LD: Did you have a game plan or exit strategies in your head if something went wrong and you got caught?
JC: Not specifically. But if something came up, I would just think on the fly and do my best to get out of that situation. But no planned-out exit strategy. If something started rubbing me the wrong way, I would just back away and tell them I wasn’t ready for a relationship.
LD: You mention in the book going to Stephanie’s a day early because you thought she was possibly seeing someone else. You were seeing or talking to other women—why did it bother you if she was?
JC: At first, we had a really good connection, and I thought maybe this might go somewhere if I gave it a little more of a chance. There were some red flags, but at the beginning, I was able to throw the flags into the back of my mind. But she would—and so would her kids—talk about the other guys she dated before me. She talked about her ex before me all the time. When he found out we were together, he told her he was in love with her. So, I decided to sneak up there to see if she was playing me.
LD: The text messages you sent were very encouraging of the feelings they were expressing to you. Why did you send the types of texts you did to these women?
JC: If I found one I liked and we had a connection, it goes back to the earlier question, could it be my way to separate? I regret what I did and that I hurt anyone. If I got them emotionally involved, then it would be easier if they were the one and they were already attached to me. I made mistakes and bad decisions that hurt others, and I hate that. Looking back, that is not the man I am or who I want to be. And it’s not the man I want my son to grow up to be. Even other men, maybe they can learn from my mistakes and not have to go through what I’m going through. I strayed from God and sought earthly flesh instead of His guidance. Not that He is punishing me, but this is where I am because of my choices.
LD: When did you have time and the means to do all of this and still have the energy to be a father, husband, and police officer?
JC: It was honestly tough. Looking back on it, I have no idea how I did it. It was a lot of physical hours and emotional time invested. I was working twelve hours a day, trying to keep up with being a father and husband. I failed at all of it. I failed as a father, husband, and chief of police. I let them all down.
Energy-wise, I don’t know where it was coming from. I think I’m paying for it now. I am physically and emotionally exhausted. The Devil had a foothold in my life, and when the Devil gets in, he can turn it all upside down.
LD: How did you keep them from finding your personal social media pages—for instance, your Facebook page?
JC: Prior to starting all of the sites, I went into my Facebook, changed my profile, and made it private. I would tell them it was deactivated or that I didn’t go on it. I would tell them that because I was chief, everyone wanted to be your friend, and I just couldn’t have it out there.
LD: If you had the chance to talk to these women again, what would you say to them?
JC: First off, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the emotional hurt I caused them and that I know they went into everything with me for a relationship. I am sorry from the bottom of my heart. I know they don’t have to forgive me, but I’m truly sorry. I hope for the best for them and hope they move on and find a happy relationship.
LD: If O showed up at your door tomorrow, saying she was ready to give you another chance, would you take it?
JC: I’m on the fence. Like I said, I love her. I have seen the woman she became, coming from the lifestyle we were in, seeing her mature, seeing her grow closer to God, which was amazing. But on the other side of the fence, I see the struggles and the things she held over my head and the broken promises she made to me. That causes me to pause on what I would do. I love her, but we would have to seek professional counseling together and individually. And be in agreement that we would work on the hurts we cause each other.
LD: What is the positive you want to come out of this chaos and mess you have brought into your life and your children’s lives?
JC: I hope that if someone who is growing up, or someone in a strained relationship, looks at my situation as an example and learns from the mistakes I made, it can have a positive outcome. I want people to know there is still hope. They don’t have to do what I did to seek attention at home. All they have to do is communicate and seek out help—professionally, if possible. I hope my story can get out there so people can learn. Be encouraged by seeing what my kids are going through, and what I’m going through, not to make the same mistakes I did and see that it doesn’t have to be this way if they get help before it gets out of hand.
LD: You said in the book that you crave sexual attention. Do you consider yourself a sex addict?
JC: No, I don’t consider myself a sex addict because most of what I was craving was the companionship. I enjoyed being with someone in public, walking around with them, and the public displays of affection, holding hands, arms around each other, kissing.
Sex was a secondary benefit. My craving was just companionship. I have narcissistic tendencies, but I don’t see myself as a sex addict.
Terri Anne Browning (TAB): *At the last minute cutting into the Q&A* Hey, sorry to just crash your interview—Takes a sip of my iced decaf skinny vanilla latte. Hey, it’s like 9 p.m. in Virginia, people!—but I have a question…and just a warning, it may have a follow-up question…or two.
LD: Please do, TA!
TAB: So, Jason, there have been a few women who have stated that you are in a relationship with them and you have kids together. One said you were in Iraq, have been married for a year and have a child. The other said you have been together for three years with a child. However, Candie may or may not have mentioned that you had a vasectomy. Was she speaking the truth?
