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Fair warning here, this episode includes discussion of murder and sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised. He is a good man and I don't even know him exactly the kind of father I wish I had had. In May of 2020, James Fairbanks was driving in Omaha, Nebraska looking for a new apartment. He was 43 years old and had recently divorced his wife after 15 years of marriage. He was
and the separation had triggered a drinking problem as he tried to cope with the stress. And he's dealing with this with COVID-19 as the backdrop. So this is in the forefront as he's doing this apartment hunting. So despite all of these circumstances,
It seemed like Fairbanks was about to turn a corner because he had found a potential apartment that would work out for him, a place where he could get back on his feet and he could rebuild his life. Now, Fairbanks had two young sons that he was hoping would visit him while he lived there. So finding a safe place was his first priority. And this is exactly why Fairbanks was checking out the neighborhood in person. And it was also why he did an online search for any crime in the area. And as it turned out, the apartment came with a catch.
A convicted child molester lived right around the corner, and his name? Matteo Condolucci. As part of his recon mission, Fairbanks decided to drive by the address listed for Condolucci, and what he saw made him sick to his stomach. Condolucci was outside of his house, and he was watching a group of kids playing nearby.
He was standing next to his car and holding a rag, but Fairbanks didn't see any soap or water. So to him, it seemed like Condolucci was just pretending to wash his truck so he had an excuse to stay outside and keep staring at the children. Fairbanks watched him until the kids left and Condolucci went inside. And when he turned to leave, he noticed one more thing. Behind Condolucci's house was a playset, a little house with a slide.
There was no fence around it. Any kid off the street could wander up and play on it. So Fairbanks returned home, but that sick feeling stayed with him. And he did more research and discovered even more heartbreaking details about Condolucci's abuse of children over the years. At that point, he decided he had to do something. He had to confront Condolucci. Ultimately, that decision changed Fairbanks' life forever, and it ended Condolucci's.
This is Vigilante, an original podcast from Podcast One. You're listening to a story told in one episode called James Fairbanks, a Hero and a Devil. I'm Sarah James McLaughlin. This is a tale of two very different fathers told by two important women in their lives, James Fairbanks' ex-wife, Dr. Kelly Tamayo, and Matteo Condolucci's daughter, Amanda Henry. We'll cover the stories of events that led to Fairbanks murdering Condolucci, as well as the trial and the aftermath that followed.
One of the two interviews we're going to feature heavily is with clinical psychologist Dr. Kelly Tamayo. She's uniquely qualified to speak on the psychology of young victims of sexual assault and to the kind of man James Fairbanks was.
Here's Dr. Tamayo. My specialization is trauma, military combat trauma, child abuse trauma, domestic violence trauma, any kind of trauma. I met James in 2001.
And we worked together in a mental health facility and we quickly became friends and we started dating and we were married in less than a year. And I was married to him for 15 years.
As Fairbanks' ex-wife, Dr. Tamayo had a front-row seat to his life. From her perspective, he was a hardworking man who excelled at his job of helping troubled youth, often children who had been victims of abuse. Here's Dr. Tamayo.
He worked for years for Developmental Services of Nebraska. And so if you understand what they do, they work with individuals who have developmental disabilities. And oftentimes, honestly, in our field, it's known as one of the more challenging populations to work with. And so you don't know exactly what you're going to be
how are you going to be needed on any given day? And he took that in stride and he worked, he did awesome work with them. And he, they so, so good that he never even had to do physical restraints, which of course they never wanted to do with those clients. But when you work in a group, a group home for years with adolescents that have developmental disabilities and mental illness, they,
There's likely to be some acting out behaviors on the regular. And he never had that because he was always able to talk them through it, to deescalate them, to just, you know, keep them on an even keel. And the kids did better with it. The whole home functioned better with it.
Dr. Tamayo says that throughout his career working with troubled youth, Fairbanks didn't just excel in his work, he went above and beyond. He brought his work home with him and did whatever he could for the children in his care.
