145: What if your best friend met a tragic fate? 41:05

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I don't like surprises. I don't like not having 100% of the details. I really want to know what brought him to that. You know, I really want to know why. Welcome to the Permatemp Corporation. A presentation of the audio podcast, This Is Actually Happening. Episode 145, What If Your Best Friend Met a Tragic Fate?

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I grew up in a suburban area in southern Florida. It was mostly me and my mom. I did have a stepdad on and off during that time, but as far as I was concerned, it was me and my mom, and it had been that way for quite some time.

It wasn't too bad. I would say it was, you know, middle class. We definitely weren't rich, but my mom always made it a point to make sure that we had vacations. She'd drive me up to Disney and she had always made it a point to put me in Boy Scouts as well. So I was a Boy Scout. That was also a big part of my life. I was just a regular kid just growing up in the suburbs.

I had friends. I wasn't the most popular person in the world, but I was in band. And through band, I was able to kind of have a nice little circle of friends that I could hang out with and had things in common with.

Band definitely played a big role in my life because I didn't have many friends and I'm very anxious when it comes to meeting new people. I can be very shy at first and being in the band kind of forced me to be in that social situation. I was constantly surrounded by people and through that I gained, you know, quite a few lasting friendships that I have till this day. It really blossomed, I think, more so when I started high school.

Putting myself out there and just starting to talk, starting to be a little bit more social than I was used to being and trying to be a little bit more outward was freshman year. Prior to the school year starting freshman year of high school, we were required to do like a band camp type situation where we would come in and start learning the music and learning how to march because it was marching band.

Standing outside and seeing all these familiar faces from middle school that I kind of already knew, that's when something clicked inside of me and I really wanted to kind of come out a little bit more out of my shell and be a little bit more social. And that's really where I felt safe, for lack of a better term. And that's where I met Mike.

I don't remember the exact initial interaction. I remember that we all came to this camp together and there was faces that we didn't recognize, faces that didn't come from our middle school. We sat near each other and I had asked him, and this was really early on, I had a little bit of a mouth on me and I asked him why he didn't curse.

And I just I always remember him saying because he wasn't sure, you know, like, what if there is a heaven? He doesn't want to be the kid that like shows up there. And then every single bad word that he's ever said is then given back to him. And I think back at that now, knowing how this story ends and it's a weird juxtaposition. We were all kids, but he just seemed more wholesome.

And I also remember his parents, they had adopted him at a very, very young age when he was a baby. But I remember just seeing them and how they were always there for him. They'd bring him, you know, breakfast sandwiches and whatnot. And they were always visible and they were always supportive. Just this wholesome family. And it's kind of hard to kind of hone in on what it was specifically, but

But it just seemed like, regardless of the fact that he was adopted, they just seemed like that wholesome American family. That in some ways, if I'm really honest about it, I kind of envied because I never really had that. I wouldn't call my home broken necessarily. My mom did the best that she could, but my father had left at a very, very young age, so...

I never had that whole family and I never really got along with my stepdad. So yeah, I think that there was a certain element of envy there. I always liked that like when I went to his house, he always had all these cool toys that I loved. Like it was an old TV show called Exo Squad and he had like the whole collection. He'd always had computers and I'd never had a computer in my life at that point. On the outside, it seemed like he had everything that I wanted.

The way that everything kind of came into play was super sudden because to my understanding, he had been sick and he thought he had strep. I remember being at the library and my mom coming up to me just bawling and she was telling me that Mike was in the hospital and that he was in a coma. So my understanding of it was that everyone had thought that he had had strep

So he had gone to the doctor and they had sent him home and eventually he got really, really sick and he started getting these red marks on his body. So after we had found out, they had to race us to the hospital. Myself and another one of my really good friends, both of us were told that we had to go to the hospital because they needed to give us a shot. I'd imagine it was a vaccination of some sort.

So we had to sit in the hospital knowing that my friend was in a comatose state and I was the closest one to the both of us where we both sat on each side of him. So we were in the closest radius. So there was a possibility that we might get sick as well. By the time I actually got to see him, he was in a coma in a hospital room in the ICU. And I just remember thinking,

so vividly. I just remember just big empty room with just machinery everywhere and a ton of my friends had already gotten there before me and a lot of them were crying.