JC: Yes, she is right. I had a vasectomy in 2012 while still married to my first wife, M. We were done having children, and the doctor explained to us that it would be easier on me to have the procedure than it would be if M had her tubes tied.
TAB: I have a follow-up question. Did you wear protection when you had sex with any of those women?
JC: No…
TAB: Then I definitely have a follow-up question to my follow-up. Have you been tested for STIs and HIV since all of this blew up?
JC: Yes. The same week that everything went viral, I got tested for both, and everything came back negative.
LD: Thank you for taking the time to answer all of our questions, Jason. TA and I have appreciated you taking time from your already chaotic life to sit with us and tell us your story. We realize this must have been very difficult with everything still continuing to be unresolved, but we are thankful you allowed the two of us to tell your story.
Now turn the page to read the debunked lies Jason has been able to set straight for us.
Lonnie Debunks the Lies
One of the big things I saw come out of the Jason Collier dumpster fire was people coming out of the woodwork with some untruths to be part of this story.
Why?
To be included.
To get some of the attention the original poster was getting.
Only they know why they chimed in by posting untruths.
A lot of people were quick to believe what some of these women—and a few men—were posting. Below are a couple “lies” that were eventually debunked. (I’m only using initials of the posters so as to not give them more credit)
Facebook User: She posted on Facebook pretending to be Jason’s first wife, stating she was still married to him and wanting some answers.
This was someone just looking for attention—she was not Jason’s first wife.
Others came forward on social media, claiming to be married to Jason and the mother of his children, each of them stating that their children were toddler-aged. It may be true that they are, in fact, married to a Jason Collier and have children with him, but they are most definitely not married to this particular Jason Collier. And since he had a vasectomy in 2012, then had all the te
sts done to ensure he was no longer able to procreate, he couldn’t possibly be the father.
Yet Another Facebook User: She posted on Facebook that she had a friend who had been in a relationship with Jason since she was fourteen years old—FOURTEEN YEARS OLD!
I don’t care who you are and what you have done. That is a serious accusation and something that should never be said IF IT’S UNTRUE. The original poster allegedly posted later she did it to “prove that people will believe anything these days.” Still not cool. That post could have opened the door to a whole new set of issues.
In the weeks following Jason’s story, another Jason Collier was arrested. He is forty-four and also lives in Texas—Nacogdoches County, Texas, to be exact. After undercover authorities posed as a fourteen-year-old girl, and this particular Jason had been told straightaway of the girl’s age on several occasions over the course of their weeklong online friendship, he made plans to meet up with her and was promptly arrested for online solicitation of a minor.
I’m sure most of us played the game Telephone when we were younger. The internet has provided people a new platform to take this game and give it a fresh twist. People were posting just for the sake of posting, it seemed. Jason was even accused of being a part of the disappearance of a missing girl. Her family came out and debunked that. It almost seemed because of this story, the original post that had gone viral, people wanted to hang him out on unsolved cases and other allegations of molestation and inappropriate behavior.
Facebook pages were being created left and right, with one group topping 200,000 members at one point. For a week in late January/early February 2021, people were coming together to watch this story, watch this man’s life fall apart, and even to turn on and attack the two original women at the center of the story.
Even as I sit here and write this, my phone is dinging with text messages of screenshots, because Jason is allegedly back on one of the dating apps. There are fake Facebook profiles claiming they are “Jason Collier,” using his picture in their profile.
I’m not here to judge anyone who finds enjoyment in mistruths they post online. I mean, come on, haven’t you heard “Online” by Brad Paisley? He spells it out in the song. People can become someone else online; they can become cooler online.
TikTok “stars” were made because of their coverage of Jason Collier’s story. Podcasts had record numbers of listeners because they were talking about this, even bringing some of the key players on their shows.
But do you know who wasn’t talking?
Jason Collier.
His life, at his own hand—let me make that clear—was falling apart at his feet. He has lost everything except maybe his children and a few family members. Let me reiterate. Does he deserve to lose his wife for cheating on her? Yes, a thousand times, yes.
Would you want this brought to your doorstep the way it was brought to his? I mean, really, who hasn’t done something they shouldn’t have?
It has been proven online, so take that for what it is worth, that Candie has done this before to other men—married men—who ended relationships with her. As a woman, I find that doesn’t sit right with me, especially for a seven-to-ten-day relationship. She could have simply shown up at his house, told his wife what had been going on, stopped at the store, grabbed some ice cream, and eaten until she was out of her feelings.
She worded her original post to make people believe she had been in a long-term relationship with Jason. What does long-term mean to you? It means more than seven-to-ten days to me. But if she would have posted how short the relationship was, I’m pretty confident she wouldn’t have gotten the “sympathy” she was seeking. My opinion, but I saw holes on night one.
