Episode 322

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

Listener discretion is advised.

My arms are always up on my little leg.

Bellevue, Washington is a clean suburb just outside Seattle, where tech wealth keeps the housing costs high and the lawns neatly trimmed, just how I like them.

It's a family-oriented town, filled with gorgeous parks and trails, a place of true Pacific Northwest tranquility.

But on the morning of July 10th, 2020, that tranquility was broken.

As the sun shone over the neat hedges and parked cars, gunshots rang out in an apartment parking lot.

There was a man down, gasping for air.

We just heard several gunshots and people screaming right there.

It sounds like it's right outside.

I live in a residence in Lakemont behind the apartment, so about five or six shots.

It sounded like a child, you know, like a light-caliber weapon.

I think I just heard seven gunshots.

Someone's screaming outside.

Help.

It sounds like it's outside Building 16, and we can hear

you screaming.

I just heard seven shots, and it looks like somebody has been shot.

I mean the overlook at Lakemont.

The calls were all coming from the same complex.

Neighbors peered through blinds, clutching their phones, straining to make sense of it all by the sound alone.

Then, amidst the beeping dispatch board, the most crucial 911 call finally got through.

Okay, is this overlake at Lake Mont?

Yes, okay, and what's going on there?

Uh, my husband's a shot.

Okay, it's your husband,

yeah.

The woman on the phone was Dee Dee Fomoon.

Her husband, 48-year-old Baron Lee, was the one bleeding out on the pavement.

And is it possible for me to speak to him?

Is he awake?

Yes, one's against me.

Okay.

Reluctantly, Dee Dee passed the phone to her bloody husband as other neighbors rushed over to help.

Where are you shot?

Sir, can you hear me?

Hello.

One's closely three shots.

More than three mama.

Okay.

Okay, I hardly care, wife.

My arms are shot, mama.

My legs.

My chest.

Okay, sir.

Okay, where is the gun?

The guy ran with the gun.

It's not here.

Please hurry.

Okay, can you handle the phone care?

Can you hand the fuck out of here?

Did he took the phone back after Baron dropped it on the ground in agony?

Here, hi.

Hi, hi.

Okay, who shot him?

We got him.

Okay, is there a wound?

Ma'am, I need you to get a clean dry cloth and apply pressure over the wound, okay?

It's been several blue, ma'am.

Okay, I need you to get some clean dry cloth and apply pressure, okay?

Even in the harsh, unforgiving sunlight, it took a moment to realize Barron's black shirt was drenched.

Three shots had torn through his chest.

Dee Dee fought to stay calm.

Her hands trembled as she tried to help.

Then, out of nowhere, a female neighbor appeared, clutching a first aid kit and reaching for the phone.

Hi, I'm new.

Hi.

Yes.

Hello, ma'am.

Here.

Yes.

Hello.

Can you hear me?

Hi.

Okay, so I don't want applying pressure right now.

Yes, my name is Krista.

I'm applying pressure to the chest room.

Okay.

Did you see which way the person went?

You said he left on foot.

Did you see which way?

Yeah.

He went towards Lake Mug.

Okay, so

where's the

I hear?

I hear.

Okay, and is it just his chest or is it also his arm?

Our arms or legs.

His arms.

He's doing that multiple times.

Okay.

We have

It's okay.

I'm so sorry, sir.

Okay, I'd have to verify.

Was it one person or multiple people?

Did you see?

One, the two.

Okay.

Finally, the chaos cracked open with a wall of sirens.

The crowd parted as police cars tore into the complex.

No one knew yet if the gunman was a man or a woman.

All anyone could say was this.

The assailant in the green hoodie vanished under the bridge towards the shopping center across the road.

Is the person still there?

Did you just hear this?

Yeah, so I just heard this and I looked out my back window and I watched someone run away.

The person that shot them.

They had a gray hoodie with their hood up,

green kitchen gloves, and they picked up their shellcase as they ran off.

As the caller walked outside to see if he could help, he noticed a clue abandoned on the pavement.

The shooter had chosen to attack Barron at 8.30 a.m., just as he was heading out to his car to go to work.

Baron hadn't been robbed.

His car was left with the keys right beside it, and his wallet was on his person.

This was a personal attack.

The gunman had targeted Barron, stalked him, and chosen the perfect time to strike.

But who could harbor such a deep grudge against Baron Lee?

A middle-aged car salesman with a wife, three kids, and a quiet, uneventful life?

Baron and his wife Dee Dee had blended their families and had been together for years.

They had two teenage kids from Dee Dee's first marriage and one son from Barron's first marriage.

As Barron lay in surgery fighting for his life, police started piecing together the few clues left behind.

The good thing was that witnesses were everywhere.

This was a large apartment complex and people all looked outside when they heard the gun going off.

So I just walked out to the window in my master bedroom and I saw an individual sprinting down the stairs toward the street.

Okay.

And then did he go to the building

across the parking lot from you or the carports or where did he go?

Right along the carports, down the stairs.

Okay, so right between the building and the carports.

Yeah, but I heard the footsteps on the concrete as I was walking to the window, and then I saw the individual jump up on the curb there and then run down the stairs.

Okay.

Using canines, the police tracked the scent of the shooter all across the complex, under a bridge and into the parking lot across the street.

But then the dogs stopped.

This indicated that whoever did this got into a car and fled.

The suspect was at large.

What kind of stature did that person have?

Looks

slim-billed.

That's why I thought at first it might have been fireworks because it looked like it could have been a kid almost.

Probably five,

four, five, six, somewhere in that range.

It's hard to tell looking down, but definitely not taller than me, based off of running next to the car real quickly.

Gray hoodie, fully over, could not see skin color, long pants on.

Can't remember if they were blue or red.

It's weird how some things you remember so vividly, and other things are just a blur.

Yeah.

And then holding something I thought would look like a bag in the right hand, like a football, as the person was running down.

Okay.

And like I said, I couldn't see skin color or anything else.

