Original subtitles

You can say anything you want online.

And that's why I'm dead.

Executed at the age of 22.

The headlines say I was cyber -sexed to death by a girl who called herself Tall

Hot Blonde.

She was tall, hot, blonde.

Add deadly to that.

This true story I'm about to tell you begins with a lie.

Told by one of my co -workers, Thomas Montgomery.

I met Montgomery when I started working at the Dynabraid factory.

It's near Buffalo.

He showed me the ropes. He even invited me to meet his family.

That's me, Brian Barrett.

I was working and going to school part -time to become a teacher.

That's my first truck.

Used, but I paid cash.

The work at Dynabraid was pretty dull.

We all had escape dreams.

I was a machinist there. Oh, they make air -powered hand tools, buffers, things

for cars.

I was looking to try to change my career, but with having two young

for me to start over, I was going to take a big pay cut.

So I just stayed there.

Keep a sharp lookout for snipers.

I always wanted to be a Marine.

When I was a kid, we used to watch the movies. I mean, John Wayne made them

famous. Montgomery loved to reminisce about his days as a Marine.

He was an M14, an M16, .50 caliber sniper rifle.

He never did see live combat.

Instead of medals, he left the military with a drinking problem.

But he quit cold turkey after becoming a responsible family man with a house in

upstate New York, a wife, and two lovely daughters.

Montgomery was a model citizen.

taught Sunday school, never even had a speeding ticket to his name.

Well, actually, I thought he was one of the nicest neighbors that we had. It was

a shock when we found out what happened, believe me.

Not hated by his fellow employees, but people just thought he was a little

awkward.

But other than that, I mean, a good father. He was, I think, the vice

of the...

of his daughter's swim club and participated heavily in that for his

appeared to be a decent husband until this came about.

What we didn't know about Montgomery is that his 17 -year marriage was in

trouble and he'd become impotent.

I mean, I had a desire, but there was times I just couldn't do anything

it was like I put so much pressure on myself that maybe doing this, We could

back together, but sex in a relationship is only part of it. There's

communications, the other part.

I talked to some of our ministers we had at the church, and they just told me

that I should communicate with her and this and that.

And there's times we would try, but I would never see her side of the story.

was always my side. I wasn't disappointed in her. I was more

my life was. I mean, I had great kids. I had a great wife.

It seems like I felt guilty because I wasn't satisfied.

I wanted something else.

That something else?

First it was online gaming.

Then it was a girl.

A teenage girl.

Most of the times when I was on there, I played Texas Hold 'em and played poker

in some of the game rooms.

And it made me relax.

I could talk to people that I knew I was never going to meet face to face and

never see.

And you could tell them things back and forth, you know, that, you know, you're

having problems and this and that. I would never give out any personal

information about my kids or Cindy, but, you know, I would talk to anybody.

I was in a game room playing blackjack. Her name was Tall Hot Blonde.

She said hi, I said hi back, and we started talking.

And she says, you're in the wrong room.

I said, what are you talking about? She goes, this was a kid's room.

And I panicked.

Because I heard about all the stings on the internet.

I didn't want to become involved in that.

So I told her I was 18.

The first time we talked, she sent me a couple pictures of her in a swimsuit.

I mean, the first day.

She shipped them out to me.

And I mean, like I said, they were...

They weren't pornographic pictures, but they were provocative.

And she told me to describe me physically.

So I described me, I'm six foot tall, and I told her muscular.

She goes, you got big shoulders. I said, yeah. She goes, oh, I like big

shoulders.

Montgomery was hooked.

He knew that Jessie, that was Tall Hot Blonde's real name, would never keep

messaging him if she knew he was really a middle -aged dad.

So online, Montgomery pretended to be a young, brave Marine headed off to boot

camp.

He gave himself a new name, Tommy.

I mean, I knew I was never going to meet this girl, and you can say what you

want on the Internet.

Montgomery told Jesse sob stories, all lies, like how Tommy never felt love

since his mother died when he was young, and he often thought of suicide.

Montgomery was a world -class liar.

When Jesse wanted to see what Tommy looked like, he sent the 30 -year -old a

photo of himself.

She wanted to talk on the phone.

He called her a few times late at night while Tommy was supposedly off duty.

Jesse really believed he was 18.

Montgomery couldn't believe his luck.

This is a depressed person, a stimulus -hungry person, in a dead -end marriage

and in a dead -end life.

A dead -end that would be good enough for many, but not good enough for him.

and definitely not good enough for Marine Sniper, who had an opportunity

something more, something better, at least something different.

Even though they were never going to meet, and they never saw each other in

person. How could that be satisfying?

Well, what's satisfying about any relationship is not its reality, but the

fantasy of what is possible.