Jim was a protector. Jim was coaching baseball on the weekends. Jim was taking extra time at practices to really focus on those one kids that really needed to sharpen their skills. He was that guy. He took a team. It was like one of those teams.
you know, Disney stories or something, a team of like misfits that ran the wrong way through the baseline, you know, ran backwards in the beginning and they won that season in their league. I mean, that's, that was his joy that, you know, building people up, building kids up and just being that good leader for them and showing them, I think, appreciation and respect.
He would bring those kids home on the weekend and they'd hang out at our house for part of a day or whatever and do things to get them outside of their group home experience and stuff like that. So I think he found great reward in it and he took great pride in it. But even though Fairbank's work was rewarding, it was also very challenging. And emotionally, it took a toll. I'll speak real freely about this story.
regardless of what people think. When you can't work in our field, you can't work with kids who have been through trauma and read their stories time and time again and not have a built-up amount of anger for the system. Certainly a built-up amount of anger towards the perpetrators, but the system that fails these kids...
they reach out time and time again. It's so hard for kids to talk about any of it. And I know this, of course, as a psychologist, it's so hard for them to come forward about something that's traumatic. And when they do, it's so often met with resistance because the family doesn't want to accept it.
People, you know, somebody thinks it's going to be way too much work. They don't get the attention that they need for what's happened and they certainly don't get the support. And there are a lot of people in our field still that don't know how to do trauma-informed care. And so then sometimes when they get in to see professionals finally, then it's not met with the right professionalism. It's not met with the right treatment.
And so there are all these injustices and these kids sometimes, you know, don't even know it. I mean, their foresight is so limited.
so small, so limited. But for us, we know that it affects them throughout their lives, that it will affect their relationships, that will affect them emotionally, that their trauma can resurface at any time and completely ruin them emotionally and paralyze them in fear. And we know all of those real things. And so we can't help but absorb all of that. And we can't help but have compassion fatigue.
that we feel for them a lot. And that exhausts us emotionally. For the most part, Fairbanks managed to cope with the stress and emotional exhaustion. Jim was very even keeled. He just was an easygoing guy. But sometimes even he got agitated.
I mean, everybody has their tipping point. Everybody does. And of course, I lived with him for 15 years. I had, you know, the strongest relationship with him, probably the strongest relationship he had in his life. So I think I can say I know him the best.
And sure, in the last year, as our marriage declined for our own personal reasons and my changes and in my wishes and things, I think that he took it hard. And there were times where he would get upset.
but it was verbal and he was never physically aggressive. The man had nothing on his record. I don't even think he has a speeding ticket. He might have one speeding ticket. He's a law-abiding citizen. He never has intent to hurt anyone or anything or disobey the law ever. So for the most part, Fairbanks was even keeled, easygoing, someone who de-escalated potentially dangerous situations.
But leading up to that day in May of 2020, he was going through a seriously tumultuous time. I know our divorce was devastating and painful for us both and certainly painful for him. And he and I talked about that even after we had divorced because we were still co-parenting. I know that he had turned to alcohol a little bit and I expressed concern about that and he kind of got that back in line.
He did get that under control and it never impacted his work or social functioning. It just was something in the evenings that he had taken to, I think, to cope. Fairbanks was going through a divorce, getting sober, trying to find an apartment, and giving his all to his emotionally draining job working with vulnerable children.
And then he got COVID. Remember, this was May 2020, during the first few months of the pandemic, when we knew very little about the disease and vaccines were still months away. Then COVID hit and he was very stressed during that time. He had had weak lungs anyways. And so I think it was just the, like this combination of like,
all day feeling like you're suffocating because he had weak lungs anyways and then this COVID on top of it and stuff so I could sense that there was like increased irritation. So that's what was going on for Fairbanks when he was apartment hunting and pulled up in front of Matteo Condolucci's house. Fairbanks went back to his sober living home where he was living during this time and researched Condolucci further. He read the story of Laura Smith whose five-year-old son was molested by Condolucci.
