appealing and the legal fight will go on for years But what lingers isn just the courtroom drama and appeals it the contradiction
01:05:04
Tom wanted to be a good father. He wanted to prove he could do right by his son.
01:05:09
He stayed in touch, leaned on him, even dreamed of settling down in a house where they could reconnect.
01:05:15
but instead he fell back into every pattern he swore he'd left behind. The lies, the violence, the selfishness that burned through everything in his path.
01:05:29
And maybe the hardest part to make sense of is the question of whether Tom could have been telling the truth about John Mann.
01:05:37
Maybe John was abusing Regina, like the detectives had suggested, and it triggered a traumatic reaction from Tom.
01:05:46
Or maybe what happened is exactly as Tom described. John tried to evict Regina and she went at him, so Tom intervened.
01:05:57
Even if parts of his story are true and noble, all of his following actions say the most.
01:06:04
Tom's choices after that night spoke the loudest. He hid the bodies, tried to hire someone to burn the place down,
01:06:13
dumped the dogs into someone else's neighborhood, manipulated and lied to those he loved,
01:06:19
dragged them into something horrible, and, most importantly, never called police.
01:06:25
Whatever happened in that house might have started with good intentions, but what followed were really, really, really bad choices that only a complete fucking idiot would make.
01:06:37
Then again, this is Ohio. At the end of the day, we all have to be accountable for our choices.
01:06:46
We all have to be responsible for what we decide to do. Otherwise, what the fuck are we doing here?
01:06:54
Today, Thomas Nuff's son is prone. He's built a life that has nothing to do with Parma Heights or with the crimes his father committed there.
01:07:05
He's well-adjusted, stable, and in 2023, he got married. Whatever cycle Tom was trapped in, his son has escaped it.
01:07:15
Good for him. And maybe that's the real ending here. Not the death sentence, not the deaths, not the appeals,
01:07:24
but the fact that even out of something so violent and tragic, like a phoenix rising from the ashes,
01:07:32
a different kind of life is actually possible. That's going to do it for another one.
01:08:26
Thanks for joining us. If you like the show, head on over to swordandscale.com. Get the app, get plus.
01:08:31
we'll see you next week stay safe Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.