Texted Lies, Whispered Truths: Jason Collier's Story

by Terri Anne Browning

  O’s son had become too much for her when he was seven. She’d had to make the difficult decision to send him to live with his father because she could no longer control him. It was possibly one of the hardest things she had ever had to do, because she knew how abusive her first husband was, but she felt she had no other choice. Her guilt ate at her.

  Her son was having issues at home with his father. He didn’t get along with his stepmother, was struggling in school, and he told O that he was frequently being beaten by his dad. I am still unsure if that was the real reason or if his dad and stepmom couldn’t handle him any longer and simply kicked him out.

  Knowing what I know now, I am more confident they did, in fact, make him leave.

  We decided to move to Borger, Texas, in November 2017 to be closer to O’s work again and to have her son move in with us. As days turned into weeks, I saw his anger issues up close. Of course, he had been around an allegedly abusive father all of his life and shared DNA with the man. Nature and nurture were both working against this boy, but then again, it is the same story for a lot of people.

  That is no excuse for the things this…little shit…has done.

  O let him get away with anything at home. Drugs, having a fake ID, and skipping school to the point a truancy officer was getting involved, were only a few of his infractions, and she didn’t make him face any consequences. He was constantly dropping my name and my position within the community to get himself out of trouble, and I was catching hell for it at work.

  Then one night, we got a call from the night shift sergeant. My stepson had a girlfriend in Stinnett, and while drunk at a party, he decided he wanted to visit her. He stole another boy’s truck while under the influence, and he proceeded to take out several power poles, completely totaling the vehicle.

  He didn’t have a driver’s license.

  As expected, he was charged with DUI as a minor.

  O paid all his fines. When the parents of the boy whose truck was stolen came forward, O then found a way to come up with $16,000 to keep them silent.

  I didn’t agree with how she was handling things, but he was her kid. And as she liked to remind me, I was living in her house. Something that she mentioned whenever we argued. She owned everything we had as a couple. I didn’t feel like I had the right to say anything, even though I was his stepfather, because O continually made me feel like it wasn’t my place.

  I should have put my foot down then and kicked him out that same night.

  Maybe then I would have saved my baby girl from the nightmare that came next.

  9

  I caught heat at work over my stepson’s behavior. The boy was uncontrollable, and his drug use—which had started as just marijuana but had progressed into cocaine—was an embarrassment I was getting tired of having to deal with.

  O wasn’t prepared to make him face the consequences of his actions. She would ground him, but she never enforced it. He would regularly curse at her, get in her face and scream at her. In all honesty, I think she was scared of him, and that fear, on top of her agonizing guilt over not being there for him when he was growing up, made her think she had to hand him everything.

  As I was getting off night shift one morning, M called me and said she needed to speak to me. A little while previous, our daughter had started counseling, something she’d said she wanted to try. M and I had just thought it was the typical stress that most teenage girls seemed to go through. But that day during her session, she finally felt comfortable enough that she admitted what was really going on with her.

  While high one night, O’s son and one of his friends…hurt my baby girl.

  Author Disclaimer

  This is an ongoing case, so we are ending this chapter here. Because of the nature of the crime, and that it involves a juvenile victim, we feel we cannot give you more details regarding it without harming the case.

  What we can tell you:

  It is ongoing.

  Per what Jason has told us, he was not allowed in the interview when his daughter was being questioned and giving her report. Due to the fact that he had been in the same house when the alleged crime occurred but did not witness the incident, there was talk of Jason being charged with failure to report as he was a police officer at the time.

  There have been delays that we do not fully understand nor have we been given a real explanation for. As per Jason, he hasn’t been given any real explanation either.

  We have just as many questions as you do.

  10

  As expected, this put pressure on my marriage to O.

  I wanted this boy in jail. She would even agree with me when I would tell her what needed to happen, but then she would turn around and coddle her son.

  The thing about O is, she hated my daughter. My daughter is so much like her mother, and O didn’t like that. But I considered it normal. Stepparents and their stepchildren rarely got along, from what experience I had with it.

  Thankfully, my stepson moved out into a house with some friends after graduating early. The house was a party central, though, and I heard drugs were always available there. As time went on, he went through multiple jobs, and every time he lost one, his excuse was, “They cut my hours.” But we lived in a small town, and I knew many of the employers he worked for. So, of course, I asked what was going on and why hours were being cut when there were still HELP WANTED signs in the windows.

  Each time, they would tell me the same thing. The boy just walked off the job.

  The last job he was able to get, he told us he was laid off due to COVID. One day, I was approached by one of the deputies, asking if I’d seen my stepson, and out of courtesy, he told me why he was looking for him.

  The boy had kept the business credit card from his last job, which he’d been fired from—not laid off, as he’d said—and he had been using it to put gas in his friends’ cars. He would put up to a hundred dollars in their tanks, and then they would pay him a portion of that money in cash, which was how he was getting by.

