Sword and Scale Nightmares - Lobotomized

Episode Date: November 6, 2024

Tammy thought she met the man of her dreams when she started dating Joseph Oberhansley. He was younger than her and she found him handsome. But when he slowly became controlling and she discovered the secret of his horrible past she broke it off. Only then did Joe reveal his true self and Tammy never stood a chance.

Patrolman McGee picks up his mic and responds to dispatch's call at 2 52 a.m. Please respond to Locust Street for domestic dispute. Frightened, Tammy Blanton tells the dispatcher her ex-boyfriend Joe is knocking on the door and walking back and forth from the front of the house to the back talking about being a god. McGee picks up his pace as Cruiser roars through the streets en route to Locust Street, another typical third shift he thinks to himself. Dispatch interrupts his thought with news that the ex-boyfriend has escalated his behavior. The woman on the phone describes him ragefully kicking the back door.

The dispatcher relays the woman's situation in real time. He has threatened her in the past. She suspects he's schizophrenic. McGee arrives and notes the past. She suspects he's schizophrenic. McGee arrives and notes the time, seven minutes since the call. He parks on the street and gets out of his cruiser. He hangs his hands on his hips as he approaches the house. Movement from the side of the house catches his attention and he turns to look. He sees a man in a blue shirt, obviously frustrated. His eyes are squinted with a furrowed brow, his mouth twisted into a frown.

McGee gets his attention, talks to him, and explains why he's there. Joe tries to explain his side of things, but he's so angry, so frustrated. He just can't articulate his thoughts. Patrolman McGee keeps his distance as Joe starts slamming his fists into his hand while pacing the front porch. He claims he owns the house and the boat in the driveway. But while he was at work, his girlfriend changed the locks. Just then another officer arrives.

McGee was happy for the backup but kept his attention on Joe. The other officer went inside to talk with Tammy. She tells him Joe is her ex but she doesn't want him coming around anymore, so she had her dad change the locks. When she explained Joe had lived there for nearly a month and a half, the officer stopped her. He explained that by law, Joe had established a residence there. Isn't that funny? Just by being there. He had his belongings and even his car in the backyard. He explained there was a proper way to get him out, but that it wasn't just by changing the locks and that it wouldn't just happen overnight. When the other officer exits the

house, McGee confers with him. They both approach Joe and tell him that it is three in the morning and nothing is going to be accomplished tonight. They recommend he come back later and work things out. Joe reluctantly agrees and gets in his SUV and leaves. McGee lingers momentarily, and leaves. McGee lingers momentarily, then circles the block just to make sure he doesn't return. Welcome to Sword and Scale Nightmares. True crime for bedtime. Where nightmare begins now. Brenda Self is startled awake. Trying to blink away the blurriness in her eyes, she realizes her son

is in her bedroom. His dark figure is motionless in the pale blue light filtering through the blinds. He says he needs to talk. She rolls over with a tired sigh and looks at the alarm clock. It's 3.30 in the morning. She pushes herself up in bed and reaches for the bedside lamp. With a click, the room is basked in a warm yellow glow. What do you need to talk about? She asks him, but she already knows. Ever since he and his girlfriend broke up a couple of days before, he had been coming over a lot.

She listens as he tells her how upset he is that his girlfriend broke up with him. She hangs on his every word as he tells her she changed the locks and won't even talk to him. She rubs the sleep from her eye and confesses he even went to her work and tried to talk to her but was asked to leave. Brenda knows that has been weighing heavily on his mind. Between that and losing his job, she hasn't seen him this upset since. She quickly pushes the memory out of her mind, not wanting to relive the past.

She tries to console him, tries to help him understand everything will be alright, but he's frustrated. A pitiful look crosses her face as he leaves the room. She can see he's upset and her heart aches for her child. She reaches for the lamp and turns off the light when she hears a car door shut. In a rush, she throws the sheets back, adorns a robe, and hurries outside. She sees her son sitting in his SUV. She wraps her arms around her body, clutching the robe tight, and walks to the passenger door.

She opens the door and gets inside, but her son doesn't move an inch. She asks him if he's okay. He doesn't answer. His eyes staring off into the distance. She raises her voice, hey, and reaches for his hand. He never changes his gaze, but he does respond. She tries to offer him advice, but nothing seems to put his worry at ease. For a few moments, she tries to convince him that the world is not against him. A hard thing to get someone to believe when the opposite is often true. He listens, but she can tell it isn't making him feel better. She sits there for a lingering moment and just holds his hand, not knowing what else to do.

