CHAPTER ELEVEN: This One’s for Todd

By the end of December twenty twenty three, our team had wrapped up production on Hello John Dale. Todd and I talked a little bit about what we'd both do next, how excited we were about the show coming out, what kind of other unbelievable stories he'd come across that might warrant a second season. On January third of this year, I got a call from my editor Catherine.

Todd had passed away that morning.

He was only fifty three. I'm still not exactly sure how to process this. None of us are, but our team did what we knew we had to. We flew to Tennessee, paid our respects, and dedicated an episode to Todd Matthew's remarkable life.

We do have a very full flight this morning, so if we do have a larger roller release, but it.

Is Wales first.

We couldn't let Todd go to the other side of the veil without a proper goodbye, and we wanted to finish what Todd started. Reached back out to Steve one last time to see what it all meant to him. My name is Kate Michigan and this is Hello John Doe. A sleuth, a family and a serial killer. The story of a family torn apart by tragedy and Todd's quest to break them back together. This is Chapter eleven, the first of three bonus episodes.

This one's for Todd.

Todd'stown, Livingston, Tennessee, is about an hour and a half outside of Nashville, a little sleepy and tucked away between mountains and trees. It was just a few days after the New year. The trees were barren gray. Todd's visitation was at a funeral home right next to the clothing boutique his wife, Florrie ran.

And so today we gather to honor and to celebrate the remarkable life of Todd Matthews.

There was so many people there, a lot of people. They were weaving us back and forth in the pews, and all I could do was watch that little TV thing showed dollar pictures.

You know, that's Rosemary Westbrook. You might remember her from our first episode. She's the sister of Tent Girl, the very first woman Todd helped identify, the one that basically changed his life and obviously changed hers.

It was a lot of thoughts running through your head of many years past.

Rosemary and her family drove up from Arkansas to say goodbye.

They were among the hundreds. There were people from the dough Network family.

Seed helped reunite his own family, his wife, their two kids, and his grandkids. People from Hutchinson, the factory where he started his career. Tina Hall, his cousin who grew up with him, was surprised by the wide range of people who showed up.

I knew he had done a lot, but even after his passing now, it's just amazing how many people came out to the funeral home and the stories about how he touched their lives. We were so proud of me.

There were so many people in the receiving line that Todd's wife, Flor, stood by the casket for more than four hours.

You know how you kind of listen in on stories as you're passing through this weaving motion, and most of them were stories of Todd being a prankster. You know how he played a trick on this one, played trick on that one, and tell somebody to go do something and watch them come out the building and laugh at him.

I overheard that same thing. I knew this firsthand.

But Todd didn't change his persona if he was at the factory or the doughnut work or the Department of Justice, or in his living room. He was the same guy, tenderhearted, with a propensity for tricks. We paid our respects and then came back the next day for the funeral. That's when we met John Brett, an old friend of Todd's.

I first met Todd in an unconventional way. I was working as an investigative reporter at WLAXTV in Lexington, Kentucky. I was sitting at my desk one afternoon in the newsroom. In the phone rang and I picked it up and fat voice he started the conversation with You're gonna think I'm crazy, but please don't hang up until you hear my story. And that call was about the tent girl case.

John was taken with Todd. Who was this guy?

Todd ended up doing his first TV interview with John back in nineteen ninety eight. This was a milestone for him and the beginning of a lifelong friendship between two men.

He was a son, a husband, a father, a poppy, and to many of us here a friend and a mentor. His humor, as we've heard his legendary as his investigative skills.

Todd was famous in Livingstone, not just because of his national profile. He was an original, hard to miss.

He was a man who found joy in life's simplest moments, whether it was nurturing his garden or cooking the meal for his family. His passing leaves a void that can never be filled, but his legacy is immortal. It lives on in the lives that he touched, the mysteries that he solved, the love he spread.

If you've been listening to this podcast, you know Todd had a pretty unique relationship to death. Like he said himself, he confronted it early on when he lost his two siblings, and it was a huge part of how he made his living reuniting dead and missing people with their families. Todd talked a lot about death before his passing, not in a morbid way.

He was just a matter of fact about it.

I'm not squeamish. Acada Cereal, