Original subtitles

Brandon was the full package.

Very tall, 6 foot 3.

He was vulnerable, funny, open, honest.

[suspenseful music]

It was all bullshit.

Just when you think you know this person,

you don't know anything at all.

I went straight to my social media.

The floodgates opened and more and more women

started coming out.

Brandon had multiple protection orders against him.

When you do break up with Brandon,

that is when the stalking begins.

My parents had to put a video camera outside my bedroom

window to shine down on my car to see what he was going to do.

Days after getting a permanent restraining order,

he came running to my car, knocking on my window.

That's when I found the tracking device.

We really felt like we needed

to start warning people.

We all had the epiphany... well,

what if we use our voices?

We were going to join forces to go up against him.

[siren wailing]

I don't think Amber and I were ever prepared

for the journey we were about to go on.

♪ ♪

Brandon and I had been together for five years

and married for two.

And at that point, I felt like everything was a lie.

I learned about Brandon's infidelity with multiple women.

He put me through the wringer, telling me he had leukemia,

but now I don't know what's the truth.

And Brandon created fake emails

pretending to be Athena,

to keep us apart.

Athena had been my enemy for five years, but in this moment,

I knew that that was never going to happen again

and that we were going to join forces to go up against him.

Between us, we had put up with Brandon's

bullshit for about 10 years.

We were vulnerable with each other.

She shared some of the things that had hurt her.

I shared the things that really hurt me, and from then on,

like, bonded like sisters.

We learned Brandon had multiple protection

orders filed on him.

We dug a little deeper into who these women were.

Some of the statements from the women that

were incredibly disturbing.

This is from August of 2005.

"He grabs me, blocks doors so I can't get out.

"I've had to run out the back door, through the trees

and bushes to get to my car."

I believe she got a 10-year restraining order.

And another one states, "I am absolutely terrified of him."

"He has caused me incredible strife, panic attacks,

"and reenacted PTSD.

"I lost 35 pounds due to stress,

"and I almost lost my job.

"He is violent and has left me with bruises

on my arm from grabbing me."

I never knew who he was to begin with.

This Brandon Johnson was not the same person at all.

Not only was I married to a liar and a cheat,

but he was a monster who abused women.

Get the fucking camera off me.

No, I won't.

You're acting like a crazy person.

You're going to kill us.

You're going to get out of my truck.

No.

Hell no.

No.

You're going to drive me to Portland,

and then you're going to get the fuck out of my life

for good.

When I asked Brandon for a divorce,

he was not willing to accept that.

One thing about Brandon is that he does not

take no for an answer, ever.

Amber was divorcing Brandon.

She had made that decision.

He, of course, started love bombing her again.

Basically saying he can't live without me

and how sad he was about this divorce.

He wants you to remember the good times.

This time is going to be different.

But Amber was very certain at that point

that she didn't believe a single word that he said.

I had not been able to serve Brandon divorce

papers at that point, and it just so happened

to be Valentine's Day.

And I had some things that Sydney

wanted to give her father.

And I figured, you know what, let's take this opportunity

as adults to talk about this.

Amber decides to make a quick pit stop at Brandon's.

I tell Amber, are you sure you want to do this?

I'm a little bit worried.

The more we uncovered, the more afraid I became of him.

And it kind of took me back to the feeling

I had when I was married to him, when

I was trying to divorce him.

Brandon does not take rejection.

He retaliates.

I've heard from several women

that he can flip a switch on you and he can harm you.

But that wasn't really sinking in to me yet.

And naive as it sounds, I really

didn't think that he would ever do something like that to me.

I just did not trust him.

I couldn't trust what he would do.

When I got to Brandon's, I was

trying to be on friendly terms so I could get him served.

We were having a simple conversation.

And in the middle of that conversation,

I got a text from another woman that

reached out to me on Facebook.

And she said, this is what I received from Brandon,

and it happened to be literally the same message that he

sent me the night before.

I love you, you're the best thing ever,

and I can't live without you.

All of her messages were coming in,

and I just started reading them to him.

And he flipped out.

And he grabbed a drink and just threw

it across the living room, and it splashed everywhere.

And he's like, why don't you see?

And he was kind of shaking.

It's that bitch Athena.

She's been doing this for years and you know it.

This is all lies.

And he went into the kitchen and he

said, if you don't stop reading those messages,

I'm going to kill myself.

I was just stunned that he was behaving that way.

But I was also scared because he just pulled a knife.

I said, you know what, I need to leave right now.

And then his eyes went dark, like it wasn't him anymore.

He approached me and he wouldn't let me leave.

