243. The Cosplay Killer
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So why not start focusing on what's important to you with Noom's approach? Sign up for your trial today at Noom.com. You're listening to an Ono Media podcast. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Peyton Moreland. And I'm Garrett Moreland. And he's the husband. And I'm the husband. And boy, oh boy, do we have news for you because our merch is live for Black Friday.

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on a trip for her birthday here soon so we will be summer warm so i'm excited about that as well some prayers that we get all our recordings done in time we will a hundred percent i don't know feeling pretty good let's go back from the gym i'm playing some pickleball i have a pimple on the tip of my nose and i woke up and it was white this morning holy crap you guys ever have had to pop a white pimple on the tip of your nose pain

Pain. Straight pain. I got it. It's okay. That's kind of what we got going on. We've just been working. We've been working on some other projects that hopefully we can announce soon as well. I hate being that person, but I am being that person. But we're excited for them. I think one of them will probably announce beginning of 2025. Recording episodes. Going out to eat. Spending way too much money that we don't have. You know, just like everybody else in the world.

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Love you all, and let's hop in to today's episode. All right, our sources for this episode are cbsnews.com, killorbkilled on peacock.com, tampabay.com, longcrime.com, wfla.com, thesun.com, oxygen.com, sportskeeda.com, and sandhillsexpress.com. All right, so I think it's fair to say that we all go through rough patches in life.

That's why it's so important to have someone that you can really lean on and trust. It's a good support system. Whether it's a partner, a parent, a sibling, a friend, even a therapist, a dog, we all need someone that we can confide in. Someone who is looking out for our best interest, especially when those struggles are mental health related. And I know this sounds like a

a better help ad but it's not the point i'm trying to make is those lifelines are everything and when you trust someone with your deepest darkest secrets you hope that at the bare minimum they will never use those secrets you told them against you which is why you do have to be careful about who you open up to yeah who you trust in those dark times because in the wrong hands you

Our darkest moments could be weaponized against us. And in the event of today's case, could even be used to cover up murder. So let's hop not that far back to 2015. Actually, I just said that in 2015 is nine years ago.

That's kind of far. No, it's kind of far. But I guess most of our cases are kind of like 90s, even 80s. So it's not that far. But 2015, why does that feel like three years ago? Almost 10 years ago, basically. So crazy. 22-year-old Matthew Trusler has just moved to Florida from Hopkinton, Massachusetts. Now, Matthew's parents, Margaret and David, gave him and his older brother, Sean, a pretty

pretty great childhood in Massachusetts. This is from everything that I've read. But like a lot of kids in their teens, Matthew sort of lost his way for a little while. He had battled with some substance abuse in his earlier years, but

Okay.

And that's when Sean noticed his little brother turn a corner. The sweet kid with a big heart resurfaced as Matt, who's now 22, embraced this new lifestyle.

life for himself. Matthew even started thinking about settling down. He created a profile on Tinder, now in Florida, and began swiping. And eventually he came across one pretty face that caught his eye. A 24-year-old girl who loved animals, who went to school for special effects and makeup, an artist who seemed bubbly and kind. Her name was Melissa Turner.

The two met up and Melissa said she was immediately taken with Matthew. I don't know why, but this sounds familiar. Really? The name sounds familiar. You might have seen it in the news. Okay. That. Oh, wait. No, I didn't. I was not in the USA when this happened. Yeah, but it would hit the news later. Okay.

So Melissa said that Matthew, quote, drew her in, made her feel important. He was different from other guys she had dated in the past. One date turned into another and then another. And before long, as the story goes, the couple was fully committed to one another. Matthew opened up to Melissa about his difficult past, his history with drinking and substance abuse.

And Melissa told Matthew about her insecurities, how she had been overweight and bullied through a lot of her childhood, and how she worked hard to go from 250 pounds down to 150 pounds in her early 20s. Melissa had found her confidence through this fitness journey of hers and had really started to come into herself.