Jessie's fantasies were pretty typical for a dreamy teenage girl.

She was from a small town deep in the hills of West Virginia.

This is the rundown house where she lived with her traditional family, a

dad, stay -at -home mom, and a brother.

Jessie was about to graduate, go to prom, wasn't sure about her future.

Tommy could be her ticket out of town.

She called him her sweet, sexy Marine, then homemade videos set to power

and confessed her deepest secrets.

Jesse lost her virtual virginity to the boy she thought was Tommy.

She had sent him other articles, like a chain with

his name and her name and, you know, Jesse and Tom forever.

You know, the heart that's broken in half.

She had sent him some panties.

And while I am with her, he would describe what he was doing with the

and that sort of thing.

Since Tommy would never be able to meet Jesse in real life, Montgomery created

elaborate cover stories.

Tommy finished boot camp.

Then he was shipping out to Iraq.

Now he was deep in enemy territory, protecting Jesse and America.

I always wanted to be a combat Marine. I always wanted to go to war. I don't

know, maybe I'm crazy or stupid or something, but I always wanted to test

skill against somebody else.

And doing that with Jesse...

Let me live that life that I knew I was never going to live.

It allowed him to be something that he wasn't.

And so all of a sudden he was an 18 -year -old Marine with all sorts of

sympathetic issues, and he could do anything he wanted to do and be anybody

wanted to be. He was even his father at one point while he was on the line.

That's right.

Montgomery added to the pile of lies by pretending to be Tommy's father.

He concocted the story for two reasons.

As a way to keep talking to Jesse while Tommy was supposedly on dangerous recon

missions. And to try and end the affair.

He knew it couldn't last.

Like I said, she was mostly talking to the so -called dad most of the time.

Tommy was down in Parris Island.

And then she told me, I really like your son and this and that.

Then I knew there were going to be problems right there.

So I tried to end it.

By telling her, I said, I don't want you talking to him anymore. I'm not going

to let you send any more relaying messages for you. And I thought it was

to end, but it didn't. One lie led into another, and like I said, it was just

like an addiction.

I saw how completely infatuated Thomas Montgomery was. I mean, it's the kind of

thing that you see more in, you know, in teenage boys who just have crushes and

get...

completely infatuated, except he was 47, so I didn't call it infatuation. That's

why I said he was obsessed, he was consumed with this fantasy.

It was like a drug or like the Jack Daniels was to me. It was something that

had to have. Once I got on it, it was, I couldn't get off. I mean, I even tried.

And it was just, I would get irritable.

Snap and Cindy about things.

I mean, silly little things.

And, I mean, like I said, I wouldn't take away from my girls. We still did

things together, but when I got home, I was right back on that computer.

He would sometimes, we would see IMs until 5 or 6 o 'clock in the morning,

he had to be at work at 7 or 7 .30.

I don't think it's a correct conceptualization of this man to say

addicted to the Internet.

I think his addiction is to excitement and complexity.

The Internet was special to him because it offered it in a way that nothing else

could. His card games at work were not sufficient.

His life was insufficient.

The addiction, though, was to the excitement, the intrigue, and the

he would have gone wherever that was.

By now, the affair had been going on for almost six months.

Here's one of Jesse's diary entries, taken from police evidence files.

Tommy had asked her to marry him when he got back from Iraq.

You've got to wonder, how could Montgomery do this to such a gullible

girl? I mean, she thought she had a fiancé.

At first I thought about it, but then when it made me feel good, I figured,

know, she's not going to get hurt.

She's a young girl, she'll find somebody else.

It made me feel like a kid again.

Back when I thought I was happier.

Love, even pathological love, is incredibly

powerful.

We talk about people who are addicted to alcohol, people who are addicted to

sex, people who are addicted to the Internet.

But the biggest human addiction is love.

We are endlessly and hopelessly addicted to love. It's the master addiction that

nothing can replace.

And she was feeding that addiction, and she was the only one that was feeding

that addiction.

As the affair grew, Montgomery seemed to cross the line between fantasy and

reality.

Then he wrote himself this bizarre note.

He was hiding it at work.

It said, On January 2, 2006, Tom Montgomery, 46 years old,

ceases to exist and is replaced by an 18 -year -old battle -scarred Marine.

He has money in the bank, $2 .5 million.

He's handsome like a red -headed Harrison Ford.

He talked about the size his private parts would be and how he wouldn't be

impotent anymore.

And then Montgomery wondered when the transformation would take place.

So he could prepare.

The most extraordinary single fact in this case is the note in his locker. The

communication on its face reflects a serious belief in something that we all

know is impossible.

that a 45, a 46 -year -old, ex -alcoholic, done -with -his -life man

-enter youth and start life again in another state with another person.

