Episode 338

19:43Mike Boudet:This was a madhouse. When asked for his mother's name, he was able to give it to the officer, but he couldn't spell it, saying that she never told him how.

20:19It's in the sink. It's in the sink. It's in the sink right now. It's in the sink? Hey, he's saying the nose is in the sink. This guy, this victim, yeah, he's got a little laceration to the back right now.

20:30Mike Boudet:The discovery of the murder weapon was good news and bad news. Good news that this unlikely and lucky victim found it, but possibly bad news that he cleaned it up. What's going to happen to me now? You're going to get checked out by EMS because you got stabbed. I'm going to try getting a hold of your mom for you, okay? Justin naturally had a lot of questions about himself, his grandma Diane, and his brother, who had been led away in handcuffs. What happened to my brother now? We got him. He's not going to hurt anyone. My grandma going to be okay? Yeah, they're working on it right now. They're helping her.

21:10Okay, that's all. Dad, you saw a little dog? A little dog? I did not go in the house. Once I saw you outside, I came and grabbed you.

21:19Mike Boudet:What Justin didn't know was that his grandmother died almost immediately after being stabbed by his brother. In her bedroom, they found Diane Madison dead of multiple stab wounds, including one that completely severed her carotid artery. And the little dog he was referring to was sitting on the bed in the same spot where he'd been sleeping peacefully next to his owner. Now, with a look of bewilderment. The dog wasn't alone. Almost everyone who knew Jalen Plummer was bewildered. No one could yet explain why a college-bound teenager, quiet, smart, and planning to study pharmacology, had suddenly turned into a violent killer.

22:06Mike Boudet:But there were cracks long before that night. This wasn't just one terrible night. It was the unveiling of a legacy that had been building long before Jalen had ever picked up a knife.

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24:25Mike Boudet:On June 22, 2019, in East Cleveland's South Collinwood neighborhood, police responded to a bloody scene on Chickasaw Avenue. Two 10-year-old girls escaped their home, reporting they'd been stabbed in their sleep. When officers got to the house, they found a third victim, a 12-year-old autistic boy who confirmed that his brother was the killer. 18-year-old Jalen Plummer was in the shower, rinsing off blood after stabbing the entire household. In a bedroom, his grandmother Diane Madison lay dead from multiple stab wounds, and her little dog also laid nearby. Jalen offered only a chilling explanation.

25:13The mental health care system failed me, so I tried to kill my family.

25:19Mike Boudet:Signs of mental illness seemed obvious when Jalen was taken to the hospital and questioned. Nurses bandaged the deep cuts on his hands, but it was as if his voice was bound just as tightly. His muffled words barely escaped. He spoke in vague, detached terms, referring to his siblings as child number one and child number two. He claimed he didn't know the names of his mother and grandmother, and said he just called them Mommy or Grandma. His mother, Tania Plummer, would later tell detectives that Jalen had no official diagnosis, but his behavior had drastically changed between the ages of 12 and 15.

26:03Mike Boudet:He'd been drinking, smoking, shutting down, and fixating on dark things. She had just decided to get him into therapy. But here's what Jalen's mother didn't want to say. She remembered that his behavior had started to change around the time of another arrest. Police already knew the name that would leave her lips. This was a man from the same city. A serial killer that had haunted Cleveland and was arrested and convicted during Jalen's crucial adolescent years. It seemed possible this disturbed Jalen so much that he became fascinated with killing and ultimately exploded in a murderous fit that night, leaving his grandmother dead.

26:52Mike Boudet:Diane was a loving, kind person, and I think sometimes that gets lost. Almost all of us who worked with her remained friends with her afterward. That's the kind of person she was. She was the kind of person others felt comfortable with because they knew she'd been through it. They knew she was the first to sympathize. She was always open to hearing about everybody's hard times because God knows she'd had enough of her own. And I just want them to remember her smile and remember how much laughter and joy she brought to people's lives. She was someone who was compassionate, who cared about her family, who cared about her grandkids, who cared about her kids even when they couldn't reciprocate, maybe.