When Matthew met Melissa, she was dreaming of becoming an actress, was also though very into cosplay. - Okay, but wait, cosplay is kind of cool and not gonna lie. - She would dress up like Elvira, Misty from Pokemon, Velma from Scooby-Doo, attend conventions, that sort of thing. And Matthew really did seem supportive of the entire thing. By 2019, the couple was engaged and looking to buy a house together.

So they found a place in Riverview, a considerably safe residential suburb of Tampa.

They were excited about starting their lives together, spending the weekends picking out paint colors and furniture for their new place. And everyone who knew them as a couple thought these two are going to go on and live a long, fruitful life together. That was until the fall of that year. So we're now in 2019. Matthew and Melissa have moved in together in Florida. It was actually October 17th, 2019. It started out like any other day for the couple.

Matthew and Melissa ran errands together. They went down to Home Depot and then to a grocery store. Then they had lunch out near their Tampa home and then they spent the rest of the night in. Melissa said they ended up cooking dinner. They had a few cocktails and around 11 p.m. she got tired and went to sleep. She passed out actually. She went to sleep on a big sofa like chair that she had in her office while she said Matthew was still up and kind of staying up late.

But when she woke up the following morning at around 8.30 a.m. on October 18, 2019,

Melissa found their house a complete disaster. The kitchen was completely trashed. There was blood everywhere. And Melissa said she was calling out for Matthew, but she couldn't find him. So she ran upstairs and searched their bedroom and the bathroom. But still, there was no sign of Matthew, just the house bloody and a mess. So this is when she decides to go out into their backyard and look around.

And lying on the patio by their pool was Matthew.

He was unresponsive and covered in blood. So Melissa calls 911 and the operator told her to administer CPR and a frantic Melissa seemingly followed those instructions because when EMTs arrived minutes later, she was also covered in blood herself. But it was clear to Melissa that there was no one who could help this situation because her fiance, 24-year-old Matthew Trussler, was dead. Okay.

So now Melissa tells police that she honestly, she was home, but she has no idea what happened. She said she just woke up and found him in this bloody mess. So police ask Melissa if they can search the house. And she's like, yes, go right ahead. They have her sign a consent form and then they give her these latex gloves to wear probably. So she doesn't touch anything else in her home. Now that it's an active crime scene.

And when they look inside, they find a lot of broken glass, including one piece that has a pretty good amount of blood on it. And they also discover a black switchblade that, when flipped open, also has blood on the inside blade. And there's a ridiculous amount of blood in the kitchen. Like, one of the state prosecutors who was at the scene said it was the bloodiest crime scene she had ever witnessed in her career. It...

Like, is she not freaking out at this point? Well... I don't know. Interesting. Well, detectives think that because of how much blood is inside the kitchen, they believe that Matthew probably mostly bled out inside the home. Oh, man. And then ended up crawling out of the screen of the window out to the patio. So...

They're like following the blood and this is what they think has happened. Yikes, man. They also think this because the window appears to be pushed open, which is weird, obviously. Yeah. So police are wondering, was he trying to get away from someone? Like why crawl outside if no one else is in the house? Why not crawl to a phone?

Because it definitely looks like he was trying to get outside. So the wounds on Matthew's body become even more confusing to detectives. He has multiple lacerations all over him, but the one that looks fatal was actually a deep cut to his right arm. So at this point, Melissa agrees to come down to the police station for questioning. This is obviously going to be normal as she is claiming to be at the crime scene at the time of the crime.

And there she remains adamant that she has absolutely zero idea how this at all happened. I'm just already getting a little, obviously flags are going up because of how bloody it was. It seems like, I mean, he was obviously stabbed. You're going to hear, there's going to be, there's going to be screaming. There's going to be so much noise. There is just no way you don't hear anything. Granted, nevermind. I'm not going to say it because that's too much information about our personal life.

in life, but there's just no way. There's no way she shouldn't hear anything. Well, she tells police, she's like, listen, I had a few drinks last night. I passed out and then genuinely I woke up and found Matthew in that state in the backyard. What I was going to say is there's probably a spot in the room in our house where we could scream and nobody else would hear it. Yeah. I'm not going to say anything. That sounds horrible. Whatever.