That he would believe that means that he took that final step from ordinary

fantasy land on the Internet through the looking glass hole and into the world

of the unreal, and he took it seriously.

I think Thomas Montgomery was so obsessed and consumed, and this was

to him. It became, the Internet became his world.

But that world was about to fall apart.

Montgomery's wife, Cindy, had been suspicious for a while.

My wife, she would just watch TV.

Like I said, we would talk back and forth, and she'd come over and see what

I was playing.

But I could always hit a button to make everything Jesse say.

to be deleted off there.

She was, oh, who are you talking to? I said, oh, just talking to some friends.

Towards the end there, I was trying to figure out how I was going to end it.

Because the guilt was eating me up big time.

Back in the summer, I thought I had a heart attack.

It was just a big anxiety attack, all the guilt.

The doctor told me I got to start getting rid of the stress, so I figured,

I'll lay off the computer.

That made it even worse.

Because I couldn't talk to her.

Finally, fate stepped in and exposed Montgomery's charade.

His wife Cindy found a package Jesse had sent to Tommy.

The red panties inside explained everything.

Game over.

She went to him when she found the package and said...

You know, now I have the confirmation that I'm looking for, and what are you

doing? Don't you realize what you're doing? This girl's 18 years old. You

family, a wife, and two kids, and a dog.

You know, what about that?

She'd come in, and she was angry, saying, I was leading an 18 -year -old

on. You know, I shouldn't be doing this and that.

Me and her should be working out our problems, not me talking to somebody

She got angry and told me, she goes, I'm sitting right here. And then I told

her, Cindy, it'd be easier for me to talk to somebody that I can't see.

So I won't see the emotions.

I says, look at how angry you are now.

And like I said, I don't blame her for being angry.

Cindy Montgomery was devastated.

She wanted a divorce.

But first, she wrote this letter.

Jesse.

Enclosed, you will find a picture of my family.

Let me introduce you to these people.

The man in the center is Tom, my husband.

There is no Tommy.

He is taking advantage of you.

You need to be much more cautious with your safety.

You will only be hurt by a man who has mastered the art of manipulation and

lies.

Do not trust words on a computer.

How did Jessie react when she got that letter?

Total shock.

I remember she told me she was disgusted that she had been sexting a 46 -year

-old dad.

She was angry and hurt.

We went into a private chat room to talk, and she asked me why I did it, why

hurt her, and I said, I wish I could explain it. I don't know.

And I told her I never meant to do it, but it was too late for that.

In a way, I was glad it happened.

I mean, it took the weight of the world off me then.

When he says that he was relieved, what would be more proper for him to say, but

which he doesn't have the insight to say, is that Thomas Montgomery was

relieved.

The identity, Marine Sniper, was not relieved.

At the same time he's glad that he's caught, Marine Sniper wants to be

to life.

Marine Sniper is somebody inside of Montgomery who has not come out, but

is desperately struggling to do so.

This is the part where Jesse and I hook up.

Here's how it happened.

I used to play online games with Jesse in Montgomery.

He remembered my screen name, Beefcake.

and contacted me to find out more about Montgomery.

She knew we worked together.

I couldn't believe all the crazy lies he'd told her.

I felt so sorry for her, consoled her.

We struck up an online friendship.

She started sending me the pictures she'd sent Montgomery, and, well, I

you can see where this was headed.

Jesse was just my type.

We got close, quick.

I could see why Montgomery would have made up anything to talk to a girl like

that. She was a world -class flirt.

What I didn't know was that Jesse was still mad as hell at Montgomery for

to her, and she was using our relationship to get back at him.

I had no clue they were still talking.

She just comes in, she goes, I like Brian because he doesn't lie to me, he's

closer to my age, and she goes, I really love him, and this and that. She said

they both had video cams, and they sent each other pictures of their, you know.

stripped down for each other. She told me this, that she told him that she was

doing it to get even with me, to make me angry.

Like I said, for the first two weeks when we didn't talk, I thought I was

it. But when she came back in and started talking again, it just brought

feeling back of feeling good.

That could have been the perfect ending for the Tommy fairy tale.

But it wasn't.

Jesse was still furious about Montgomery's lies and used me to get

I'm not proud of what happened next.

But Jesse had a certain hold over me.

She got me to help her make fun of Montgomery online.

We went into game rooms and called Montgomery a predator and a loser.

He was suspended from playing.

And then I decided to tell our co -workers at the factory about how he had

to Jesse.

We have to keep in mind that something happened here. And what happened here

was... Outside of his control, his life space

merged with the Internet.