27:34Mike Boudet:Diane Madison wasn't just a grandmother. She was a mother of one of the most notorious killers in Cleveland's history. Her son, Michael Madison, grew up in that same house on Chickasaw Avenue. As an adult, he returned to raise a family there with his girlfriend, Tania Plummer. They had two children, including a disabled son. Eventually, Michael left them behind. Not before Jalen witnessed it all, though. The growing suspicion, the arrest, the conviction of a killer. Someone who had once called that house home. Conversation recorded on July 19, 2013 at 8.54. Please, please. Back to my side. Please, I'm going to help you.

28:27Hey, how are you all? Okay. Alright, just pop up in the table. Just need to see, y 'all can send somebody over here. We can't get this one garage open. We can't get a garage door open, but it's a smell. I know when a dead animal smells, and I know a garbage smell, but a fly coming out of the wall from one side of the garage, I mean, that smell is so freaking strong you can throw up. I mean, we just want to make sure there ain't nobody on the other side or something. I mean, it's so bad enough, man, you would throw up. It's hard to even take the smell. What's the address? 1395, Haiti. What's your name?

29:09My name's Chase. That's what you're saying. What's your last name? Child. What's your phone number? 216-870-8956. Okay, are you done? Yeah, I'm out here now. We're waiting nobody to come up yet. We ain't called. That smell in the garage.

29:35Mike Boudet:If you've never had the pleasure, it's a mixture of rotting fish, dead animal, skunk, and raw sewage. How's that lunch treating you? You're welcome. This call came in six years before Diane's murder. And it wasn't just the first sign of something horrific. It was the past catching up. It was a call to police from a cable company worker in this building that eventually led to the arrest of Michael Madison on murder charges. He lived there in an apartment and one employee saw flies swarming in a nearby garage. So I went in there and when I smelled the smell, I was like, oh my God, we need to call the police.

30:16East Cleveland police found the decomposing body of a female victim on Friday. They ID'd Madison as a suspect, arrested him at his mother's home and began questioning.

30:26Mike Boudet:The garage wasn't behind Diane's house. It was on Hayden Avenue, near a small upstairs apartment Michael had been renting just a few miles away. Because by 2013, he wasn't living under his mother's roof anymore. And he wasn't the same cute, cuddly little boy she'd raised. He had turned cold. Michael Madison, Diane's son, was no stranger to trouble. he was quiet and withdrawn he's always been that way he'd been drifting for years through dead-end jobs short tempers and the kind of isolation that makes neighbors nervous he had anger issues sometimes i would see him upset yelling and i just told him to calm down and he he was okay you know he spoke to everybody when the garage door finally opened and the truth finally came spilling out, literally.

31:26Mike Boudet:It wasn't just the neighborhood that changed, it was the entire Madison household, especially his stepson Jalen. The man he had once called stepdad would now be called something else entirely, a killer. Michael wasn't exactly a copycat, but his crimes bore chilling similarities to those of another Cleveland serial killer he reportedly admired, Anthony Sowell, infamously known as the Cleveland Strangler. Sowell was convicted in 2011 after the remains of 11 women were found at his home. Years later, Jalen Plummer, who lived with his stepfather Michael in the same house, appeared to develop a disturbing interest in the same notorious figure.

32:16Mike Boudet:The coroner in Cleveland, Ohio says six bodies found in the home of a convicted rapist were female. All were homicide victims. Police arrested 50-year-old Anthony Sowell Saturday. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Heavenly Father. I am so glad they got him because I wasn't going to rest, you know, until they did. Before, I had to put my fridge against the door and lock myself in before I could even go to sleep. Just two years after the Cleveland Strangler was put away, Michael Madison emerged onto the crime scene. Michael was born in East Cleveland in 1977. Former classmates barely remembered him because he had no real friends.