Whatever. Anyways, keep going. Police are like, okay, yeah, we hear her story. But what was most suspicious to them is that this is a really gruesome crime scene. There were a lot of signs of struggle in the kitchen alone. Broken glass. So how in the world did Melissa sleep through something like that? Yeah, there's no way. There's no way. And here's what else is strange. In the interview with police...

Melissa comes in still wearing those latex gloves that they gave her earlier at the crime scene, which, okay. But these are like, Hey, we're no longer at the crime scene. You know, you can take those gloves off now. Like you don't have to wear those in here. And she's like, Oh no, it's fine. I'll just leave them on. Thanks. And so eventually detectives are like, what? Okay. So they interview her with them on. And then they're like, we need to photograph you now. So you're going to have to remove the gloves. And,

And so she takes the gloves off. Oh, I already know what you're going to say. Can I finish your sentence? Sure. There was cuts all over her hands. Well, they realized that under the gloves, she was hiding a pretty big gash on her palm. Yep. Like a gash deep enough that it needed stitches. Like it was bloody. Like it needed stitches. And they're like, why didn't you talk about that? What is that? And she says, no, it was just that...

Before I called 911, I was in, I went in and I accidentally grabbed one of the broken glasses. But then as police are kind of moving her around to take pictures of her, they discover that that's not her only injury. She also has a cut on her neck too.

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Police are having a hard time buying Melissa's story. Melissa, what the heck did you do? You didn't hear it. You felt you were asleep for the entire crime. Yeah. But also you have a huge gash on your hand and then also on your neck. So they decide at this point to press her a little further. They were like, hey, did you guys as a couple ever fight? Did things ever get physical between you? And Melissa's like, no, absolutely not. Things between us were great.

But there was one thing. Melissa said Matthew always tried to hide from her when he was sad or depressed. But he had, on more than one occasion, talked about self-harm, according to Melissa. So they ask her, were you guys ever physically violent? She's like, no, but Matthew did hide kind of this violent towards himself side of him. She said he always feared he was going to, quote, die young.

So now police are considering this and they're like, okay, is she alluding that maybe this was suicide? No, there's no way he could have. Okay.

But I guess there's always a way. But but also it's not like he was stabbed. They were more slashes. And that wound on his arm wouldn't have made this impossible. Like you can definitely give yourself a fatal wound on your arm. Right. So when police run this scenario against other details found at the crime scene, though, they're like, it just doesn't add up.

Because alongside some defensive looking wounds on Matthew's body, the medical examiner actually finds a stab wound in his back. Oh. Signed, sealed, freaking delivered, man. The medical examiner's like, we don't think he could have stabbed himself in the back.

And the evidence that this was actually a homicide keeps growing from here in the investigation. Remember that big sofa-like chair that Melissa slept on in her office that night? Well, when police are still combing the crime scene, they find blood drops leading to that chair. Okay, that could have gotten there after Melissa walked around the house that morning, sure. But detectives also find clues that say...

She actually wasn't sound asleep all night like she had initially told them because for starters, police collect all the data from Matthew's smartwatch and learn his exact time of death from his health app on there because it's obviously going to track when his heart stopped beating. I think I need to start wearing an Apple Watch. It registered that Matthew's heart stopped beating sometime close to 5 a.m.

Which lines up with another really chilling piece of evidence that police had collected while canvassing the neighborhood from one of Melissa and Matthew's neighbors. It seems like there should be...

It may be to get a little too tricky. Like if your heart actually stops beating, like if it recognizes it. Call police. Besides, I mean, I get you can take off the watch and stuff, but there's a way to differentiate the two. Oh, right. And they can tell your heart actually stops beating and like it's still on you. Yeah, it should like send a notification to...

Like the non-emergency hot line or something like that. I don't know. I'm sure this has already been thought of. Okay. So don't come at me, but it would be really interesting. It might actually exist. It might. I bet you there's actually an app that like automatically calls police or something. Well, they have life alert, you know. They do have life alert, babe. Is that what you want? Yeah. Okay. I'll get you one. So it turns out that the people living across from Melissa and Matthew had...

a security camera that captured the couple's backyard. Of course they did. That's what I'm talking about. So it captures a piece of the backyard. Now the fence around Melissa and Matthew's property keeps you from seeing what's happening out there. But police are like, hey, he crawled out to the backyard. He's found dead in the backyard. Can we please see that footage? But those cameras also capture sound. So they're like, oh, we can't see anything. Wait, there's sound. So they turn it up.

