Jennifer Paeyeneers

Weight loss medications are everywhere right now.

Everyone's talking about them, everyone's on them.

But let's be real.

Have you seen the price tag?

It's hard to believe they're actually accessible.

That's where HERS comes in.

HERS is transforming women's healthcare by providing access to affordable weight loss treatment plans.

They connect you with a medical provider who will work with you to determine the best treatment option for you.

So, if you've been struggling to find a solution to your weight loss journey, it's time to find the best option that works for you through HERS.

Start your free online visit today at forhers.com/slash snapped.

That's F-O-R-H-E-R-S dot com slash snapped for your personalized weight loss treatment options.

For HERS.com slash snapped.

Weight loss by HERS is not available everywhere.

Compounded products are not approved or reviewed for safety, effectiveness, or quality by the FDA.

Prescription required.

See website for full details, important safety information, and restrictions.

Actual price depends on product and plan purchased.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

You chose to hit play on this podcast today.

Smart Choice.

Progressive loves to help people make smart choices.

That's why they offer a tool called AutoQuote Explorer that allows you to compare your progressive car insurance quote with rates from other companies.

So you save time on the research and can enjoy savings when you choose the best rate for you.

Give it a try after this episode at progressive.com.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates.

Not available in all states or situations.

Prices vary based on how you buy.

When chaos erupts on a quiet street in Oklahoma, a man is left dead on his own doorstep.

Someone had knocked on the front door, and the next thing she heard was some shots.

Blood was pumping out of his chest.

We've got somebody going from door to door.

Better be careful.

It might be you next.

But a homicide investigation points to something more intentional.

To see them together and the bed was unmade, doesn't take much imagination.

She wasn't ready to let go of being a fun party girl.

I believe that drove a wedge in their marriage.

Holy cow, this has been going on for a while.

As detectives press for answers, love and loyalty cloud the truth.

She thought we didn't have anything on her.

I said, she doesn't love you.

She's using you like a dog.

It was getting very tense in this small town.

I wanted the mastermind behind bars.

November 29th, 1999.

Just before midnight in Stillwater, Oklahoma, Officer Jeff Dillon is on patrol.

I was in a parking lot and I was car to car with another officer who happened to be one of my training officers.

I had made the mistake, apparently, of making mention that, man, it was a pretty slow night.

Within about a minute of that, officers were dispatched to the shooting call.

The caller is 24-year-old Jennifer Payoneers.

When Jennifer Payoneers called 911, she said that someone had knocked on the front door and her husband Tommy got up to answer the door and the next thing she knew she heard some shots.

We went ahead and responded.

When I arrived, I could hear a female crying inside the house.

I announced that I was a police officer officer and the female inside said, come in, he's been shot, helping.

When I got to the inside, I could see Tommy Panniers.

He had a bullet wound to the center of his back.

Miss Paniers was hysterical.

As I started doing CPR and I gave him the first breath, Jennifer asked, is he okay?

Is he okay?

My primary focus at that point is to just do everything I can to try to resuscitate him.

If there's any hope at all, then you want to give him that chance.

Floyd Thomas Payoneers was born in Hawaii on July 12th, 1974, into a struggling family.

He told me that he was born addicted to heroin, that his mother was an addict, and his father was not around.

and that at one point they actually lived in the crawl space under a house.

After his mother committed suicide when Tommy was just three years old, the toddler went to live with his grandma in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

It's kind of a small town.

We're about halfway between Tulsa and Oklahoma City.

Everybody knows everybody.

You drive down the street, you see them and you wave to them.

So there's not much that goes on that nobody knows about.

In Stillwater, Tommy's grandmother tried to give him the love and parenting he had been missing.

I think she did her best to make sure he had a normal, you know, as normal an upbringing as he could.

I think that she instilled his sense of fairness and right and wrong and

gave him a strong sense of,

you know, the golden rule.

As Tommy grew up, his grandmother's lessons seemed to stick.

You know how when you meet somebody for the first time, you can can feel there's a good vibe there.