Then she gets out and watches as he puts the car in gear and backs down the driveway. She hopes he's going to be okay. As she goes back inside, turns off her lamp and lays back into her comfortable bed, she hopes nothing bad happens like last time. last time. Tami met Joe Oberhansley during the spring of 2014. Joe was 33, with little to his name. He had a menial job at a car dealership and lived with his mother. But Tami was a caring person with no children

and didn't mind a fixer-upper when she recognized a man in need. I can fix him, she thought. She'd been married four times before but was sure this guy would be different for some reason. He was a whirlwind relationship and by late June, Joe had moved some of his things into her home and began staying overnight often. But when Tammy's friends at work asked about him, she admittedly knew very little. They had talked about his past, but he was always very vague. One friend, Tanya, recommended searching for his name on the internet. Isn't that a Tanya thing to do? Timmy typed his name, Joseph Oberhansley, into the search bar, and she pressed enter.

In seconds, the screen was full of results. Oh, that's interesting. The reflection of the bright screen in her eyes grows as they widen in shock. And she reads headline after headline. This can't be true, she says out loud. She barely moves as Tanya impatiently turns the laptop to face her. Oh my God, she exclaims, snapping Tammy out of her temporary shock. Her and Tanya's surprised faces meet as she turns the laptop back around and clicks on the first link. Slowly, her mouth falls gape as she reads. A 17-year Joe comes home to find his five day old baby in his mother's arms.

He then turns his attention to Sabrina Elder, his baby's mama. Just looking at her he feels anger rise in him. His mind races. He regrets ever getting her pregnant and hates the fact that now she thinks she can live in his house with his family. He starts pacing up and down the hallway with his anger writhing inside of him. Suddenly he reaches into his bag, pulls out a loaded handgun, points it directly at Sabrina, and pulls the trigger. The gun recoils in his hand. He can smell the burnt gunpowder as he pulls the trigger again and again. His mother quickly

puts the baby down and rushes to help Sabrina. Her body slides out of the chair she was just in and crumples onto the floor. Even with his mother shielding Sabrina, Joe doesn't stop. The gun releases two more resounding bangs hitting his mother in the back, damaging her kidney and liver, and in the arm, shattering her bone. As soon as the shooting started and his mother put the baby down, his sister picked him up and ran from the home. Joe saw her spun around and shot at her, but narrowly missed. Sabrina lay under his mother, dead, from a gunshot wound to the head. His grandmother Norma ran from the kitchen to see what was going on.

Just in time to see Joe place the gun under his chin, lock eyes with her, and pull the trigger. He would survive the self-inflicted gunshot wound after spending three weeks in a coma. The bullet lodged in his frontal lobe, effectively giving him a partial lobotomy. Lobotomies were once touted as a miracle surgery pre-1970, treating and curing a myriad of inflictions,

from homosexuality to schizophrenia. We have a lot more of that these days and a lot less lobotomies, as you can probably tell. Doe would be convicted of manslaughter for the death of Sabrina and attempted murder for shooting his mom. He would spend 13 years of his life in prison, being released two years shy of his 15-year sentence. Not long after his release, he would move to Indiana to be with his mother, who had long since forgiven him for some reason. There he would serve out the remainder of his

parole. But just before it was due to run out, he met Tammy. Tammy slams the laptop shut. She doesn't want to read anymore. She turns to Tanya and tells her this doesn't change anything. He was just a kid back then, she explains. He's changed. She gets up from the table eager to change the subject, but she can tell that Tanya doesn't want to. In the months to follow, Tanya and others noticed Joe slowly taking control of Tammy's life. They all told her it was going to happen, and now it is. She became withdrawn and saw her friends less and less. She only saw Joe. He even gave himself access to her Facebook account so he could monitor her activity. It would take a couple more months before Tammy saw what exactly made her friends suspicious of Joe. In early September,

her company held a picnic at an amusement park. Tammy took Joe and by all accounts, they were a happy couple. But the following Monday at work, Tammy would ask a co-worker for help. She confided in her co-worker that Joe had raped her all weekend and wouldn't let her leave the house. She packed clothes in a computer bag when Joe was distracted. She didn't want him to know she intended to break up with him. Her friend would let her stay at her house. That night Joe called and Tammy answered. Tammy picks up the phone and slides her finger across the screen to answer it. Before she even says hello, she presses the speaker icon so her coworker can listen in. She watches

her coworker's expression flash between shock, anger, and empathy when he openly admits he raped her. Tammy mouths the words, I told you. She tells Joe, it's over. In a demanding voice, she says, No one, and I mean no one, gets to terrify me the way you did this Sunday. I will never forget that as long as I live. She tells him to get his stuff and get the fuck out of her house. I added the fuck part, by the way. Joe begs and pleads for her to just let him come get her so they can talk and he can manipulate her. But she wisely refuses.

