Episode 296

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Sword and scale contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences.

Listener discretion is advised.

I wanted a release from all the hard things I had to do and how pointlessly hard I made my life.

Do you feel a release?

No.

I feel like...

I made the one mistake they can't forgive me for.

Welcome to the premiere source of murder in your household.

Sword and scale.

This is season 12, episode 290-something of, you know, the thing.

What shapes a person?

In America, the answer is probably DoorDash and Chick-fil-A, judging by our healthcare costs.

But I'm talking psychologically here.

We've often talked about nature versus nurture.

Is a person's brain predispositioned since birth due to inherited traits, or is it slowly formed by experiences over time?

We've come to learn that, like so many other things in life, the answer is not black and white.

It's nuanced.

Psychological disorders aside, and by the way, we all have them, the fact of the matter is that you are in the driver's seat.

And until you relinquish control and let the crazy take over,

which, by the way, is a choice, you are responsible for your actions.

Despite what's happened to you in the past and despite what society tells you these days, we are the only ones behind the wheel of our own destiny.

Those...

are just the facts.

The sooner we figure out that no one is coming to save us, the better.

And while some strive to do their best to steer through life responsibly, others can be careless, holding little to no value for human existence,

including their own.

It's Thursday, March 20th, 2017, at the Hillsboro County Sheriff's Office in Tampa, Florida.

The fluorescent light flickers in the stark interrogation room, casting shadows off three empty chairs awkwardly positioned inside the 8x10 space.

At 10:24 p.m.,

18-year-old Joshua Carmona is seen on surveillance, casually entering the room.

Joshua is still in his street clothes and isn't handcuffed.

A surprising detail considering the purpose of his visit with investigators.

Just so you know, man, this room is audio and video recording.

Just so you know, I'm going to turn this on as a backup.

And the reason why we do that is so I can't put any words in your mouth, okay?

Joshua looks up to notice the CCTV camera pointed directly at him, but is unbothered, well aware that everything he says can and will be used against him.

By now, the two detectives have scooted their chairs just inches from his.

They're positioned in a perfect triangle, and for the first time ever, Joshua is given the undivided attention he's always wanted.

While sitting at an uncomfortably close distance, Authorities read him his Miranda rights.

Then they move to establish the suspect's level of competency before diving into the interview.

What was the highest level education you completed?

High school.

High school?

Okay.

What high school do you have in?

Jefferson.

Jefferson?

Okay.

How were your grades?

I had a 3.5.

3.5s?

That was pretty good.

I heard you went to Fordham University.

Yes, sir.

That's a pretty good school.

That was a great school.

Yeah.

Did you like it up there in New York?

I had fun.

Yeah.

I wouldn't say I liked it.

No?

I'm originally from New York and anything, so I'm

kind of familiar with the area.

New York's great.

I just did a lot of bad things.

The female detective on Joshua's left is holding a red folder.

In it are crime scene photos, witness statements, and evidence slogs.

Her partner then leans in as he continues to gauge where Joshua's head is at this very moment.

Do you take any medications or anything?

No, sir.

No?

Okay.

Do you take any drugs?

Yes.

What kind of drugs are you doing?

Weed.

Weed.

That's not so bad.

I mean, it.

I mean, it.

It was pretty bad.

It was pretty bad?

Like the paranoia.

Paranoia?

You get paranoid from the week?

Spice.

But you do spice?

I think so.

You think so?

I think that's why I was so much more paranoid.

Okay.

When was the last time you did that?

Today.

Today?

What time?

Four or five.

Four or five?

Okay.

How are you feeling right now?

I'm still coming down.

Still coming down?

Do you know where you are right now?

I'm up.

Yeah, I know where I am.

Where are you?

I'm in

the text's office.

You're in your sheriff?

You're in the sheriff's office?

Okay.

Investigators are in a tricky spot after Joshua tells them he's currently high on spice,

a synthetic compound known to cause delusions and even mania.

Still, he agrees to continue with the interview.

With his shoulders stiff and eyes on the floor, Joshua swallows a mouthful of spit and prepares to reveal details of a crime so vile that even the two seasoned detectives in front of him will shudder.

Taria Lua DiAngelo, more affectionately known as Tara, was born in Tampa, Florida on March 20th, 1978.

Her best friend Renee Roberts remembers the time they met almost like it was yesterday.

I met her in high school and we were in JROTC together.

I think I was 15 and she was 14.

I was older, so I graduated first and then she graduated like the following year.

And

that's how I met her, and we became friends that way.

After high school, the two friends lost touch, but reconnected a few years later when Tara became pregnant with her firstborn, Joshua.

Tara asked Renee if she would be the boy's godmother, and she couldn't have been more thrilled.

She had asked me to be his godmother before she even gave birth to him.

And then

once, you know, she got word that she was going to have him, him, you know, I went to the hospital.

You know, I went up there and I was in the delivery room whenever he was born.

That was my godson, you know, and I loved him to death.

I got pictures of me with her and Joshua when he was like two years old, you know, so I have a lot of pictures.

Unfortunately, Tara struggled as a young mother.

She was only 20 years old at the time.

To make matters worse, Joshua's father wasn't in the picture from the start.

Luckily, Tara had some good people in her life, her friend Renee being one of them.

He was a good baby.

He was a good baby, you know, he didn't cry much.

I watched him during the day for her to work, you know, because at the time I wasn't working because my ex-cousin was taking good care of me.

I didn't have to work.

So, you know, I just took care of Joshua.

I treated him as if he was my own child, you know.

Despite the help from friends and family, Tara ultimately made the difficult decision to award custody of Joshua to his uncle when he was five years old.

Shortly after he entered elementary school, Joshua's uncle had troubles of his own and relinquished his responsibilities to the boy's grandmother, with whom he became very close.

While Tara's exact issues are unknown, she ended up moving out west to get her life together.

According to Joshua, aside from the occasional visit to his grandmother's during the holidays, he rarely saw his mother growing up.

All I think about now is when I was a kid, and she would visit for like a day or two,

and then she would leave.

And I just remember me crying myself to sleep, because I was really sad.