Because at that juncture, the fellow workers discovered his involvement and

discovered it in an embarrassing way.

He was robbed of his privacy and robbed of his capacity of self -deceit.

Because once that occurred, it was hard for him to be in the fantasy.

Montgomery wasn't talking to me in person anymore.

In fact...

He had told us both to leave him alone.

Frankly, I was getting tired of playing Jessie's games. She was out of control.

But she did invite me to finally come meet her in person.

I should never have let it slip at work that I was driving to West Virginia to

visit the Virgin.

I got a text splashing.

Seems Montgomery still had a thing for Jessie and her virginity.

Wow. So intense.

And as it turned out, unnecessary.

I never did meet with Jessie.

She got mad at me, claiming all I wanted was sex.

Our relationship was over.

Maybe that's why she went back to Montgomery.

She was an attention junkie, and quite the vixen now.

Even though Montgomery was still mad at Jessie for humiliating him.

Watch how she lured him back.

by playing the Tommy Fantasy card.

Fantasies do not die that easy.

He's still Marine Sniper. He still believes, I submit, that somehow he can

get back on track.

It's still his fantasy that Jesse will say certain words, engage in acts of

contrition, and they will be back together again.

Now that Montgomery and Jesse were, quote, friends again, he started

in her.

I had no idea he hated me so much.

You'd think Jesse would have been freaked out by that outburst, but she

to get off on his rage.

Jesse promised Montgomery she'd never message me again, and to seal the deal,

she took her new friendship with the real 47 -year -old Thomas Montgomery to

dark and twisted place.

God, Jessie loved playing games.

Just when she had Montgomery back where she wanted him, he started flirting with

other guys online.

Montgomery was devastated.

He begged her to stop toying with him.

And then I made the stupid mistake and threatened her, told her, if you don't

leave me alone, I'm going to physically hurt you, which was my anger coming

back, which I thought I had under control, but I didn't.

I just told her if she didn't leave me alone, I would come down there and

physically hurt her, or I would take something away from you that you love,

meaning her mom. I would come down and hurt her mom.

So for a while, she didn't talk.

Then she came back and talked to me.

and saying, my mom wants to talk to you.

I said, okay, I'll talk to your mom.

She came and talked to me and told me to stay away from Jesse. I said, okay, I

will, but please tell her to stay away from me too.

Reciprocate your request to your daughter.

She said, okay.

So a couple weeks went by, nothing.

Didn't hear from Jesse, nothing.

Next thing I know, Jesse comes back. I said, wait a minute, your mom told me to

stay away from you when you were going to stay away from me. She said, well,

she'll never know.

It's a little bit like a game room.

If you go onto the Internet and you play a game, there are figures.

They have guns, they shoot each other, and they battle, and somebody dies and

somebody doesn't die.

What makes it a game?

What makes it a game is that the next time you press that button, everyone's

alive again.

And this is a game at some level.

And the rebirth of Marine Sniper is critical to Montgomery's psychic

life.

Looking back, you can see how Jesse's mind games were driving Montgomery

They messaged back and forth for weeks, a texting cycle of verbal abuse and

sexual tension.

And then, inexplicably, she started messaging me again.

Wanted to be friends.

Montgomery didn't know.

Until he saw my name on Jesse's MySpace page.

That's when all hell broke loose.

It was a beautiful, quiet September day, and I walked up to the car and I saw

three bullet holes.

The window was closed, the driver's window was closed, and there were three

bullet holes in it.

He was sitting in the driver's seat, and he was slumped sideways, not

quite on the steering wheel, but over towards the right side.

His arms were at his side, so you could see the one hole here, and there was a

huge... hole in his neck, and he was just covered with blood. There was blood

all over the front seat of the car.

It was a cold -blooded, nephatical execution.

I think that Thomas Montgomery still viewed himself very much as a Marine, as

sniper. I think he planned these things out. As a matter of fact, when we found

Brian's car, the passenger rear tire of his truck was flattened.

which then made Brian, I hate to say this, but I mean made Brian a sitting

And those are the kinds of things that Thomas Montgomery would have put the

thought into to say, you know, he had told people he was a sniper. If he ever

killed somebody, it would be with this weapon, and he would snipe them. And

enough, that's exactly what happened.

I think Brian was just, you know, he was such a young kid.

And kind of a happy -go -lucky, you know, live for the moment. And I don't

that, you know, although I think he thought Thomas was probably strange and

had their differences and they were clearly not getting along, I don't think

ever really thought that he would even get in a fist fight with Thomas

Montgomery, let alone have something like this happen.

Why wouldn't Montgomery have gone after Jesse?

Why Brant?

Well, it was, of course, Jesse who ultimately, from any perspective, had

committed the worst crime.