And around 4 a.m., so an hour before his heart stopped beating, on the morning of October 18th. No way, man. You can definitely hear banging on the neighbor's security camera coming from inside Matthew and Melissa's home. It sounds like objects are crashing inside the house as if someone's throwing things around.

And then over the next few minutes, voices start to appear on the security camera sound. And by 4.37 a.m., there is screaming coming from Matthew and Melissa's backyard. Now, I want to tell you, it almost sounds demonic.

It's a woman shouting things like, I hate you. You're so effing arrogant. Go effing die. And then that's followed by more shouting and things like, get up, get up now. I hate you. Now, all of that screaming and crashing seems to go silent by 5.11 a.m. that morning, which does, again, line up with the data collected from Matthew's smartwatch.

So the question of suicide is clearly no longer on the table for detectives because you can obviously hear that there is a woman threatening Matthew. They can clearly hear there's two different voices, a woman and a male. Now, question is, was that a third party yelling at Matthew while Melissa was asleep on that chair that had blood drips to it? Or is it Melissa in the video? Yeah, obviously, Melissa.

Now, I do want to tell you all that footage is actually reviewed while Melissa is still in the interrogation room. The more like the day of the murder. So police are working fast on this case. Like they go and talk to neighbors. They're like, pull it up right now. We need to see. Which reminds me of the Chris Watts case where literally.

As soon as police respond, one officer, they go to the neighbor's house and look at his security footage. How crazy would it be? She's sitting in there knowing. I mean, she's not knowing, but just being actively being caught because a neighbor has a security camera. Right. So cool. So detectives go back into the interrogation room and they're like, listen.

Your neighbor has security footage and we need you to tell us what happened around 4 a.m. this morning. And Melissa plays down for a while. She's like, what happened at four o'clock? I don't know. I told you I was sleeping. And they're like, the neighbor's security camera can pick up on the noise. There was loud yelling and screaming coming from your home. What do you say to get out of that? Nothing.

And Melissa's like, no, I was asleep. I don't remember. And detectives are like, Melissa, please. Melissa, girl. And eventually, Melissa seems to recall some new details. Interesting. She says, well, we have gotten into an argument. Actually, yeah.

like screaming at each other and if we were it really wasn't a big deal so by this point melissa's admitted that she's awake at 4am and that she is arguing with matthew which means there was no one else at the house with them i mean if there was someone else she would have said oh no that was someone else i woke up there was someone else right no she's saying no it was us there was no one with us

And when they corner her on that, they're like, okay, Melissa, you do understand that if he died at five and there was no third party in your home and you were awake, who killed him? And she's like, actually, as you're saying this, more is coming to my memory. She's like, wait, I do remember something. She says, Matthew was still up at four in the morning and was being super loud and woke me up. And so we got into a fight about it.

And when they ask her why she was screaming at him to get up, get up, she says, oh, well, Matthew was clearly not sober on that evening, even though he had been battling with his sobriety for years. And when he got to that state of drunkenness, he would often fall down and have a hard time composing himself. Which they could double check if they do a, what's it called? What's it called? Anoscopy. Autopsy. Which they could double check if they do an autopsy. Autopsy.

autopsy autopsy which they could double check if they do an autopsy autopsy autopsy if they do an autopsy report autopsy report autopsy report which they already did autopsy report no autopsy which did the autopsy report say but i do want to point out

Before all this, Melissa was using the fact that Matthew had struggled with his mental health as a way that this could possibly be suicide, right? Like maybe the police would think it's suicide if she mentions that he sometimes talked about self-harm or really struggled with this. She kept going along these lines of self-harm, drugs, alcohol. Right, right. Well, no, when that doesn't work, now all of a sudden she's weaponizing his addiction, right? She's like, well, he would just get super drunk and he wouldn't be able to stand up.