Despite his biological parents not being around, Joshua flip-flops during his interview, admitting that things actually weren't that bad for him as a kid.

I had a great childhood.

I was a great kid.

I was trying to make an excuse and act like I was broken.

Okay.

I screwed something up.

I made the wrong choice.

Okay.

But not long before he started dabbling in illicit drugs, Joshua felt his grandmother was the only adult figure in his life that he could count on.

Unfortunately, all that changed in 2009 when Joshua claimed things started to fall apart.

When he was in sixth grade, his mother returned to the East Coast, which was around the same time that Joshua's grandmother passed away.

After that, he had no choice but to move back in with his mother, who had already established her own life with her new boyfriend, whom she eventually married.

Trying to make up for lost time, Tara worked long hours to afford toys and video games for Joshua.

She took him on road trips to Cooperstown to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame and bought tickets for them to see his favorite team.

the Yankees, whenever they played the Rays at Tropicana Field.

Despite these gestures, friends and relatives noticed Joshua struggling with his new family dynamic, now living with his once estranged mother and the new man in her life.

I used to say, Joshua, you know I'm your godmother.

And he would just ignore me and go in the other room, you know.

Then I'm like, well, he ignore me.

But, you know, when I ask her, she's like, you know, he don't really like talking to people.

He really didn't like talking to people.

So

he would just never say nothing back to me.

He was not a people person.

With each passing day, Joshua started to feel more like an outsider.

Tensions only grew when his stepsister was born a few years later, as all the attention was now directed towards her.

After that, Joshua rarely spoke with his parents unless he wanted something.

I know as he got older, you know, she'd call me because she was upset, you know, with him, you know, like he...

did something, you know, maybe he, you know, because he would always ask her for money and stuff.

And, you know, there just comes a point, you know, where you can't give your last dollar every time, you know.

And

so she would do everything she could for him,

you know, but it's almost like if she couldn't do something or she couldn't buy him the best of this or the best of that, then, you know, he

would get, he would get kind of angry, you know.

When he was a teenager, Joshua did start to show some signs of progress.

He attended Jefferson High School in Tampa, excelled academically, and became a talented athlete playing for his varsity baseball team.

His mother, Tara, was often seen in the stands cheering him on.

For the first time, it seemed like Joshua had found purpose in life.

Baseball provided him with a sense of confidence and self-worth.

Now with a goal to work toward, his mother also noticed improvements in his attitude.

He spoke regularly about his dreams of playing professional baseball one day.

As a result of a respectable GPA and accomplishments on the field, Joshua even earned himself a most likely to succeed superlative in his high school yearbook.

Things were looking up.

He was just kind of to himself.

He was, everyone knew he was really, really smart.

He was very outgoing senior year.

He went to a lot of parties.

During his senior year, he even took the stage at the school's talent show to express appreciation for his mother, of all people.

It was a really moving speech.

It was like that, that factor.

Like, it was what got everyone crying, all the girls.

Like, it was a really nice speech because his mom was in the crowd.

She got up.

While things seemed to be going well for him, as he approached graduation, Joshua apparently didn't mean a word he said during that speech.

Frustrations about his home life had silently gotten worse as he internalized an overwhelming sense of rejection.

And his senior prom, Joshua's date and class valedictorian, showed up to the dance alone.

According to friends, Joshua was back at his hotel room, passed out drunk after pre-gaming a little too hard.

He showed up to the dance hammered, long after it ended.

After high school, he was back to feeling bad for himself.

He slowly started to withdraw from his family again, but also the majority of his friends.

Those who knew him described Joshua as distant during this time,

someone who carried a strong sense of bitterness everywhere he went.

As a result, the emotionally inept teenager started smoking marijuana regularly, using weed as his main escape.

Sound familiar?

We didn't talk at all,

and when I turned to drugs, we

just

started talking about nothing, never seeing each other.

Another positive shift came a short time later when Joshua was accepted to Fordham University, a promising school in New York City's most bustling borough of Manhattan.

To his benefit, this was a great accomplishment.

After all, Fordham University isn't just some run-of-the-mill community college.

It's a private institution that came with a pretty hefty tuition cost, around $60,000 a year.

Not to mention, the Fordham University Rams had a pretty decent baseball team as part of the NCAA's Division I program.

From his mother's perspective, college was sure to be an exciting turning point in Joshua's life.

A change for the better.

But boy, was she wrong.

This is sort and scale, after all.

You didn't forget that, right?

You see, almost as soon as he enthusiastically tossed his bat and glove on the bunk of his freshman dorms, Joshua's weed smoking started soaring to great heights.

No pun intended, to put it bluntly.

Also no pun intended.

Joshua just loved getting high.

I mean, who doesn't?

Getting high is awesome.

It rocks.

But if you're a kid and you start doing it every day, well,

that's going to be bad.

You see, Joshua loved getting high more than he loved hitting home runs.

It wasn't long after entering college that Joshua expanded his horizons and his deteriorating mind by experimenting with substances much stronger than good old-fashioned Mary Jane.

I mean,

they call it a gateway drug for a reason.

Rather than focusing on his grades and dreams of one day making it to the big leagues, he spent most of his time partying: booze, MDMA, cocaine, spice, you name it.

If it was available, then Joshua was all in.

By his own admission, the drug spice, in particular, made him extremely paranoid, which was just one of the many factors that contributed to his poor attendance record from there on out.

To make a long story short, Joshua blew it.

He flunked out of school, he packed up his bat and glove, and was forced to hop on a plane back to the one place he hated the most, his mother's house down in Tampa.

Unfortunately for his mom and stepdad, it wasn't long after he returned that Joshua started acting up again.

As a result, his mother kicked him out for a period, after tiring of his constant clouds of weed smoke filling up her home.

For several weeks, Joshua couch hopped between the apartments of friends, the few he had left, that is.

It was during this time that Joshua managed to make his way back north to Pennsylvania.

According to court documents, that's when he allegedly assaulted a woman before stealing her car and driving to a remote overpass.

It didn't take long for police to track down the stolen vehicle.

When they arrived on scene, officers found a despondent Joshua behind the wheel.