Okay.

So no skin color.

Can you tell gender?

It was either a teenage boy, most likely, or it could have been a woman.

If you were to think about things that have happened in the last 24 hours, 48 hours, over the last week, do any incidents or concerns stand out in your mind in this complex here that would have resulted in a situation like that?

No.

I mean, as far as I know, the family,

wonderful family, I think they have a special needs kid and

they've never done anything but smile and be polite along with everybody else in the area.

So it just was a complete shock.

It was a complete shock.

Baron Lee was a kind-hearted car salesman who smiled at every person he met.

Now he was at Harborview Medical Center full of bullet holes.

Baron had been shot nine times all over his body, from his legs to his arms and chest.

At Harborview Medical Center, surgeons worked fast, pulling bullets, tying off limbs, fighting to keep him from slipping away.

The cops were already writing it up as a homicide, but inside the OR, no one gave up.

After hours of surgery, Barron opened his eyes.

He didn't just live.

He remembered everything.

Hi, my name is Baron Lee.

I'm originally from Hawaii.

I now reside here in Issaqua, Washington.

Barron's survival was a miracle.

There was no way he should have lived, but he did.

Total nine shots.

I took two to the arm,

two to the right arm, two to the left leg, I believe

one on the right leg, two on the left arm, one in the chest, and one in my hip, I believe.

Baron said that the morning was like every other, except that his stepchildren were in Florida visiting their grandparents.

So it was just his wife, Dee Dee, and his son, Eric.

Baron kissed his wife and child goodbye, then headed down the stairs towards his car.

And I come out of the house and I'm probably about 25, 30 feet from my car.

And I just unlocked it with my fob and I hear pop.

So this is July 10th, 2020.

So I'm thinking, oh, someone's still firing fireworks, right?

So I looked to my left.

I didn't see anything.

As soon as I look to my right, a second shot goes off.

And that's the one that hits my right arm and shatters my right arm completely end up dropping my keys and my fob and then i see this person with green gloves and a mask aiming a revolver i mean just shooting at me baron's first instinct was to use his car as a shield so he moved as quickly as he could while the rounds kept coming so i run to the car

He's still firing at me as I open my car door with my left hand I take a shot into the back of my leg and then another shot in the back of my leg, and I end up falling to the ground.

I end up pulling myself behind the car door while the person is firing at my car, riddling it with bullets.

And then a few seconds later, it seems like instantaneously, the person's standing over me comes around to the car door and he's standing over me.

First shot goes right through my chest and out.

And I'm thinking, oh shit, I'm gonna die.

Like, what am I gonna do?

That's when it all hit him.

The reality of what was happening but nothing compared to the pain it's like initially feels like um you're getting punched and and and pierced at the same time so like you feel that searing pain that goes through the from the bullet but the impact feels like someone just punched the crap out of you you know it's like

That's when Baron made a quick decision that probably saved his life.

So I decide I'm going to throw my head and body under the wheel well of my steering wheel, the steering wheel column, and protect at least that part.

So if they're going to shoot me, they got to shoot my body or my legs or whatever and not any fatal parts, hopefully, right?

So I dive in and he unloads the rest, about I think six more shots on the left side and then runs out of ammunition.

I see him bend down, pick up some shell casings, and then I hear him run off.

That's when neighbors arrived and started tending to Baron.

He screamed for them to get his wife, afraid he was going to die right then and there, right in that parking lot.

They do that.

She comes out.

My wife's like, oh, you'll be okay.

You'll make it.

You're strong.

Don't worry about it.

And I remember having a full-blown conversation where they're asking her to

take care of the kids, that I love them.

When officers arrived, they tied tourniquets on Baron's limbs.

He was losing his vision.

The pain was overwhelming as they lifted him into the stretcher.

As the adrenaline starts wearing off and I'm taking a breath, what's going through my head every time I'm breathing is this my last breath?

You know, I felt like I'm dying, right?

Like I was in so much pain and I was like, oh my God,

am I going to end up stop breathing?

You know, because I know people get shot.

You see it on TV, right?

They're slowly fading out.

And I'm thinking, oh my god, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be, you know, this is my last breath.

This is my last breath.

Am I dead now?

You know, that type of thing.

As his strength started to fade, Baron's racing thoughts about who would care for his family faded into something different.

The ambulance raced across town while the paramedics ripped off Barron's clothes, desperately trying to locate all the bullet wounds.

That's when he felt himself slipping away.

And I remember I felt at ease at one point.

I was imagining myself in a meadow or pasture, very calm, serene.

And I was tired and I just wanted to go to sleep.

And the paramedic basically shook me and said, hey, you got to stay awake.

You got to stay awake.

And I'm like, okay, okay.

And then I remember I was like almost gone.

I was like, my eyes had closed.

And all I felt was this searing pain.

He stuck his finger in my wound to wake me up.

And I was like, oh, fuck, don't do that.

I'm up.

I'm up.

I won't go to sleep.

Right.

And from then on, I was up until surgery.

When Baron finally woke up from surgery, he was bewildered.

But his first concern was his children.

Dee Dee assured him that everyone was safe.

And then detectives arrived.

It actually, the investigation started right away.

I remember Detective Perrott and Detective Granis both showed up at Harborview.

They had told me that I was under protection.

Media, no one was allowed into the hospital to come visit.

The only person allowed was Dee Dee.

Didi was the only one that was authorized to come up and see me.

The detectives wanted the obvious answers.

Like, oh, I don't know.

Who the hell would do this?

When they interviewed me the first time, I basically said that it was Sharon.

Without a doubt, it was her.

Sharon Kelly was Baron's first wife.

I know, I know.

Sharon and Baron.

Let's just be adults here and try to move past it, okay?

But Baron's wife, Dee Dee, shook her head.

Sharon was Eric's mother.

She would never do something so horrible to the father of her son.

Was this just Barron's trauma talking?

And Dee Dee had told them, oh, no, it could be a disgruntled worker at his job.