Brandon is a very big man.

He's 6'3". He's built.

He was blocking me, blocking me with his body.

He had veins popping out of his neck.

He was... literally had, like, saliva

coming out as he's screaming.

It was terrifying. It was terrifying.

I just remember screaming, please let me go.

Please let me go.

I don't know what's going to happen.

I think he thought he was losing control

and he needed me to get back in my place, obey him.

I don't even remember getting down the stairs.

Just panic.

And I'm literally reaching for the doorknob.

I can feel his arm come up over me and slam it shut.

And so then it was another panic of, now I'm cornered.

I'm like, let me out now.

He said, I'll let you out.

But if you leave, I'm going to go

over and kill that bitch Athena and then

I'm going to kill myself.

And with that, he opened the door.

I almost slipped on the ice. I'm running towards my car.

I was shaking like...

like, just trying to get my car.

I sped out.

Now I saw it for myself.

He really is a monster.

I did not call the police because I was driving.

I'm just shaking.

My heart was racing and I couldn't

process what was happening.

As soon as I got back to Oregon, I spoke to the police

and I told them exactly what happened.

He said, hold on.

Did he say he wanted to kill Athena?

Of course, I'm just thinking, Athena needs to know.

♪ ♪

[phone chiming]

I wake up to, you know,

my phone chiming a bunch of times.

I get a text message from Amber.

It was a lot to absorb.

Brandon had threatened to kill me.

I'm in sheer panic.

I have all the little kids there.

I just started thinking, are my doors locked?

Are my windows locked?

He's going to come kill me.

Thankfully, the police do arrest Brandon.

♪ ♪

The police charge Brandon with unlawful imprisonment

and threatening to kill Athena.

And then he was ordered to appear in court.

Amber called me the next day, and I

was really scared for her.

I told her to get protection.

I knew that Brandon was dangerous.

The prosecutor in my case requested

that me and Athena show up at the court in Bothell

to testify.

We certainly didn't want to go.

I was already terrified to be around Brandon at that

court hearing that day.

As we were going through the metal detectors,

Brandon was standing to our left.

As soon as we walked in, he starts walking towards us.

He is shouting things at us, telling us to leave him alone.

We were all the way against the wall

trying to get away from him.

Our hearts were racing.

The police officers immediately called

other backup police officers to help with the incident

and restrained him.

The audacity of him was shocking.

Ultimately, Brandon had to plead

guilty to two more violations of his restraining order.

After a series of hearings, Brandon

does agree to take a plea.

He admitted what he did to me in his home

and threatening to kill Athena.

And we are now all awarded

the five-year no-contact order.

And it's not that common.

Normally it's one or two years.

And it was then that I knew that they took

this very, very seriously.

I didn't know I was a victim of domestic violence,

I didn't know that, until we had a victim's advocate.

And she told me, what he's doing to you

is considered domestic violence.

So that was a really big awakening for me.

How did I get myself involved in this?

Like, how did this happen?

He's not even close to the person that I thought he was.

We were given restraining orders,

and I truly believed at that time that I was safe

and that I would be protected.

But I was so naive.

Days after getting a permanent restraining order,

I was driving down the freeway and see

Brandon driving next to me, flagging me down to pull over.

I pulled over in a safe spot where people could see me.

He came running to my car, knocking on my window.

And I rolled down my window, and he leaned in to kiss me.

And I remember just leaning back, trying to get away,

and he kissed my forehead.

I was just repulsed.

I did not want him to kiss me.

I wanted to get the hell out of there.

But it felt violating.

It just felt violating.

And that was that moment of, wow,

he's letting me know he can do what he wants,

and he can break that restraining order if he wants.

This actually doesn't protect me at all.

Well, what happens if he shows up at my house?

By the time I call 911, is someone going to be here?

Like, what if he does something?

♪ ♪

[suspenseful music]

I was still fresh out of this marriage

and I was still processing everything,

so I didn't know at that point what he was capable of.

But Athena did.

I was worried for Amber because

when you do go to leave Brandon and break up with Brandon,

there's definitely a switch that flips.

That is when he escalates and the stalking begins.

When Brandon and I got divorced,

I had to get a temporary protection order against him.

I naively thought that getting the protection order

would help me.

It was clear he didn't care.

Brandon did not care about that piece of paper.

When you reject Brandon, it's not really you that he wants,

it's control.

He wants to control you.

And we discovered that this has happened with not only

us, but multiple other women.

As a hairstylist, I see hundreds of women a year,

and they tell me everything.

I absolutely warn them to be on the lookout for Brandon.