She had deceived him and exposed him. And yet,

Jesse is not killed.

Why not?

Marine snipers don't kill women.

At every turn,

He acts consistently with the rule.

He's a man defending his territory, his mate, by killing another

man. What mammals have done since time immemorial.

The Internet became his world, and I think he saw Brian

as the only threat to that world.

Brian paid for a lack of wisdom with his life.

There is the old saying, if you play with fire, you have to expect that every

once in a while you're going to get burned.

That's not the equivalent of saying that if you play with matches, you will

probably burn to death.

Brian acted unwisely. He acted insensitively.

He underestimated the explosive forces that were at issue here.

And he paid a price that no one should pay for that.

If I were alive, I'd want to tell my family three things.

I'm so sorry I never told you what was going on.

I didn't suffer, and I'm glad I never knew about what happened next.

The investigation into my murder quickly focused on Thomas Montgomery, but

deputies couldn't find him right away, and they were worried he might be going

after Jesse.

Our immediate fear was if, in fact,

It was Tom Montgomery, and if in fact he was enraged at the point of shooting

Brian Barrett, how was the girl in West Virginia?

My fear was, is she alive?

So we spent the next few hours trying to track down who it might have been. We

had a name.

How did you track her down?

Well, it's interesting.

We did it two ways. At that point in time, I was in our dispatch center,

whatever, using driver's license, all the formal ways.

But while I was doing that, one of our younger dispatchers, who was much more

computer savvy than me, got onto MySpace and found her there.

West Virginia police were immediately dispatched to Jesse's house.

It was about 6 o 'clock in the morning, between 6 and 6 .30.

Myself and another officer arrived at this residence.

Came to the door here, knocked on the door.

A lady comes to the door, and I asked her if her name was Jessie.

She stated no, that her daughter Jessie lived in Concord.

And I asked her, I said, has she been here recently? She said no.

I said, do you have a phone number anyway that I can reach her? And she

I don't have no way to get a hold of her. And I said, well, she's your

and she may be in danger. I need to talk to her.

She was nervous.

You could see her eyes starting to tear up a little bit.

You could tell that something was wrong.

So we kept interviewing her and trying to find out where Jesse was, and finally

she broke down and started crying in the middle.

I'm Jesse. I've been using my daughter's name on the Internet, using my

daughter's name on the Internet.

Oh, my God.

There was the truth.

The unimaginable truth.

Jesse, the real Jesse, never wrote a single word to Montgomery or me.

It was her mother, Mary Sheeler, who had been sending out Jesse's pictures and

lingerie, having cybersex online.

The mother using her own beautiful daughter as bait.

And look what happened.

I think she enjoyed, as much as he enjoyed living this fantasy life through

Internet, she did also.

I mean, he was an 18 -year -old Marine, and she was a beautiful 18 -year -old

female. What did that say about her, that she could use her daughter's

to perpetrate this?

Well, what's frightening about this is what didn't happen.

She could have produced the death of her own daughter, the kidnapping of her own

daughter, or the harassment of her own daughter. She created the perfect storm

for incredible rage and disappointment, and she did it day in,

day out, over and over again.

There is a cruelty, a vileness to her conduct that is just indescribable to

The whole thing is incredible.

I'm still, to this day,

on credible investigation from the standpoint that the only person to tell

truth in this investigation was Brian Barrett.

Here's what happened next.

Mary Sheeler was asked to fill out a police report.

She said Montgomery had called after the murder, thinking she was Jesse.

and said her boyfriend was easy to take care of, and that no 18 -year -old was

going to best him.

But when police questioned Montgomery, he refused to cooperate.

He said he didn't kill me, and he sounded convincing.

The denials of Thomas Montgomery that he committed a homicide are completely

accurate.

In some sense, metaphoric in our fantasy,

Marine Sniper did it.

Marine Sniper did it.

exactly the way a sniper would do it, with a rifle well perpetrated.

He didn't walk up and pummel him to death.

He lived as a sniper and killed the competitor like

a sniper.

He lived out the fantasy to the last bullet.

Since Montgomery wasn't confessing, and there were no eyewitnesses, the

investigation intensified.

Montgomery's computer was confiscated.

Experts found thousands of IMs that he had saved.

There was a peach pit left at the murder scene.

It matched Montgomery's DNA.

A gun clip left by the truck was traced to Montgomery as well.

And while the murder weapon was never recovered, a search of Montgomery's

turned up something intriguing.

He had actually said to one of his fellow employees,

If I ever were to commit a murder, I would use this particular type of

which was, I think, an M1A1, which is a very old military kind of rifle.

Well, of course, the shell casings we found at the murder scene were from that

very kind of rifle.