When police asked what he was doing dangerously parked on the side of a bridge, he told them he planned to take his own life that day, by jumping to the freeway below.

Fortunately for Joshua and perhaps no one else, the cops stopped him just in time.

I tried to end my life because I still couldn't get over that happened to me as a kid.

And I'm still blaming and hating the world.

Due to concerns for his mental health, Joshua was never charged for the assault or theft.

Instead, authorities notified his mother.

at which time she welcomed him back into her home and arranged for him to meet with a therapist.

I was talking to a therapist,

but I was kind of holding back from him too.

I came back from Pennsylvania in December and they made me start talking to him.

And I knew that whole time that

I didn't want to go back and face what I did.

I just wanted to quit and give up, but I didn't tell him that.

The therapist?

Yeah.

I was holding it in.

Although Joshua couldn't see it, his mother did the best she could to navigate the situation, all while trying to support the family from her job as a pharmacy tech at a Walmart in Tampa.

With her job, too, you know, her job when they needed her to go work at another

store, she went to work at another store, you know.

Over time,

no questions, you know, she would always work it.

She would never let anybody down, you know.

If she knew you needed something, she was there.

Despite her hard work, Joshua couldn't get past his feelings of resentment towards his mother.

And the self-loathing teen only harbored more and more negativity as time went on.

The college dropout and ex-athlete started blaming everyone but himself for his missteps in life, pouting alone in his childhood bedroom, feeling sorry for himself.

You know, like a loser.

Joshua fell back into his old bad habits, because they were easy.

easier than real life.

He attempted to find and resolve these problems in his life through resin hits and swigs of hard alcohol.

Meanwhile, Joshua's family felt just as hopeless.

He refused to open up to anyone, including his therapist, and his loved ones were at a loss.

Then in February of 2017, Joshua hit rock bottom.

when he was pulled over for drunk driving in Georgia.

He was ultimately arrested and charged with a DUI,

which can be a real wake-up call, believe you me.

In his mind, this was the last straw.

For the next several weeks, he struggled to maintain the appearance of a man holding it together.

He started to let the mask slip a bit.

In reality, he was quietly unraveling.

And his hatred towards the world would soon manifest into several downward swings of pure violence.

The thing that that would come out of this was just

a release

from

what I did to my life.

Besides all the problems, like the legal issues,

I made myself bully shit for no reason.

And so I wanted a release from all the hard things I had to do

and how pointlessly hard I made my life.

Did you feel a release?

No.

I feel like

I tried to do

most good attention from my family.

I threw everything away and it doesn't make a damn bit of sense.

I tried to end something

that had nothing to do with me.

I made the one mistake they can't forgive me for.

At just 18 years old, Joshua Carmona was already at odds with the universe.

A promising student, with a passion for baseball, he once had a potentially bright future.

But beneath the surface of his accomplishments, he was discontent with life.

He was convinced it had dealt him a lousy hand and he just couldn't let it go.

On the afternoon of March 20th, 2017, following a disturbing 911 call, Hillsborough County deputies arrived at a townhouse on Hawthorne Place Drive in Riverview, Florida.

Upon entering the residence, authorities grimaced at a scene so gruesome that some excused themselves to go vomit outside.

It's hard to get a cop to vomit, but not impossible.

While crime scene techs worked to secure the home and gather evidence, a spokesperson for the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Department held a press conference at the scene.

Unfortunately, I did find a female inside the residence who's deceased.

We're currently in the process of making next to kin notification.

Once we complete that, we will release the victim's identity.

We're also in the process of conducting a search warrant and getting it signed by a judge for the residents here.

We're currently interviewing neighbors, family members to try to identify a cause for this.

for this crime at this point.

It's still very early and we're conducting a number of investigations at this time.

We don't feel that the neighbors in this area are in any danger and that was not random, but again, we're still working through the early phases of the investigation.

Right now we're going to limit it to upper body trauma so we're going to have to wait for the ME to get inside and make an exact turbocharg.

As neighbors flooded the sidewalks of this once unassuming street they started to come up with theories of their own.

One resident who lived across the street spoke with reporters about her encounter with the victim's family member moments after she made the gut-wrenching discovery.

He was very nervous and he kind of collapsed on the ground.

The only information the public had been made aware of was that a woman was dead and that her killer was still at large.

The victim's vehicle was missing from the home and whoever committed the crime was believed to have fled in a white 2016 Nissan Centra.

I think that's crazy.

I never really expected to hear something like that in this neighborhood.

After interviewing various witnesses, Several reported hearing shouting earlier that morning, but for whatever reason, no one called police.

According to one witness, they'd seen a young male exiting the home a short time later, but they couldn't provide a physical description.

Hours after night fell over Tampa, Florida, deputies eventually located the victim's Nissan Centra traveling along Interstate 275 at around 9.30 p.m.

When they pulled the car over, They found 18-year-old Joshua Carmona behind the wheel.

He was calm, cooperative, and promptly taken into custody.

As the patrol car made its way to the station, Joshua leaned forward while handcuffed in the back seat.

In an emotionless tone, he told officers that if they treated him nicely, he'd tell them everything they needed to know.

You know, this is extremely tragic.

A mother was killed on her birthday.

And now we have a three-year-old that's going to be motherless.

While he was in the car, he spontaneously did state that he killed his mother.

I was getting ready for work that night.

It was like around 10.05, the 10 o'clock news came on.

But my phone rang, and it was one of our mutual friends.

And she said, Renee, have you talked to Tara today?

I said, Yes, I talked to her this morning.

I said, I kept waiting for her to call me back because, you know, she said she would call me when she was done and we could meet up.

But since she never called me, I've just stayed home.

Why?

And she said,

Somebody with her name in Riverview was killed today.

I was like, What?

I said, no way.

There's not another, you know, Tahiri D'Angelo, I'm sure, you know,

it can't be her.

It can't be her.

So I called her sister and she answered the phone, yes, Renee, it's true.

Tara's gone.

And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what?

What did you say?

She's like, Renee, she's gone.

I'm like, no, she's not.

Let me talk to her.

You know, and she got, Renee, she's gone.