You know, he works in the car business.

Maybe they're mad.

Or

I don't know, maybe her ex-husband sent, you know, Didi's ex-husband sent somebody.

You know, they said there's all kinds of possibilities, and in my mind, there was no other possibility.

It was easy to dismiss.

A man shot nine times, confused, scared, and searching for answers.

His divorce from Sharon had been nasty, but now they barely talked unless it was a drop-off when they exchanged care of Eric.

And yet, what if he wasn't wrong?

Dee Dee said Baron was crazy.

Sharon was not responsible.

Still, the cops promised they'd look into it.

They had to.

But first, they chased the leads they did have.

CCTV footage from nearby businesses and traffic lights around Baron's apartment complex.

And on those tapes, something stuck.

A red Ford truck idling on the other side of of the bridge, just after the attack.

Then the shooter ran up and climbed in.

This vehicle was distinct.

It was a Ford F-Series single cab with diamond plate bed cap and tinted headlight covers.

Using traffic cameras across Bellevue, police tracked the truck.

Thank goodness for 24-7 government surveillance, eh?

Well, it worked, because they got lucky.

One frame had the plate.

They ran it and discovered that the red Ford was registered to a middle-aged man named Arthur Mendez.

And just like that, the case had a new name, a new direction, and a very unexpected turn.

Find your lucky street on Highway 29 at Twin Pine Casino and Hotel during our Destination Lucky Ford Maverick giveaway this October.

Earn entries all month in October.

Play for cash and bonus entries every Saturday, 6 p.m.

to 10 p.m.

Then join us for our grand prize giveaway at 10.30 p.m.

on Saturday, November 1st for your chance to drive away in a new Ford Maverick.

Destination Lucky, only at Twin Pine Casino and Hotel.

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Find your lucky street on Highway 29 at Twin Pine Casino and Hotel during our Destination Lucky Ford Maverick giveaway this October.

Earn entries all month in October.

Play for cash and bonus entries every Saturday, 6 p.m.

to 10 p.m.

Then join us for our grand prize giveaway at 10.30 p.m.

on Saturday, November 1st for your chance to drive away in a new Ford Maverick.

Destination Lucky, only a Twin Pine Casino and Hotel.

Get lucky.

In July of 2020, 48-year-old Baron Lee was on his way to work.

at the car dealership when he was ambushed outside his apartment by a stranger, shot nine times in the legs, chest, and arms, and left for dead.

But somehow, Barron survived.

While detectives were stalking out a house in Mount Vernon, tracking the Red Ford pickup that helped the shooter vanish, Barron was facing something else entirely.

A long, brutal recovery without the use of his legs or his left arm.

The first three months I was in a wheelchair.

I couldn't walk.

I couldn't do anything other than go in a wheelchair.

When I was in the hospital, they wanted, because it was the middle of COVID, they wanted to send me home immediately.

So they basically said, every day we're going to have you try and walk a little bit.

And since you have two steps at home, your goal is to walk down two steps.

If you can walk down two steps, we're sending you home.

So I ended up going home in seven days.

But when I was at home, you know, obviously I wasn't walking around.

I was still in a wheelchair.

With Baron immobilized, Dee Dee, his wife, was the glue that held the family together.

Didi's amazing, an amazing woman, and I owe a lot to her.

Not for just the shooting, but what she went through while I was going through rehab was amazing.

Emotionally, physically, I don't know how she did it.

Every day, I had to have my wounds dressed twice a day.

So she had to go through all the bullet wounds and take out the gauze and put in new gauze and

clean it all out every single day on top of taking care of Eric, feeding, medications, all that, and then taking care of Sophia and Ethan, cooking, cleaning, laundry, all of that by herself with no help and still smiling, still being positive, still being supportive, still encouraging, and not asking for anything back at the time.

Because that's the thing.

Not only did Dee Dee have to take care of Baron and her two teenage children, but Baron's son from his first marriage, Eric, is special needs.

Eric has dystonia and Cornictoris.

These are two very serious conditions, which means he will require 24-7 care for the rest of his life.

Dystonia is a developmental disorder that causes a person to have awkward posture and move with twisted, repetitive motions.

Chronicteris is a condition developed at birth when Billy Rubin builds up in the baby's brain.

I think I said all those things correctly, but I'm sure you'll let me know anyway in the comments.

Anyway, this results in cerebral palsy, learning disabilities, and hearing loss.

But the reason this all happened to Eric was not an act of God, but instead, it was due to negligence from the medical system when Eric was born.

You see, Sharon decided at the last minute to change from her OBGYN to a midwife at a birthing center, after her OBGYN told her she had to watch her weight during pregnancy.

Guess she didn't like that.

Anyway, Eric was born safely at the birthing center, and then the new family returned home.

But after a few days, Baron noticed something was off.

After they sent us home, the very next day, the birthing center sends a home nurse to get Eric's heel prick test, which is a genetic testing.

And so they come over and then they leave.

And then over the next few days, I start noticing that Eric is

severely jaundiced.

He looks yellow.

So I call the birthing center.

I tell them, hey, you know, Eric's, Eric's getting yellow and I'm a little concerned.

And they're like, oh, yeah, that's normal.

Babies usually are a little jaundiced.

Just put him in some sunlight, and he should be okay.

So, I did that.

The next day, he's not getting better.

And so, I call them up again.

They're like, Oh, no, no, that's normal.

He's

Asian, of course, he's going to be a little yellow, you know, like that's normal.

I was like, That's that's a weird, you know, it seemed weird, but as a first-time parent, I wasn't, you know, completely sure.

So,

it wasn't until day seven or the

evening of day seven, my son was just crying.

He wouldn't stop crying.

And he had been pretty even keel.

I mean, his demeanor was really quiet.

You know, he smiled, but he didn't cry or do anything.

So this was concerning that he kept crying.

So the very next morning, this is day eight, I go to my normal doctor and I take him there.