And we seized his gun cabinet, and of course we didn't find that kind of

but in going through photographs, we found an old photograph.

That was actually a photograph that Thomas took of Cindy when I think they

in Florida for some period of time. And in the background of that photograph is

this same gun case.

And the FBI was able to enhance the photograph to show that there was an

the gun cabinet. When you put the whole puzzle together, every piece fit.

Now investigators had a solid case, and they finally arrested Montgomery.

He still thought Jeffy was a teenager.

So imagine that moment when Montgomery is taken into custody and he's handed

this picture of Mary Sheeler and they tell him that's who he had really been

talking to.

I know when the deputies first told him when we had him in the interview room,

you know, do you realize that all of what has happened was all fantasy? That,

you know, she's not 18 years old. She's, you know, 46 years old and he didn't

say a word.

They said the blood drained from his head, and he turned the color of the

which was a pasty white.

Like I said, when I found out who she was, I was shocked, big time.

I really thought she was an 18 -year -old girl.

I mean, she played the part to a T. She was a great actress, which she did.

I mean, even the part that made me think she was really 18 was when she thought

she could actually talk to a Marine on a combat mission.

Sitting in a Humvee with a computer playing a game, talking back and forth.

made me think she was an 18 -year -old blonde that didn't have no sense.

Because there's no way you're going to get a computer out over there.

Even though I was older, emotionally I was immature.

Once she got me hooked, I was done, like a fish on a line.

And she was good at it.

Montgomery still wouldn't confess to my murder.

but he was clearly in turmoil.

He tried to commit suicide in prison.

When he was arrested, he was a big, you know, barrel -chested guy, and

within the first couple of months, he lost about 100 pounds.

I stopped eating until I got to 130 pounds, and I found sleeping pills in

the inmates' cells, so I took 25 Seroquel and...

attempted suicide.

I was so distraught that my kids are all I have left.

And if I couldn't have them, I didn't even want to bother to live.

Montgomery's attorney decided to look into an insanity defense.

My initial conference with the psychiatrist indicated there wasn't

Don't forget, we're not talking about a mental defense about having a

relationship on the Internet. We're talking about a mental defense regarding

murder of a young man and the way the...

The murder occurred would indicate there was planning, there was well thought

out.

There wasn't enough there to mount a successful defense.

Montgomery wanted a trial. Said he had an alibi.

He claimed he was home at the time of the murder and that his wife and

would back him up.

But Cindy Montgomery wanted no part of that. In fact...

She told police her husband was not at home that night.

Montgomery talked to his daughters in this prison phone call.

I love you so much.

I love you too, Dad.

He did not want to put his daughters through the dilemma of

a trial. That was probably when we started talking seriously about a

plea into this case.

And how long did you talk about a plea? Because someone said there was pressure

from you.

I don't think pressure is the right word.

My experience, and I told him this, tied in with the evidence would indicate

that an acquittal was going to be almost impossible.

That was my professional opinion.

And now it's time to think about cutting our losses.

And I know I met with him on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We met three times

over the weekend.

And on Monday morning, that's, I believe, the date that we went in and

the plea.

The purpose of today's proceedings was the commencement of trial, starting with

the selection of the jury.

And did you intentionally shoot this person with a weapon?

Yes. What kind of a weapon?

A .30 yellow. And how many times was he shot?

The proof, in my opinion, was overwhelming, and he realized it because

someone...

of the character of Thomas Montgomery doesn't plead guilty unless he knows

he's going to be convicted and he knows that he did it. And that's why he could

state under oath that he was guilty and take the plea that he took, which may at

least allow him to come out of jail during his lifetime.

If he were convicted, he would have gotten 25 to life. Instead, he got 20

which means he served, if he's good in prison, means he served 17.

Do you think the prosecutors should have gone to trial?

18 years is an extraordinary amount of time for an ordinary citizen without a

history of criminal behavior to spend in jail.

But a young human life is infinitely valuable.

From the perspective of anyone who cares for Brian, the sentence is an insult.

And our memorial plaque that was given to us at his funeral.

had anybody involved made a phone call.

Even people at Dynabraid, if they would have stepped up to the plate and said,

there's a problem here at work that we feel you should be aware of, then

we would have been able to have the opportunity to talk to them. As I said,

Brian never complained about anything, so he never said, gee, this guy's giving

me a hard time.

I blame myself for finding the ad in the newspaper for the job.

I don't know, you blame yourself for all of it. I blamed my career choice of

fixing PCs and computers for having a computer in the house.

It's sad that Jessica, the daughter, kind of fit the mold of

exactly what he would have liked in a girl. He liked blondes, he liked

girls, and she was on the basketball team.

