“From what I am pulling from your letters you are much closer to [my daughter’s] age than mine let alone Tom’s,” Cindy wrote. “Are you over the age of 18? In this alone, he can be prosecuted as a child predator.” She added, “As you can see, Tom’s not 18. He’s married and he’s a father of two. He’s 47 and I’m his wife. You’ve obviously been fooled.”
With that, Cindy confronted Montgomery with her discovery about his secret online life and told him she wanted a divorce. He didn’t argue; he simply moved into the basement.
After Jessi received Cindy’s letter, reality set in, and she began her search for a new, younger man. She started by looking at Tommy’s list of friends on Pogo.com. She remembered Tommy mentioning a friend named Brian and contacted him after finding his profile under “Beefcake1572.” She confided in Brian about her involvement with the older man, and Brian confirmed Montgomery’s age, marital status, and the rest. She asked Brian if he was really 22, explaining that she didn’t want to get tricked again into falling in love with a much older man. Brian assured her that he actually was 22, and the two started an online relationship, playing Lottso (a game similar to bingo) on Pogo.com. Before long, they weren’t just playing Lottso; they were engaging in cybersex.
While Jessi toyed with Brian’s affections, she continued to email Montgomery, even though she now knew the truth about him. She taunted him with the news that she was getting to know Brian online, and Brian began bragging about the relationship at work, which infuriated Montgomery. The trio began exchanging messages in chat rooms and sending instant messages (IMs), with each subsequent message nastier than the last. As a result of complaints from Jessi and Brian, Montgomery was kicked out of some of the chat rooms, adding to his frustration and fury.
When Montgomery emailed Jessi to say he was contemplating suicide, she begged him not to and agreed to stop communicating with Brian. In turn, he threatened her with bodily harm if she continued her online romance with the younger man. She went along with Montgomery’s wishes, but not for long.
Jessi craved attention, and she couldn’t resist the urge to cause a little more drama. She sent Brian a message and wooed him back. When Montgomery found out, he suddenly started talking about guns and shooting sprees at work, putting his co-workers on edge. His talk of violence was so unnerving that, as a joke, a colleague arrived one morning wearing a bulletproof vest. But it was no joke when Montgomery began grilling his co-workers about Brian’s work schedule.
On the morning of September 15, 2006, Jessi ignored several obscene IMs from Montgomery. When he telephoned and began screaming at her, she simply hung up. It was the last straw for Montgomery, who decided this was the day he would take charge and simplify life for Jessi and himself. He loaded his guns and, that evening, drove to Dynabrade where he waited for Brian to finish his shift. He followed him to the parking lot and, when no one was around, he shot and killed him.
Montgomery later IM’d Jessi again. “U waiting for ur bf,” [“You waiting for your boyfriend?”] he wrote. No response. He IM’d her again at 2:15 AM. “come on c ur bf brian wont mind u talking to me.” [“Come on, see your boyfriend Brian won’t mind you talking to me.”]
When investigators interviewed Brian’s co-workers and began to unravel the details of the love triangle, a detective—concerned that Jessi’s life might be in danger—called her in West Virginia and then contacted the local police. When an officer knocked on Jessi’s front door, Shieler answered and told him her daughter wasn’t expected back until later that night. The officer was suspicious, since New York State investigators said they had just spoken to the girl. After further questioning, Shieler admitted her ruse, confessing that she had been playing the role of young Jessi.
Shieler claimed that when she first visited Pogo.com, she “accidentally” used her daughter’s screen name and was directed to the teen chat room. Investigators later learned she had originally registered on the site as “TallHotBlondBig50,” which would have tipped most people to the fact she was a middle-aged woman. She quickly changed her screen name to “Peaches_06_17” and chatted with Montgomery and later with Brian. She claimed noble intentions, asserting she was trying to prevent Montgomery from luring teen girls online and that Brian was someone she couldn’t get rid of no matter how hard she tried. The police soon learned that there was more to the story than Shieler would have them believe.