And so then they're like, okay, whenever we're trying to ask you something, you just like revert to like somehow it's Matthew's fault. Which I mean, if she killed him, obviously. So now they're like, okay, now that we've gotten her to kind of like reframe her story, change her story already. They say, okay, now can you tell us how you actually got that cut on your hand? And Melissa finally gives in and she's like, fine. I did murder Matthew, but it was in self-defense.

So now she's officially. Does she have an attorney at this point? No. Or is she just straight just. No. And we're still day one. And she is confessing to the murder of Matthew. But now the first time she's saying it. I mean, her story has changed a thousand times. Yeah. But now it's self-defense. And this is how her confession goes.

Melissa says when Matthew woke her up at 4 a.m. because he was being too loud, it did turn into a pretty ugly argument. She said when Matthew got to this point of intoxication, he was also known to bring out knives. Now, again, she sort of returns to the first bogus theory she pitched because she

Okay. Okay.

So Melissa said she thought Matthew was going to kill her at that moment. And so she grabbed the knife that's now in her possession and stabbed him in the back. Gently, though. She says, I gently stabbed him so that so that she can try and get him off her. No way. Did she really say gently? Yeah.

She said, I gently stabbed him. And I stabbed him lightly in the back just to get him off of me. You can't. You can't gently stab someone. Also, that sounds way more painful, to be honest, to be gently stabbed. You just can't. It is not possible to gently stab somebody. So after this, she said Matthew slammed her head into the counter. And that's when she recalled vaguely stumbling back to her office where she collapsed in the chair.

Because she now has a head injury until around 8 a.m. the next morning. And then Melissa says when she came to, she was certain Matthew was still alive because she didn't think that gentle stab wound would be fatal. Mind you, Melissa doesn't really seem to make mention of any of the other wounds covering Matthew's body, as you remember. Mm-hmm.

But she does say, however, that this wasn't an uncommon occurrence between them, that she had lied earlier and there was a lot of physical abuse. After all, the couple did fight, especially when it came to the addiction that Matthew struggled with with alcohol. But after this, Melissa actually doubles down on this story and comes up with something pretty wild and disturbing. And she says, okay,

So, yeah, not to mention there was physical abuse, but also Matthew saw demons. That sometimes in their relationship, he would stare off into corners of the house and tell her the evil entities were watching them. I just don't really know what to think because, I mean, Matthew's obviously dead. He can't defend himself. And she's just saying all this stuff. Granted, like some of the stuff...

And maybe it could be true. Like other people, this stuff happens too. But like she's just saying stuff and he can't defend himself. You know what I'm saying? Well, I'm just like... She's just going off. Like she's just going off and saying anything and everything possible to make herself look better. Wake up in the morning, call 911, say, we got in a fight last night. He slammed my head on the counter. I ended up passing out and now he's dead. Like...

It was physical. I don't know what happened. It was self-defense. Like, you don't call and be like, I don't know what happened. I have no idea. I don't know. It's just kind of frustrating. So she says that when all of this happened the night of his murder, Melissa claims that something had switched in Matthew and that it didn't seem like she was even fighting him.

during this physical altercation that as things escalated, according to Melissa, he started talking to her in a weird voice and saying, what's the matter, little girl? Are you scared? Because Matt's not here anymore. He just had this little smile on his face and he said, what's the matter, little girl? Are you scared? Because Matt's not here anymore.

Now, I know it might seem like days have passed to this point, but I'm trying to tell you all of these story changes and evidence and new things she keeps bringing up happen literally within hours. What in the world is happening? So by 2 p.m.

That day, remember, she calls police. She wakes up at 8 a.m. It's now 2 p.m. And all of this has happened. Melissa's like, shoot, I should ask for a lawyer. So they let her leave for the night because she now asks for a lawyer so they can't keep interviewing her. And they're like, we'll let her leave and we'll compile more evidence. And so they decide to speak with Matthew's friends and family next, right? Like this is normally what happens in an investigation. It's just that they already have a confession at this point. Also, they'll easily know because if

She's saying all this stuff and no friends or family know. Have heard about it. The likelihood of this being true is like 1%. Right. I mean, if you are struggling with mental health. Usually family. To this severe of seeing demons. Usually somebody else knows. Yes. Usually it's not just the spouse. Therapist, family, somebody. Somebody. Not always. Not always. But usually. Yes. So they start interviewing friends and family. They're like, hey, we need...