I'm like, there's no way Tara's gone.

Like, I just talked to her this morning.

There's no, no, there's absolutely no no way that she's gone.

After 18-year-old Joshua Carmona was escorted into a Hillsborough County interrogation room, he told investigators that on the morning of March 20th, 2017, he woke up and chose violence.

Today I woke up and

I decided

I've been thinking about this like for a while.

When you say thinking about this, what do you mean by that?

Oh, that's a good question.

I've been thinking about harming my parents.

Joshua's stepdad had already left the room to drop his three-year-old daughter off at a daycare.

As for his mother, she had plans of her own.

It was her 39th birthday.

Just before 10 a.m., Joshua's mother told him she'd be back soon after a hair and nail appointment she'd scheduled as a gift to herself.

Shortly after she left the home, Tara received a call from her best friend, Renee.

I called her that morning, like around 10-something in the morning.

I called to tell her happy birthday and see what she was doing for the day, because I wanted to spend some time with her for her birthday, because we always did that together on our birthdays.

I asked her what she was doing, and she told me she was going to the mall, and you know, she worked hard, so she deserved to go get her nails done and stuff.

Back at the townhouse, Joshua stewed in anger.

He paced around while solidifying the next step of his evil plan.

At At one point, he ventured into the kitchen, grabbed all the small knives from the butcher block, and started hurling them at the wall, snapping several of the blades in the process.

The only knife that remained was the largest, a butcher knife, which Joshua brought with him back to the living room and set aside for later.

During that time, he sent a text to his mother asking her to return home with

syrup.

That's right.

Syrup.

It's unclear why.

I mean, it's a really weird request, right?

It's not like bread or milk or butter or something like it.

It's syrup.

Regardless, the mere suggestion of enjoying delicious, fluffy, tasty pancakes in conjunction with what Joshua planned to do next is quite disturbing, to say the least.

Certainly not something that you would consider rooty, tooty, fresh and fruity.

While his mother sat down in the salon chair across town, she responded to her son's text agreeing to pick up the syrup.

That said, the text message directly above it suggests what Joshua's home life was really like.

The exchange, later recovered by investigators from his mother's phone, occurred three days before Joshua's arrest and reads as follows.

Our pharmacist and district manager just said they can cover me while I go with you to court next month.

I'll work on booking our flights this weekend.

Joshua responded with the word, okay,

to his mother's text, which was about helping him fight his DUI case in the coming weeks.

I know that there's been some recent history.

You've gotten in some trouble up north, that kind of thing.

The thing, the thing in Georgia, right?

Has she been supportive through this?

Has she

okay?

And she's tried to help you kind of like overcome it and

well,

they gave me everything I needed.

They gave me a home and helped me through it.

Okay, when you say they gave you everything you needed, what do you mean by that?

You said that.

So she's really been trying to help you.

She's done everything.

Okay.

Despite recognizing the unconditional love his family had for him, Joshua, being the piece of shit autistic Zoomer that he is, told investigators he had two options that morning: face the legal consequences of his DUI or kill his parents.

Guess which one he chose?

What was going to happen was I had to go do my monthly parole for Georgia and go

get an appointment with my doctor this week.

And so I was deciding between quitting and doing this or doing everything I have to do

and getting ready to like...

go through probation, go to the hearing in April and talk to my therapist.

Okay.

So you feel like you're deciding between

I tried to make it a choice between those two.

So those you felt like are kind of your two choices?

Like I made it in my mind I was like today we're going to decide because I was pinning them against each other.

Right.

Makes sense, doesn't it?

Regardless of how Joshua came to this rationalization, his mind was made up.

Not long after his mother left the house, he remembered his baseball bat.

The same bat he'd dreamt of hitting home runs at college with, but became a complete failure before he had a chance.

Enraged at the thought of what his life could have been, Joshua grabbed the aluminum bat and took one hard swing at the staircase banister, snapping the wooden railing in the process.

He then did the same thing to one of the kitchen chairs.

I broke a chair.

I was hitting the staircase with the bat and just using the bat.

I was talking about the herbaris.

Okay, and you're kind of demonstrating like this.

Are you right-handed?

Okay, so you were holding the bat this way, the way you're showing up?

Okay.

After throwing a hissy fit, that's what it was, a hissy fit, Joshua ruminated in his thoughts for the next two hours.

lost in his loserhood.

I wonder what subreddits he browsed while he was doing that.

At one point during his police interview, detectives asked Joshua if he was under the influence of drugs or alcohol that morning.

After he said he wasn't, authorities asked if he'd ever suffered from auditory hallucinations.

Here's what he had to say about that.

I want to ask you kind of a weird question.

Do you ever hear voices that you feel like you're hearing that other people around you don't hear?

Yes.

You do.

Have you ever talked to your therapist or anybody about that?

He

knows it.

He thinks it's from

the weed.

Like he said,

when I started doing it, that's when I would be seeing.

What is it?

I don't know.

I'd be seeing a hearing stuff other people don't.

When you do, when you smoke weed.

Okay, is it only when you smoke weed, though, and you're high?

I wouldn't.

Even when I'm high.

Like,

I've seen...

things in public

that

I knew I shouldn't believe, but

that makes me think there's a lot of things I've seen that I wasn't sure about.

What do you mean by that?

Like sometimes

I'm hallucinating

and I hear the radio say something or people in public say something

that they shouldn't be able to know.

And so I know when I'm on the drug I hallucinate.

but I don't know about what.

So how do you know that you're hallucinating?

Because typically someone that is doesn't even realize they're hallucinating right so how are you aware of the fact that you're hallucinating because there was like a

a small few that i confirmed like

so have you ever like like when this is happening have you ever said hey did you hear that to somebody like all the time yeah and i've seen like water on my pants i see it and i touch it and it's dry that's what i would notice when i was drinking sometimes

okay so when you're drinking you see that when you're smoking marijuana how about when you're smoking spice?

I don't.

Do you know the difference between marijuana and spice?

I don't.

No?

That's why I was opening it up.

Okay, so you're not sure if it's marijuana or spice that you're smoking?

Do you usually try to smell it, test it, something like that, to see?