And my doctor says, hey, you need to take him to the emergency room.

So Baron rushed his eight-year-old son to the emergency room, praying that everything would be all right.

I'm headed to the ER with Sharon, and basically she's like, no, no, we need to stop at the birthing center.

They'll know what's wrong with him.

And so, you know, against my better judgment, I listened to her.

I took her to

the birthing center.

We get to the birthing center.

They're like, oh, yeah, he's jaundiced.

We need to probably give him some milk.

So they grab, get bottled milk, and they start feeding my son.

And about an hour later, they realize that his temperature is going up.

It's spiking and he's not getting better.

And they're like, oh, you need to get to the hospital.

Baron was beside himself, a million thoughts rushing through his head as he packed up Eric and Sharon in the car to go to the place he originally wanted to go,

the emergency room.

As soon as we get into the ER,

a whole team comes into the room, grabs him, puts him on the stretcher, and takes him up to the newborn ICU.

And like, we don't even know what's going on.

And so they're like,

we'll have someone meet with you and they end up putting us into this room and about a few minutes later there's like 10 or 11 doctors and nurses come in and they're like you know we we gotta you have some things to discuss with you about Eric and they tell us that he has a severe case of hyperbilirubin.

He said there's they say that most children, when their bilirubin levels are at 15 or so, they'll put them under the blue light and that usually brings them down.

And they said if it goes over 20, typically they have to do a blood transfusion, taking out the bad blood and putting in new blood.

They said my son was a 47.

Eric's Bilirubin levels were astronomical.

Baron knew that this was serious, but he had no idea why it happened.

Why had Eric's levels spiked so severely?

Apparently, the person that did his genetic testing didn't submit it right away.

And so my son had a genetic disorder called galactacemia, where he can't break down galactose.

And galactose is one of the components in lactose.

Lactose breaks down into two parts, glucose and galactose.

And the glucose gets burned up as fuel and galactose usually gets passed through the body, through your urine.

But a person that has galactacemia is not able to break that down and that galactose will flow through the bloodstream and get trapped up inside of the brain.

And that's that's what happened to my son.

The nurse from the birthing center had neglected to send Eric's genetic testing off in time.

This very serious and life-threatening condition went unchecked.

And then Eric was given milk by the birthing center, which was essentially like giving him poison.

So the doctors are telling me all these scenarios about how he could die.

If he does survive, he's going to be a vegetable.

Or best case scenario, if he does survive, he'll have no motor skills, so he won't be able to talk or walk.

And fortunately, he did survive, but they were correct.

Eric was six years old when Baron was shot.

And though he was not a vegetable by any means, he did require constant help as a medically fragile kid.

So not only was Dee Dee tending to a frustrated and traumatized husband in a wheelchair, she also had a son in the same condition, plus two teenagers who were terrified that there was a crazed psycho on the loose, wanting to kill their stepfather.

It was absolute hell for Dee Dee, but she kept a smile on her face the entire time.

Just goes to show some women are truly fantastic.

She was the rock in this situation as Barron struggled.

I wasn't easy to deal with as well.

You know, through that rehab, I had, you know, know emotional issues I had physical issues so you know I had temperaments you know obviously with what I went through my my patience was very low and and she had she was the water to my fire you know and she made sure that she got me balanced and and told me things were going to be okay and we're going to make it and we had financial issues that we were stressing about and a lot of other things that you know we had to deal with that most people don't understand you know

while baron worked on his physical rehabilitation, the police were setting their sights on the investigation.

They checked out Didi's ex-husband as well as Sharon.

Didi's ex was out of the state at the time of the shooting, and though he admitted to having some beef with Baron, he claimed he had nothing to do with it.

He checked out.

Sharon said the same thing.

In fact, she told cops, The only person I know in Bellevue is my ex-husband, and we rarely talk.

The exes were checked off the list for now, and police narrowed their focus on the owner of the shooter's getaway car, Arthur Mendez.

Arthur was about the same age as Baron, and he lived in Mount Vernon, a town about an hour and a half away from Barron's house in Bellevue.

Instead of just going right up to the door and knocking, Police decided to stake out the Mendes house to see if they could get some activity on the truck.

The red F-150 was the key.

Detectives had pulled even more footage from the day of the shooting and now confirmed that the truck had arrived at Barron's apartment two hours before the attack, circled back and exited.

They were also able to secure traffic light footage that showed a clear shot of the passenger in the truck, a slender person wearing a distinctive gold chain.

This person, the alleged shooter, also had a habit of tucking the seatbelt under his arm rather than across his chest.

They were certain that this truck was the key to finding Baron's killer.

As a group of officers staked out Arthur's house, another team investigated his life on social media.

Arthur was 56 years old.

He had a couple of kids, loved Jesus, and was a big football guy.

But he had no known ties to Baron Lee.

In fact, Arthur wasn't the one who drove the red F-150.

It belonged to his son, 17-year-old Quincy Mendez.

Quincy was your typical high schooler who flexed on social media by posing for bathroom selfies.

He also devoted his life to wrestling and had dreams of joining the military.

He worked at a tire shop and drove his F-150 there for every shift, so the cops tracked him.

One afternoon, they hit the jackpot when they noticed a friend in the car with him.

This friend wore a gold chain, and he tucked his seat belt under his arm, just like the passenger on the surveillance video had.

Bingo.

But the detectives had to keep Baron and his family in the dark.

Chasing down Quincy was a covert operation and they couldn't risk any gossip.

I worked with the detectives.

They kept asking me stuff, you know, here and there, but they wouldn't disclose anything that they found.

They told me that they wouldn't because they wanted to keep the integrity of the investigation in place.

And I said, I understand that.

I said, I'm not in a rush.

I said, just do what you got to do to make sure you can get a conviction.

That's all I care about.

The detectives found out that Quincy Mendez went to Mount Vernon High School.

And when they visited the school's administrators, they were able to identify the alleged shooter as Joseph Good.