Tell us everything you know about Melissa and Matthew. And to them, it's becoming more and more clear that Melissa's story is likely a bunch of crap. Yeah.

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G-A-B-B dot com slash M-W-M-H. Gab dot com slash M-W-M-H. Terms and conditions apply. Now, not only do police learn, there's actually no evidence that Matthew has ever considered or tried to self-harm. And when Matthew's brother, Sean, and his parents hear about his murder, they literally tell police, Melissa killed him. And it wasn't an accident. It was intentional. Holy crap. Which is...

A major red flag. If the family or like first things first is that she killed him and it was on purpose. Take Melissa down. There's no question in their mind because they say Melissa quote took Maddie long before she took him forever. Like they, they, she took Matt from them long before she killed him. I guess Matthew had cut off his family sometime prior to his death, which was likely at her demands because,

Even Sean, his boss and his brother, said that six months prior to the murder, he himself had gotten into a fight with Melissa, Matthew's girl. And from what I can tell, it had to do with how many hours Matthew was working for Sean. So she actually got him to quit the

And Matthew and Sean hadn't really been speaking much since. So she says he's working too much. And then he quits his job that he had with his brother. She sounds diabolical.

But there was more to the story, according to Matthew's parents. Apparently, Matthew had gotten involved in Melissa's business, one that caused him to slip into old habits and threatened his sobriety. Because remember how I mentioned Melissa was really into cosplay? Well, what I didn't tell you was that was actually how she made a lot of her money. She would dress up like characters and then film sexually explicit content as these characters.

Okay.

But over time, Melissa developed a pretty hefty fan base. People who were willing to pay a lot of money to see their favorite fictional character come to life and engage in sexual acts. Which meant more people willing to pay for her content as well. Now, I'm not sure if this was like an OnlyFans thing, but I know this cam girl job actually helped her buy that home that they lived in in Tampa.

But even long before she met Matthew and recruited him to participate in her videos, people saw a change in the Melissa they once knew. So before Matt's even in the picture, people who knew Melissa were starting to feel weird. An ex-boyfriend of Melissa said once she started to see some real growth and success from her cosplay business, the more...

unhinged she became, if you will. In fact, he said, Melissa became so obsessed with her business that it consumed every corner of her life. All she thought about was how to make more and more money. And she was willing to do anything to make that happen. It was almost like something switched inside of Melissa, almost like she became manic, unpredictable.

Now, a former roommate of Matthew's even comes forward to say, look, he did live with an alcohol addiction. Yes. Okay. But Matthew was never violent when he was drunk. Friends and family come forward and they were like, I've lived with him. I've seen him. I partied with him. He was not a violent drunk. However,

It did make Melissa pretty angry, according to friends and family, when Matthew got too intoxicated. Got it. To the point where multiple people said they had seen her be the aggressor on more than one occasion. Got it.

So Matthew's family has a different theory for police. They think at first Matthew might've been into the idea of helping Melissa out with their cosplay stuff, that the cut and the money he would make was probably enticing. And, um,

If he didn't work for his brother, he could work for her. But over time, he might have gotten uncomfortable with it or suggested that he wanted out. And they believe that that was the conversation that might have sparked their argument on October 18th. They also wonder if Melissa was actually looking for a partner for her business when she found Matthew on Tinder. Like, yeah.

Matthew was in shape. He was handsome. He fit the mold of a good looking actor. So maybe Melissa had kind of recruited him in a way to help her out with this content. Of course, this is just the family's theory, but I think it makes sense. I mean, a family does know the nuances of a relationship better than we as people just researching this and the journalism might understand.