32:57Mike Boudet:He was, I guess, what you would call forgettable. He didn't graduate from high school, but he was far from stupid. He had a lot going on in his head, but no one ever bothered to ask what that was, and he never saw a therapist. But he needed one because he hated women, specifically black women. The women who fell into his nightmare weren't prostitutes or drugged out street women, not that they would deserve his fate. Instead, they were women with families, full lives, and plans. And for a brief, fateful moment, each of them crossed paths with Michael Madison. The first body found was 18-year-old Sherilda Terry.

33:47Mike Boudet:She had just graduated from high school with plans for a good life. That summer, she worked at an elementary school in East Cleveland, helping run youth programs and earning respect from teachers and neighbors. She was last seen alive on July 10th, 2013, leaving school after her shift, but she never made it home. They met somewhere in the previous weeks and started texting. Michael lied, saying he was 25 with no children. When they opened the garage door, thousands of flies swarmed in the putrid air. Officers moved the bags containing her remains and a trail of decomposition, fluid, left a mix of brown, gray, red, and yellow flowing like a dirty river on the concrete in front of it.

34:39Mike Boudet:It was one of the most gruesome crime scenes they'd ever laid their eyes on. She died from ligature strangulation, and investigators also noted a severe vaginal laceration consistent with sexual assault while she was still alive. Sherilda's my angel. Well, everybody called her Sherilda. I called her heaven. Why is that? I called my kids according to how they act. And that's my heaven. So, to me, he took mine. She's a praise dancer. She's a holy person. She's heavy into the church. And she's my reader, my bookworm. It didn't take long for Michael to be arrested and brought in for questioning. But it came after a standoff at his mother's house.

35:25Mike Boudet:DNA and circumstantial evidence were strong. But during questioning, detectives hoped to get some answers as to why. Michael had the spotlight for once. He talked a lot, but not about what mattered. And he wasn't the loud bragging type. Instead, he gave metaphors quietly. Parables. Detached theories about the human condition. It was as if the man accused of stuffing women into trash bags thought he was there to give a philosophical lecture. And while detectives paused for timelines and names, Michael offered riddles and speculations. And you know, this is my first time really realizing just how different walks of life are.

36:15Like when I was a younger, we stayed on the west side. And we stayed in Cleveland, so we got to school on the west side. you know what I'm saying, West Side School, where I like, you know what I'm saying, Puerto Rican, and it's white, you know what I'm saying, but it's pretty good ministry, and we moved here, and it's been pretty much just, you know, black on black for the majority of my life. I've always, I mean, I told myself, I told myself I would like to stay out in the country, you know what I'm saying, three, four horses, you know what I'm saying, a couple cows, some sheep, you know what I'm saying, some rams, some goats.

36:48What are you going to do with a ram and a goat? I just like to see the Rams. I think they had like the most testosterone for any animal. Really? The Rams. They were going at it one time. Like Rams. What were they? Fucking bang heads and chilling in? Mm-hmm. Lean, flipping up and then lean down. I don't like the Rams. People say it. I like the Rams swagger.

37:11Mike Boudet:Yeah, he really did just say, I like the Rams swagger. The conversation shifted for a minute to the day police picked him up. It was a sweltering day when police moved to arrest him on July 19, 2013. He happened to be at his mom's house on Chickasaw and barricaded himself inside for hours. SWAT was called. And the standoff ended only when officers used tear gas and broke the door down to force him out. They asked him what he was thinking at the time. If it sounds garbled, it's probably because of the cheeseburger he was eating.

38:03Mike Boudet:This guy's maybe the chillest killer they've ever interviewed. He went on to say that while police car sirens blared and lights flashed, while voices boomed over the megaphone yelling for him to come out, He was listening to his mother's wind chimes, smoking cigarette butts from the ashtray and thinking about his childhood.