Tommy was very much that kind of person.

Very open, very friendly, big smile on his face, 24-7.

In high school, Tommy garnered attention for his edgy style.

Tommy had his hair bleached kind of to blonde tips and then spiked.

And, you know, he's wearing earrings and the whole thing.

He had more kind of a punk look.

That was kind of a thing then, you know, in the 90s, kind of a green day look, I'd say, you know, very, very cute little punk boy.

At 18 years old, Tommy landed a job at Audio Innovations, a local company that specialized in audio and video for cars.

Tommy came in and he went to work in our assembly area.

Tommy would look at the process and he'd go, oh, you know, if we did this, we could change it.

We could change it.

It'll be so much better.

We all had confidence in him and what he did.

So it was very much a group consensus that he was the right guy for what we wanted to do.

In his early 20s, Tommy met Jennifer Wheeler, the daughter of a successful local florist.

She had a large extended family.

They were very well established in Stillwater, you know, been there for generations.

They were a religious family, and there was a very large church in Stillwater that they were a part of, and they were very active in that.

Jennifer, who was studying to be a hairdresser, diverged from her conservative upbringing.

There were stories that she was a bit of a wild child in high school.

She did like attention.

She had wild-colored hair at times.

She wore a lot of makeup.

She was just very, very outgoing.

Jennifer was drawn to Tommy's style and outgoing personality, and Tommy fell almost immediately for for Jennifer.

They were a fun couple to be around, you know, very much fed off each other, their personalities, a lot of energy, a lot of laughs.

They seemed at that point to be very much in love.

That big grin Tommy had, well, got a couple sizes bigger.

When Jennifer brought Tommy home to meet her family, They were impressed enough by his stable job to look past his unique appearance.

I think that her family thought that he'd be a very good influence for her and so that's kind of why they gravitated towards him and really embraced him as one of their own.

He was close to Jennifer's parents.

He loved them.

That was that mom and dad that he wanted to have.

On September 28th, 1996, Jennifer and Tommy tied the knot.

Since Tommy didn't have a stable family growing up, he was super excited to be a husband and have a home.

The couple soon bought their first house and started working on a new dream, opening a salon for Jennifer.

She had been thinking about a wild hair salon from when she was a little girl.

This is what Tommy told me, and that she had had that name picked out forever.

So this was kind of her dream to have this.

Tommy was really active in building furniture and fixtures and remodeling that and making it a pretty cool place.

When the couple wasn't working, they spent most of their time with Jennifer's younger brother, 18-year-old Nick Wheeler.

Nick set up a recording studio in the closet of his bedroom, and he was doing multi-track recordings.

Most high school garage bands are really pretty hookerable, but not this one.

They had some talent.

And so, you know, they formed the All-American Rejects.

Tommy loved Nick.

Nick loved Tommy.

Tommy was very supportive of Nick.

He would go to their concerts to help them set up and tear down.

He was still a young person at heart, loved music, liked the excitement of a live band and that kind of stuff.

Jennifer helped out too, doing everything from selling CDs to honing the band's signature look.

She spent a lot of time with her brother and the band, and so it was a younger age group she spent time with.

By 1999, after three years of marriage, Tommy and Jennifer had settled into a comfortable and successful life.

He looked forward to getting home at night.

He would talk about it and having his beer

and mowing the lawn.

He was feeling like he was making himself into more of a man, more of a husband.

But on November 29th, 1999, the happy home Tommy has built for himself hangs by a thread after a violent shooting leaves him fighting for his life.

I gave him two breaths and noticed his chest was rising, so I knew he was getting air.

So there was still hope.

I did CPR until the ambulance arrived.

The paramedics were doing CPR and blood was pumping out of his chest.

With his life life on the line, paramedics load Tommy into an ambulance.

I then got an ambulance and I went to the hospital with Tommy.

You never give up hope, but he had just devastating injuries.

Coming up, investigators kick into high gear to track down the shooter.

They want to find out if there's still a threat out there.