  O paid off her son’s ex-employer so they wouldn’t press charges for the credit card fraud.

  The money she was spending to keep her son out of trouble was yet another issue putting pressure on our marriage. O had a good job that paid very, very well. But between the trouble she was constantly paying to keep her son out of, her shopping addiction, and all the bills we had, money was tight. When I asked where all the money was going, she would get upset with me and yell that I shouldn’t worry about it because it was her money.

  Everything we owned was hers. The house, our vehicles…everything. I wasn’t on her checking account—but both of her children were. Yet, she had insisted that her name be put on my checking account. It seemed what was hers was only hers, and what was mine was hers too.

  Which she held over my head when things would get rocky. If she was angry with me, she would throw at me, “This is my house. That’s my truck you’re driving!” But when things were good, she would gush, “I love our home. You look good in your truck.”

  Our sex life was turning nonexistent. Despite how our relationship started, O was becoming more and more withdrawn in the bedroom. One of my turn-ons was I liked to see her in lingerie, but O hated to wear it because her first two husbands made her feel like she was undesirable. But I loved the way she looked in it. The more I would try to build up her confidence, however, the more she would seem increasingly inhibited.

  We tried counseling through our church for a while, right before I took the police chief position in Stinnett. Our relationship felt like it was slipping away. I wanted to hold on to it, but nothing seemed to be working. If anything, she made me feel less and less like the man of our household, and I had zero respect at home.

  Back when O and I had first started dating, those who knew her well had told me she wasn’t a nice person. Most would even go so far as to call her a bitch. I was starting to see just how right they were.

  I’m not trying to excuse what I did next. I know I messe
d up in the worst way.

  I just wanted some respect.

  To feel like I was wanted and needed again.

  11

  Disclaimer

  Names have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved.

  The game all started in November. That was when I first opened up a Plenty of Fish account. I was on the site for a few weeks, just chatting with several different women, before I went on my first date with Linda.

  We chatted through the app for about five days before I drove down to Lubbock, Texas, and met her on her lunch break. This was about two weeks before Thanksgiving of 2020, and we sat and talked in the parking lot during that time, before arranging to meet up after she got off work for dinner. She brought her daughter. Afterward, Linda invited me back to her place to meet her parents, with whom she’d been living since her divorce.

  I didn’t want to meet her parents, but I felt like she was pressuring me, and I hadn’t yet gotten what I wanted. Sex.

  Our second date was the Friday after Thanksgiving, November 27. She had a girls’ night planned, so I just decided to hang around Lubbock for a little while until she was finished. But during the evening, she called and talked me into meeting her friends. While they were drinking, they all mentioned they were hungry. I was ready to leave, so I offered to get them food to take back to Linda’s house.

  Once her friends left that night, Linda and I were intimate for the first time.

  The following weekend, December 5, 2020, I returned to Lubbock for our third and final date.

  This time, I got a hotel room, and Linda spent Saturday night with me. On the way home, I texted her and told her, “Hey, this isn’t going to work. We’re moving too fast.”

  I can’t remember saying “I love you” to her, or even her saying it to me.

  No, I never asked her to marry me.

  No, I didn’t give her a ring.

  And no, there wasn’t even any mention of buying a coffeemaker.

  Afterward, Linda contacted O via Facebook, but when O mentioned it to me, I told her it was a scam against cops. Because Linda’s page looked generic, O believed me and blocked Linda so she couldn’t talk to her again.

  At that point, Linda was the only woman I’d met in person, but I was chatting with several other women on Plenty of Fish and through the Facebook dating app as well.

  One of those girls is the one the world seems to refer to as “FedEx Stefanie” since there were two women with the same name. I never met that particular Stefanie. But I did play more of a game with her. I would joke about things like, “Does Amazon Prime ship wedding dresses/wedding rings? I can mail you one, and you’ll be able to pick it up since you will already be delivering them.”

  That was when she asked, “Do you send every girl you haven’t met a ring?”

  And I followed up with, “Only the pretty ones.”

  I never actually bought her a ring, or even a coffeemaker.

  In hopes of getting what I wanted, I would string these women along. If they liked something, I liked it too, so they would think we had something in common. Sometimes it worked; sometimes it didn’t. If I felt like we had a connection, then we would meet up.

  It was during this time that I was also chatting with a woman named Jessica. The two of us never met, never talked about getting married—and once again, no mention of purchasing a coffeemaker—but she did tell me about the video app Marco Polo. On this app, you just pick who you want to send a video to and then record the video, so I never sent the same video to multiple girls.

  Actually, I didn’t even realize I never said anyone’s name in any of the videos until it was mentioned to me by Lonnie during one of our many interviews for this book. I guess it just became a habit not to call the women by name. It helped me not mess up when I was with them. The one time I did mention a woman by name in a video, the world seemed to think she was more special to me than the others, and I guess, in a way, she was.