And softball. And softball, and he's a baseball fan.

Had it been some other image of a girl, it might never have gotten that far.

And he got the standard presents that Montgomery got in the mail, and he's got

photos and dozens of photos. I think you put it all together and you start to

believe that Jessica's a real person.

I was really stunned over the fact that how could a mother do this and why would

she pretend to be a child to reach out to these men online.

you know, behave like that. And how could someone be a mother and do these

things that a true mother would never do that?

And what her actions led to, you know, my greatest sorrow, losing our firstborn

son.

We were just stunned over it. We just couldn't fathom someone being so

wrong to have done something so horrible.

What are you feeling towards her right now and the fact that she wasn't

Can we put that on tape, what we feel towards her?

I feel that I would like to see a law made to protect other people and

online because I feel there's not enough accountability for their actions.

She can't be put in prison for what she did because there is no law.

So you're stuck with the knowledge that she could do this and walk away.

In the perfect world where you get to create the laws that you've endured.

You almost want to think she had some blame, but the bottom line, she may have

helped create that situation, but the bottom line at the end of the day, the

who pulled the trigger was Tom Montgomery.

In New York State, it's difficult because you'd have to prove that she

assisted him in committing the murder or basically told him to

commit the murder.

which she never did that.

She clearly got him worked up into doing this, but she didn't actually

say, yeah, you should go take care of Brian. You should go kill Brian.

It's a fine line, and that's why I said, should she feel some responsibility, I

would hope that she does.

I don't think so. I don't believe so.

This is Tim Sheeler, Mary's newly divorced ex -husband. Do you think she's

responsible in some way for this young man's death?

Yes. I can say that with no hesitation.

Tim says Mary continued lying even after my death.

She never told her own family the whole truth either.

And last year when I guess she had to go to New York and testify before

the grand jury, that's the first that I had any inkling.

that all this was really even happening.

And even then, she said, I have to tell you something.

Okay. And she said, I've done something that's not really good.

Okay.

So she said, I have got online. And she said, I was in a chat room. And she

said, one of the men I was talking to, I didn't realize it, but

he was,

I had a mental problem, I think is the way she worded it.

And I was also talking to one of the men that he works with in the chat room,

and he apparently got jealous and killed the guy.

So, you know, I started asking questions.

He just played it off as I was just one of several that...

We were in chat rooms.

Did she tell you what the conversations were about? No. I mean, she actually

said that they weren't. She said they were about the weather and about the

that they were playing, about can you believe that somebody actually said

something like that, and just generalized topics.

I always thought it was her.

I thought that's how she'd been doing all this. That's her.

So when did you find out that she was using Jesse as an excuse? When Jesse

and told me.

I guess people...

Friends here and things had odd comments that struck her as odd.

So she Googled her mother.

And when you Googled her, it all came up.

My baby girl found out all of it.

She went on.

And there it was with her.

And her space and her name and her pictures.

She came and she said, Daddy, did you know this?

And when you tell your child, how can you say, I didn't have a clue when I

didn't have a clue?

And I had to talk to her for hours before I could even convince her that I

didn't know what her mother had done.

I couldn't believe what her mother had done.

How do you do that to a stranger?

And how can you do that to your child?

Did you have a good marriage?

I thought it was.

I was planning my life with this person. This was the person that I thought I

was going to die with.

And when you finally realize that there's something different, is you're

out the door to work, or you're coming in the door from work, and she's sitting

on the couch, and she's got that laptop, and she doesn't even look up.

Bye, I love you. Love you.

And she never even looks up.

She doesn't stop what she's doing.

And you begin to wonder what is wrong.

And when you try to talk to her, then she gets angry and defensive.

Were you ever tempted to look at the computer?

I would walk towards her to kiss her or whatever, and she'd close the lid.

Now that I always wondered.

And I would ask her, you know, well, why do you have to close the lid? Well,

I've got to lean forward and kiss you, don't I?

Was this like her sex life?

It could have been.

It very easily could have been.

It was like I told you earlier. I just, I thought things...

were on the upswing, and now I have to wonder, I always wonder, if I was just

outlet for what she built up on the Internet.

Jessie asked me, she said, why would Mommy do this?

And I had to tell her what I've formed an opinion of Mary over the years.

Mary's capable of doing a lot of things if she thinks she won't get caught.

If she thinks that she can either cry her way out of it or explain her way out

of it, Then it's okay.

It's a standing joke in her parents' house that, you know, when Mary would

caught, I mean, her mom actually caught her one time poking her finger in the

corner of her eye to make her eye water so she could appear to be crying.

I mean, it was a standing joke.

Those are the little things that should tell you something.

But you just laugh about them and go on.