If it was a person that came up random and shot him at the door, are they going to do it again?

And a broadcasted suspect sketch yields a solid lead.

He was known to be in the neighborhood.

As far as I was concerned, I focused on him first.

On November 29th, 1999, Tommy Payoneers is fighting for his life in an ambulance after being shot in his doorway.

At the crime scene, his wife, Jennifer Payoneers, is about to head to the hospital when she flags an important detail.

Jennifer surveyed the scene and said that her purse was missing.

There was a table on the wall.

It was on the east wall, and there was a wallet, keys, and other things sitting there.

The victim's wife's purse was sitting next to that, and it was missing.

With a new lead, detectives send Jennifer to the hospital and begin combing through the crime scene for more clues.

We've noticed gunpowder residue on the door frame as you walked in to the right, which would indicate the shooting happened at the doorway.

Somebody came up and shot him at the door.

Her purse is missing, so we're thinking, okay, somebody robbed him.

Luckily, the perpetrator left something behind.

I noticed two bloody shoe prints on the front porch.

There was no markings of what type of shoe it was.

The footsteps went straight to where the purse was and then back out the door.

He was as excited about finding those shoe prints as a dog would be finding a bone.

The best way to preserve that was with photographs.

And we marked it, we measured it, we wanted to see the size of it in case we did find the shoe.

As they wrap up inside the payoneer's home, Investigators turn their attention to the potential threat beyond their initial perimeter.

We didn't know who did this.

If it was a person that came up random and shot him at the door, are they going to do it again?

They want to find out if there's still a threat out there.

And are any of the neighbors in danger?

Is this a person who is going house to house and doing this sort of thing?

While officers searched the neighborhood, detectives talked to Jennifer in the emergency room of Stillwater Medical Center.

I met with Jennifer in a side room room in the ER.

She was visibly distraught.

She was crying, makeup running.

When you do an interview with somebody like that, you have to be patient.

You have to listen to them.

She said that they had spent the evening with her brother, and after he left, she and Tommy were getting ready to go to bed, and that's when there was a knock at the door.

When Jennifer heard the knock at the door, It was so soon after Nick had left that she thought it was Nick.

Jennifer says when Tommy opened the door at around 11 p.m., it wasn't Nick but a panhandler.

She mentioned that there was a person who had come earlier in the night that was begging for money.

She described him as a black male with kind of a lazy eye.

Tommy had refused to give him money and then they had gone to bed.

Jennifer explains the couple had settled into bed minutes later.

But just as they were drifting off, there was another knock on the door.

She didn't get up, Tommy did, and went to the door and she could tell there was a conversation.

And then she heard shots.

Jennifer yells for her husband, doesn't answer.

She calls 911.

Jennifer says she rallied the courage to leave the room and found her husband lying unresponsive in the doorway with no one else in sight.

She didn't see the shooter, but she's implicating the beggar.

She didn't see that person during the shooting, but that person had been there earlier.

So the initial thought was, well, this person went and got a gun or got angry or whatever and came back.

Before detectives can continue the interview, doctors emerge from the ER.

Tommy had a total of five bullet wounds.

And so he had, you know, one in the back, he had two in the chest, and he had two basically in the neck area.

The doctors worked him for about 40 minutes, putting chest tubes in, giving him medicine, and he was finally pronounced deceased.

Miss Payneers was kind of hyperventilating, you know, just heavy breathing and no-no, didn't really talk a lot.

After he passed on, we had a homicide on our hands.

News of Tommy's death quickly spreads through the close-knit Oklahoma community.

We just didn't see this coming and Stillwater's a really nice, peaceful,

really low-crime small town.

So it was a real shocker.

The way she told the story left the impression that we've got somebody's going from door to door and better be careful, it might be you next.

So it was

very unsettling to not only the community, but to law enforcement as well.

Didn't know what they had on their hands.

Based on Jennifer's description of the panhandler, detectives release a composite sketch to the public and soon receive calls from some of their own officers.