When investigators first interviewed Montgomery on September 18, he offered an alibi for the time Brian was murdered. He claimed to have gone out for dinner, returning home by 10:15 PM, which was too early to have committed the crime. But Cindy told police he hadn’t gotten home until almost 11 PM, a time corroborated by cell phone records. Montgomery was placed at Dynabrade close to the time of the murder and long after he had clocked out of work.
When police broke the news to Montgomery that Jessi was actually a pudgy, 50-year-old, married mother, it didn’t seem to register with him. Police described his behavior at the time as “erratic.”
“He’d appear calm, then all the sudden he would get elevated, upset, stating something along the lines of, ‘I just don’t understand what this is all about,’” said sheriff’s deputy Jason Weiss. “He was very dramatic.”
“He became quiet and somewhat maudlin when he spoke of the woman and their internet relationship,” according to detective Charles Tirone. As the story unfolded, the truth behind the trio’s real relationship emerged. “There were hundreds of pages of chat room contact,” said assistant district attorney Ken Case. “There was a lot of material. He [Montgomery] was a guy who prior to this happening was a very dedicated father. To make that much of a transformation, as a result of communicating with a fictitious person, is pretty frightening.”
When police interviewed Dynabrade employees and other local witnesses, one person described seeing a man dressed in camouflage gear and a ski mask on the night of the shooting. Someone else reported hearing gunshots. In combing the crime scene, police retrieved enough evidence to bring a solid indictment against Montgomery, including a leather cartridge case with what appeared to be dog hair on it, bullet shells from a .30 caliber rifle fired at close range, and a peach pit near Brian’s truck. The peach pit became a critical link to the case since it was the only piece of evidence with DNA on it. After further testing, the police found that the DNA matched the killer’s.
Although he had made a confession 2 weeks after the murder, initially Montgomery refused to submit to a DNA test, but police were able to take a sample from a soda can he used and left behind after one of his police interviews. His DNA matched that on the peach pit, and Montgomery was officially arrested 2 months later, on November 27, 2006.
In July 2007, Montgomery was offered a deal of 20 years in prison for a guilty plea versus a 15- to 25-year sentence if the case went to trial and was successfully prosecuted. At first he rejected the deal, but on August 20, Montgomery pled guilty to first degree manslaughter. In spite of a later attempt to retract the plea, on November 27, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison with 5 years of post-release supervision.
Justice Penny Wolfgang delivered the sentence: “This is a totally senseless killing. This young man has been cut off in the prime of his life. … All of this for absolutely no reason.”
The victim’s father, when he had the opportunity to address Montgomery before sentencing, said, “My wife and I don’t understand how this could happen to our family. We don’t understand how such evil could exist in the world. To gun down a boy over simple jealousy does not make sense.”
ABC’s popular television series 20/20 aired an episode devoted to the case in March 2010. Montgomery told the news correspondent that his online relationship “became more real to me than real life. If I was smart, I would’ve just ended it, but it was like a drug that I needed every day.”
Brian’s parents filed one wrongful death lawsuit against the three they felt were responsible for their son’s death: Montgomery, Shieler, and Dynabrade. They later drop
ped Shieler from the suit because, as Brian’s dad said, “She has nothing. She’s just a piece of dirt.” Their case is still pending, while the haunting reality of losing a son hangs over them every day.
Brian Barrett, killed by Thomas Montgomery as the result of a twisted love triangle [Courtesy of Deb and Dan Barrett]
Montgomery after his arrest [Courtesy of Erie County Sheriff’s Office]
Mary Shieler and her daughter, the real Jessi [Courtesy of Barbara Schroeder, producer of talhotblond]
Brian’s truck at the crime scene [Courtesy of Barbara Schroeder, producer of talhotblond]
Dan Barrett, second from right, of Lockport, standing with his son, Daniel, during a sentencing hearing for Montgomery, seated, in the white shirt [Courtesy of Tonawanda News]
Don’t Preach to Me
When Joanne Ruffner checked her email early one morning in October 2006, she discovered a surprising message waiting for her—a confirmation that she’d signed on to a swinging singles/couples website. A profile had been set up in her name, complete with personal information including her email address and IM screen name.