The abuse left a lifelong impact on her son, to the point that 24 years after the fact, he died of a drug overdose. Smith blamed Condolucci directly for her son's death, and Fairbanks saw that she had started a Facebook group to warn people about Condolucci. She wanted to stop him from victimizing any other children, and Fairbanks felt the same way. Condolucci had to be stopped. So he decided to go back and give Condolucci a warning.
On his second visit, Fairbanks brought a 9mm semi-automatic rifle, just in case he needed protection. After all, he didn't know what would happen when he confronted a convicted felon. Coming up, a deep dive into the crimes of Matteo Condolucci, which made him a target for vigilante justice. Now, back to the story. When 43-year-old James Fairbanks drove to confront Matteo Condolucci, he knew that Condolucci was a convicted child molester.
He knew that one of his victims had tragically died years after being assaulted. And he knew that Condolucci was a free man living in a house with a play set in the backyard. He'd done it before and he could do it again. And that was unacceptable. Here's Dr. Kelly Tamayo, clinical psychologist and Fairbanks' ex-wife, speaking to what might have been going through his head. So it's understandable to me that Jim, with Condolucci,
the long history of, of the knowledge of manipulation and deceit and like sex offenders or abusers, like they'll,
They groom them, right? That's how they do it. They groom them. So they get them comfortable with being at their house or being in their yard or whatever, talking to them. And so I can imagine that Jim thought that this guy was grooming these kids as the guy was peering, standing or staring off at these kids or having those things in his yard. But what Fairbanks knew about Condolucci pales in comparison to what his daughter, Amanda Henry, knew from her harrowing experience growing up with him.
Amanda bravely agreed to share her story with us. Here she is describing her childhood, which was nomadic and chaotic. Grew up all over the place. I was born in San Bernardino, California. Lived in Jacksonville, Florida, Daytona, Orlando, Denver, Colorado, Colorado Springs, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Little here, little there.
Life was always on the road. Anywhere from some months to a couple years, three years at most, we would have to move. There was a very good reason Condolucci and his family didn't stay in one place for long. It was too dangerous. My dad was a snitch for the ATF and the DEA. He infiltrated the 1%er biker gangs.
A brief note about one percenter gangs. The name refers to a statement that the American Motorcycle Association, or AMA, made after a 1947 motor rally devolved into a multi-day riot. The president of the AMA asserted that, quote, 99% of bikers were law-abiding citizens, end quote. Quickly, clubs like the notorious Hell's Angels stepped in to say they were, quote, the other 1%, unquote.
Outlaw crews have been known to engage in organized crime, extortion, drug and weapons trafficking, and even contract killing, sometimes in connection with the mafia. So yeah, these people, you didn't really want to be on their bad side. Since Condolucci was an informant infiltrating these gangs and then reporting them to law enforcement, well, it wouldn't really be wise to stick around. So we were always on the run, always on the run. Ended up
racking up a child molestation charge and ruined his own life and in turn decided to become a snitch in hopes that they would expunge the charge for services, so to speak. In 1994, Condolucci assaulted a five-year-old boy. After a plea deal, he was given drug counseling, four years probation, and put on the sex offenders registry.
In 2007, he was convicted of raping a 13-year-old girl. This came with his sentence of five years in prison, but he was set free after two and a half years. In addition to the counts on his criminal record, he also abused his own daughter for many years. Here's Amanda speaking about her experience. It started when I was really young. I would say as far as I can remember, like as far back as my memory recalls, I was, I don't know,
seven or eight years old when I started remembering things. Touching me, groping me all my life, telling his friends in the biker gang, this is my daughter, we're getting married. Just disgusting, horrible stuff. I could never keep a female friend. She would always hit on him.
Just disgusting. I hate him. His punishments were have sex with me or give me sexual favors or be grounded for X amount of time with no phone, no this, no that. I chose to be grounded but didn't get that choice. He would take it from me. It's not your decision. I'm the adult so I'm making the choice for you.
Everyone I confided in went back and told him, and I got life beat out of me. He'd kick me in the face with cowboy boots with spurs on. He would wrap his fingers in my hair and swing my body around by my head. He had my brother, my middle brother Joey, he had him so terrified that he wouldn't do shit to help me. Every day.