I worked patrol for years and everybody in that neighborhood or worked that neighborhood knew who he was.

His name's Scott Sanders.

We knew that he was cross-eyed, he was a black male, and he would be known to ask for money.

Not only that, one officer reported that he had seen Scott at the crime scene just minutes after the shooting.

One of the patrolmen had told me that Scott Sanders had walked by when the ambulance was there and said, what happened?

Did somebody get shot?

Scott matched the description that she was given, and he was known to have been in the neighborhood.

So as far as I was concerned, I focused on him first.

On November 30th, 1999, detectives bring Scott Sanders into the station for questioning, but he denies having anything to do with Tommy's death.

He stated to us that if he had had a gun, he would have sold it because he was always trying to gather up money.

He was very open, cooperative, forthcoming, and he

never showed any signs of nervousness or deception.

And he agreed to take a polygraph test.

It showed no deception.

He had an alibi.

I knew where he was.

And then we searched his residence.

He was not in any possession of any weapons.

He was known to frequent that neighborhood, but he was never known for violence.

These guys ran all the traps and realized that he wasn't the one and exonerated him.

Coming up, investigators change tactics and uncover a stunning scandal.

He became angry.

He was upset that she was there.

He said, it is the most disgusting thing I have ever done.

It's almost like that was a beacon shining.

There's something going on here.

This show is sponsored by Liquid IV.

Hey, it's Stephanie Gomolco with oxygen.com.

Soaking up the last bits of summer sometimes means more time in the sun.

I trust Liquid IV to keep me hydrated, whether I'm squeezing in another pool day, weekend trip, or running in the park.

I used to drink so much water water and found my lips would still be so dry.

Liquid IV helps me stay hydrated so that doesn't happen.

Liquid IV is packed with electrolytes, essential vitamins, and clinically tested nutrients that turn ordinary water into extraordinary hydration.

Just one stick and 16 ounces of water hydrates better than water alone.

My favorite flavor hands down is Firecracker.

I'm obsessed and I have it every day.

It's delicious with ice cold water and tastes like summer in a bottle.

Savor the last bits of summer with Liquid IV.

Tear, pour, live more.

Go to liquidiv.com and get 20% off your first purchase with code snapped at checkout.

That's 20% off your first order with code snapped at liquidiv.com.

Affordable and easy access to therapy is something everyone should have.

It can help you find the silver linings even during tough times.

Telehealth is one-way accessibility is more convenient than ever, thanks to Rula.

Rula isn't just affordable.

They stick with you throughout your journey to make sure you're getting the best therapy and that you're making progress.

With Rula, every provider is carefully vetted and chosen for their expertise, making the first step towards better mental health easy.

Rula starts by asking you some questions about what is important to you and then provides a list of licensed providers who match your preferences.

You can have an appointment as soon as the next day.

Thousands have already trusted Rula to support them on their journey toward improved mental health and overall well-being.

Head over to rula.com snapped to get started today.

After you sign up, they ask where you heard about them.

Please support our show and tell them our show sent you.

Go to rula.com/slash snapped and take the first step towards better mental health today.

You deserve quality care from someone who cares.

November 1999.

Detectives in Stillwater, Oklahoma have cleared local drifter Scott Sanders of any involvement in the murder of 25-year-old stereo engineer Tommy Payoneers.

Next, they turn to the bloody footprints found at the crime scene, hoping they will lead them to the killer.

It was obvious that this belonged to a suspect because we know no police officers, the first arrived, first responders had shoes like that, and neither did any of the detectives.

I went to a local shoe store here in Stillwater and I talked to them about it.

It ended up, it was a Nike Air Penny.

It was a special edition shoe that was sold for a limited time.

With the killer's shoe model identified, detectives turned their attention to Jennifer's 19-year-old brother, Nick Wheeler, who was at the house before the shooting.

He was literally like one of the last two people to see Tommy alive.

Nick and Tommy were close, and I think it was pretty traumatic for Nick that Tommy had been murdered.

Nick found nothing unusual the night he visited Tommy and Jennifer.