I tell them that they should run for their life.

I dated Brandon Johnson in 2006.

Brandon was very intense and almost immediately

told me that he loved me.

And I believe Brandon tells you everything

that you want to hear as fast as he

can so that you are hooked.

Ah!

For the most part, he's very charming.

But if you, God forbid, break up with him,

then he is vindictive, spiteful.

He wants to punish you.

-Stop, stop! -You need help.

Stop, please!

Just stop talking!

God!

When I broke up with Brandon, he just seemed to be furious.

Brandon would show up at my work,

at my home where I lived alone.

He was coming to bars that I went to

after work with my coworkers.

He was so persistent.

And he's huge.

I mean, he's a big guy, over a foot taller than me.

I had specifically asked him to stop contacting me,

and he was still showing up everywhere.

He was incessantly calling me to the point where I did end up

changing my phone number.

My family was concerned for me.

My co-workers were concerned for me.

Not too long after, I did get back

together with an ex-boyfriend.

He and I were out one night, and Brandon came and found

me and made a huge scene.

Brandon accused me of cheating.

He told me that he was going to fucking kill him

and that I was damaged goods.

You fucked up now.

I'm going to ruin you.

Brandon was completely unhinged, like a caged animal.

Brandon was behaving that way because I had moved on.

He was so jealous and he genuinely

seemed capable of violence.

Years later, Brandon found out that I had

talked to Athena and Amber.

I was at the lobby of this hotel with friends,

and I ran into him.

He proceeded to scream my name, that I was a whore,

that he had explicit pictures of me

and was going to show everybody.

I was really, really scared.

I said, I have nothing to hide, and there aren't any pictures.

I don't know why you're doing this.

I looked around to all of these bystanders

and said, we were in a relationship 10 years ago.

He punched some really thick glass doors.

And he only left me alone when I said,

I'm going to call the police.

I feel like once you've been involved with Brandon,

you're kind of always involved with Brandon.

And he will do anything to continue to torture you,

even from afar.

I had even mentioned to my family

that if I ever went missing, he should be their number

one person to look at.

After Brandon stalked me onto that freeway that day,

and after talking with Athena and hearing from these women,

I was on fire.

It was just like, fuck him.

Fuck him.

We're going to tell everyone what he did to all of us.

All of us had the worst experience,

and we wanted to share that,

this is a crazy person.

You can't even think this shit up.

And nobody was helping us.

And we wanted people to know what we were dealing with.

Amber and I knew that we now had

to protect ourselves, our daughter, and now other women.

We always talk about Brandon being a hurricane,

and you're kind of in the eye of the storm,

and he's circling around you.

And you can't see out, but everyone can see in.

So we wanted to really show what

happens in these toxic, cyclical relationships.

My daughter, Lexus, she loves podcasts.

And I remember her listening to one, going, huh,

and then Amber says the same thing.

I'm like, we all had the epiphany.

Well, what if we use our voices?

So we decided to do a podcast.

I was very adamant.

It was just, we're going to have to do it.

And Athena was like, OK, I'm on board, let's go.

Let's do it.

We had to team up and we had to get to the truth.

And this is how we became "Ex-Wives Undercover."

Hello, everyone, and thank you

for joining us for season one, episode

one of "Ex-Wives Undercover."

The name "Ex-Wives Undercover,"

it just kind of said everything

because you feel like you're an FBI agent

when you're with Brandon.

You're going to want to buckle up for this one,

because it's got a lot of twists and turns.

We did everything from the ground up.

Women that he chose, he could manipulate.

We built our website.

We bought recording mics off Amazon.

I'm ex-wife number two, by the way.

This is Amber.

I worked a full-time job, so did Athena.

We spent nights, weekends, every waking moment

was on this podcast.

We'd sit down, get on the mics, and spill our story.

We were all looking for true love,

but unfortunately, Amber and I married

a very charming sociopath.

Amber and I knew how important it was

to tell our truth no matter what.

You just never know.

I think the podcast has achieved a lot.

I love that Amber and my mom can be like a leading

light for women.

You might look at them and be like, oh, my God, can't

believe you fell for that.

But you can't fully understand it

or grasp it until you've been in that situation,

or you've watched someone close to you be in it.

I get it, I do.

I really do because I was there.

When I was born, it was just my mom and I.

We were, like, best friends.

Then Brandon came along.

I was seven years old.

I was a child.

He treated me like I was a competitor,

almost, like I was a threat.

He would get mad at me if I sat next to her

in a booth at a restaurant.

He used to take my stuff and he would hide it.

His reactions were crazy.