The About Me section was filled with intimate details that made Joanne blush. By 10 PM that night, nude photos of her had been posted on the site. By 1 AM the next morning, there were more than 16 such photos as well as a new email address with the username “joanneaznymph.” Fellow swingers were encouraged to share nude photos of themselves with her. In the meantime, she soon learned that various nude photos of her were being sent to the directors of the real estate association for which she worked.
Joanne hadn’t posted any of this material, but she knew who did and her immediate goal was to stop the nightmare that was unfolding before her own eyes. She recognized the photos as being taken by a former boyfriend, Mike Myers. She was in her late 20s when she met him in 2004 through a hiking group she had started on Yahoo! Groups. To get the group off to a strong start, she’d gone to Yahoo! Personals and invited other 20-somethings in the Tucson, Arizona, area to join. Though some lively discussions ensued, she never could seem to get the members together for a real hike—with the exception of Myers.
She had chatted with Myers on the phone several times before they agreed to meet for a hike. They met up at a mall in nearby Sierra Vista, where Joanne transferred her hiking gear into Myers’s truck. They drove to the Coronado Cave Visitor Center before hiking to the Coronado National Monument. During the 5 hours spent together, they enjoyed each other’s company and found that they seemed to have a lot in common.
“I had a boyfriend at the time,” said Joanne. “Mike knew this because we talked throughout the whole hike about everything. He told me he was in his late 30s, an officer in military intelligence at Fort Huachuca in Arizona, and that he was single with no children.”
Joanne felt comfortable with Myers and continued to IM with him via Yahoo! and on her cell phone. He wanted to go hiking again, but Joanne’s boyfriend had become jealous of the frequent phone contact between the two and talked her out of it.
A few weeks later, Myers was transferred from Arizona’s Fort Huachuca to Camp Zama in Japan. He emailed Joanne, and she confessed that she missed their conversations. When he was later deployed to Iraq, in mid-2005, he began to email her more frequently.
Joanne welcomed Myers’s attention, which came during a rocky period in her relationship with her boyfriend at the time. The flirtations were innocent enough at first, but she soon sent him a few sexy photos of herself, to his obvious delight. After breaking up with her boyfriend, she lost almost all contact with Myers for more than a year. But by June 2006, she felt ready to start dating again and reached out to her erstwhile hiking buddy.
“We would spend hours on the computer chatting back and forth,” said Joanne. “On his days off—Mondays—he would call me because it would be Sunday my time. We would talk for at least 2 hours at a time.”
She shared every detail of her life with him, from her past relationships and childhood to her hopes and dreams. Myers seemed to reciprocate. He shared that he had two brothers; one lived in North Carolina with a wife and children, and the other, who was autistic, lived with their parents in West Virginia. He said he had been engaged once, but after realizing his fiancée only wanted him for sex and money, he had broken it off.
On June 17, 2006, Myers sent Joanne an email that changed the depth of their relationship, writing that he had been “thinking about ‘our house’ in West Virginia and thinking what it will be like to have you as my wife, companion, friend. I think of that a lot. I know we’ve kind of ‘joked/hinted’ at it, but I think of it a lot.” By July 4, they were calling themselves a couple.
“I thought I had found my equal,” said Joanne, “the one person in life that was meant for me. I thought God and my mother (who passed away in 2003) had sent him to me … he was an angel.”
Since Myers was still in Iraq, they began to exchange nude photos of themselves via email and snail mail. Joanne saw no harm in it. After all, they were planning to move in together and get married.