Again, he left around 11 o'clock, and that's the last he saw Tommy.

When detectives ask Nick about the AirPenny shoes, Nick says he can't think of anyone who wears that style, but that he isn't familiar with everyone in Tommy's inner circle.

Tommy spent a lot of time with his coworkers.

They would come to he and Jennifer's house and they would have barbecues and get-togethers.

Tommy was a very big part of our work family.

He worked for a company named Audio Innovations and his employer had to a certain extent taken him on as almost a son.

They were, in a sense, his family.

With Stillwater being, you know, where we don't have a lot of homicides, and most of them are someone that knows the victim, there's some kind of connection there.

On December 2nd, 1999, detectives arrive at Audio Innovations.

Everyone at Tommy's work were willing to help.

They wanted to talk about it.

They were basically in shock that anything had happened to him.

Everybody's trying to think in their head, was there anybody that was mad at him?

And not one single person could come up with anything.

Nothing.

Tommy's coworkers tell detectives that Tommy was one of the rising stars in the company.

Tommy was so good that he caught the attention of other companies and specifically of Sony, which is kind of a big deal in the electronics world.

And Sony wanted to hire him.

To keep Tommy at audio innovations, the company says they offered him a raise and a path to management.

In order to fit his more professional role, Tommy began to change his look.

I noticed that kind of the spiked hair went away and the earring went away and he showed up in a polo shirt.

Tommy's bosses say that there was one person who wasn't impressed with Tommy's new straight-edge look.

His wife, Jennifer Payoneers.

I think that she wasn't seeing him anymore as a kind of wild car audio rock and roll guy.

He wanted, was becoming more of a husband, a salesman.

According to Tommy's coworkers, the once happy couple was soon fighting about the time Jennifer spent with Nick's band, The All-American Rejects.

I believe that drove a wedge in their marriage because Tommy wanted Jennifer to be home.

She would rather be where they were performing or setting up parties.

She wasn't ready to let go of being a fun party girl and become somebody's wife at work.

Detectives ask if the couple was headed for a divorce, but Tommy's coworkers say it wasn't likely.

At least back in those days, that's how that town was.

You know, everybody got married, everybody went to church.

I think that would have been

a huge thing for them to get divorced.

Tommy wanted to fix things.

Tommy wanted to have this marriage that lasted for,

you know, 50 years.

He wanted everything he didn't have as a kid growing up.

But then Tommy had some kind of strange health episodes.

He was going through some concerning physical ailments.

A lot of stomach issues, a lot of headaches, bloody noses.

Nobody could quite figure out what was going on with him.

He was not as vibrant, but it went away.

It did not stick around.

He improved, so nobody really gave it a second thought.

Although Tommy's health improved in the fall, his situation at home did not.

Jennifer was still very intertwined with her brother's band.

It appeared that when their ascent started, the band, that Jennifer became the organizer or the agent.

She involved in setting the gigs up, but she also did the parties and the get-togethers.

That's how she met Philip Meadows.

Philip is a lot younger than Jennifer.

Tommy said, there is a guy that is driving me nuts, and that was Philip.

He has got his hands all over.

He practically sits on top of her on the couch.

According to Tommy's coworkers, all of the couple's problems boiled over on October 10th, 1999, when Tommy came home early from a trip.

He got home, and she was not there.

So

he started calling around to different people and he couldn't find Jennifer anywhere.

So then he started driving around.

He went over by Philip's house and her car was parked outside.

He became angry.

You know, he was upset that she was there.

Tommy's coworkers say he stormed inside.

He gets into the room and Phillip was sitting on the bed wearing a pair of shorts, no shirt.

That's it.

Tommy was very angry now to see them together.

And the bed was unmade and

doesn't take much imagination.

So

Tommy tells Jennifer, we're leaving right now.

And she says, no, I'm not leaving.

You go.

And he was pretty upset.

And Tommy slapped her.

According to Tommy's coworkers, Jennifer called the police and Tommy was charged with domestic violence.