38:48I think I would have came out the door before that door got hit like that. Yeah, fuck that door up. Yeah, I'm not saying that that's the reason that I didn't come out, but like I said, family and friends would be the worst. And, you know, I met her mother, but, you know, she and her got to a point where I, you know, really pretty much didn't care to see her again. But, you know, during a certain time, it was like she was there for me, you know what I'm saying? You know, the whole thing was done for a second appearance and going forward, don't hold on to this, don't hold on to that. You know, I put all of that behind me.

39:29But, I have, I really.

39:31Mike Boudet:At several points throughout the more than eight hours of interrogation, Michael alluded to a loveless childhood of neglect. According to him, his mother prioritized appearance and money over him. As much as detectives wanted to make him comfortable and hear about his past, they still had a job to do. And it wasn't to be a therapist for a killer. Start at the beginning. That's all I was born. Start at the beginning. whenever you want to start it. This is your opportunity. Tell me. I'll tell you what. What's your bitch on here? You got me for it? Yeah. Well, I got a call saying that they found a body in the garage, found a place on the...

40:22so I'm hating. Mm-hmm. I don't know if there's people that call me because they say, I'll be around here. I'm sorry. Is that where you live at?

40:33Mike Boudet:Let's answer that. Yes. That's it. That's where Michael lived. But all of a sudden, it was not really his place. His baby mama's name was on the lease, and people just sort of came and went, all helping pay the bills together somehow in some sort of weird collective. You know, anybody could have been there. Anybody could have had access to that garage. Michael, I don't know if you had a conversation with the commander about the last six hours I've been over in your spot with an organization called BCI. I don't know if you know what BCI is, man. You ever watch any of the CSI shows? Because whenever something happens, you leave intentionally or unintentionally, you leave stuff behind.

41:29Whether it be DNA evidence, fingerprints, blood. We're giving you the opportunity to tell your side of the story, man. Okay? But please don't sit here and insult me. All right? I've been spending the last seven hours processing your apartment. I know the evidence in your apartment. I know the evidence in your garage. I mean, please do me the courtesy of, listen, I understand that people make mistakes. I told you before, I'm not here to judge you. But please do me the courtesy of being honest, man. All on me, though. But, man, you said it's all on me. Like, all on me. My place, my better lives, my just me.

42:15It's because it's rented to you. Everybody says that you live there. And a reputable information is reputable because we get people that saw you in the apartment, man.

42:27Mike Boudet:He argued that he was in and out of the apartment and hadn't been in the garage for weeks. The body was put in the garage less than a week before. All the detectives wanted was for him to fess up and tell them what he did. And they weren't getting anywhere. It was time to bring God into it. Little did they know that they had just made a massive overreach. This was the perfect opportunity for the suspect to preach.

43:14where you had a devil and you have God. Hell is right here on earth. Like you, no matter if you was a reverend, a pastor, a deacon, like you are not without sin. Like you sin, he sin. Like no one, whether it be police, pastor, no one can tell me that it's without sin. No one can tell me that they have never committed sin and never broken the law, whether it be misdemeanor or study. Somebody like, everybody has a certain type of skeleton in their closet. And whether it be pastor or chief of police, like, you know, throw a name on it. Skeletons can be as big as the name, like chief of police. And his skeletons can be just as big as, say, Anthony Show Will, all the way down to little girls just leaving daycare.

44:08Like, no one, like, yeah, I know it's a guy, and I know, you know what I'm saying, and I know it's good, and I know it's bad.

44:20Mike Boudet:They just let him keep talking. They let him drift through the vague philosophies and half-baked sermons in his little cabeza. According to him, no one wanted to hear his story, the real story, quote-unquote. Again, you'll never convince a retard they're not a genius. He was fine talking about literally everything except the murders.

45:10This is like I told you earlier, I'm at the beginning line of some shit that you don't want to go through. You don't want to go through. And probably you all probably wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. That I'm at the starting line of. It's not like me giving you what it is. You won't want to make this any easier for me. You know what I want to do? I want to do the hardest thing that a police officer ever has to do. Do you know what that is? Go to work. No. That's easy. Going out there when people are doing bad things and catching them, chasing them, fighting with them, whatever it takes. That's easy.