Her dream of getting out, running away, dying, somebody killing him. Anything was better than being there with him. Death was better than being with him. Little did Amanda know that one day a complete stranger would grant her wish. Late in the evening, May 14th, 2020, Fairbanks returned to Matteo Condolucci's house. According to him,
He only wanted to talk to Condolucci. Fairbanks wanted to let him know that he was on to him and that if he abused another child, he wouldn't just have the law to answer to. That's where the gun that Fairbanks brought with him came into the picture. But what actually happened ended up going a lot further. 64-year-old Condolucci answered the door. 6 foot 3 inches, 370 pounds of him. The TV was on in the background as Fairbanks gave him a piece of his mind.
He put the fear of God in him, or more specifically, the fear of Fairbanks and his 9mm. According to Fairbanks, during this confrontation, Condolucci made him move forward like he was going to attack. And in response, Fairbanks raised his rifle and fired. Not once, not twice, but seven times. Three shots to his torso, three to his back, and one to his temple. The TV was still on when Fairbanks left the scene and drove away.
Fairbanks' ex-wife, Teli Tamayo, thinks that immediately after the shooting, he was probably in shock. I got a call from him and he told me what he did and
was very clear about it and said that he was turning himself into police. And I was devastated because I've certainly never been through something like this and wouldn't have known what to prepare for, but it was like a death. It was the closest thing to having a loved one die as I can imagine, because me and the kids knew that we were losing him now to prison.
Probably we didn't, you know, for a very, very long time. And it was just so sad because this was completely out of his character. And I know now in hindsight that there were some suicidal thoughts that were going on and where he drove to was where we used to live. And going out to the country with a gun in your car right after you killed somebody is...
Fairbanks thought he was going to be arrested any minute.
But hours went by, then days, and he later said, quote, For a little while, I thought, hey, I'll get away with this. I can do this. I can just get rid of everything and pretend like it never happened, unquote. But that didn't quite sit right with him. He decided he had to own up to his actions. So several days after the murder, Fairbanks sent an email to the local Nebraska media confessing to the crime.
And to prove he was actually the killer, he provided very specific details, like the kind of gun he used and the fact that the TV was left on at the scene. At first, the email was anonymous, sent from the address Stop Predators, with the subject line, Matteo Condolucci Homicide. But Fairbanks promised to identify himself once his message was made public. Fairbanks wrote, quote,
I've worked with kids for years who have been victimized, and I couldn't in good conscience allow him to do it to anyone else while I had the means to stop him, unquote. He also said, quote, I know in this messed up judicial system, that means I will face far more severe punishment for stopping him than he did for raping kids, but I could no longer do nothing, unquote. Amanda Henry, Candelucci's daughter, and also a survivor of his abuse, wishes Fairbanks hadn't turned himself in.
To be honest with you, I wish he would have never said anything. They'd have never found out. They'd have never really investigated it. They would have just been this, you know, they'd have pushed this one, they'd have swept it under the rug. I even told his attorney that I wish he would have kept his mouth shut. It would have been one less monster that he would have been a free man. But the fact was, the Fairbanks had publicly admitted to killing your man.
So of course there was going to be a trial. There were going to be consequences. The only question was, what would those consequences be? And how, under the extraordinary circumstances, could they possibly be fair? Up next, we'll cover James Fairbanks' dramatic murder trial and shocking sentence. Now, back to the story. It's probably fair to say that most murder trials don't begin with the accused publicly admitting to committing the crime.
But that was the case for 44-year-old James Fairbanks. He'd sent a letter to the press clearly stating that he had killed convicted child molester Matteo Condolucci. There was no doubt that he had pulled the trigger. But there was still considerable doubt about what a fair sentence would be for his actions. It was definitely a sensational case.
The victim, a convicted child abuser, the murderer, a man who has never been in trouble with the law, who devoted his life to helping children and had firsthand experience with the devastating aftermath of abuse. A man who said he'd taken the law into his hands to stop Condolucci from harming any other kids. But the prosecution sought to show that Fairbanks wasn't just a squeaky clean defender of children like he made himself out to be.