The school administrators confirmed that both Quincy and Joseph were good kids.

They never caused any trouble, and they had zero criminal records.

Still, it was time to talk with Quincy and Joseph and find out what the hell was going on.

At the station, Joseph folded his hands and listened to the detectives.

So

before you decide on that, okay, we have some information that we're willing to share with you at this point.

So if you want, before we get into that, you can hear us out about what we have to say and then make a decision about that.

Okay.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, that's on screen.

Okay.

Sound fair to you.

So you're okay with talking to us at this point?

Do I have to answer questions and stuff?

That's up to you.

Like you said, you've read your rights to...

You have the right to answer questions.

You don't have to answer questions.

At any time, if you feel uncomfortable, you can just say, Yeah, I've heard what you wanted to say, I don't want to answer that.

So, I'd just rather have, like, because I have no idea about any of this stuff, so I'd rather have that.

So,

and that's fine, you're more than entitled to that.

What we'd like to do is just have you give us the opportunity to share with you what we have, and then you can make a decision.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah.

Joseph didn't seem to really grasp what was happening, but like a good alleged hitman, he wanted to seem agreeable.

So he nodded along as the cops told him about the attempted murder they were investigating in Bellevue.

So

when,

like I said, we had that shooting in Bellevue.

After we went back, we found this

vehicle

pulling into a gas station down in Bellevue.

You recognize that pickup at all?

Kind of, yeah.

Kind of.

I don't know.

You don't know?

I'm not sure.

You're not sure?

You've never seen that pickup before?

I know a few people who've owned those.

Anybody that you know that owns a pickup like that?

Joseph said his friend Quincy had a truck like that, but they didn't hang out that much anymore.

In fact, the last he heard, the clutch went out on Quincy's truck.

Because you said the clutch had been out for a long time.

I was just trying to put a reference on.

Six, five, six months, I don't know.

Five or six months, clutch has been out?

I don't know.

I'm not exactly sure.

Oh.

So

there's that picture there.

So, may I get an attorney before I answer all these questions and stuff?

I feel like I'm doing it wrong.

And just like that, Joseph shut up.

Smart boy.

Because the cops weren't done with him.

Not even close.

They started churning out warrants, pulling everything they could from Joseph and Quincy's iCloud accounts.

Instagram, Snapchat, emails, text, you know.

The entire profile of your life you put online.

At first, it was just teenage noise.

Selfies, memes, dumb jokes, all useless.

But two months in, buried in the noise of selfies and memes, a detective spotted it.

An email receipt from Brick House Security, a company that sells GPS trackers.

Why would a teenager need a GPS tracker?

Baron Lee's car was still in evidence.

Investigators checked under the tailgate, and lo and behold, there it was.

The GPS tracker, still clinging to the frame with a strip of cheap duct tape.

The detectives contacted Brick House, pulling every record they had related to the serial number on the device, and it was registered to none other than Sharon Kelly,

Baron's ex-wife.

Um yes, I purchased a GPS tracker from you guys about five years ago.

And it's the subscription, of course, is no longer active.

Um I am able to log in, but it looks like you guys may have changed the website or

service or whatever that you've used.

I want to reactivate that device, and then I'm not sure how

I'm not sure how I can if it's like track view or what.

Once your device is activated, it still looks the same

so would you like to reactivate your service or your tracker

I would like to reactivate it

Baron was right this was all Sharon and apparently she'd been plotting this for five years

now the cops had to figure out how 30 year old Sharon got two teenage boys to shoot her ex-husband.

I'll tell you what, some women out there are pure shit.

Anyway, Joseph lawyered up when they took him into custody, but Quincy,

Quincy wasn't quite as

smart.

Well, yeah, we had an incident in Bellevue, and that's what we're here to talk to you about.

They told you what you were arrested for, right?

No, they didn't.

I was asking, and they were just like,

shut up and just labor the detectives.

That's right.

That's all the slot told me.

Okay.

Yeah.

So, like we said, it's a pretty serious thing, but as we said,

right now we think you're more minimal, but

minimal in your involvement in it.

Like, I think there's other people that are more.

I don't know how to best explain it.

So there's other people that obviously have played a greater role in what happened.

That's fine.

I think as we talk about it, it'll probably make more sense.

Okay.

So to be clear, you're under arrest for an assault an assault an assault yes

uh and it's a pretty serious one

what assault

do you want to assault this

well

that's one

harming another human being yeah harming another human being

we also know that there is another person involved that needs to be held accountable for

a much larger role in this than

you you seem to have played.

Okay.

And that's a big part of what we're interested in today.

Right.

There's a reason we're talking to you.

So we know there's more to what you guys did when you were in Belfield than what you're telling us.

Because we've already talked with him.

The detectives told Quincy they already knew what happened, which was, of course, a lie.

And now they needed his side of the story.

Who falls for that shit?

Oh, right, right, right.

Dumb people.

Which are usually, you know, criminals.

Quincy said that when Joseph approached him about driving to Bellevue,

he wasn't in his right mind.

Smoking shrooms, huh?

To be fair, this cop's drug education probably came from a VHS tape.

Quincy admitted that he was at Joseph's house tripping on shrooms with Joseph's sister when Joseph came home and said they were going to Bellevue the next day.

Joseph said he had something big to do, and there'd be money in it, too.

He told you.

He told me at the end, like,

do you want five grand?

I pretty much gave you the option.

Okay.

I said, yeah.

How much did he say he was getting?

I don't know.

That's a standard question.

Negotiating one-on-one.

You say, well, how many give me five?

How many are you getting?

I mean, that's a lot of money.

Five grand?

i i just point how much does he get in i just cut uh

well i think he said like probably 13.

his cut was 13 yours was five so 18 total

or was there another person in there that's getting a cut of that

that i i don't know i he just told me for me said it was just he's getting paid and i'm getting paid that's it that was it okay

So the question becomes, where did that money come from?

Right?

I haven't gotten any money.