I mean, you could, like, trip, and he would yell at you.

Lexi, she was robbed of so much.

Yeah.

Sorry, it makes me emotional about that one.

Her dad left, and then Brandon stepped in,

and he thought it would be fine because this

was the new boyfriend.

And then he never was loving towards her.

And she was robbed of that.

He punched a hole in our closet door in the hallway.

It got to the point where it was easier

not to make him mad.

I would worry about my mom all the time,

worry about my safety or hers or my sisters'.

He created a very toxic environment for everybody,

and he just never quits.

He just knows how to ruin lives.

He's good at it.

It was awful. It was awful.

And after that, I knew that took a piece...

that definitely took a piece of me.

I think the main hope for all of the podcasts

is that it will help people become

more aware of the red flags in a new relationship.

It's safer for everyone.

As the podcast grew and had a further reach,

then more and more people would come out, even

more victims of Brandon's.

I would say, on a weekly basis, I

was being contacted by different women,

people in the legal system, women in other states.

He's going to lie until the day he dies.

It was really gratifying to see that our story

was resonating to women.

And then we got a message from a woman named Kelly who

kind of changed everything.

♪

So one of my friends, she sends me a message.

And she's like, oh, my gosh, have you seen this?

There's this podcast, and it's called "Ex-Wives Undercover."

And I'm like, OK, whatever, these two women.

And my friend had said, that's Brandon.

I was like, no way.

So then I started listening and listening, and I was just...

I was appalled.

And the time that it became really real for me

is when there was audio clips of his voice.

And there's one in particular where he is in a car.

He's like...

Stop, please!

...just stop talking!

And that's when it really hit me.

I'm like, oh, my gosh, this really is.

This is for real.

And everything came back and spiraled back for me.

I still can visualize what his eyes looked like when

he was saying those things.

It really was the worst part of my life.

♪ ♪

I was Brandon's first serious girlfriend.

I started dating Brandon in 1992.

We dated for three years, so that was when I

was 14, 15, and 16 years old.

We went to high school in Aberdeen, Washington.

In that time, Aberdeen was just... we're a small town,

old logging community.

A lot of people know Aberdeen for being Nirvana.

Kurt Cobain actually went to Aberdeen High School, which is

where Brandon and I both went.

I was super just attracted to Brandon's personality.

He was outgoing.

He was loud.

He liked me.

You just fall into that trap of, oh, my gosh,

this guy picks me.

Day one started out amazing, and probably

four or five months in, it just got extremely chaotic.

He didn't want me out of his sight.

He always wanted to be around me.

Didn't want me talking to anybody,

and only because, you know, I was his.

But there was times when I really

wanted to be with just my friends,

but that wasn't really allowed.

He always had to be there because he

didn't want me to be alone.

So I lost a lot of those relationships during that time.

He was definitely obsessed with gaining muscle.

It was really every day having to lift.

He talked to me about being bullied for being overweight.

And when he was younger, he said he saw people in his life

be abused, that he wanted to be strong enough to protect.

It is interesting how he says he wants to protect women,

but he really wanted to control.

He insisted he walked me to every single class.

And if there was a time that I didn't want to kiss him,

or I didn't want to hold his hand on the way to class,

he would push me up against the wall and yell at me.

He would, you know, tell me that I was overweight,

the colors that I could and couldn't wear,

not wearing purple, you look ugly in that,

that I wasn't good enough to be a cheerleader.

He just made me feel so incredibly small.

Eventually, when I tried to break up with him,

he wouldn't let me.

It was if you break up with me, I'm going to kill myself.

I felt helpless.

I tried to leave him numerous times, and it took a lot.

He would stalk me and sit in front of my house.

And my parents had to put a video camera outside my bedroom

window to shine down on my car to see

what he was going to do.

If somebody, especially a guy, ever picked me up in the car,

he would follow us down the road in his truck.

But there was always this stalking, crazy behavior.

I'll tell you right now, like, when trauma happens to you,

there's things that never leave your head.

So I reached out through the podcast

and I'm like, oh, my gosh, I know this guy.

He never stopped.

And it just got worse.

I do believe that it almost became

addictive behavior for him.

Hearing from Kelly makes you think, oh, oh, my gosh,

you know, this isn't an adult Brandon thing.

This started well before me, Athena,

or any of the other women.

There was certainly a risk to doing the podcast,

but you should have a right to know if the person that you're

dating is dangerous or not.

It's hard. It drives you crazy.

We knew that Brandon wasn't a listener of podcasts,

so we knew that we'd be safe for a little while anyways.