  12

  Before I even broke things off with Linda, I was already talking to the Stephanie who lived in Kansas. She was probably the one I met the most often and got to know the best. She was also the one I was most attracted to, except for one other lady whom I met for the first time in January.

  Stephanie had five kids, possibly twenty-five cats, and was paranoid that the entire town was against her. If you have followed this story from when it first went viral, then you are aware of what Stephanie’s issues are, but I won’t mention them here. That is not my story to tell.

  We started talking on the dating app around December 5, 2020, while I was still seeing Linda. On December 11, I met Stephanie for the first time.

  She was working in Liberal, Kansas, that Friday, which isn’t too far of a drive from Stinnett, so I asked her if she would like me to come up and meet her.

  Stephanie was excited that I would do that.

  We met in the parking lot of where she was working, and we sat in my vehicle talking—well, I sat and listened, because Stephanie talked and talked and talked. Afterward, I drove back to Stinnett, picked up my son, and went home, where he spent the weekend with me since M and I still share custody.

  The second time I went to Kansas was the weekend of December 18. She thought I was arriving that Saturday, but I had this feeling she was seeing another guy at the same time, and I wanted to do a little detective work to see if I was right.

  During our phone calls, she would always call me from her car so that her kids didn’t overhear what we were talking about or interrupt. I thought I had it timed just right to drive by and see if anyone else was parked in her driveway, but she happened to be sitting in her car as I did my drive-by and spotted me. Of course, she called me.

  “What are you doing?” she asked as soon as I answered, and I played it off that I came up early to surprise her.

  Because of her paranoia that everyone in her town was against her and only out to get her, she asked me to meet her at a cemetery close to her house. She thought no one could see us from where we were parked, but I could tell anyone who drove past could see us easily enough. The whole time we sat there, she seemed nervous. She wanted to hide since she thought the cops would bother her if she didn’t. We sat in my truck and talked for a while, but I noticed a farm truck kept circling the cemetery suspiciously. I thought it might be her ex or the other guy I was sure she was also seeing.

  Her nervousness didn’t stop her from kissing me for the first time that day, though.

  I had reserved a hotel room in Dodge City, thinking it was closer to Stephanie’s house, but it was actually over an hour away from where she lived. The next morning, I drove back to her place, and the two of us went shopping for her friend’s birthday present.

  Afterward, we met up with her friend and had dinner to celebrate the woman’s birthday. Once dinner was over, I dropped Stephanie off so she could pick up her car and follow me back to Dodge City. There, we went to a brewery to talk and get a few drinks before going back to my hotel to have sex.

  In the following weeks, I saw Stephanie a few more times and even met her kids on several occasions. January 14, 2021, was the last weekend I went to Kansas, and I was ready to break things off. I drove up that day, and we had dinner with her kids. When we got back to her house, something was wrong with my truck door, and her son couldn’t open it. Something had caused it to get stuck, and I had to open it hard, shattering the window.

  That night I went to my hotel, and Stephanie spent the night with me again. The next morning, she and her daughter went with me to get my window replaced, and then we spent the day together. One of our stops was at Target. As we passed the coffee machines, I mentioned which one I had and that I really liked it, and she told me which one she had been thinking of buying. But there was never any mention of actually buying that one or any other coffeemaker for her.

  In truth, I was already moving on to the next player in my game.

  13

  That final weekend with Stephanie was a busy
weekend for me. Closer to the end of my time with Stephanie, I had started chatting with Tiffany on the Facebook dating app. Of all of the women I chatted with and dated, Tiffany was the one I was most attracted to, even more so than Stephanie.

  My plan was to spend the two days with Stephanie, break it off, and then on my way home, stop in Sweetwater, Texas to go antiquing with Tiffany on January 16.

  While I was still getting my window fixed, Stephanie called me in a panic to let me know her son had run away, and I drove straight back to her house to help her search for him.

  In the early hours of the morning, once he was found, I sat in my truck with Stephanie trying to break it off. One of the reasons I gave her was that I was very allergic to cats, and it seemed every time I came to visit her, she had even more cats at her house. But she kept saying she wanted us to try, that she loved me and wanted it to work between us. In a moment of weakness, I eventually let her talk me into getting a hotel room again, and we spent the rest of the night together.

  In all, I got maybe forty-five minutes of sleep before I was on the road back to Sweetwater, which was seven hours away. Every weekend, I would get Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off, so weekends were the best time for me to meet up with Stephanie and the others.

  The plan was to meet up with Tiffany in the Walmart parking lot. I got there in time to go inside and buy her a few bouquets of flowers, and then I went out to meet her at her vehicle. We went to lunch, and I made sure we stopped at Sonic to get drinks because she had told me repeatedly during our chats that it was one of her favorite things to do.

  We went ax throwing and had dinner that night. It was fun, but we parted ways with nothing more than plans for the following day. The next morning, we had brunch together before going to the bookstore. When I left, we shared what I thought was a sweet goodbye kiss. I wanted more, but Tiffany wasn’t ready.