She disconnects the call with a newfound confidence. She feels good after breaking it off. She feels free. The next day, at work, all the color rushed from Tammy's face when she turned around at her desk to see Joe. Her manager had to ask him to leave before calling the police. She stayed with her coworker the next night also. The following day, her dad changed the locks on her house and that night she felt safe enough to go

home. She texted her co-worker that evening, At the end of my day, I am claiming my life back. I worked too hard to get here. No one will take me down. Her experience with Joe left her feeling like a survivor with renewed promise of a full life ahead. But just to be safe, she locked all the windows and doors and she wedged a chair under the back doorknob. Six hours later at 3 a.m. she would call the police because Joe was banging on the back door. The following morning, her coworker arrived at work, but Tammy wasn't there. She waited until nine, but still Tammy was a no-show. She began texting and calling her repeatedly but got no answer. She called her from a work phone and someone picked up. The

voice on the other end said they were Tammy's brother, and she was with her dad who had a medical emergency overnight. The coworker called another friend of Tammy, and she tried calling her. But when she heard the voice on the other end of the phone, she knew immediately it wasn't her brother. When she asked, where's Tammy?

The voice pretended not to know what they were talking about and said they had the wrong number. That's when they decided to call the police for a welfare check. By 10am, officers were knocking on Tammy's door. The first thing that Captain Pavy does when he arrives at Tammy's house is run the plates on the SUV in the driveway It only takes a few seconds before the squawk from his radio confirms. It is Tammy's He walks down the driveway passing the vehicle and the boat behind it before turning and walking up the steps to the front porch He hears another officer's footsteps fade as he checks the back of the house.

Pavy raises his fist and wraps on the glass storm door. He waits, but there's no answer. The storm door squeaks as he opens it to knock on the main door. He knocks and listens. You can't hear any movement inside the house. The silence is broken when the officer in the back radios that the back door is ajar. Both officers feel a sudden sense of dread come over them, making the hairs on the back of their necks stand up. Pavy nearly jumps when the front door finally swings open. Inside, he can make out the figure of a white male standing a few feet from the storm door. He

says his name is Joe and that Tammy is not here. Pavy asks him whose car is in the driveway and knows that he's lying when he claims it's his. He asks Joe to come outside. It's hard to hear through the door. Joe reaches out to open the storm door when Pavy sees a fresh wound on his knuckle. Joe steps outside between the two officers. Pavy already doesn't trust him after he knows he's lied. He notices he seems slow to answer their questions, like he's making up an answer on the spot. He says he left his ID at work and wants us to go there with him to get it.

Pavy finds his eagerness to leave the home suspicious. The other officer, feeling the same suspicion, asks Joe to put his hands on the house and let them pat him down. When the officer mentions a pat down, Pavy sees Joe tense up, take a step back, and slightly reach for his back pocket. Pavy acts quickly and grabs his wrist with one hand pushing him towards the house with the other. In his back pocket was a folding knife. The knife, with a handle that doubled his brass knuckles, was covered in blood and blonde

hair. Officers entered the home and yelled for Tammy. As they walked through the home, they noticed dried blood on light switches and doorknobs. The back door, still in the locked position, had been busted open, leaving broken trim on the floor. As they walked down the hall, they noticed the bathroom door was also busted open. Inside the bathroom, even in the dark, they could tell there was blood everywhere, and in the tub was a bloody mound of some kind. The mound was draped in a camper's tent. Lifting the tent would reveal the crushed skull of Tammy Blanton.

Processing the scene would reveal even more disturbing details. The front part of Tammy's skull had been cut open and part of her brain removed, and the tub mixed with the blood or brain matter and pieces of skull. Her throat was slashed or stabbed so many times it looked like one big cut. The left side of her chest had a large wound, large enough to see her organs. Later, the autopsy revealed that in addition to portions of her brain, The autopsy revealed that in addition to portions of her brain, part of her lung and heart were also missing. In the kitchen, they found a fork, spoon, knife, and plate with bits of skull and blood on it. On the stove was a skillet and a pair of tongs with blood on the handles. In the skillet was a burned residue with a void in the middle where

whatever had been cooked was removed. In the dining room on the floor was a spread out tarp with bloody tools laid out. A steak knife, a butcher's knife, a screwdriver, and an electric jigsaw. All covered in blood. Detective Parker looks over his notes. The details coming from the scene were pretty damning to the man sitting across the table from him. He stares at Joe and asks him, why he is here. Joe calmly replies he didn't have his identification on him when the officer asked for it. What about Tammy?