As soon as Brandon really caught on to the podcast,

I believe that people from his hometown started reaching out.

He is losing his mind.

I was scared because when he's pushed up against a wall,

I think that he's going to crack and explode.

He is now not in control.

We had to deal with repercussions to that.

Brandon was beyond pissed.

He absolutely tried to stop the podcast.

He sends a cease and desist letter

to try and shut us down.

It's scary.

And we didn't know what to do.

And then Brandon pulled out all the stops,

trying to get temporary restraining orders on us.

We consulted with a First Amendment rights lawyer who

told us we have every right to share our true story,

and that this was a matter of public interest.

Our attorney and his team,

they did everything to help us,

and we won.

Immediately, the temporary restraining

orders were thrown out and he was

not able to stop our podcast.

Brandon's still very angry, so he went for our reputations.

We start being sent screenshots

of Instagram pages

that are tagging us abusing the legal system.

Men against abusive women, where a man is stating

that he is a victim of domestic violence

by his two ex-wives who are out to get him.

It definitely did not take much to uncover

that Brandon was the one who had created all these accounts.

Accounts basically saying that we are frauds and liars,

stalking him and being obsessed with him.

Absolutely ludicrous.

Nobody wants to stalk Brandon.

Nobody wants to be around Brandon.

Nobody wants to ever see Brandon again.

♪ ♪

Our fans weren't falling for his BS on those social

media accounts.

They went into protection mode

and everybody was flagging that account.

It was crazy to watch him try to, like, flip the script

and be like, I'm the victim.

I think his ego is so big,

he just thought, everyone's going to see the light.

But we all knew better than that.

Nobody bought it for a moment.

But Brandon can never lose.

As well as these slanderous Instagram accounts,

Brandon also got a restraining order on me,

threatening to remove my rights to communicate

with his daughter, Sydney.

Brandon's restraining order on me was thrown out,

but it seemed that, you know, he wasn't scared

to take anyone to court to challenge them.

He had a lot of representation,

a few different attorneys.

And I just couldn't understand, like, how.

It's a lot of money.

Every time Brandon and I were together,

he would pay cash for everything.

And he always had a wallet full of crisp $100 bills.

I do remember asking him, in a joking way,

did you just make those this morning?

♪ ♪

Brandon had money for lawyers.

He had money for vacations.

He had money to wine and dine women.

Like, where was he getting all of this money?

♪ ♪

One day, I get a message from my friend,

and she is letting me know that a woman

by the name of Elizabeth had reached out to her.

Elizabeth thought that the man she was dating

was telling her all kinds of lies,

and it legit sounded like Brandon.

And so she was really concerned.

Next text that comes through is

an image of a driver's license with Brandon's

picture, Brandon Crane.

Elizabeth asks, is this really him?

And we say, yes, absolutely.

But his last name is not Crane.

Myself and Athena knew that this is just taking it

to the next level, and that now he's changing his identity

to get what he wants.

Elizabeth absolutely got a red flag from that

and decided to go to the courts and look into him.

And she finds out everything else, everything

from the past, all of the harassment orders,

stalking orders, DV.

She goes on to talk about how crazy it was,

how, you know, there's a lot of legal charges

he's facing right now...

13 counts of felony theft with his employer,

and he's been charged but not sentenced.

She was just talking like Amber and I knew.

And we were like, wait, wait, what? What?

She sends me the court doc.

She had made copies of everything.

He has his complete criminal history,

and he's, you know, up for embezzling money

from an employer.

I've never heard of this.

This is wild.

And I was just like, what the fuck?

♪ ♪

[suspenseful music]

At one point during our time together,

Brandon had a really good job in tech.

He was an HR recruiter at HTC, a mobile phone company.

I knew he made a really good living, but not that good.

I started to work at HTC in 2015.

As an attorney, if you want to be

in a more fast-paced, interesting environment,

tech is the place to be.

The first time I met Brandon was in... I think

it was the employee Christmas party.

We randomly got paired up on a bowling team.

Brandon seemed like a nice person,

very private in the office.

I don't know that he had a lot of friends.

Being a recruiter, he could work from other places.

I mean, he was working mostly with people

outside the company, like, recruiting employees.

I think it was in fall of 2018 when someone in finance

came to the legal department at HTC,

and they noticed something strange with the contracts.

The contract was to increase the recruitment fees

for this company Softnet.

Based on what we read in the agreement,

it was an outside recruiting firm,

and they did tech recruiting for kind of skilled positions.

This contract had a problem because it hadn't been

approved, and none of the lawyers

were aware of anyone who had worked on it.