And he was just laying there with just, there's machinery everywhere. If I recall, there was hoses and he had retained water. So he was a little, he was bigger than I remember him being. And it was scary seeing my friend that way. That's one of the most vivid images that I remember is just seeing him there, just lying there comatose. It wasn't until later that we found out that he had contracted bacterial meningitis and

and I believe something, I believe Meningococcus as well. He was in a coma for quite some time, I would say for weeks. I believe at that point I was around 15, 16, because I believe it was sophomore year. We were trying out for, I think, like all-county band, and I remember being at the audition and Mike's girlfriend coming up to me, or coming up to us, and he's like, you know, Mike's awake. Right after the audition, we went to go see him,

The red marks on his body had gone necrotic. So all of the red marks which were on his hands, on his feet, they had all turned black and they had all shriveled. So his fingers by that point looked like just black raisins, you know, just long, dried out decay. I remember him asking, he's like, so are you guys scared of me now? And we weren't. There was obvious concern, but it wasn't fear.

It was relief that our friend was there. He seemed happy to see us, but I think he might have been overwhelmed, maybe tired. Just kind of shook up with the fact that, you know, I went to sleep and I didn't look like this. And I hate to say it like that, but it was a drastic change. Meningitis comes in either viral or bacterial. And from my understanding, he got the bacterial meningitis. No one really knew where it came from.

or where he contracted it from. There's that kind of worry in the back of my head, you know, like, are they going to be able to save any of his limbs? Are they going to, you know, is he going to be okay? I don't remember the exact timeline. I just remember the doctors not knowing how much of his body was going to be able to be saved. You know, eventually his fingers went, most of one of his hands went.

Most of the arms were intact, heavily grafted, but he had a wrist, like right at the wrist, and then half of like a palm, no fingers, nothing like that. And most of his lower legs were gone. But every limb had a bit of amputation to it. Most of his body or a large percentage of his body was

would eventually have to be grafted as well. So he was scarred significantly by the end of it. He would eventually get prosthetics for his legs. He had prosthetics for his arms as well, but he never used them. He only used the leg ones.

It would take years of rehabilitation, you know, before he was up like walking on his prosthetics. He was in a wheelchair for a long time, a motorized wheelchair. But it was a long, long process. I just remember when we were at the children's hospital, another boy had contracted meningitis and he didn't make it. So it was obvious from the get-go that he had been lucky.

There was a lot of media coverage. He opened a scholarship in his name. Once he was able to kind of move his wrist around and his arm around, he'd still play computer games. Like, they got him a laptop. A lot of it was, how does he live a normal life from this point on? So they'd look into, like, getting him voice assistance hardware for his laptop. He would still play games, and, you know, eventually he got his wheelchair repaired.

Given the situation was kind of cool because you know, he got his wheelchair. He hadn't quite gotten his prosthetics yet So he had this really fast electric wheelchair and he'd always let us use it I just remember that as everything progressed he was still just a kid and we were all still just kids Eventually, you know once he got out of the hospital He eventually did stay in the band

He played the keyboard for a bit. And I think they tried to alter a trombone for him because his dad played the trombone. We went to homecoming. And that was a big thing, having him come out to homecoming. It was a slow process. But, you know, eventually normalcy kind of started creeping in. Him and his girlfriend broke up.

I don't think anyone ever faulted her for that. I think that she hung in there a lot longer than a lot of people would have because I remember him already being out when they broke up, and I might be incorrect with that, but they stayed friends. We all stayed friends. So it wasn't a normal childhood, but it was as normal as it could be.

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where UF is a couple times, you know, to throw parties with him. He had joined a fraternity, like a band fraternity, I believe. So he was, you know, he was making friends. He was acclimating the best he could. I don't remember the specifics of why he wanted to move, but I remember driving to help him move and then bringing his stuff back to Orlando. He had found this awesome little, like,

loft townhouse kind of place. It was on the second floor and then it was a two story and it had like a hot tub. It had all these like cool little bachelor amenities and it was near the downtown area and it was just an awesome place. And I was there.

Most of the time, once he really moved to Orlando, our friendship and our bond got that much greater. Like I said, I mean, we had been friends and we were definitely close friends by the time everything had happened to the point where I had run into some

financial difficulties, I think either freshman or sophomore year, and without even asking, gave me this $1,600 to help me with what I needed, because I think I was going to get kicked out of my apartment and then some, because I'd struggled financially when it came to being in school. I did work, but it wasn't enough, and I was trying at that point to survive.