45:53I want to do the hardest job when I have to go to somebody and say, I'm sorry to tell you this. But if your loved one is no longer with us, they're dead.

46:05Mike Boudet:This didn't faze Michael. He just kept talking until everyone in the room was numb. It's a cool parlor trick if you can do it. Politicians are great at it. It's a shame, though, he didn't talk until he was numb. Because he would have already been there a long time ago. I'm numb. I'm truly numb. Truly numb. Truly numb. I'm not expecting to be heard. You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying? prepared for the worst, hope for the best, prepared for the worst. Like, whatever the worst is, like, I know it's still, like, it's not like I'm about to go to war, I'm about to be shooting and shit, going to war, I'm about to be in front of the judge, around other criminals, that's what I'm saying is, man, like, I feel, I feel it's nothing, I feel it's not a damn thing, like, I'm sure you're, it's, like I said, man, this shit, like, Like, this world that we live in, like from generals in the army to tenets, commanders, like, how do you think some of these wars is going on?

47:17They just send somebody out on the front line. Knowing that these dudes ain't going to come back. They ain't even supposed to even come back.

47:24Mike Boudet:For the record, Michael was never in the military. He was just pulling out all the stops to make his case, even by stealing valor. even though he hadn't admitted to anything yet he knew they had him so he would just hint at the motive which was i was neglected nobody ever listened to me my baby mama nags me all the time because i don't have a job wah she makes me feel less than a man women all want one thing wah wah Wah. Holy shit, what an insufferable asshole. I hope this serves as a way for these females to stop trying to fuck guys over. You know what I'm saying? Is that what happens when they fuck you over?

48:16Oh, I mean, other than the regular, no, not necessarily. But it's going to serve at some point. It's going to change. It's going to be some type of shakeup.

48:40Mike Boudet:Then, out of the blue, probably because they were so numb from the talking, the cops flipped the switch and asked him point blank.

48:56Was that like a trick question? No. Why is it a trick question? Why would it be a trick question? No, I ain't never killed nobody. Killed me a couple of birds or something. Is this the first time you've ever killed somebody? I ain't never killed nobody.

49:08Mike Boudet:But that was a lie. In an obscured part of the interview that's barely audible, unfortunately, he admits to strangling one of the women. He was annoyed that she wouldn't leave and felt like she was trying to take advantage of him in some way. He was drunk, and all he remembered was putting his hands around her neck. He never said she died, but he never said her name. Later, he claimed he found a body in a garbage bag and carried it down to the garage. But he never put it in there. It was a mirage of pieces. But the pieces corroborated the evidence, and it didn't take a genius to fill in the missing pieces.

49:55You could be the man right now. Let's do it. Mike, I know. I know you've got the power now. What do you think I mean, Mike? I don't know. You're not really being clear with it. You kind of... You know what we found yesterday, right? Think about what I found today, Mike. What were you talking about yesterday? He said, they're going to learn. We're going to teach. They deserve it. I was just talking about the satellite. That's delirious. No, Mike. You weren't. And I was sitting there trying to put it all together. And after we took you back downstairs yesterday, Sergeant Ruth and I and Sergeant Gardner, we sat down in my office and we talked for a long time.

50:43and we just were trying to figure out what you were trying to tell us and I and Sergeant Ruth know now what exactly what you were saying bro like I know now we jumped right in like we found it I found out you're the man you were bullshitting. You know I was y 'all not, y 'all are talking to me but y 'all not really telling me what you, like what is you saying? I got another body. I thought you were kind of blowing smoke up my ass yesterday. Me and Gardner and Ruth were talking about it. I thought you were blowing smoke up my ass yesterday. I said, I don't know. I said, well, hey, I think he's telling me just by his body language, just by his demeanor, some of the things he was saying.