Asks Parker. Joe claims he's not seen her in a couple days and that she stays at her dad's house or with friends. "'Didn't you have contact with police this morning?' Parker asks. Joe denies any contact, as if you can deny reality. Some criminals are just plain dumb. So is anyone that denies reality, by the way. Parker leans forward and tells Joe, I know you're lying. Joe replies,

my name is Steve. Parker's face turns perplexed, but he doesn't know how to respond. He just blurt out, so you don't know Tammy's dead? Joe nonchalantly replies, that's the first I've heard of it. This is going to be a long day. Parker thinks. Eventually Joe would tell a very different story. He claimed he went to Tammy's just to talk, but when he arrived, there were two black men already there. He claimed one attacked Tammy with a knife while the other held him at gunpoint. Then they ran and Joe chased them, but didn't catch them. He thought Tammy and the two men were planning to cut his head off

and eat his brain, but the men betrayed Timmy. When he returned to Timmy's, she was already dead, so he placed a ten over her body, but not before deciding to eat part of her brain because she was already dead, so who cares, right? Now, if you believe that story, then I've got an NFT to sell you." Parker's expression went blank. He leaned forward once more and told Joe, "...that story doesn't match the evidence. It sounds made up." Joe only complained about his head tingling, exclaiming,

"...I'm like electrifying right now." Parker got up and left the room, frustrated, of course. He let Joe stew for a while. Electrifying, whatever the hell that means. While alone, Joe seemed to talk to people that weren't there, saying, get back. Other times he would just make random buzzing noises. I wish we had the video for this one. Parker bursts back into the room and asks Joe, where's Tammy's heart? I ate it, he said. It's part of me now. But you didn't kill her, Parker questioned. Finally Joe revealed the truth. He said when he forced the back door open, Tammy was already

locked in the bathroom. Parker listened intently as Joe went over the details. He said he already had his knife in his hand and used it along with a little elbow grease to force open the bathroom door. He stopped for a moment, looked Parker in the eye and said, truth be told, like, she really wasn't all that scared, surprisingly. Then he detailed how she tried to hit him, but he attacked her with a knife and her body fell into the tub. He said he felt like he had to kill her before she killed him. He could hear her thoughts somehow. Joe would be charged with murder, burglary, and rape. It would take six years before he would make it to trial. Well, he made it to trial once before, but because a witness revealed

information that was barred from the case, the judge declared a mistrial. Then they couldn't find an untainted jury pool to draw from. Everyone had seemingly heard of the crime already. Between procedural delays, Joe was declared unfit to stand trial and then had his competency restored three times. Sounds scientific. Joe was prone to bizarre outbursts, claiming they had the wrong man, and his name was actually Zeus Brown. Yeah, yeah, that's what he claimed. Later he tried to fire his lawyers, claiming they were trying to control his thoughts,

of course. This is all part of the legal system, by the way. Dealing with crazy people who are seemingly everywhere these days. Eventually Joe would reach an actual trial, though. Joe refused to let his defense team use the insanity defense, so the prosecution took the death penalty off the table. Everyone except Joe could see he was mentally ill. I mean, it was friggin' obvious when someone's mentally ill. They say crazy dumb shit that you shouldn't believe and just accept as fact. The defense's only witness was Joe, and he took the stand to explain his innocence.

But after a few hours of deliberation, the jury convicted him of murder and burglary, but for some reason not rape. There just wasn't enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he raped her in the process of murdering her. Sometimes juries can be illogical. But during the sentencing, the jury took less than an hour to decide he needed to be sentenced to life in prison. Somehow, they came to the right conclusion. After all, quickly Joe tried to appeal the decision, but it was upheld.

He'll spend the rest of his life in prison. Tammy's horrible death still weighs heavily on her family. Brenda, Joe's mom, still stands by her son. As for Joe's son, he was put up for adoption after he killed his mother and went to prison. He never saw him again and hopefully he never will. If you enjoyed the show, please consider joining PLUS at swordandscale.com slash PLUS. But if you can't, consider leaving us a positive review on your preferred listening platform. Sweet dreams and good night.