I don't know the specifics of it, nor do I know how much he got, but I know that he was very well off after everything had happened and he didn't mind sharing it. He kind of always watched out for me and I never really had to ask him to do that. And he never expected a dime in return. Here's a kid who has half of his palm and a wrist and

And he's really great at games. You know, he'd buy stuff and I'd cook it and we'd just play video games all day or an all night. You know, if I wasn't working, I was spending time with him and we would just hang out. My 21st birthday, I'd thrown this party with friends and everything. And I was just kind of making a statement. You know, we were just kind of talking and going out to dinner. And I was like, you know, I didn't really, you know, I threw this giant party, but I don't really know what I'm going to do on my actual birthday. So I don't, you know, I'm trying to plan it out.

And he just looks at me nonchalantly and he's like, oh, we should go to Vegas. I was like, that's not funny. I can't afford Vegas. That's not something I can do. And he just looks at me and he's like, yeah, we're going to go to Vegas. And we went back to his apartment and he booked us two first class round trips to like tickets to Vegas at the Palms Hotel. So I kind of called out of work and we went to Vegas. You know, we just did it.

I eventually ended up moving a little bit further, still in the Orlando area, but I had moved in with some friends. And by that point, I was working a lot. I wasn't in school anymore. I was mostly working and just trying to live in Orlando. We would still hang out and he would come over or I would go over there. He would start driving and eventually he had started dating somebody who he would ultimately get married to.

For all intents and purposes, they seemed really happy. So seeing all these little milestones, you know, getting married, you know, getting his own place, getting his own car. He was self-sufficient. All in all, he was doing his best to live as normal of a life as possible. And he was doing a pretty damn good job of it. He messaged me out of the blue one day saying that he wanted to start a company. And he asked me to move back up and I could live with him forever.

And we were going to try to start this little like tech support company. We started it and we started to advertise for it. We'd drive around and leave pamphlets and whatnot. And he started it officially like it got incorporated. But it never seemed to kind of come into fruition. And that would be a trend in Mike's life that he couldn't hold a stable job. He was still financially well off.

He had bought a house, but he was home a lot. Eventually, I would meet a girl who would ultimately become my wife. Shortly after we started dating, a couple months down the line, she got pregnant. So I ended up moving in with her so that we could raise our child. And, you know, I was with her for a bit and we started to have some problems. So I kind of ended up moving back in with him while I worked.

and kind of just try to get my life back together in some way, shape or form. If I wasn't working or if I wasn't spending time with my son, we'd spend hours just playing games and like screaming at each other from across the house because his computer room was on one side of the house and my room was on the other. And it was cathartic, I guess, for lack of a better term, because I don't know how I would have done that alone. My girlfriend and I kind of

re-established our relationship and I would eventually move back in with her and they were at my wedding and I had another son. Also around that time and maybe a little bit before that is when he kind of started to show an interest in guns. Someone had broken into his house and they had come home just in time to like for the guy to be leaving or whoever it was. He had I believe a

two AR-15s in the house and he would go to the shooting range and fire them and like he'd take friends and go and you know fire them. I just remember those two things kind of showing up around that time like I knew that the guns were there but I never felt threatened by them in any way. After certain incidences he just didn't want to live in Florida anymore so they ended up moving to Georgia. Throughout our entire friendship Mike loved to drink.

like a lot. It didn't seem like a problem growing up because so many people drink when you're around that age, but looking back at it, you see that he really did have an issue with drinking for years. I remember him getting so drunk that he started hitting my window on my car. I was driving us back to the house and he was like slamming my car window and I was really afraid that he was going to break it while I was driving.

We were at a, like a club of some sort and he got angry and I don't remember what he got angry at. He just slammed his hand down on the glass, like his palm, and it shattered the glass. So I saw these little instances, these little flashes of anger, but I never really paid much attention to them. So, I mean, with that being said, I don't know the specifics of what caused the problems or

in the marriage. I do know that he had sunk into a bit of a depression because he was having a hard time getting a job. And I just remember that she had told me that the drinking had become a big issue. And eventually it just came to the point where he told me that he was going to be moving in with his parents. His parents were also living in Orlando at this point.