When we saw that it was signed by Brandon Johnson,

that's when some alarm bells started.

Brandon did not have the authority to sign a contract.

They also noticed it was signed

by someone named Barbara.

We decided to really look into this further

and figure out who this company was.

When I first saw the name Softnet,

it sounded like a fake company immediately.

So we went to their website, and, you know, there really

wasn't a lot on the website.

Then we looked at the Secretary of State's office

to see who had registered Softnet,

and we saw Barbara's name.

And that was the same individual

that we saw on the contract.

We went to Barbara's Linkedln page,

and we noticed that she had, like, only a few connections.

We thought that was extremely odd because, you know,

a recruiter and especially a CEO would probably

have hundreds of connections.

And we went to social media

and found her social media page.

We started looking through her pictures,

and we noticed that she commented on photos of Brandon

and referred to Brandon as her son.

At the very least, what we have here

is a conflict of interest

because Brandon's doing business with his mom

and he's signing contracts with his mom.

So we call Brandon in for a meeting

and we ask him who Softnet is.

He said they were a company that did

stellar recruiting services.

Brandon definitely looked nervous.

He was talking fast.

I think he was pretty surprised

to be questioned about this.

Then we asked him if he knew who Barbara was,

and he said he didn't.

So then we gave him the contract that he had signed

and we said, it says right there, Barbara.

And he goes, oh, well, she's a recruiter for Softnet.

Then we presented him with the social media page

from Barbara that showed that she was referring

to him as her son, and he

knew he was caught at that point, I think.

He said, oh, well, she changed her name.

Sorry, I got confused.

It was insane.

Like, you pretend to not know your mom.

We collected his laptop and his badge.

Meeting was pretty much over at that point.

It looked like, you know, he was kind of happy to just

be fired maybe at this point.

And it seemed like there was obviously

some more stuff going on.

We knew we still had some more digging to do.

We didn't believe that, you know,

these services were legitimate.

We immediately contacted all the people

who we paid fees for.

And we asked them, you know, have you ever heard of Softnet?

Have you ever heard of Barbara?

And pretty much everybody said that they'd

never heard of Softnet.

They'd never met or knew of a Barbara.

And they didn't work with a recruiter.

They applied directly to HTC online.

Softnet was getting paid, and they weren't

actually doing anything.

When Brandon left, we noticed that his computer

had been logged in to a Softnet

email account as Barbara.

Brandon was a liar.

I mean, he was essentially using

his mom as a front to control this company

and embezzle money.

It came to a total of $392,000.

This was fraud.

This was $392,000 in fraud.

It was shocking.

And that's when we went to the police.

Brandon Johnson came to the attention of my office

because Seattle Police heard that he'd stolen nearly

$400,000 from his employer.

We figured out through search warrants and other things

that, in fact, that money had not

gone to Softnet generally, but to

Brandon Johnson specifically.

He didn't include his mom in the bank accounts.

I mean, I don't know if she knew about it.

We don't really have evidence that she fully

understood what was happening.

And in all cases, the beneficiary

was Brandon Johnson.

It was his money. It was his crime.

It was his scheme.

It was him, him, him.

He was ultimately charged with 13 felony counts

in King County Superior Court in 2019.

Hearing that it was nearly $400,000, it was shocking.

But it made sense now because we didn't know

how he had this kind of money.

But why isn't he being arrested for all this stuff?

That's the million-dollar question.

After you're charged with a crime,

especially a white-collar crime like this,

often you are not put immediately into jail.

It's not like a murder.

It's not like a shooting.

You are usually allowed to stay out.

It was a big theft case, but we still

need to prove it at trial.

But until that, Brandon Johnson was

free to do whatever he needed to do, as long as he stayed

in touch with his lawyer and came to court appearances

as required.

That is what he did on this case.

Ugh, that's when I knew

it's not just the stalking of the women,

the domestic violence.

He is all around just...

he's in deep at this point.

Myself and Athena had formed very close

relationships with multiple women that had

been involved with Brandon.

We ended up calling ourselves Charlie's Angels

on this text thread between myself

and Athena and several of the women.

So if one of us heard from Brandon,

it was on this group text.

We're comparing stories so he can't get one up on us.

One night, one of the women who had ended a relationship

with Brandon calls me, and she lets

me know that she feels like she's

being watched, followed, that Brandon's starting

to get a little obsessive.

I believe that Brandon thought he could always get her back.

And when he realized that wasn't going to happen,

you could see the change in him that way.

The woman calls me and lets me know that there's

this video she has, and she wants to send it to me,

and that you can see this man who looks, height-wise, very

similar to Brandon.