51:27You say you're talking out of the side of your mouth. I think that that was you wanting to tell your story, and I'm giving you an opportunity now to do it. And I'm telling you, I believe you now. I kind of half-assed believed you yesterday. And I'm believing you 100 % now. So we ain't even hung on this one body. We talking about something totally different now. Whichever one you want to talk about. Like it ain't one, it ain't two. Let's do this all the way, brother.

51:59Mike Boudet:Michael barely flinched. He had admitted to having dates to his apartment and getting so shit-faced that he didn't remember them leaving. He confessed to putting his hands around one of the women's necks and awakening to find a body in a garbage bag. That's bad. But even now, when confronted with more evidence and yet another body, he deflected. The detectives were running out of patience, and now they didn't just want to know why he killed. They wanted to know how many more dead women would be found and where they were located.

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53:38Mike Boudet:When they found the first body in East Cleveland in 2013, it was a trash bag in a garage. The neighbors had smelled something. By the time the police arrived, the case was already strange. The suspect, Michael Madison, was calm. him. He denied everything and admitted only enough to seem helpful. One woman, he said, was dead, but he hadn't killed her. He found her in a bag. He just moved her. That's all he claimed. But the evidence was there. They still didn't have a clear motive, though, only a suspect who talked in metaphors and acted like a victim all the time. This victim was also a father of two and a stepfather to one quiet teenager named Jalen, who years later would erupt into his own kind of violence in the same house on Chickasaw Avenue.

54:35Mike Boudet:The violence from both men was directed only at women. The women who raised Michael and her grandson Jalen and three other innocent women who just happened to cross the wrong path. Mike, you got the power. Obviously, she disrespected you. Obviously, she put you into that position. Something happened, bro. She made you have to show her. And now all I want you to do is just show me. We'll talk about whatever you want to talk about. You want to talk about the most recent one first, or you want to talk about another one? Whatever one you want, bro. In this tiny blue interrogation room that resembled a prison cell, detectives and Michael sat for hours on end, eating cheeseburgers from McDonald's as the questions came.

55:22Mike Boudet:one after another. While the barred window raised, Michael smoked black and mild cigars, the smoke mixing with the scent of sweat and making its way out the window to the sweltering streets of Cleveland. They were finally coming to understand this killer. I guess even before here, just pretty much knowing like them at 35 with no real background in school and no career, no 401K. Kids, a baby mama has part as evil as they become. You know, I'm a real compassionate dude when it comes to certain things. What kind of things? I just know people, people, but somewhere along the way I just lost, like I love, like I love female anatomy, but a man, a man, a man's, a man's manhood should never be compromised when it comes to a female who's never been a man.

56:34Mike Boudet:It was a simple but disturbing statement. In that one sentence, Michael revealed a cracked mirror of identity, pride, and resentment against women. In 2025 especially, it's not unusual to hear the voices of frustration from men who feel diminished in relationships and society at large. Still, his words, though wrapped in philosophical language, revealed a specific grievance. This was a man whose sense of self had been shaped and maybe shattered by the women around him. Still, nothing could justify the brutality that followed. He never offered a formal confession, not in so many words. But he did give what experts call a functional confession.

57:24Mike Boudet:That's when a suspect doesn't technically admit guilt, but their behavior shows it. They lead police to evidence only the killer would know. They describe crime scenes in detail. They help close the loop. Think of Ted Bundy, who helped investigators find remains even years after denying some of his murders. Or Israel Keyes, who mapped out the burial site of one of his victims despite refusing to name all of his crimes. It's not in what they say, it's in what they do. Michael finally took detectives to the bodies. The first was Sherilda Terry, the body found in the garage. The young girl just starting her life.

58:16Mike Boudet:Next was 28-year-old Shetisha Sheely, who had a daughter. Her body was discovered in a brush pile near the garage behind Michael's apartment. It was found in layers of heavy trash bags, the same method used for the other victims. Forensic examination was limited due to decomposition, but there were signs of trauma and possible strangulation. Shatisha had bruises on her face, and her clothing had ligature marks. Last to be found was 38-year-old Angela Deskins. She was discovered days after the first body in a musty basement of an abandoned house near Michael's apartment. Angela was a quiet woman with a soft voice trying to piece her life back together.