Because marijuana has a distinct odor to it, and spice has a distinct odor to it.

I just don't know.

You don't know?

Okay.

And if you don't know, that's it.

Either way, what I have is in my car.

The man-made chemical known as K2 is designed to mimic the effects of THC,

but is

much stronger.

Regardless, there's a reason this stuff has since been outlawed in virtually all 50 states.

As for Joshua, it may have worked as a truth serum of sorts during his interrogation.

Luckily for investigators, he was kind of an open book.

When she came home, I snugged up on her and I used a bat.

What did you do with the bat?

I

didn't mean what she saw.

When his mother finally returned home around noon, Joshua greeted her in the doorway and directed her attention to the staircase banister he destroyed with the baseball bat.

She came in.

I just told her to look over there.

And I just came behind her.

And she came around the counter to look at it because I told her.

With her back turned to him, Joshua picks up the bat, holds it over his head, and swings it.

Just hit her.

We just hit her in the head.

She fell down.

Following the initial blow to the back of his mother's head, she stumbled into the kitchen table.

She fell on the table.

Okay, and do you remember that happening and breaking the table or something?

She just went against it, and the table got bent because of that.

Okay, are we in the living room or the kitchen or something else?

This is the kitchen.

It opens up into the living room.

The dining area?

The living room.

And so the table you're talking about is in which room?

The dining area.

Okay.

While Tara was still conscious, she threw her hands up in self-defense, lying helplessly on her back on the kitchen floor.

She begged her son son to stop.

But Joshua showed no remorse,

no emotion, and continued to bludgeon his mother's skull.

Why are kids like this nowadays?

Violent, entitled automatons.

And when she's on the ground, what are you doing?

How are you doing?

Just opens up.

Over your head?

Did you how many times do you think you hit her while she was on the ground?

Probably five or six.

Five or six?

At least.

At least.

Could it be more than ten?

No.

So less than ten?

Between five and ten?

No.

Okay.

But she wasn't out.

And so I just kept hitting her until

she

until she stopped.

Okay.

I hit her so she couldn't breathe.

Because her face swelled up.

And so it was just muffled and screaming.

And I was just trying to hit her until that stopped.

As a result of severe blunt force trauma, his mother murmured and groaned on the floor.

But that didn't stop Joshua.

From there, he continued with the assault, eerily offering his mother the following comforting words in the process.

Did you say anything during it?

What did you say?

I told her to be okay.

Okay.

She was trying to push me up,

and I just told her, I said, just stop.

Stop fighting.

Just let go.

Was she fighting?

What do you mean, let go?

Was she holding on to you?

She was trying to grab her throat.

So she was fighting.

She couldn't breathe.

And she was trying to get away from me.

Was she on the ground at this point?

And I told her, I said, just let go.

She wouldn't.

And so I got up and I just smashed.

I hit her again.

in that face.

Okay.

She was on the ground.

I see these little, like, almost like little neck marks.

What are these from?

That's just blood plates.

Okay.

Once she finally stopped moving, Joshua walked the short distance to his mother's bedroom and retrieved a bed sheet and comforter before returning to the kitchen.

I rolled her onto sheets.

and just dragged her.

And then I moved the body to the bathroom.

According to Joshua, he wasn't sure if his mother was still alive.

But to be sure, he produced the large knife he'd set aside earlier that day.

So, what kind of knife was it?

It was just

from the

rack of knives.

You have like a lock or something on the counter?

Which one was it?

It was in the butcher one.

Okay.

With the butcher knife in hand, Joshua re-entered the bathroom and started defiling his mother's body even further.

Help me understand that.

You said to let out blood so she wouldn't wake up.

Is that right?

Because she was just knocked out.

Okay, from the back, she was just knocked out.

So you don't think she was dead at that point?

I wasn't sure.

Okay.

Are you trying to put out our misery?

Yeah.

So where did you use the knife to let the blood out?

On the the back of her neck okay can you kind of show me where on on her neck right in the back okay

did you come around to the front

how did you do it

we're not there right now so i i can't try to remember right i'm sorry it's just foggy yeah sorry take your time take your time man i'll remember it later

though his memory is

Foggy, Joshua pressed his knees into his mother's spine before slitting slitting the back of her throat.

Pools of blood quickly formed beneath the toilet and a nearby trash can.

But what he fails to mention during this interview is how he grabbed his mother's hair, lifted her face off the bathroom tile, and proceeded to slit her throat again.

This time dragging the blade so deep across the front of her neck that the two wounds nearly intersected, decapitating her.

Putting her out of her misery is a gross mischaracterization of what happened here, as Tara DiAngelo's head was nearly completely severed.

Once the victim's son was finally satisfied, Joshua proceeded to clean up the mess he made, the only way he knew how.

Lazily.

And then I turned on the pan and just closed it.

And then I started pouring baking soda onto the rug and trying to clean all the blood.

Is this something that you had

looked into before to try to figure out how to get the blood cleaned up?

Or what made you think to grab baking soda?

It was under the counter.

Okay.

I think they use it for spills on a carpet.

Okay.

And I just saw them there.

And I was going to clean it to make it look better later.

Okay.

You don't, what you're describing, there's probably going to be a lot of blood involved, right?

But I don't see really any on you.

Where are the clothes that you were wearing when this all happened today?

I took them off and I showered.

Okay, and where'd you put the clothes?

In my room.

In your bedroom?

Where is your bedroom at in the house?

Upstairs.

Okay, and so when you go up the stairs?

Upstairs to the room on the left.

The room on the left, like the first room, or is there more than one?

There's only one.

Okay.

Where'd you put them in your room?

In the closet.

After showering and changing out of his bloody clothes, the clothes no doubt that his mother had washed for him.

The 18-year-old killer brought both murder weapons over to the kitchen sink.

And then the knife.

Where did you put the knife?

In the sink.

In which sink?

The right sink.

The right sink?

In the bathroom, on the kitchen?

Or in the kitchen sink?

Oh, in the kitchen.

Did you clean the bat off as well when you were trying to clean up the house?

I started to.

Okay.

How did you try to clean it off?