After making bail, Tommy moved out of the couple's home.

What he told me directly was that when he slapped her, that all the fight went out of him.

He said, it is the most disgusting thing I have ever done.

He was begging Jennifer to forgive him.

She agreed to meet him for lunch.

So he thought things were maybe going a little bit better.

He told me that Jennifer said she was just there visiting as a friend.

I think he wanted to believe it.

Based on their conversation with Tommy's coworkers, investigators feel there's more to the situation with Philip Meadows than Tommy was led to believe.

It's almost like that was a beacon shining.

There's something going on here.

Tommy was jealous of Jennifer's relationship with this individual.

That just added to the suspicion on our part that this might contribute to a motive.

On December 8th, 1999, eight days after the murder of 25-year-old Tommy Payoneers, detectives with the Stillwater Police Department ask 18-year-old Philip Meadows to the station for an interview.

Just weeks before the murder, Philip was allegedly caught shirtless in a bedroom with Tommy's wife, Jennifer.

I mentioned to him that don't you think it's odd that there was a domestic over here at the house and then this many days later that the husband's dead.

He brushed it off as an incident between Jennifer and Tommy.

He denied any romantic involvement with Jennifer.

Phillips says that the night of Tommy's murder, he was out with his friends, Cameron Chesney and Kenny Lewis.

He said, they'd just been out and gone to a few parties.

Phillips' initial alibi was, I didn't have anything to do with this.

I wasn't around.

Wasn't me.

After releasing Phillip, detectives reach out to Kenny and Cameron.

They said they had went to different parties going on all over town.

I think the officers felt the pressure because for the first few weeks, none of their leads were panning out.

It was getting very tense in this small town.

And we were doing everything we could with the detectives to figure this out.

We would ask them about, you know, what do you think?

What's your theory?

There had to be some justice for Tommy.

As the weeks go by, friends of Philip and Jennifer start to reach out to police with whispers of scandal.

There were rumors that flew around that circle that Jennifer and Philip had more than a casual relationship.

People telling us that there was something odd going on, that Philip's always around her.

She's always laughing and carrying on with him.

Detectives reach out to Philip, Cameron, and Kenny for another interview, but all three decline to speak to the police.

And Jennifer follows suit.

They would go see her to talk to her numerous times, and she would seem to be put off.

It sets off a little bit of a red flag going, okay, why didn't she say more?

Just when investigators begin to lose hope, they receive a shocking break in the case.

On February 16th, 2000, Cameron Chesney walks into the police station, escorted by his father.

Cameron saw Philip with Jennifer at the basketball game, and he said, that just ain't right.

And it disturbed him.

And his father was intuitive enough to know that

something was bothering Cameron.

His father suggested: hey,

you need to talk to the police about what you know or whatever it is you're feeling.

Cameron's demeanor was, he was quiet.

He kept his head down a lot.

You could tell something was upsetting him.

I'm putting a lot of pressure on him.

I'm asking him who shot Tommy.

Who shot Tommy?

And finally, he said, he whispered, Philip shot him.

Cameron admits he and Kenny misled detectives about the timeline on the night of Tommy's death.

Around 11 p.m.

on November 30th, the three young men were not at a friend's house like they'd initially claimed.

Phillip with two friends were out driving around,

asked them to drive

to the neighborhood where they let Philip out of the car.

Cameron Cameron says Philip didn't explain what he was up to, but Cameron and Kenny soon got a clue.

They heard the shots go off.

Then here comes Philip running down the street and jumps into the car.

Cameron says Philip didn't discuss what had happened, but when Cameron heard about Tommy's death the next day, he knew Phillip was responsible.

I think that's when it soaked into them.

This was real.

Cameron walks into the police department and it kind of changes the investigation from suspicion to now we have something.

Cameron agrees to wear a wire to get a confession out of Philip.

On February 17th, 2000, the two young men meet up outside of Phillip's work.

The basic deal that Cameron was going to tell him was that this is bothering him and he wanted to go to the police and he was going to tell them what he knew.