I guess the good of this story is people made new friends in these groups, one TikTok creator has started a whole series “investigating” current events and went from 1,500 to 89,000 and counting followers—and last but not least, Terri Anne and I got to write our first nonfiction together.
Final Opinion from the Authors
Lonnie Doris
My alter ego jumped down this rabbit hole almost immediately upon seeing it shared by a friend of hers and Terri Anne’s. But right away, she started shooting holes into the story that was being laid out in front of her. She watched two women go back and forth, seeking attention on whom he “cared” for more. She saw other women coming out with some truths and some made-up stories to get their five minutes. As the days progressed, and more lies came out, her caring and gentle soul wanted to help keep the mean-spirited people away. So, she reached out to Jason—I assure you she told him she didn’t agree with him and what he had done, but she also didn’t agree with some of the actions by others, trying to make a mockery of him with their evil pranks and antics. Gotta love her; she has a heart, unlike me.
When my alter ego came to me (in my head, of course) to ask me about teaming up with Terri Anne to write this story, I was skeptical. But, in the end, if you know my alter ego, she is convincing, so I said yes. I didn’t say yes because I agreed with what Jason had done. Quite the contrary, and we made it clear to him we did not agree or support his actions. I said yes because, before knowing what I know now, I felt there was a story to tell. The original story I thought would be told, based on what I saw unfolding on the socials, was about weight loss and how it can change a person—sometimes not for the better.
But I soon found out, while Terri Anne and I were interviewing Jason nightly for a week, there is so much more to this story. There are so many moving parts that I, quite frankly, was beginning to feel my head spin. And at the end of it, I had to go to my secluded place just to recharge…and so did my alter ego.
Do I still believe Jason’s side of the story needed to be told? Yes. Yes, I do. Because, honestly, it’s not just about Jason. As you’ll read in Terri Anne’s statement, it’s about his children. My alter ego and I have shed many tears for these children over the course of this story.
By telling this story and with the majority of the proceeds going to them, I know their futures will be bright on the other side of this. I think it says a lot about how Jason feels that his children were hurt by his actions. And by him trying to make it up to them by giving them a better future shows me that he may be redeemable. Maybe? That’s on his shoulders, and actions speak louder than words.
I also hope that his story will help someone else.
Terri Anne Browning
As we come to the close of this book, I would like to take a moment and tell you my thoughts on why I decided to agree to write this book.
Writing nonfiction is something that was completely outside of my comfort zone. I feel much more in control of fictional characters that I—ahem, attempt—to govern as the story progresses. Turning someone’s real-life narrative into something readable was a process I had little power over because I wasn’t sitting there talking to the characters who constantly drive me crazy, but an actual, living person who had a story I had zero control in creating.
I’m sure at this point those who have read my other books are wondering what the hell is wrong with me, and why I would put my other books on pause to take the time and even listen to Jason Collier’s story long enough to turn his narrative into something worth reading. As we sat down for our nightly calls, at times, I wondered the same thing myself. But in truth, I’m glad I did, because now I’m even more curious about the other aspects of this story.
Not Jason’s or Candie’s or even Stephanie’s. Frankly, I’m finished with these people and their drama. None of them are worth my time now.
Jason’s children were—and still are—the reason I agreed to write this short narrative in his words to begin with. A narrative I endeavored to remain impartial to as I wrote it so that my own feelings didn’t spill over into his words. As I saw the craziness that was going on via social media, it wasn’t hard to imagine what kind of chaos these children’s lives must have suddenly become. Just thinking about it broke my heart. Being a mother of three, I couldn’
t just sit back and stay silent when I had the opportunity to help, even if in a minuscule way.
Then we got to the part where Jason’s daughter was…hurt. I wanted to put it in the book, but at the same time, I was reluctant without both her and her mother’s permission—plus, there is the whole ongoing investigation to consider. Luckily, Lonnie and I were persistent, because if we hadn’t been, Jason wouldn’t have told them at all. I very well may have vomited if that had happened, knowing that I was responsible for putting that poor girl through such an ordeal all over again without her permission.
I told him exactly what I thought of him, and I’m sure he is not my biggest fan.
When I learned that neither his daughter nor ex-wife knew about the book or what was potentially going to be published, I felt physically ill. My trust in Jason vanished that day—although it wasn’t strong to begin with. And I promised myself, along with his daughter and M, that from here on out, they were now mine to protect. Lonnie and I now have two more honorary members of our family.
Stay tuned. I’m sure you’re going to hear more of this story in the future in other aspects.
And from other points of view.
You didn’t honestly think this was the end, did you?
Texted Lies, Whispered Truths: Jason Collier's Story Page 5