In August 2006, they were finally together again when Myers’s scheduled month of leave coincided with a conference Joanne was attending in Kansas City, Missouri. Myers told Joanne that he’d spent his first day back in the U.S. with his brother and his family in North Carolina before heading to West Virginia to go fishing with a friend. The reason she hadn’t heard from him for a few days, he said, was that there was no cell phone signal where they were fishing. She believed him, of course. He called her again on his way back to North Carolina before flying to Missouri for their brief rendezvous.
They shared 3 days together in Kansas City, spending most of their time in the hotel room making love, sleeping, talking, and eating. Whenever they went out, Myers held her hand or had his arm around her waist. They appeared to be a couple who were very much in love.
Joanne was oblivious to all of the red flags that appeared along the way. Later she remembered that he’d paid for everything in cash, never with a credit card. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time because some people are like that,” she recalled.
Returning to North Carolina for the remainder of his R&R, Myers continued to call Joanne often. One night, he said he was at a bar with his brother and asked if she would talk to him. His brother was eager to speak to the woman who was making him so happy. Believing the man was Myers’s brother, she spoke with him at length on the phone, loving the attention.
When Myers returned to Iraq in August 2006, he sent Joanne gifts: DVDs of movies he knew she liked, teddy bears, flowers, candy, and a necklace with a gold heart pendant. They set their wedding date for July 4, 2008, and she started planning the wedding.
Myers said he wanted to follow the traditional route and ask Joanne’s father for her hand in marriage. He even made arrangements to go to Arizona in December 2006 to meet her father in person. In the meantime, he emailed her father to say how very much in love he was with his daughter and to thank him for raising such an amazing woman.
On August 15, Myers sent Joanne the following love letter via email. (Certain sexually explicit references have been deleted.)
My dearest Joanne,
I have never had anyone who I felt comfortable with or didn’t ‘make fun of me’ or act like i was stupid for asking such things. That is one of the things from my past that I’m also working on. I am so happy that we are able to talk about these things, despite how difficult it is for me or you, we are doing it. Yes, it will be a slow process, but I think because of our relationship, our love and commitment to one another it will all be ok.
You will get a massage anytime you want or need one. It really is a pleasure for me to do that for you. It really is relaxing for me and gives me great joy to know that it pleases you so much. And when I say ‘pleases’ i do not mean in a sexual way of pleasing, but in a relaxing, enjoyable way. I think it will be so relaxing to take a bath together, to just sit in the warm water and enjoy one another’s company. Candles lit, sipp
ing a glass of wine and talking about our day, our love for one another.
Please don’t be scared. I think you have seen that I am very easy to talk to and really like it when you do. I really like the ‘assistance’ and I do desire to make it ‘all about you.’ I’m sorry that it didn’t seem that way in Kansas City but I really did think i was.
It will just take a little time for me to learn your body and what really makes you happy. If you are happy then i am happy. I really mean that jo.
I believe I told you the same thing, ‘Just relax and let it happen as it does.’ I want you to be relaxed with me, and i think you were; we both were very comfortable with one another. I have had two ‘girl friends’ cheat on me and that was devastating. I thot they loved me or at least cared about me greatly. I was wrong and my trust was greatly violated. I had told myself I will never trust another woman again, but I DO trust you 100%.
I have never had a girl friend who was really beautiful like you are. I have never had anyone love me like you do. I love you so much.
There have been so many times that i have been ridiculed and put down, made fun of because of my glasses, or whatever. I know that I’m not great looking, but I do try and take care of myself, best I can. I also know that you love me for who I am.
I love you so much and i do trust you. I know we will have a wonderful life together. I love you joanne.
Myers sent Joanne money via PayPal to help with the wedding expenses, but then, suddenly, he told her that their plans would have to change. He said he was tired of his current work and was going to begin school in June 2007 to change his military operational status. He said he was hoping to be stationed in Texas after he finished so that they could get married and be together. Once again, she trusted him implicitly.
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