And Philip was saying, you can't do that because if anybody talks, then it's over.

We're all going to be in trouble.

As police listen in, Philip reminds Cameron that he and Kenny knew about the murder beforehand.

Something Cameron had conveniently left out of his confession.

It became pretty apparent that Cameron was a whole lot more involved than he had led his father to believe.

Cameron isn't the only person Phillip implicates.

Phillip said, Jennifer knows about it.

Jennifer is part of the conspiracy.

Jennifer had it done.

I just know that listening to the whole conversation, myself and the other detective, we were going, okay, this is the break we were looking for.

That was the turning moment in the game to us.

We knew we were ready to file within hours.

Hours later, detectives arrest Philip for first-degree murder and conspiracy.

Police also go to Jennifer's salon with a warrant for the same charges.

They waited for her to come out the back door of the salon, and they arrested her then.

She was very quiet.

She was cooperative, almost cool.

It was almost an impression I got that she thought we didn't have anything on her.

She's brought to the booking room.

Who's your attorney, Jennifer?

I don't have one.

You don't have an attorney, but I understand you don't want to talk to me now.

Is that what you told me?

I respect that.

I'm attorney.

And Detective Little walks in the hallway with Philip Meadows in handcuffs.

And I looked over at Jennifer and she's doubled over.

She looks physically ill.

I was concerned that she's going to throw up.

My opinion is she didn't know that we had the information of Phillips' involvement.

News quickly spreads that the daughter of one of the town's prominent families has been arrested for the murder of her husband.

Everybody's like, oh, no, no, absolutely not.

That's just not a possibility.

We don't want to believe that, anyways.

That's just horrible to think that.

Without physical evidence, prosecutors face an uphill battle to convict Jennifer.

In an attempt to remedy this hole in their case, prosecutors hope to convince Philip to crack.

You're the one that's going down for that.

We offered Philip a deal.

We'd take the death penalty off the table if you testify against her.

He was so resistant to that because he loved her.

And I can remember, it's almost as if I'm talking to my own son.

I'm saying, she doesn't love you, Philip.

She's using you like a dog.

Philip was facing the death penalty, and he was either going to talk or not.

It was up to him.

Coming up, Philip decides between his lover and his future.

He wasn't getting out of this.

Philip felt like if he wanted to maintain the relationship with Jennifer, he needed to do what she wanted.

In the spring of 2000, four months after the murder of Tommy Payoneers, prosecutors have offered 18-year-old Philip Meadows a plea deal in exchange for testifying against his girlfriend, 24-year-old Jennifer Payoneers.

On March 21st, 2000, Philip reaches out to prosecutors with a decision.

When he, I think, came to his senses and realized

she really didn't love him or he he wasn't getting out of this.

When they started interviewing him, of course, then he spills his guts.

Philip confirms what investigators and close friends have suspected for months.

He and Jennifer had been engaging in an affair since meeting at a party in the summer of 1999.

Philip had just graduated from high school, to all of a sudden having sex multiple times

a day or a week or how often with a married woman, it blew his mind.

She She shares with him that the only thing keeping us apart is Tommy.

And if Tommy wasn't in the picture, we could be together.

According to Philip, Jennifer told him she would never be able to divorce Tommy with her family's blessing.

Divorce was not an option in her mind because Tommy was so well liked by her parents and grandparents.

She felt trapped and she needed to get rid of him.

Philip felt like if he wanted wanted to maintain the relationship with Jennifer, he needed to do what she wanted.

Phillip says Jennifer made the first attempt by trying to poison her husband's drinks.

He said she was putting Visine in his Gatorade and it didn't work.

Made him sick, but it didn't work.

Boom, we were like, oh, all that time he was sick.

These are the symptoms.

of doing that kind of stuff.

Then

reality started to set in.

Then we're thinking, holy cow,

this has been going on for a while.

When poisoning didn't work, Phillip says Jennifer encouraged him to shoot Tommy and make it look like a robbery.