I just put it in the sink.

Like, put it in the sink and rinsed it off?

Okay.

Joshua then placed the bat by the front door with plans to use it a second time.

And then, but then I just left it

because

I thought I was going to use it again.

And your stepdad.

So I just, yeah, so I just put it there.

Fortunately, the killer's stepdad was running behind schedule.

In fear that the police might show up, Joshua gathered his mother's purse, cell phone, and keys before heading out the door and jumping in her Nissan Sentra.

From there, he was en route to pick up his three-year-old half-sister from daycare.

How responsible of him.

On the way, he texted his step-grandfather from his mother's phone.

Posing as the victim, he asked if he wouldn't mind watching the three-year-old girl over the weekend.

Joshua fabricated a story when asked why, telling his grandfather that his mother and stepdad were going away for a few days.

The grandfather instantly became suspicious.

Even through text, he could tell this wasn't Tara on the other end.

Partially because his grandfather had never babysat the child before, and it was unlike Tara to make such an impromptu request.

Minutes later, Joshua arrived at the daycare and picked up his stepsister at around 1.30 p.m.

The two then drove back to the crime scene where Joshua packed his sister a bag of clothes.

Roughly 60 miles away, Renee and her two-year-old daughter were getting ready to surprise Tara for her birthday.

But just as they were about to leave, something told her not to go.

And I said, okay, you know, I said, let's go ahead and go bye-bye.

So we go to the door, and it's literally like something stopped me and said, Renee, don't go over there.

Wait for her to call you.

Because it was a ways away.

It probably would have taken me an hour at least to get there from where I lived at the time.

But I was going to just surprise her, you know, with some flowers and stuff at her house.

But I didn't.

I just waited and I never heard back from her.

Meanwhile, back in Riverview, Florida, Joshua texted his best friend and told him to meet at a nearby park.

When they arrived, Joshua's sister ran to a nearby swing set.

While she played, blissfully unaware that her brother had just killed their mother in cold blood, Joshua and his buddy proceeded to toss around baseball.

While he tried to play it off like everything was fine, Joshua's friend noticed that he seemed a little off, almost right away.

During their game of catch, Joshua took multiple breaks and nervously looked at his phone.

According to his statements to police, Joshua was monitoring the ring camera footage back at his mother's residence.

That is, until he saw his grandfather's car pull into the driveway.

And I knew he came to my house because I could see it on my phone.

The door was opened.

Okay, oh, you have a camera that's like you can pull it up on the app?

We have a security thing on that.

And I knew at that point, it was over.

Why is that?

Because there was still some on the carpet.

Okay.

It wasn't long after Joshua's grandfather entered the home and stumbled upon the grisly scene in the bathroom.

I backed the comforter.

I saw Taria lying on

the ground.

I saw a lot of blood.

At the sight of his loved one's mutilated body, the victim's father immediately notified police, walked outside, and fell to his knees on the front lawn.

Meanwhile, back at the park, Joshua frantically stuffed his phone back into his pocket and told his buddy that he had to leave, but not before asking him to watch his sister for a few days.

By now, his friend was about as confused as one could be.

He could see the panic in Joshua's face, But he didn't understand why.

When the friend asked why he needed him to watch the the three-year-old girl, Joshua came right out with it and admitted to murdering his mother just hours earlier.

So what did

I said?

I was like, I killed someone.

And I gave him.

Was that the exact word that you said, I killed somebody?

Yeah.

Okay.

Like, I was trying to.

That was really bad.

I was trying to tell a joke.

I like told the worst.

Most fucked up joke.

Now there's something you don't hear every day.

One minute you're practicing your fastball with a friend at the park and the next he tells you he just killed his mother with a baseball bat and butcher knife.

I mean, how do you even respond to that?

I'm pretty sure it's not in Emily Post's book of etiquette.

Naturally, his friend was at a loss for words, but before he even had a chance to reply, Joshua told him that he was going on the run and planned to kill himself.

Which, to be fair, may have been the most practical idea this young man has had in his whole fucking life.

Although he didn't provide much detail regarding how he was going to commit suicide, Joshua quickly said goodbye to his sister and friend before hopping back into his dead mother's car and peeling out of the parking lot.

From there, he got on the highway before pulling off a nearby exit and into a 7-Eleven.

At around 4 p.m.

the evening of the murder, he attempted to make three separate withdrawals from an ATM inside using his mother's debit cards.

All of the transactions, of course, were declined.

But on the fourth and final attempt, Joshua got lucky.

And then what was the rest of the plan for the day?

It was to get cash so I could take the car.

So how are you going to get cash?

With her cards.

Do you know her pin numbers and all that stuff?

I figured one out.

You figured one out?

Okay.

How'd you do that?

It's on her phone.

Her pin numbers on her phone?

Does she have like

a swipe access or anything on her phone?

Okay.

Joshua then texted his drug dealer and drove the short distance to his house where he picked up a bag of weed because that's the priority here.

Make no mistake.

You said you woke up, you hadn't been drinking or doing drugs this morning.

You don't, until after you kill your mom, you call your dealer to get some weed or spice or something.

Is that right?

What were you going to get from him or her?

I got button.

You went and got button, which is marijuana?

Okay.

But this is after the fact.

So you haven't done drugs, alcohol, you haven't taken any medications, prescriptions in like the last three or four days.

He also smoked a little spice with his dealer.

But remember, Joshua doesn't know the difference between spice and marijuana.

After getting baked out of his mind, the killer made his way to the same mall where his mother had gotten her hair and nails done just hours before.

While parked outside of Sears,

rest in peace, Sears, he looked at his phone again, this time noticing the cops were already at his house as he watched the live feed from the ring camera app on his phone.

Okay.

Where is her phone now?

I dumped them.

Where?

At Brandon Mall.

Brandon Mall?

Whereabouts?

Next to Sears.

Inside or outside?

Outside.

Outside?

I know which one it was.

It was in the grass areas.

In the grass area?

Clicked out by the building or over by the road or parking lot?

Outside of Sears.

Okay.

Next to the cars.

What kind of phone does she have?

You know what?

Seven.

Model.