You see him bent down behind his vehicle

in front of the house.

And suddenly, you can just tell, like, either

the tires are being deflated, but something is definitely

happening to that car.

So the next day, she had noticed that the brake lines

of that car were cut.

I can't prove it was Brandon, but it just...

that scared me.

For months, I had nightmares about me

driving my vehicle with my kids and not being able to brake.

Whoever cut the brake lines on that car,

he had no thought in the world about harming

an innocent person.

There were a few of the dates the woman

gave me where she believed she was being watched or followed.

And I was trying to comfort her

by letting her know Brandon has

Sydney, so there's no way that he could, that late at night,

get to your house.

And that's when Sydney opened up and told me

about the late-night drives and how

he'd left her wrapped up in a blanket

in the back of the truck.

To leave a little girl at night by herself alone

while you're stalking your ex-girlfriend

is despicable.

After that incident, I get a phone call from Brandon,

and he's informing me that he's not going

to be able to take Sydney.

He's in a bad place,

and that he decided to take a few days to be alone.

And then Brandon disappeared.

He pretty much was offline a longer than normal period of

time, and we were concerned.

If there was any calm or quiet from him,

that meant that something way worse was starting.

Peace was scary when it came to Brandon.

He is not predictable at this point,

and each week that passes, I feel like he's

just losing it even more.

He has multiple felony charges he's facing right now,

and I have a feeling that Brandon had fled the state

to avoid being arrested.

♪ ♪

[suspenseful music]

A week had passed.

He had not contacted me.

A few more days go by.

I decide to reach out to any close friends and family,

and nobody has a clue where Brandon is.

Athena called me up and said,

I'm going to go to his house and see what I can find.

Sydney asked me to grab a few of her things

that were there since he's MIA.

She had schoolwork, her backpack.

Although I have this five-year no-contact order,

it didn't matter when it came to Brandon

and I sharing custody of our child.

We had a parenting plan for Sydney,

and unless we went back to court

and spent another almost full year

redoing the parenting plan, he still had access to her.

I just said, please be careful.

I don't know what you're going to walk into.

I look through the house, I call out.

I go upstairs.

I check the rooms.

He's not there.

♪ ♪

Walking back down the hallway, there's

all these boxes stacked.

And I thought to myself, did he move?

I went through the garage door just to make sure

he wasn't in there.

I was terrified, walking in, thinking

I was going to find him.

And that's when I saw this crossbow.

He's not an outdoor guy.

I think Brandon has never even thought about hunting

a day in his life.

He doesn't do this for sport.

So that was very unusual.

When we got our five-year no-contacts,

he was not supposed to have any type of firearm or weapon.

And yet here he is with a crossbow.

That's a weapon.

What was his plans with that?

Was that something meant for someone?

And then, of course, we were scared.

♪

So some time goes by, and I get a text message from Dee.

I was at the gym one evening here in Seattle

and looked over towards the smoothie counter,

and I saw Brandon standing there and had a wave of panic.

It had been a few years since I'd had a run-in with Brandon,

and I felt safe.

Seeing him, I became shaky and scared, and I snapped a picture

and sent it to Athena, and said, is this really him?

I think I was under the impression he had moved.

I'm seeing this image.

I immediately just... I felt sick, I felt nauseous.

I was scared because we all believed he had left the city.

That gym is 20 minutes from my house.

We made eye contact and he looked into my soul,

and I felt very scared and terrified.

And I knew that I had to call the police.

There was no way I could go to my car with him there.

I was certain he would follow me.

When I called the police, I let them

know that I had filed a restraining

order against Brandon and that he had warrants.

There are a lot of different courts

that have arrest warrants for Brandon Johnson.

He's got three in Washington State.

He had arrest warrants for hit-and-run,

for driving with a license suspended,

and for violating a no-contact order.

In addition to that, we're looking to talk to him about

stealing $392,000 from HTC.

[indistinct police radio chatter]

They showed up with, I believe, six cop cars,

including a K-9 unit.

They located his truck, which was empty, and searched

the premises inside and out, and said

he had taken off on foot.

And they were unable to locate him that night.

The fact that he'd come back, I

was scared because I knew that he

was in close proximity to me.

And when you add in your family and your children,

it takes it up to a whole different level.

They're my world.

And he is not predictable at this point,

and that alone is terrifying.

Some time goes by.

Our 12-year-old daughter, Sydney, does ask me

about her father picking her up from school.

I find out that Brandon was texting her.

And that's where you'll see that the family

laws and the criminal laws coming together,

there is a complete breakdown there.