We never really got super deep into his personal feelings on anything. He was always kind of mysterious when it came to stuff like that. But I could kind of tell, you know, just piecing it together that, you know, if he was coming back home, it wasn't for good reasons. So clearly they were having issues. Ever since I knew him, he was always okay financially.

And now I don't think he had the house anymore. I think the house went into foreclosure. So the house was gone and he didn't have any money and he was now living with his parents. So first chance I got to hang out after he had told me he was back in town, you know, I told him, it's like, Hey, you know, I'm going to go out with a friend. Why don't you come join us so you can get out for a bit? And he said, by that point, he didn't have funds. So he would take a rain check.

Okay, well, maybe I'll take some time during the week or something and we'll go have lunch or something or I'll go see him and his parents because his parents love me. But I didn't think that that conversation was going to be the last conversation that we ever had. I was at work and I just remember my wife calling me at the time. I picked up the phone and she was bawling. I picked up the phone and she was like, Mike just killed his parents. And I was like, what?

Because it didn't make sense. It was unreal at that point. Like, that doesn't make sense. My wife was at home alone, and she was afraid because she didn't know if he would come to our house next. I left work, and again, it's one of those things where, like, what do you do? You know, like, he just killed his parents. You know, like, who else is he going to go after? Is he not going to go after anybody? I didn't know, you know, so I went home.

I remember calling the police and just letting them know that I knew that he had two AR-15s, which I guess they didn't know at that point. I had spoken to the detective. I was at home kind of comforting my wife. I was angry. I was scared. I was upset. You know, like, what do you do? And I remember he had asked me if he could live with us for a little bit because before he had made it back to his parents' house...

He had lived with one of my friends and they eventually told him that he couldn't stay too much longer because he had kids and he was with his wife and like, you know, they just couldn't have that extra guest there. And I didn't think that he would want to live at my house because my house was really hectic with the three kids. And I didn't know if he would be angry at me for that or I don't know if he was just going after whoever he could. But I remember asking the cop if he could send a patrol car to

every couple hours just to make sure that everything was on the up and up in the neighborhood. He didn't even say no. All he said was, if he shows up at your house, you do what you need to do to protect your family. And that statement has stuck with me to this day because the implication that if my best friend were to show up at my house with hostile intent, he was suggesting that I take the actions necessary to make sure that my family is okay.

It kind of just stuck with me, you know? So that night I barricaded the doors shut and we had a, we had a sliding glass door. So I slept by the, I didn't even sleep. I stayed by the sliding glass door all night, um, making sure that nobody showed up. And it was one of the scariest emotionally exhausting nights I've ever experienced because you just don't know.

I'm just worried. I don't know what his intentions are or were. So I don't know if it's, you know, justified to be afraid or justified to think that he might, you know, come after me. But if he went after his parents, who I thought he loved, there's no telling who he'd go after next or if he would go after anyone next. So it was this dread mixed with uncertainty. And that's what that night was.

Was constantly looking at the door, constantly looking at the window, listening for any sound that sounds out of the ordinary. And just fear and fear and just questioning and just, it was just traumatic. And that's where like your mind starts racing, where like, what would have happened had I seen him, you know, Sunday? Like that's where it starts and everything.

That's where a lot of my feelings that I still kind of hold to this day start and like where I kind of felt like I failed my friend. You can host the best backyard barbecue when you find a professional on Angie to make your backyard the best around. Connect with skilled professionals to get all your home projects done well. Inside to outside, repairs to renovations. Get started on the Angie app or visit Angie.com today.

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and I believe he cleared out him and his wife's bank account as well. And he proceeded to go on the run. I remember messaging him. I still have the messages to this day, asking him, you know, what had happened and could he please, you know, just talk to me. You know, I would like to talk to him even if it was just the last time, see if maybe he would turn himself in or see what his intentions were, like see if I could get some answers. And he never messaged me back. I don't know if he got the messages or

I just remember that I never heard from him again. The main question was why. Throughout the years, I could definitely tell that there was a little bit of a rift between him and his parents where there were certain things that he didn't like. And I know that his wife didn't like them to a certain extent. I always just attributed it to, you know, at a certain age, everyone might

have a little bit of disdain for their parents, you know, like, because they think they know more, whatever it might be. I thought it was just like a phase because his parents had moved up to Orlando to be closer to him. So I don't know if maybe he thought they were being overbearing. I never really knew a lot about where that feeling came from, but I knew that some of it was from his dad. I would say his dad loved him, but his dad definitely had a weird way of showing it sometimes. And he was very, I don't know, it's kind of hard to explain.