A seven.

Okay, and it's a white and in a white and purple case.

Was that damaged when you got rid of it today?

Okay.

Do you know if it's damaged now, though?

I have no idea.

I mean, you threw it out, so I just dropped them and

she like dropped them down hard, and you just kind of just toss them.

That's tossed.

So not really that hard?

Okay.

Did you just?

Okay.

Like in by rocks and stuff, but it might still be there.

Okay, well we'll see.

I mean, you know, someone could have picked it up.

We never know.

Yeah, is it like in one of the little islands in the parking lot, or is it like in the bushes against the building or some

island?

Okay.

According to Joshua, he hadn't quite planned out the next move.

And does that surprise you for a pothead?

I mean, thinking ahead isn't exactly one of the strong suits of a marijuana smoker.

Unsure of where to go, he decided to get back on the freeway and just start driving aimlessly.

Because

why not?

Driving aimlessly is what he had done throughout his entire life, so

why stop now?

I

just started driving.

Okay, where'd you go?

I was trapped between

like I was just driving in circles.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to go north or to Miami because

I was having this conflict in my head

between

going somewhere or

like giving into the guilt and turning myself in

and I was I decided

I was gonna turn myself in and just come back to Tampa how far did you make it

I went to like Ocala okay and I started going east and then I came around I just came back to Tampa what was the route

I took

I just wasn't sober so I don't remember it a short time later deputies spotted the victim's Nissan driving along Interstate 275 in Tampa.

After pulling the car over, Joshua was arrested without further incident.

Toward the tail end of his interrogation down at the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Department, the detectives informed Joshua that they were going to leave the room to make a phone call.

Right before they did, the suspect asked if they could relay a message to his grandfather about his three-year-old sister.

Is there something you want me to say to him?

Is there something you want to say to him?

I'm so glad she's okay.

What do you mean by that?

Because

I was worried,

and now their family doesn't have to live with that.

What do you mean, live with that?

Like, her just being taken away because of me, someone, someone that was in their house,

someone they loved

took someone they loved.

I was afraid they were in that scar because of me.

Well, you know, that is something they're living with now.

Josh, that's something that you may want to think about, okay?

I don't know necessarily if you want me to relay that message to them.

Uh,

yeah,

you killed your mom, so

pretty sure your sister is going to have to live with that.

Following the nearly hour-long interrogation, Joshua was placed back in the handcuffs and officially charged with first-degree murder.

Breaking news right now: an arrest and the murder of a woman found dead on her 39th birthday at her Riverview home.

Deputies put the cuffs on Joshua Leon Carmona.

They claim he used a baseball bat and a knife to kill his mother, Tahiri D'Angelo.

Joshua Carmona, an 18-year-old with a deranged perception of what he viewed as a turbulent past, had long struggled with feelings of isolation and resentment.

His relationship with his mother, once close and supportive, had deteriorated into tension and estrangement.

On March 20th, 2017, that tension erupted into extreme violence inside their Riverview, Florida home.

When police were called to the townhouse on Hawthorne Trace Lane, they quickly located the body of 39-year-old Tara D'Angelo.

She'd been beaten to death with a baseball bat and her throat had been slit with a butcher knife.

The victim's body was found in the bathroom partially wrapped in both a bedsheet and a comforter.

Forensic investigators determined that the attack started in the living room and ended in the bathroom.

Blood spatter on the carpet, walls, and tile floor indicated a prolonged struggle.

Defensive wounds on Tara's arms showed that she briefly tried to fight back.

The most personal injuries were the two lacerations across both the front and back of the victim's neck.

The wound directly beneath Tara D'Angelo's chin was approximately four inches long and so deep her uvula and larynx were exposed, severing major arteries and veins as a result.

Investigators quickly found the murder weapon by the front door.

A red aluminum Easton baseball bat with the word Rampage ominously printed on its side.

How How fitting.

Authorities also located the bloody knife which was found on the right side of the kitchen sink.

There among a few dirty dishes was a large blade partially covered by a blue Tupperware lid and a black spatula.

Roughly nine hours after the murder, the suspect Joshua Carmona was apprehended by deputies when his mother's car was spotted traveling down a nearby interstate.

Inside the vehicle, authorities located the victim's pharmacy Walmart badge, a Rawlings baseball glove, and the bottle of Aunt Jemima's syrup Joshua had asked his mother to bring home roughly one hour before he ended her life.

Maybe he was just upset about the portrayal of African Americans on syrup.

Who knows what kids are pissed off at these days?

But it's probably something stupid.

Police also located paperwork in the Nissan's glove box, a vehicle that Tara had just proudly purchased three days before her murder.

During questioning, Joshua offered a full confession, and before long, local news trucks were outside his Riverview home, capturing every second of this riveting content to serve up to viewers at home in between local car dealership commercials.

We are still learning a little bit about what exactly happened inside this home, but forensics detectives have been here all through the night collecting evidence, interviewing witnesses, sorry, interviewing neighbors, I should say, and family members as well.

Online jail records describing the situation as domestic violence, and they're also revealing a little bit of insight into how this may have happened.

Before all we knew about Tahiri D'Angelo is that she suffered some kind of upper body trauma, a possible murder weapon, according to jail records, a baseball bat.

or a knife or possibly both.

Again, that is a big part of the investigation happening all through the night and detectives finally just wrapping things up early this morning.

It was a bit of a shock here for this Riverview neighborhood and certainly a traumatic, devastating situation for that family.

We saw a husband, we saw a daughter out here yesterday afternoon, all truly heartbroken.

And a little insight, detectives all along telling us that they had reason to believe that this was not a random attack and they all along suspected it may have been a family member this morning.

Now facing a first-degree murder charge, Joshua's fate would soon be left in the hands of 12 jurors.

Ahead of the trial, he was offered 60 years in prison in exchange for a guilty plea.

A deal he turned down, because why wouldn't you?

It's 60 years.

I mean, there's really no point in accepting that.

Any idiot can tell you that, so I'm not sure why you would need a degree to offer it.

In January 2020, nearly three years after murdering his mother, Joshua finally saw his day in court.