They argue that Condolucci's death wasn't a case of self-defense and that Fairbanks had a premeditated plan to kill a sex offender. Fairbanks' search history and the weeks leading up to the killing painted a damning picture. He looked up articles about people who killed sex offenders, what their sentences were, and whether death row inmates in Nebraska could get a commissary. He researched the legal definitions of second-degree murder versus self-defense.
He'd even looked up the address of another sex offender in the area and mapped a route to that person's home. While admitting that Condolucci wasn't, quote, the most sympathetic victim, unquote, one of the prosecutors said, quote, Fairbanks doesn't get to be the judge, jury, and executioner. There are a lot of criminals in the world. You don't get to confront them and then try to claim self-defense, especially when you do all this research on someone a week before you murder them, unquote.
With a pretty big hole blown in the self-defense angle, Fairbanks accepted a deal. He pled no contest to a second-degree murder and a gun charge. Then it was time for the sentencing. At this point, people close to the victim and the perpetrator could provide context and mitigating factors that might sway the judge to be more or less lenient. Amanda Henry and her brother, Joseph Condolucci, both spoke, but on opposite sides. Amanda spoke on Fairbanks' behalf while her brother spoke for their father.
Joseph clarified that his father hadn't put up the playset in the backyard as Baytelor children in. Joseph himself had put it up for his kid. Joseph also said of Fairbanks, quote, the facts that he had in his mind were not facts. They were just made up thoughts in his head as to why he needed to kill my father, unquote. When Amanda got up to speak in court, first she turned to Fairbanks to apologize.
I was only allowed to do the victim impact statement, but my victim impact statement got shut down because I looked at James and I told him that I was sorry that he felt he had to do this and that he no longer has freedom. And they shut me down right there. And they told me that I couldn't talk to him. I mean, I don't see...
a better person, a better man than that. It's not his child or children, but he took a stand for us. And whether or not he knew he was taking a stand for me, he took a stand for all of us. He gave up his life and his family for us. And that means a lot for people like me.
Fairbanks must have had some idea of what was coming. If he'd researched what sentences other vigilantes had gotten for killing sex offenders, chances are he knew he wasn't going to get off scot-free. He even wrote in his confession letter that he knew he would face a far more severe sentence for stopping Condolucci than Condolucci faced for raping children. And as it turned out, Fairbanks was right.
James Fairbanks, convicted of killing a sex offender and then later on told the media in a letter about it, was given a lofty sentence in Douglas County Court today. 40 to 70 years combined on two charges, including second-degree murder. 40 to 70 years. Compare that to the four years probation Condolucci got for assaulting a five-year-old boy and the five years in prison he was sentenced to for raping a 13-year-old girl.
With Nebraska laws, Fairbanks could serve as little as 20 years with good behavior. But still. As Fairbanks' attorney put it, "Mr. Fairbanks has been hailed a hero in some circles and a devil in others." Amanda Henry falls firmly on the hero side. She said she believes Fairbanks' sentence was too harsh and her father's was too lenient.
So, I mean, like, it's sad because, you know, I've been through so much therapy. Like, my mental health issues are a mile long. So with all the abuse that I had taken from him, if I had been one of those victims who had just gave up,
Nothing would have been done. My life would have been pointless and he would have still been running for free. They wouldn't have done nothing. Would they have charged him for murder because he's the reason why I killed myself? No, but it's okay for people like him to run around and cause life-term issues. He's been in jail. I don't know how many times. I don't think that our justice system
is at all in favor for victims like myself. Sexual abuse, mental abuse, physical abuse. The justice system is not in our favor. Unless you murder somebody, then they don't care. But they don't understand that, like I've said before,
When you do something like this to a child, you literally just took that child's whole life. We no longer have a childhood. We now have to grow up as an adult from that point on. I've been an adult since I was seven years old. It's not fair that we have to suffer while they continue to look over our shoulder with a fucking smile, knowing that they're able to get away with this, knowing that nobody's going to help us until it's too late.