So my now ex-husband, Brandon, has threatened to kill me.

He has warrants out for his arrest.

He has multiple domestic violence orders

from multiple women, and yet he can fully

have access to our daughter.

It is outrageous.

I previously had called the police prior,

you know, and they straight told me it doesn't matter.

They don't override one another.

And you'll have to actually just get a court date

and go back in.

And again, I'm thinking to myself,

what are these documents for?

What are these court orders for if they

don't really do anything?

They don't protect. They don't mean anything.

I am aware that Brandon has a suspended driver's license.

Therefore, I told her the only way that would happen

is if somebody else was driving the vehicle.

I asked her that morning when she went to school

if she had heard anything from her father.

She said no.

I said, OK, then you'll be taking the bus home

and I'll see you when you get home.

Sydney never arrived home.

♪ ♪

I got a text message from her that said that her father did

pick her up.

I say, who's driving?

And she says, dad's driving.

That's when I call the Bothell PD.

They are 100% on board and they want to arrest him.

From there, I jump on a call with Amber

to tell her what's going on.

I'm nervous. I'm scared.

Sydney is not responding to any of my text messages now.

So it's all of us in communication.

And that's when I suddenly get text messages from Sydney.

I know my daughter is terrified.

I know she's scared. -You don't know what to do.

Do I call the police?

Do I drive up there now?

Can I help? What can I do?

I was scared for Sydney.

He always said that nobody would

ever take his daughter away.

With everything he had done, now what is he capable of?

I remember that I have a tracking app on her phone.

I am on the phone with the police

and we began to follow her route with her dad.

And the police officer says, we're

going to just pull him over and get to the bottom of this.

And then it just all took a left turn really quickly.

[siren wailing]

She's saying that Dad's trying to flee from the police.

What should have been a simple stop turned into this

crazy high-speed chase.

[siren wailing]

Just when you think you know this person,

you don't know anything at all.

The police are pursuing Brandon,

you know, at a high speed,

and they confirm that Sydney is in the passenger seat.

Your heart immediately goes to the worst of,

he's going to get in an accident.

He's going to hurt and/or kill both of them.

He was weaving in and out at high speeds.

They realized that it was not safe for Sydney,

so they have no choice but to pull back.

♪ ♪

I had so many emotions.

I just wanted to be there with her.

If I could trade places with her, I would have.

For so long we've been trying to say this,

and no one's hearing us.

And here's that moment, someone going to die

before you actually listen?

Is a child going to die because you wouldn't listen to us?

I'm watching on the map.

And then there's a point where they're by the railroad tracks

and the dot stopped moving.

Amber was freaking out.

I was freaking out.

I've always had this feeling that if he's going down,

he's going to take her to punish me.

♪ ♪

[crossing bells dinging, train horn blowing]

Finally, I see that he is moving

and he's making a loop back.

All of a sudden, I get a phone call.

And it's Sydney and she's crying.

Just hearing that is heartbreaking.

I get a call from my mom telling me that my sister

called and found out that they were in, like,

a high-speed police chase.

At some point, he was able to get off the freeway,

dropped her off at a Pagliacci Pizza, gave her 10 bucks,

called her an Uber, and said, go sit inside and wait.

And Brandon sat across from the store

and just, like, watched.

And then from there, she called my mom.

He left our 12-year-old daughter after, like,

going through the horror she just did.

I have no words for it.

What is this?

Love it?

She will forever have that memory of,

my dad trying to outrun the police.

He was supposed to be a safety place for her growing up.

That's your parent.

The system had failed us so many times.

And you're trying to protect this child,

and you're just hitting roadblocks at every turn.

And you don't know if this is going to end well.

Sydney is texting me.

I'm driving as fast as I can to get her.

I pull up, she gets in the car, and I

just hug her and she's crying.

We take off from there, and the phone rings and it's her dad.

And she answers it on speaker.

And I hear his voice, and everything

inside of me just wants to scream and yell at him,

but I can't.

I have to shut my mouth and safely get us away from there.

It really takes a horrible person to do those things.

We knew that Brandon was incredibly scary and unhinged.

He is a dangerous man.

And he's everywhere.

If Brandon could do what he did with Sydney in the car

and with the police officers after him,

I had no idea what he was going to do.

I just knew something horrific was about to happen.

Rachel came to me and told me she

found a guy that was perfect.

I just got a really bad feeling about him.

He was following her.

He had been listening under her bed.

I think he just took it beyond anything

that was even imaginable.

You will get tased!

You will get tased!

Get down on the ground, now!

And he was going to stop at nothing.

♪ ♪