It wasn't until later that I found out that his dad was left unidentifiable from his face. From what I remember being told, it almost looked like he went after his dad first. And I think his mom was shot in the back. So I think it was meant to stop her from either doing something or I don't know if she was protecting. I don't know the specifics of it. I don't have answers. I don't have closure about it, but...

Yeah, it was a weird night, to say the least. From my understanding from the reports and everything like that, he had made it out of Florida. And I'd spoken a couple years later to his wife about it. And I think she thinks that he was kind of heading towards like someplace remote, someplace where he could just get away. So he got pulled over for making an illegal U-turn. And from my understanding, and I might be slightly wrong in this,

As the cop was getting ready to walk towards the car, he heard a popping sound. So by the time the cop got to the car, he had already killed himself. And I believe, you know, that was just him knowing that, you know, he'd been pulled over. It was only a matter of time before they pinpointed what he had done. And I never got the answers that I wanted. I don't know if I necessarily deserve them, if it was necessarily any of my business, but never in a thousand years would I have thought that it would have been him.

Because like I said, I think about that wholesome kid who wouldn't even curse because he thought that he might get to heaven and he'd be held responsible for every time he said a bad word. That kid had now murdered his parents and I couldn't make sense of it no matter how hard I tried. I think back to that time that he broke the glass. I think back to that time that he punched the window in my car. And I think back to how much he drank. And I just see these little signs everywhere.

Had I hung out with him, could I have changed his mind? Would that have been enough to change his mind? Or even worse, if I had hung out with him, would he have taken my life? It kind of brought this sense of blame. Like I felt like I should have been there for my friend who's been there for me. It's to this day, it leaves me with the sense of like, could I have stopped it?

And I don't know if that's arrogant of me to think that I would be able to say something that would be the catalyst, but like, I'll never know. People are going to jump to, oh, well, he's a bad person. But at the same time, you know, the flip side of that coin is I knew the part of him that wasn't bad. He never spoke ill of me. He never, you know, he never hit me, you know, like, yeah, I saw moments of aggression, but they were never aimed at me.

He did terrible things and I feel like you do a terrible thing, I guess that should make you a terrible person, but that's something that I'm conflicted with every day. Part of me hates what he did, part of me hates him for it, but part of me just wishes that my friend was still here. Part of me remembers the person that he was. When they had the funeral for his parents, it was in Orlando, and so...

A bunch of us had come, you know, like there was family and everything. And I just remember the urns sitting there. And I just remember walking up to them before leaving and walking up to the urn and just saying, I'm sorry. You know, I'm sorry. I couldn't fix it. And like I said, to this day, like I hold this blame. Like I wasn't there for my friend. And I feel like if I could have been, then maybe I could have changed something. I'm the kind of person where I like to know answers. I don't like questions.

I don't like surprises. I don't like not having 100% of the details. I really want to know what brought him to that. You know, I really want to know why. And I want to know why he didn't reach out to me. I want to know why I didn't get to say goodbye, as odd as that sounds. Like, I don't know. I wish that he didn't take his life. And it's one of those things where it's the second time in my life that I've had to come to terms with, like, mortality being a very real thing.

And one of the things that I ask myself all the time is, is I don't know what comes next. You know, I don't know if if there's a heaven, I don't know if there's an afterlife or I don't know if it's all just black, you know, if everything just ends. But I also know that I'm not in a hurry to find out. So I wish I knew, you know, what was going on through his head afterwards.

Was life so terrible that he would risk nothingness just because he wanted it to stop? Because whatever came next, even if it was oblivion, was better than what he was feeling at that time. Those are the big questions that are constantly plaguing me. And I mean, it'll be perfectly fine one moment and the next moment it'll strike me. You know, it'll come out of nowhere. Or, you know, some of my friends ask me about it.