So he enlisted his friends, Cameron and Kenny, to help.

Phillip knocked on the door.

When Tommy opened the door, He shot him several times.

He went ahead and entered the house,

then got the purse.

Tommy was still alive and apparently shot him more at that point

and then fled back to the car.

After Phillips' confession, detectives also resolved the mystery of the shoe prints found at the crime scene.

I contacted Nike Company.

They put me in touch with their shoe expert.

And I described the shoe print to him.

I sent him a photograph of it.

and he said, that sounds like it's an air penny.

They sent me the exact shoe and that shoe matched perfect the shape and the size of that pattern on the ground.

When Phillip confessed and he was sitting in the room, I walked in at some point and I had that shoe and he goes, hey, you found my shoes.

He wanted to know if he could have them.

I said, no, you can't have them.

That confirmed to me that that was the exact shoe he was wearing over he did the shooting.

Though Phillip's fate is squared away with a plea deal, prosecutors will need additional evidence to convict Jennifer.

I felt like when it was all said and done that she was actually more culpable from an evil standpoint than Philip was.

Phillip was under the influence of sex and her lies and her manipulation, and she was using him like a cheap trick.

to get her desired results.

I wanted the mastermind behind bars, but she never made any type of confession.

Since Jennifer refuses to talk, on March 21st, 2000, police execute a search warrant at her home and find a guilt-ridden poem on her desk.

Throughout the poem, it appears she's addressing it to Tommy and how she misses him.

And the last sentence says that it was her fault.

From law enforcement's perspective, when we read it, it even furthered our theory of the case and what she'd done.

In January 2001, Jennifer's trial begins, with the prosecution's case leaning heavily on the testimony of Philip Meadows.

The defense attorney's strategy was to, of course, put Philip on trial and downplay her involvement.

He's just making all this up, you know, to get a deal with the state, that Philip was infatuated with Jennifer and killed Tommy to get her for himself

on January 30th 2001 Jennifer breaks her silence on the witness stand claiming Philip had mentioned killing Tommy earlier that fall when the pair were just friends Jennifer thought that was a joke that wasn't gonna happen I'm not the guilty party here.

I'm being persecuted.

On the stand, Jennifer insists she never tried to poison Tommy and that her relationship with Philip only started after Tommy's death.

Jennifer said it was all on Philip.

It was all his idea.

He made up all these stories and that Jennifer was a devoted, loving wife.

On March 22, 2001, the jury finds Jennifer guilty of conspiracy, but not murder.

Though sentenced to 10 years in prison, she is released in 2005 after spending just four years behind bars.

It is a sad story because the one that should be held the most accountable was able to resume a quasi-normal life way before her time.

Very angry, angry at the fact that

You know, all this could happen, I felt it was a grave injustice.

Now Tommy's friends are coping with his loss.

The only thing that lets me sleep at night is that there was never a minute that Tommy didn't want to try and fix this with Jennifer.

So I could have told him,

she's bad for you, get out of it.

It would not have made any difference.

Tommy needs a voice.

He's a person who loved family, wanted a family.

We were his family.

And,

you know, 20, 25 years later, we're still feeling the pain.

Kenny Lewis and Cameron Chesney both received 10-year sentences.

Cameron was released in 2005 and Kenny was released in 2008.

Philip Meadows was paroled in May 2018 after serving 17 years.

Jennifer Payoneers was never charged with any alleged poisoning attempt on Tommy.

After her release, Jennifer returned to Stillwater, where she runs a salon.

For more information on Snapped, go to oxygen.com.

You open the fridge.

There's nothing there.

So what's it gonna be?

Greasy pizza?

Sad drive-through burgers?

Dish by Blue Apron is for nights like that.

These are the pre-made meals of your dreams.

At least 20 grams of protein, no artificial flavors or colors, no chopping, no cleanup, no guilt.

Keep the flavor.

Ditch the subscription.

Get 20% off your first two orders with code APRAN20.

Terms and conditions apply.

Visit blueapron.com/slash terms for more.