Prosecutors argued that the attack was premeditated, citing text messages and his damning statements to police.

Joshua's defense team pointed to his mental health struggles as if they make him special.

They don't.

They don't.

We all have them.

We all have them.

But they argued that his actions were the result of emotional instability.

I guess guess you got to blame something when your own actions are just such shit, you know?

During witness testimony, a friend of the defendant told the court how Joshua gradually became an outcast, how he'd stopped going on family trips and spent most of his time alone leading up to the killing.

Weird how drugs do that to you.

I've witnessed it in my own family firsthand.

He was just acting kind of strange the days leading up to it.

He was just acting super weird and like just saying all kinds of weird stuff.

Joshua's best friend, who played baseball with him roughly one hour before the murder, was a key witness during the trial.

Well, he gave him a hug before he left and then he said he killed his mother.

Did he appear angry to you?

No.

During cross-examinations, the defense grilled Joshua's best friend again.

suggesting that the defendant murdered his mother not out of premeditated malice, but because he was mentally unwell.

Again, as if that's an excuse.

Another text recovered from the defendant's phone was presented by his lawyers in court.

That message sent by Joshua to one of his friends reads as follows.

She doesn't care about me.

All she cares about is them.

So let's talk about it.

The act of a child killing a parent is incredibly rare, accounting for only about 2% of homicides in the U.S.

You have to be a real piece of shit.

to kill your own mother, making Joshua Carmona somewhat of an anomaly.

According to tons of studies, the first three years of a child's life are crucial for building a strong bond with parents.

In fact, they're crucial for development in general.

That's usually when psychopaths are formed, by introducing trauma during that formative period of time.

Beyond that, the first eight years is key to developing social skills and learning how to manage emotions effectively.

During his interrogation, Joshua claimed he would sometimes see and hear things that weren't there, specifically when abusing drugs and alcohol.

Joshua also happened to be within the peak age range for adult males prone to psychological conditions such as schizophrenia.

While there's a chance Joshua was prone to early onset of some kind of mental illness, perhaps genetically, perhaps exacerbated by weed and booze.

There simply isn't enough evidence to support this theory.

In other words, in the years leading up to the murder to the day he stood trial, not one of the several medical professionals he met had ever diagnosed Joshua with a mental illness.

So what's the fucking point?

If we have this science, so-called science, pseudo-science really, that's supposed to tell us things about the world around us, and then it can't accurately predict anything, then what's the fucking point?

Just naming terms?

With that point, the prosecution rested its case, as the jury wasn't buying anything that the defense had to offer, because there wasn't much there.

On January 9th, 2020, Joshua Carmona was convicted of first-degree murder and ultimately sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of parole.

So there you have it.

Joshua Carmona was a young man with every opportunity handed to him who now sits in prison for life, exactly where he belongs.

This did not come as a result of abuse,

not as a result of mental illness, and certainly not because he grew up in a bad home with bad parents.

You see, Joshua was merely a product of his own entitlement.

A fucking baby, a man-child who refused to take responsibility in life for his lack of success.

It's disturbing to see how many young people are exactly like Joshua Carmona in 2025.

Everything ahead of them, everything to look forward to, every opportunity imaginable, yet desperately looking for problems.

to fuck up their own life with and then blame others for.

I mean, we see more and more of this every single day.

And are we just seeing more of it because we see more things, because social media is so prevalent in our lives now?

Has this always been the case?

Have Joshua Carmonas existed throughout history?

And we just haven't noticed.

The reason why Joshua's story is so intriguing is because...

We see it all around us.

We see the entitlement.

We see the blame.

We see the young people with no purpose, no direction, spending their days getting high and wondering why they can't afford a home.

Blaming the adults in charge for it while sitting there doing nothing to improve their own future, to change their own outcome.

It's disturbing, it's sad, and it is quite worrying to those of us who give a shit.

I don't consider him my godson anymore.

I do not.

People ask me, you know, have you forgiven him?

You know, have you forgiven him for what he did?

You know, are you mad at him?

I'm like, well,

how can I forgive someone who killed my best friend?

You know?

It's not like, you know, she was killed in a tragic accident.

You know, it's not like

she passed away in her sleep.

You know, it wasn't an accidental death.

You know, this was on purpose, you know.

He wanted her dead.

And, you know, and that's the part that hurts me the most.

you know, it's like, how could you want your own mother who gave you life to die?

Why would you want to hurt her?

You know, I will never understand that.

So, when people ask me, have asked me, have you forgiven him?

No, I have not.

I will never forgive him.

How can I forgive someone who took away my best friend from me?

She was someone, you know, that would give you the shirt off her back if you needed it, literally.

She would do anything for anybody.

She would never do anything to hurt anybody.

And the fact, you know, of her getting hurt, just it really upsets me because she didn't deserve it.

I think he was just ungrateful because he wanted a new baseball bat which she bought for him and in my mind I've always thought I wonder if that's the baseball bat that he used you know is that why he wanted that baseball bat because he intended to use that specific one to hurt his mom you know so those questions have have crossed my mind and I probably will never get the answers to that

It's probably a good time to call your mom, don't you think?

Maybe see how she's doing, see what she's up to.

She probably gets lonely, you know.

All right,

have a good one.

Say hi to your mom for me.

Stay safe, and we'll see you back here next week.

In the meantime, you can support us by buying some shit at store.swordandscale.com.

If you go to swordandscale.com and then click the store link at the top of the page,

And you're logged in, you'll get your discount.

Also,

just a little clarification there about the plus situation.

The free episodes will continue to come out

pretty regularly, but then we're also going to begin to

make some of these episodes exclusive, plus episodes, a little plus at the end of them.

So you know that they're only available at sword and scale.com or on the app.

And

yeah.

So there's that.

You can also find us at Apple and subscribe there, but you won't get any of Sword and Scale TV because they don't support video yet.

And that's a thing.

So check out the show we're making if you want to, Sword and Scale Television.

These things are getting too long.

I gotta stop.

I gotta just stop.

I'm not a sales guy.

I should just stick to content.

And if you like it, you like it.

If you don't, you don't.

That's it.

Period.

Bye.