The hardest is it's become a Florida Man article. So every once in a while, it'll pop up on Facebook and I'll see it as a mockery. Like people will treat it as a joke. Like to see people kind of laugh it off and kind of see it as foolish is hurtful. You know, I ultimately ended up getting divorced. And I think one of the things that, one of the most hurtful things that I ever heard coming from that was my wife was afraid that I might turn out like he did.

which I wouldn't in a million years, and to even hear that was in and of itself kind of traumatic. I wouldn't say I'm 100% back to who I was before that. I can't say that there's one specific thing that makes me different,

I just know that I'm not the same and it's hard to pinpoint it. You know, I hate to say this, but I'll try to joke about it because that's how I grieve. I tend to grieve by making fun of things or cracking jokes to hide the fact that I'm still very much hurt. It's added like an extra element of anxiety in my life and sometimes depression where I'll just, you know, I'll just think about him and I'll just get really down.

But I don't think I would ever do the things that he did. I kind of ask myself, like, what's the threshold when it comes to that? Like, how much could I deal with before I ever got to that point? Again, it just gives me another what if. You know, what if I did? You know, what if I could? I don't think I could, but I didn't think he could. I know that I suffered from depression. I know that I suffered from things like anxiety just to begin with. And it was never terrible, but, you know, I'd have my bouts.

but I never thought that he did. You know, I always thought that he was just, I thought that he made it. I thought that he'd survived. I thought that he faced these insurmountable odds and he came out of it better than I ever could. I looked up to him for that. I don't know. Looking back at it, I wish I had said something. I wish I had told him that he has anger issues. I wish that, you know, everything's I wish. Everything's I wish I could have.

I try to rationalize my way through it. Obviously, I'm not the one that pulled the trigger. Yeah, it just sneaks up on me. I'll tell people, when I tell the story, I always tell them, I feel like I was partially responsible, and everyone's like, well, you're not. I was like, yeah, I mean, I understand that, but your brain still has a habit of being like, but maybe you were. Maybe there was something I could have done, and that's where that guilt comes from. It definitely has changed my perspective on good and bad.

It's about as gray as it can be. I don't see him as a villain. He did villainous things. He did evil things. He did horrendous things. But at his core, at his best, he was a good person. And he made a terrible decision. And I don't know what the cause of that decision was. But I don't see him as a bad guy. I feel like he needed help and he didn't get help.

It kind of makes me think back and I wish I had the exact quote, but I remember reading Julius Caesar when I was in high school.

When he's being buried and they say something along the lines of the evil that men do lives on, but the good is often turned in their bones. Like no one thinks about the good that he did. You know, like no one knows that he bailed me out when I needed him. No one knows that he fed me when I didn't have money. I remember that person. You know, I remember the adventures that we had and like that wasn't the person that did this.

And no, I don't think that people are just good or bad. I think that sometimes bad people do good things. And I think that sometimes good people do bad things. And we, it's not, it's not as simple as he was a bad guy because the fact of the matter remains is there's so many questions. It's a weird sensation. I mean, people often like, people always ask me like, how did you deal with it? I mean, I mean, you just do. Like, you'll never get to see my kids grow up. We'll never...

You know, play games again. Like I don't even, I don't even use my computer anymore. I'll still play video games on like the console, but I stopped playing the game that we used to play. I wouldn't, I wouldn't touch it. It's weird. You do your best to move on from it and you're just, you just always feel a little bit different.

It gets me like every once in a while, I'll go into like that rabbit hole of like, what does come next? Like, will I, you know, one day I'm going to die, honestly, obviously, but will it be nothingness? Will it be heaven? Will it be hell? Will I ever see him again? I don't know. I just, I hope wherever they are, all three of them, I hope they're happy. I hope they're at rest. I hope they're at peace. This is Actually Happening is brought to you by me, Witt Misseldein.

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Hey, I'm Mike Corey, the host of Wondery's podcast, Against the Odds. In each episode, we share thrilling true stories of survival, putting you in the shoes of the people who live to tell the tale. In our next season, it's July 6th, 1988, and workers are settling into the night shift aboard Piper Alpha, the world's largest offshore oil rig.

Home to 226 men, the rig is stationed in the stormy North Sea off the coast of Scotland. At around 10 p.m., workers accidentally trigger a gas leak that leads to an explosion and a fire. As they wait to be rescued, the workers soon realize that Piper Alpha has transformed into a death trap. Follow Against the Odds wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app.