But what I'm saying is, he didn't have that money to pay you, right?

He's getting $13,000 from somebody.

Right.

Yeah.

Probably.

Okay.

So what does that lead you to believe is happening here?

Someone told him to do it.

Right?

Yeah.

He's being paid.

He's breaking you off a piece for being his driver, basically, right?

I believe.

Okay.

Quincy swore he had no idea who the money was coming from, but

he was high, and $5,000 sounded pretty good, money was coming from, but

he was high and five thousand dollars sounded pretty good for a drive to Bellevue.

Even if it was some sketchy shit.

Like,

oh, I don't know, emptying a clip.

Oh, and before you say it's a magazine, not a clip,

just shut the fuck up.

Was it mean to take a whole clip or tap someone?

Shoot someone?

But you know what?

Yeah, but in my head, I was just just like,

I thought it was just bluffing, honestly.

Like

who does know that could have put him onto a job like that?

Put him on a job like that?

You know,

like, who's gonna say, I need somebody to get shot?

I know.

I'll call a job.

Not anyone I would know of.

All my friends are

high schoolers.

The more they talked, the more it really did seem like Quincy was just the tag-along who got roped into something too big for his warped little mind to handle.

We are only showing you about 2%.

This excruciating interrogation went on for nearly four hours.

So, is it some scrap he was supposed to go knock off or what?

Uh, no.

You don't know what kind of person?

No.

Did you ever find out what kind of person it was?

Did you ever talk about it?

Just it could have been just a normal Joe Mo citizen who's walking down the street or was it a gangbanger or what?

Who was?

The person that was supposed to be taken out.

Oh, I don't know.

He just talked about the dude, that that this dude.

That was it.

He didn't say anything all his time.

What did he say about the dude?

He was just like, this dude right here.

I was like, what about him?

He's like,

we need to,

we need to unlock the clip.

So, yeah, he told me.

We need to do what?

He said, yeah, I didn't.

A clip.

I love the clip.

I love the clip.

What does that mean to you?

That he was going to cap him.

Yeah.

I'm telling you guys straight up.

I'm being honest.

I'm being everything I am right now to be helpful to you guys right now.

I do not know who he's connected with.

I do not know who his big homies are.

He told me I did it.

It was fucked up up that I did it.

I regret it.

I shouldn't have done it just for money or anything, but I don't know who his connections are.

But the cops didn't need Quincy to confirm what they already knew.

Sharon Kelly was behind it.

They had the brick house GPS data.

They had the emails to Joseph.

They also had the texts between Sharon and the boys, solidifying their guilt.

And the conversation between Sharon and Joseph was that the job wasn't done, that they'll need to go back.

And Joseph will say, well, we need money up front because you didn't pay us anything yet.

So we need some of that money, or at least half up front.

And apparently, Quincy said he didn't want to take part of any of it.

They didn't want to participate or help or have anything to do with it anymore.

So when the cop showed up at Sharon's door with handcuffs, she didn't ask, what is this all about?

She didn't feign ignorance.

She dropped her coffee cup and screamed inside to her brother, Call my lawyer.

But what still haunted detectives was the question no evidence could answer.

Why?

Why would the mother of a special needs child who saw him every weekend hire teenage boys to kill her ex-husband?

Sharon wasn't going to talk, but the cops didn't need her to.

Because Baron

was alive and willing to tell them

everything.

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Your ring, your way.

In early July of 2020, Baron Lee was shot nine times by a teenage hitman.

He should have died, but somehow he didn't.

Now his ex-wife Sharon Kelly sat behind bars, the mastermind of it all.

She wasn't talking, but to her dismay, Baron was alive and he remembered everything

because what no one knew then was that sharon hadn't just tried to kill him once she'd been laying the groundwork for years she had tried to run me over twice prior once in 2015 this is before i ended up fleeing the state of washington because i wasn't getting help she actually had me on her hood and she was she actually tried to hit me i ended up jumping up and we ended up on her hood and she drove, you know, a couple hundred yards before I was able to roll off the car and get away from her.

The second time was in front of the Kirkland Police Department during a custody transfer.

And they said that basically it was a domestic issue and that we would have to deal with it in family court, which just boggled my mind.

So someone tries to kill me, but it's a family issue.

So I ended up going to family court and I'm told in family court that we just need to learn to co-parent better.

Sharon and Baron's amicable phase was short-lived.

They met online in 2005.

Barron was working in Nevada at the time, and Sharon was young, pretty, and looking for someone to take care of her.

Though they were over a decade apart, they pursued a relationship through phone calls and texts.

And before long, Sharon left Washington to meet Barron in Nevada.

And she wanted to come down to Vegas, and she asked if it was okay to bring her two younger brothers with her to meet me and stay a couple weeks.

And so I was like, yeah, you know, if you want to come down and visit, no problem.

You know, I was single at the time.

Nobody lived with me and I had space.

So she came down to Vegas and she brought her brother Timmy and her brother Joshua, who were like five and I want to say five and seven or five and eight at the time.

With her young brothers in tow, Sharon showed up in Las Vegas and surprisingly, Baron welcomed them with open arms.

Being a product of the foster care system himself, Baron just couldn't turn anyone away.

We hit it off and then you know the interaction I had with her brothers surprised her as well.

Her brothers were so used to

just doing whatever they wanted and having you know no discipline.

And so when they came to stay with me, you know, set some ground rules and

basically the way they treated her was not very good and I you know I told him that that's not you know allowed you know and that kind of stuff and started parenting them and

the two weeks that they were going to stay ended up turning into like four months staying with me.

Their relationship moved quickly.

They decided to move back to Washington so Sharon could be closer to the family.

Barron agreed without hesitation.

After settling in, they got married.

Baron believed they shared the same ambitions, a driven, adventurous future.

Sharon had a way with words.

Soon they decided to start a family.

Then Eric was born.

His birth was traumatic, leaving him severely medically fragile.

Barron stepped up.