And when police hear all of this, they seem to think it kind of makes sense too. The family brings it forward enough evidence of this theory that they start to buy it, particularly reflecting back on one thing Melissa said in that interview, and it was that Matthew claimed to be possessed by demons. Now, Melissa is a cosplay model and actress, and a lot of the stuff she does is horror and fantasy related. So they have to wonder,

Is this like a script for Melissa? Is she creating her own narrative here? And is she giving the performance of her life while doing so? Possibly, because not a day later, on October 19th, 2019, Melissa is arrested for second-degree murder with a weapon. I'm just trying to figure out why. Like, I'm still trying, and I know we're talking through this. I mean, do we really need a why with domestic violence? No, no, no. We never need a why, but...

You do at court. You do in court. Like, where's the motive? What's the motive? Why? Why would you do this? I mean, you do need a why to an extent. Because then you have to prove first degree murder, not prove second degree murder. Like, where are we? Yes. Where are we on this journey of...

I don't know. Either way, she is arrested fairly fast and a judge sets her bond for half a million dollars. And Melissa puts that home she shared with Matthew up as collateral. Finally, on November 7th, 2019, the autopsy report comes back with some interesting information. It says that the stab wounds on Matthew's back were in fact superficial.

Which was going to be tough for the prosecution because it suggested that maybe Melissa was telling the truth about trying to get Matthew off her. That the stab was gentle, if you will. They also discover that Matthew's blood alcohol level was, and this was in quotes in some sources, astronomical. Okay, so I was going to ask what the medical examiner had found.

had found with his blood alcohol level well it was actually five times over the lethal limit for florida however but okay police never checked melissa's blood alcohol level so there's no telling if she was equally as incapacitated during this fight ultimately they find that the cut to matthew's right bicep severed an artery that led to his real cause of death which was from blood loss

Which means if Melissa had just called 911 at the time of the fight, they might have been able to stop the bleeding and save Matthew's life. So because of COVID, it takes two and a half years for Melissa to end up in court. But before, there are several attempts by both the defense and the state to make some sort of plea deal. But Melissa maintains it was self-defense. So when the state says 25 years in a state Florida prison for...

her plea her attorneys are like absolutely not we will plead for five years and the state's like no way so on valentine's day 2022 it is time for a jury to decide whether melissa acted in self-defense or not because it's not a question of whether she killed him so after hearing some of this i still think she would say my opinion i don't think it was in self-defense

But I don't know how that can be proven. So I think she's going to get off because after hearing the evidence you have, unless there's more while we go into trial, I just don't, I don't see how she gets convicted. Let me tell you a little bit, a little bit about the trial. Okay. Here's what's interesting. The judge did not allow any mention of Melissa's cosplay career to enter the courtroom. Why? According to them, it wasn't relevant to the case. Okay.

I always find it interesting when a judge says this isn't relevant. It's like everything is relevant. Right? Well, okay. I understand that the jury might look at her differently if they knew what she did for a living. Okay, I see what you're saying. But that's part of the case, right? Well... Or no. I mean, it doesn't really technically tie into the killing that night. So he's just worried about the preconceived ideas around it. I mean, I think the family thinks it does because the family thinks he was leaving and that's what bothered her.

But I think it could be helpful for the jury to know that this woman is technically an actress. Like she's an aspiring actress. Okay. She acts in these videos. Yep.

there's a chance she could cry on demand because right away she goes on to give the jury her sob story about how she thought she was going to die that night and she had no choice but to act in self-defense. She never intended to kill Matthew. And yes, she does take the stand during her own trial. Frankly, the defense had a pretty good chance, like Garrett said, at getting these charges dismissed. Between the superficial stab wounds, the extremely high blood alcohol content, they argued that

That could make someone hallucinate and see demons. Like her story could be true. Yeah. And Melissa painting Matthew as an abusive alcoholic who exhibited unsettling past behavior. That's a hard case of fight. Yeah, it is. And maybe one of the most interesting things that kind of helped her case was in regards to that security footage from the neighbor's home. And I know you would think it would be the opposite. This is the one where you can hear Melissa screaming obscenities at Matthew and telling him to die. Yeah.