59:06Mike Boudet:She had once worked as a hairdresser, someone who brought beauty to others, but she struggled to get by and pull her own life together. Someone introduced her to Michael. He seemed somewhat safe enough and had a calm personality. That was all it took. June 7th, they tell us that's when they last saw Angela, and since then they say they have been frantically searching for her. But this week, police confirmed their worst fear that cops had found her body, that 38-year-old's body. Investigators right now aren't saying how she died. Cops discovered her remains in a backyard Saturday near Shaw Avenue.

59:47Now, new this morning, a statement from the family, quote, Angela Daskins was a beautiful, sweet, kind hearted woman. She was raised in Novelty, Ohio, by her father, Robert Daskins, and her stepmother, Linda Daskins. Everyone who knew her loved her. She was a wonderful daughter, sister, and aunt who truly cared about her family and friends. She is loved so much and will be missed by everyone who knew her.

1:00:12Mike Boudet:In the days after Michael's arrest, neighbors were quick to share their memories, not about him, but about his mother, Diane Madison, and what she'd been through. Everyone spoke highly of her. I want her to be remembered as someone who cared deeply for her children, someone who cared passionately about her community. She was just a fine person. I'm a better person for having known her. Michael loved his mother. He admitted this openly. But he also alluded to neglect. What he didn't do in the interrogation was throw her under the bus. But the defense did that for him at the trial. The trial formally started in April of 2016.

1:00:57Mike Boudet:By early May, Madison had been convicted on all counts. Three counts of aggravated murder, three counts of kidnapping, three counts of gross abuse of a corpse, three counts of rape, and one count of possession of criminal tools. The following week, the court turned to mitigation evidence, opening the door for a glimpse into Michael's upbringing. Underneath the calm exterior of the woman next door, the community activist and loving mother and grandmother, the defense painted an entirely different portrait. They described Diane as cruel, neglectful, and violently abusive. Michael's attorneys revealed years of torment that started in childhood, documented by an expert clinical psychologist who evaluated Michael and examined his records.

1:01:50Mike Boudet:They said Diane beat him regularly, locked him in closets, and even forced him to eat feces. It didn't stop there. The defense told the court he was also sexually abused and emotionally abandoned. They argued that Diane's abuse left scars so deep that they helped shape the monster he would later become. During the victim impact statement given by Sherelda's father, chaos broke out in the courtroom when, for some reason, he stopped mid-sentence and lunged across tables towards Michael. He started attacking him and had to be pulled off. His sister later clarified what happened at that moment. During the sentencing, you have the families there, and they're pouring out their hearts and saying how they're going to miss their families and what their families meant to him.

1:02:43And he's sitting over there smiling, which caused my brother to launch at him. To him, he heard, fuck the daughter, excuse me, the life of my daughter, the life of my niece, the life of our baby, whom we called heaven. And OK, so it was horrible to be that close, to have to breathe his air, to be in the same room with a person that is so horrible and don't even care. He don't care. He was he was laughing when she gave him the death penalty.

1:03:12Mike Boudet:You heard it. At the end of the trial, no mitigating circumstances were going to stand in the way of justice. Michael Madison has now spent nearly a decade on Ohio's death row. He was sentenced on June 2, 2016, and was scheduled to die by lethal injection on May 20, 2021. But an unofficial moratorium on executions has stalled all lethal injections in Ohio since 2020. Want to know why? Why? Well, they're waiting for an alternative execution method in place of lethal injection. You see, they can't get their hands on the right drugs to make the deadly cocktail. They can put dogs and cats to sleep all day long.