Sharon did not.

I worked in the car industry at the time.

I worked for Toyota, and I worked twelve-hour days.

I'd get up in the morning at six and I'd come home about six.

And I would find Eric soaking wet in his walker or, you know, his little walker thing.

And he'd be crying and screaming.

And Sharon would be sitting on the couch watching Korean dramas or whatever it is that she was watching.

And she would say, oh, yeah, he's been like that all day.

And I'm like, then why aren't you changing him?

Why aren't you doing anything?

And it would take me

three, four hours to calm him down, you know, because he had been

in that high emotional state for so long.

Whether she was depressed, overwhelmed, or just plain lazy, Sharon's mothering went from bad to worse.

Baron knew things were unmanageable.

He tried to get help for his wife, but she insisted she was fine, and so was Eric.

So the last draw for me was that I found out that she was having Eric, someone babysit Eric.

Like, they're not medically trained to babysit him, but they were babysitting him while she was going out and having an affair.

Baron had enough.

Not out of anger, but fear.

His son Eric's health was on the line.

With Dystonia and Cornictoris, every day required constant, specialized care.

And Sharon couldn't handle it.

She wasn't just failing as a mother.

She couldn't even be trusted as his nurse.

And so I was like, okay, I'm done.

You know, like, this is it.

So I came home one day and I picked up Eric and I was trying to leave the house and she's asking what you're doing and I'm saying I'm leaving I'm taking Eric with me and she got mad and started pulling on Eric and and I was afraid he was gonna get hurt so I gave him to her and she starts screaming you know like like she's being abused or something and just at the top of her voice she's screaming and the neighbors end up calling the police and the police come And she says, oh yeah, that I'm abusing her and abusing my son, breaking furniture and doing all this stuff.

And I'm like, I haven't even touched her.

I haven't done anything to her and I haven't broken anything.

And so the police do their investigation and they realize that none of what she's saying is true.

But they advise that one of us leave.

And I said, well, she has my son.

If she wants to go and leave with him, then go ahead.

I'll just deal with it in court.

And so she takes off.

It was the point of no return.

Two weeks later, Sharon filed a restraining order and the state put Eric in her care.

That's what the state does.

Favors women in situations like this.

It happens all the time.

Must be that male privilege I keep hearing about.

That's when the war started.

For the next five years, Baron fought for custody while Sharon played the system, demanding support and collecting benefits.

Her son wasn't a child to her anymore.

He was a paycheck.

At least, that's what her family convinced her of.

The woman Baron had fallen in love with had transformed into a bitter entitled mother who expected sympathy from the world because she had a special needs child.

A lot of that going around these days.

Her family are, you know,

what we call them.

career welfare cases, you know.

And then her mom basically lives off welfare, uses welfare because she has multiple kids.

So she uses welfare to, to survive.

And their mentality, and I saw this in text, where like, you know, oh, you can do this, this, this, you don't have to work.

You know, you can, you know, get welfare.

You can live off his child support.

So it was more of like, oh, you know, I don't have to do anything anymore.

And I can, you know, abuse the system and that type of stuff.

It became clear that Sharon wanted sole custody of Eric.

Not to care for him, but because there was a million dollar settlement tied to his birth injury.

Though they could not sue the birthing center directly, the insurance paid them for what happened to Eric.

I took that money and I put it into a special needs trust.

So later on when Eric's 18, hopefully that money will grow and

help you know take care of him when we're not there anymore.

One of the things that I found when we broke up, because I had access to all of her phone records as well.

And so there were text messages where she had planned, you know, to siphon money out of our accounts.

Also, when we break up, that they were going to utilize

the courts to force me to pay child support, and that eventually she's wanting to get access to the trust fund money.

Sharon had custody of Eric until he was three years old.

And during that that time, she did her best to put him in a more medically fragile state, demanding a feeding tube, a tracheotomy, and a do-not-resuscitate order.

All things doctors said he didn't need.

So, she hospital shopped until she got the feeding tube and the DNR.

What a bitch.

During this time, I expressed a ton of concerns because he was being hospitalized, he was being sick, she was trying to do things that didn't seem appropriate.

But because I didn't have

medical making decisions, she was able to go to the hospitals and convey what she wanted.

That's when CPS stepped in.

Sharon was diagnosed with Munchhausen by proxy and deemed unfit.

Eric was placed in foster care pending a parenting plan.

For Baron, it was a nightmare, a legal disaster.

His life narrowed to one goal, bringing Eric home.

But the courts leaned towards Sharon.

I wonder why.

Oh, right, right.

Female.

This was despite her erratic behavior and her obvious lack of concern for her own child's well-being.

Then came 2017, a custody exchange at the Kirkland police station.

Sharon didn't just lose control, she threw Eric on the floor instead of placing him in a wheelchair.

That

changed everything.

For the first time, someone besides Baron saw her rage firsthand.

Baron and Dee Dee took Eric home.

He stayed with them full-time, but legally, Sharon was still considered the primary caregiver.

Let's face it, the family court system is more than broken.

It's pure shit.

Anyway, Barron didn't want her to have contact with Eric for obvious reasons.

Shared custody was just not an option for him.

She was after Eric.

It was the way that Eric was being hospitalized or the things that she was doing.

It looked to me like she wanted him to die, but in a way that no one was going to question her and say that he's, it's because he's medically fragile or this is, you know, this is the cause of his death.

It's because he he had complications

there was one incident where Eric's home nurse aide found him nearly dead at Sharon's house and he had to be rushed to the hospital things like this just kept happening and here's the thing is the family court system ignored it all like the GAL is saying hey

this this boy is not safe around her he needs you know and they ignored it all they when it came to whatever she did it doesn't matter who spoke on my behalf whether it was me, whether it was a GL, whether it was a social worker, it didn't matter.

The courts never listened.

Baron and Dee Dee cared for Eric while Sharon had visitation.

What she really wanted was money.

If Baron was gone and Eric returned to her care, she thought she could get it.