Dr. Kelly Tamayo spoke to us about the long-term consequences of childhood sexual abuse from a clinical psychology perspective. That's the thing, like all of these kids live a life of consequences. It is not just the days, months, years that the abuse occurs or that the trauma occurs. Like it is persistent. It is pervasive and it changes. It remaps the brain and that's my specialty, right? It remaps the brain in ways that we can't undo.
Amanda and Dr. Tamayo weren't the only ones who thought Fairbanks didn't deserve such a lengthy sentence. There was a lot of sympathy from people online. Laura Smith, the mother of the boy who Condolucci assaulted and whose son later died of a drug overdose, also joined the pro-Fairbanks campaign, starting a petition to get him freed. As of this writing, the Change.org petition has over 60,000 signatures. And I have to say that there was this...
insane outpour of support. That was the other thing that I wasn't prepared for and having never gone through this, but me being kind of his point person and trying to support him with helping him find his lawyer and get him through it.
My Facebook was getting flooded with people from other countries, from all around our country. How can I put money on his books? How can I support him? What can I do for him? You know, telling me, like laying out their story of abuse. I saw a story and story after trauma and how they, you know, how the injustices that they went through and they're like, he is a hero.
Amanda Henry also fields online support for Fairbanks. I still add people to his Facebook account. It seems to keep growing and growing, and every time I see a new member, it just makes me smile because I'm the one that gets to add them. So, I mean, it's a treat when I open up my Facebook and I got notifications for that. That's one of my highlights of my day. Though she sometimes communicates with Fairbanks' family...
She's not in touch with Fairbanks himself, although one day she hopes that will change. I hope one of us ends up getting just fed up with the other and just says, okay, I'm going to do it. I'm going to write her. I'm going to write him. I hope it's him. I just don't know what to say, really. But I do hope he gets a super early release. And I hope that...
If we're still around, that time comes, I would definitely, definitely like to meet him and make him a permanent fixture in my family's life as a friend. To know that somebody cares that much about not me, because like I said, he didn't know anything about me, but children in general. If they ever do meet, Amanda knows what she'd say to Fairbanks.
Thank you. And then I'm sorry. And then I wish that there was some way I could have helped him more. But a major weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I'm not terrified of him anymore. I don't have to live in fear. And it is all because of James. Amanda also believes that Fairbanks saved other children from abuse by killing her father. I absolutely do.
I mean, for goodness sakes, I found pictures of people's children in his office. Why do you have pictures of other people's children? They're just random pictures of random children of all ages, colors. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's not normal. That's not normal. Having a garage full of children's book bags and toys and
Dr. Tamayo also thinks her ex-husband had the best interests of children in mind. Probably thought that he was doing something helpful to kids. And maybe that gave him some, I don't know, some peace of mind after all that he had seen and heard over the years and everything that was out of his control that he worked with. Whatever peace of mind Fairbanks gets from that thought might not be great comfort in prison.
He won't be eligible for parole until May of 2040, and then he'll be 63 years old. His children will be fully grown and could even have kids of their own. But in the meantime, Fairbanks has continued to use his skills to help people behind bars. You know, since he's been incarcerated, Jim has sought help.
He initially sought to be a teacher in the prison system so that he could continue to use those skills and help people, that he has been a mentor to young adult men in there and really taken them under his wing. And Jim, in no way, shape or form, has made himself out to be a victim in this. He's making the best of it. If there's a way, I don't know.
We'll give the last word to Amanda Henry, who has a unique perspective on why victims need to come forward with their stories. We do this because we have to, because people aren't listening. We have to, otherwise people like me are going to continue to do this. And people like James Fairbanks are going to continue to go to prison when they're good people. They're teachers, they're counselors, they're fathers, they're aunts, they're uncles. People are going to get tired.
And they're going to continue to get tired. So the world is going to be full of shit people and molesters and murderers while the good people are in jail. Thank you for tuning in to Vigilante. We'll be back next week with a new story about people taking justice into their own hands. Until next time.