1:04:07Mike Boudet:All the strays, put them all to sleep in a humane way, we're told. But they can't get the cocktail right for humans. Isn't that strange? It's almost as if they don't want to, and are just hiding behind some bullshit regulation in order to not do it, despite what the populace might have voted for already. Doesn't sound very democratic, does it? Anyway, for now, this asshole is still alive, as the system that condemned him sits frozen in time, almost by design. I am struck by the sheer inhumanity of what one human being can do to not one, but three human beings. It is incomprehensible. You cajoled, lured, and deceived Shetisha Sheely, Angela Deskins, and Sherelda Terry to your apartment for your depraved purposes.

1:05:15You went on to abuse the corpses of these three victims. You stripped them from the waist down. You folded them in half, binding them so that their feet were up by their ears. You wrapped them in multiple layers of trash bags, and you discarded them.

1:05:35Mike Boudet:This killer didn't just kill out of nowhere. His crimes were monstrous, but they happened after unresolved festering thoughts from a long and tangled legacy of suffering. Then you add the alcohol and possibly drugs and poof, you get a Soren Scale episode. Lucky you. Decades later, in a cramped Cleveland apartment, a young Michael was beaten, locked in closets, humiliated, and allegedly forced to eat feces by the very person who was supposed to protect him, his mother, Diane Madison. a woman the public celebrated after her death. Later, he was allegedly sexually abused by one of her boyfriends.

1:06:23Mike Boudet:Michael felt emotionally discarded and shoved through the cracks of a system that barely noticed he was falling. Then came Tania Plummer, the mother of his child who, according to Michael, belittled him and called him less than a man. A man's manhood, he said, should never be compromised by a female who's never been a man. That quote may sound absurd on the surface, but beneath it lies a cold bit of truth. One that points to a deeper identity crisis, especially among men raised in trauma, by women who are in trauma themselves. It's a warped belief born in pain and shaped by powerlessness. It's an endless loop.

1:07:09Mike Boudet:I don't know how the fuck we get out of. Do you have any ideas? And then came Jalen, Diane's grandson. The quiet boy who watched all of this unfold. Who once lived under the same roof as Michael. In 2019, Jalen, just 18 years old, would creep into Diane Madison's home and stab her to death in her own bed. He didn't just kill her, he nearly decapitated her. He pleaded guilty in 2021 and is serving a life sentence, with eligibility for parole in 30 years. His brother, sister, cousin, and sad little dog all survived the incident and remained in the care of their mother, Tania Plummer. So here is the question.

1:08:04Mike Boudet:Did Jalen inherit the same demons that haunted Michael? Was this demonic possession some sort of poltergeist in this house of horror? Or do we accept a more rational explanation? Did Jalen learn violence by watching his uncle in and out of his life bringing stories of abuse and death with him? Did Diane really change into the person neighbors claimed? Or did the darkness inside that house simply go unnoticed until it exploded again? Did the systems America has in place fail both of these men? or did society simply stop asking the hard questions and stop doing the hard things once the bodies were found in the end does it all really matter anyway it should we all have this feeling in the back of our mind that it should we should do better at raising all of our children we should have a safer and happier and more mentally sound civilization.

1:09:19Mike Boudet:It started with the allegations of abuse at the hands of one woman. Two men carried it forward, and three innocent women, in addition to Diane herself, paid the ultimate price. Not one of them deserved to die.

1:09:55Mike Boudet:That's going to do it this week. Thank you for joining us. I invite you to go check out our latest episode of Sword and Scale Television entitled Home. Easily one of the most fucked up things you'll ever see. I promise.

1:10:13Thank you.

1:10:58Honestly, I've been spending way more time with animals and coins than ever before because dating right now is a full-blown circus. Clowns everywhere. If I wanted chaos, I'd open my inbox. So I go home, kick off my shoes, and dive into animals and coins. Build a village that doesn't fall apart. Collect adorable animals that don't ghost you. Raid people who actually deserve it. Zero mixed signals, only pure enjoyment. If you're exhausted by the emotional gymnastics, choose something that actually delivers. Download Animals and Coins right now and reclaim your peace.