So she went through her little brother, the same one Baron once looked after in Vegas, and she found Joseph Good,

setting in motion her final plot to get rid of her ex-husband.

Sharon's little brother put the word out amongst his friends at high school, and Joseph took the bait.

It was that easy.

With Barron dead, the money would be all hers.

Money, money, money, money, money.

Or so she thought.

But what Sharon didn't realize is the way the trust is set up, unless it's needed for medical reasons, that money will never be pulled out.

And it can't be pulled out as cash.

It's going to be pulled out to pay for medical reasons only.

So in other words, if there's a medical bill, then it goes directly to the medical company, not to us.

And then we pay the medical company.

But that wasn't what she thought.

She thought she would have access to it.

For years, Sharon had threatened Baron.

And worse, their son.

But what she did was so outrageous, so unhinged, that when Barron spoke up, he sounded like a man describing the plot of a bad movie.

No one believed him, and the family courts only emboldened her.

Every time Eric landed in the hospital or CPS got involved, she was given a pass, cause she's the mom.

Years of getting away with it convinced her of one thing.

She

could get away with murder.

As horrible as you may think that the shooting was, was,

the shooting was the best thing that happened to me.

The shooting gave me a voice.

A lot of men go through this, and this is one of the hardest things as a man, sitting on an island by yourself.

I was telling people what was going on at work, my personal life, my family, and I would always get that.

eye roll, you know, not, you know, not blatant, but you could tell, like, yeah, he's full of shit type of look, right?

Like, oh, he's not telling all the truth, or he's exaggerating.

But the shooting allowed people to see that now what I say is true, right?

Like, what I've been saying all my life is true.

Joseph Goode was charged with attempted murder and unlawful possession of a firearm, then sentenced to 13 years in prison.

Quincy Mendez received eight years for the assault on Barron and was sent to a juvenile detention center.

Barron has since forgiven both of the boys.

Sharon, on the other hand, was eventually offered a plea deal, taking her charge down to solicitation of attempted murder in the second degree.

She'd be looking at 13 years, not 25.

Then, for shits and giggles, they lowered her charge a smidge more.

Probably because of the tits and puss, you know?

But in the plea deal, the prosecutor offered her 150 months.

And my argument to the courts was that the fact that they were

reducing

the plea, she should have got the maximum of the reduction plea, not

an agreed average of that plea.

And so the reason I wanted that was, one, at 150 months, she would get out when Eric is 17.

And my concern is that I'd have to deal with this family court bullshit again

on top of having to deal with her trying to kill me.

So I told the court that, one, she shouldn't get less time than the shooter or the or the driver.

So she should get 165, the maximum 165 months, which will allow me to set up guardianship and do everything that's needed before she gets out.

So Eric would already be 18 by the time she gets out.

It was abysmal.

It was outrageous.

How could Sharon receive a lighter sentence than the teenagers she hired to shoot Baron?

Without her, none of this would have ever happened.

That's what appalled me the most.

Like, I even stated that in court, you know, the fact that she not just ruined my life and my son's life, but she ruined two teenagers as well.

You know, I said, like, you know, she deserves a lot more than what she was given.

Sharon is behind bars, and she'll be there until her son turns 18.

But for now, one legal problem remains that Baron is still trying to fight.

Technically, Sharon still has custody.

I wanted to go to trial and get custody, but she was in county for three years.

And during that time, they wouldn't allow me to move forward with the family court case, saying that she had a right to be there and that I couldn't move forward.

So this whole time I've been waiting to get custody.

And because it took so long, they closed the case.

And I had to petition to reopen the family court case so I can still fight for custody.

I still don't have custody.

It's unbelievable, but Barron is still fighting for custody, for control, for peace.

Sharon is behind bars for literal murder, but not forever.

One day she'll walk free, and as co-parents, their paths will cross again.

Can you imagine?

They share a child.

Not just any child, but Eric, a non-verbal, vulnerable boy who will need care for the rest of his life.

Will he ever say he wants to see his mother?

Will she even care now that the money's gone?

Sharon Kelly was evil, not misguided, just plain evil.

Munchausen by proxy, delusions of grandeur, abusing a medically fragile child.

She was dangerous and calculated, and for years she had Eric all to herself.

Barron still lies awake wondering what she did during that time.

The early years shape a child forever, and if she left him in filth when they were married, threw him on the police station floor in front of strangers, then what actually happened behind closed doors when she was alone?

When she could get away with anything.

But Baron can't live in those shadows.

Not anymore.

This isn't just about Sharon's twisted plan to kill Baron.

It's about the man who survived it, to be a father.

That should have been the end of it, but it wasn't.

It was the start of something bigger.

A second chance for Baron.

Now he's on the advisory board of a non-profit organization for foster children called Route 21.

And he's fighting to change the system.

pushing laws to protect fathers and family court, including one bill in the House and another in the Senate.

And at home, with his wife Dee Dee and his kids, he's building the life Sharon tried to destroy.

Baron didn't just survive by luck.

He survived for a reason.

For Eric.

Everything he does is for his son.

What a great dad.

The shooting didn't ruin him.

It revealed the truth.

Sharon is a threat.

And in 2036, she'll be out.

Free to roam, free to plot.

Baron knows she's not done.

After 13 years in a cell to stew on vengeance.

So maybe he'll move to another state, another country, whatever it takes.

Because in 13 years, he'll need to disappear before she finds him again and does

even worse.

Who knows

what that bitch

is capable of?

Well, that episode was produced by Mish Barbara Way, one of our

one of our longtime producers.

We've had producers here for, I don't know, what, six, seven, eight years now?

So, uh, hard to keep track of how long they've been around.

She's very talented, though.

Very talented lady.

Always puts out great stuff.

I'm your host, Mike Boudet, in case you're lost just browsing through the Apple catalog.

If you like this show, you can help support it.

You can go find a lot more of it at swordskill.com or download our app on iOS and Android.

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