Well, the defense actually calls a former FBI audio expert to the stand, and they say they're pretty sure sections of the audio have been edited and the volume enhanced at trial to make Melissa sound loud. And Matthew was practically inaudible.

Now, I don't know if this is true. Obviously, like an FBI expert is testifying to it. I don't know if the audio was edited. What I do know, though, is that it's very obvious on that audio that Melissa is telling Matthew to die. Okay. That's not... You can't edit that. You can't edit that. And that is the truth. And also, I mean...

This also could just be the reality of the situation in the audio. Melissa was the aggressor. Matthew...

Could have been stabbed. He could have been trying to calm things down. Or he was already so injured at the point that he couldn't scream. I mean, ultimately, it was up to the jury to sift through this massive pile of fact and fiction. But I want to say it didn't take long for one thing to become clear. And that was that Melissa wasn't that good of an actress after all. I explained my side and why I did what I did. You're crying right now.

Is that what's happening? Are you crying right now? Do you know what tears look like? Jurors saw right through the tears Melissa tried to cry on the stand. One minute on the stand, she would be like really angry and then just like flip a switch and be devastatingly sad. And this really made the jurors feel uncomfortable.

But that was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to proving Melissa's guilt because the prosecution brought up another questionable point in Melissa's story. Remember when she said Matthew had hit her head on the counter and that's when she stumbled and passed out? Well, when she was examined at the crime scene that day, a tech determined that she had zero signs of head injury.

And if that was the case, why didn't she report it right away to the police? Well, the answer to that question seemed to come with one final smoking gun. It was another piece of tape that was shown to the jury from inside the couple's home on the night of the attack. Okay. It's from an ADT surveillance camera pointed at the couple's foyer. So they had a camera inside the house. It's at 3.42 a.m. Did she not realize that?

And you can see Matthew walking through their foyer pretty calmly. Everything about his demeanor is pretty normal. And then...

Melissa is trailing behind him in this footage and she's hunched over. She looks irate. She's disheveled. She's very intoxicated. She's almost like creepily like stalking Matthew into the kitchen where according to the timeline, their fight begins less than 20 minutes later. And then at 4 0 8 AM, Melissa returns into frame and she's standing in the foyer, just staring at the wall for a

for a moment and in that clip you can see that her right hand is covered in blood okay and then melissa turns back and walks back into the kitchen now there's so many alarm bells going off with these tapes but one of the biggest this is insane it one of the biggest things the prosecutors point out at trial is okay if she's in self-defense right and she's in distress she feels like her life is on the line here like she's claiming

Why would you get out of the kitchen where the fight is happening? And then go back in. And then like calmly and then run back in. Why would you run back towards your aggressor? Yeah. The person who's trying to kill you. I think it's pretty clear to say that Melissa probably did not get hit into the head and stumble into her office. And that she could have easily called 911 in that moment if her life was in danger. But she was either so drunk she couldn't comprehend what was happening or she chose not to.

So after less than a week of testimony, the jury came back on February 18th, 2022 with a verdict. The 29-year-old Melissa Turner was found guilty of second-degree murder. Good, good, good. She was later sentenced to 20 and a half years behind bars. But the damage Melissa did to Matthew's family and his memory. Unrepairable. Unrepairable. Matthew's mother pointed out how Melissa not only isolated him from them in the final months of his life. She killed him.

She created this narrative of abuse about him. She slaughtered his name after killing him. Which is what I was saying earlier. She just made all this crap up. I mean, she used Matthew's hardest battles, his alcoholism, his addiction.

As a way to try and throw him under the bus. To shield herself. To protect herself. To cover up the fact that she did murder him. And according to the state. Willingly did it as second degree murder.

When I think in reality, Melissa was probably the threat all along. If you're basing it off of what everyone in their life has said. Yeah. It feels like pretty cut and dry behavior. Isolate someone from their family, isolate them from their job, completely cut them off, make them reliable on you. That feels like aggressor predatory behavior to me. That's like what we see, right? It's pretty wild. And

And that honestly is the case of Matthew Trussler and where it's sitting right now. All right, you guys, that was our case for this week's episode. And we will see you next time with another one. I love it. And I hate it. Goodbye.

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