Because you think, well, that was then, this is now, and now's better.

Now's different.

Sounds like Mary was a good liar her whole life. Yeah.

And this is Jessie.

The real Jessie.

Betrayed, shaken, fragile.

She wasn't up to doing an interview, but she has completely cut off

communications with her mother, refuses to speak to her.

Jessie says her mom still hasn't apologized or explained why she lied.

betrayal has devastated her.

Mothers are supposed to love and protect you.

Ultimately, it may be that what needs to happen for there to be a reproach

moment between Jesse and her mom is that there'll have to be some forgiveness.

But there's a problem with me saying that.

I submit to Jesse. If I was speaking to Jesse right now, I would say, Jesse,

there is a rule of forgiveness.

Never forgive those who are not repentant.

You see, until her mother can come to terms with and take responsibility for

magnitude of her evil, she is not repentant. And if she is not repentant,

not forgivable.

Should she have spent time in jail? It amazes me that she hasn't been. I mean,

really, it does.

I think some days I think that that would have been the only thing that

have really drove it home to her that she had done something wrong.

It took six months, a private investigator, and a surprise visit by a

to finally get Mary Sheeler's side of the story.

She lives with her parents now in this new house.

She wouldn't allow cameras inside.

She doesn't want Thomas Montgomery to know what she looks like when he gets

of prison.

Her defense of why she did it?

She says all she ever wanted was to be a good mommy, and that she never meant

for any of this to happen.

She said she was bored and lonely.

Her children had grown up, her husband was often gone for work, and she was

trying to have some fun online.

She claims the only reason she kept talking to Montgomery?

To put it simply, I don't believe Mary when she says this. I believe that

this is self -aggrandizing comment made to make herself look like a victim

and not an evildoer. It's a denial of her significant responsibility.

I don't think that she was acting with gratuitous motives.

She was taking care of herself.

She was taking care of her own psychological needs, and I believe she

ultimately to the detriment of the cost of another human life.

She has got away with not participating directly, as far as I know, but still

yet being associated with the ending of a 22 -year -old man's life before

his life got started.

All for what?

It was either thrills or just boredom or some of all or I don't know.

You said something so kind on the phone that you had thought about contacting

the Barrett somehow, some way. I would love to, but I don't know how to.

How would I feel if I was in their place?

And it would be a coin toss as to how I would accept a phone call or a letter or

anything from anybody associated with that woman.

if I was in their place.

And I don't know.

There's no words.

How can you say something to make somebody feel better for their loss of

child over such... It's not an accident.

It was so frivolous and stupid.

When police confiscated Mary Sheeler's computer, they found some pretty

disturbing stuff.

There were hundreds and hundreds of pictures of Jessie.

It was like she'd been stalking her daughter with a camera.

Many of the photos were obviously taken without Jessie's knowledge.

But most troubling of all, it turned out Mary was sending pictures to several

men, not just Montgomery and me.

There was even a video clip.

Mary had somehow taken a compromising shot of her daughter's miniskirt and

emailed it, asking guys, Do you like it?

Mary's son, Tim Jr., didn't want to talk on camera either.

His mother doesn't speak to him about what happened, but he says he sees her

spending lots of time on the computer again.

And he's worried.

They say Mary Sheeler can't be charged with any crime. He didn't pull the

trigger.

True. But as far as I'm concerned, she did something far worse.

She unleashed a fantasy online that was as addictive as any drug.

and as lethal as any bullet.

To put it biologically, even a snail will give up

its life to protect its young.

I think she should be sitting where I am.

I really do. She had a lot to do with this too.

I would want to know why she did it, you know, why she used her daughter like

that.

I mean...

Did she have the same problems that I had?

Lack of communication in her marriage and this and that. But why use your real

daughter? You could have made up a name for somebody else.

That's all I would want to know is why she did it.

Don't make the mistakes I made.

Don't sit and keep everything inside.

Don't think you can settle your...

your problems by talking to somebody on the Internet because all it does is make

it worse.

And don't push your family away from you.

When you have problems, pull your family in closer so you'll be stronger.

Because I know I see the hurt in my kids' eyes every time I see them.

And it just hurts me even more.

I mean, the guilt kills me every day.

from my perspective of what's to be learned from this, will sound when first

said to be just childishly simple.

Be nice, don't lie.

We've been on this planet in our current genetic form probably for more than a

million years.

If this interview took place a million years from today,

Be nice.

Don't lie.

Will still be good advice not taken.

All that is great about us is our fantasy, because tweaked and merged with

technology, it becomes creation, and interspersed with and coalesced with our

baser urge, it becomes evil, vile, and homicidal. It is the best and the worst

of us, but it is what is unique about man.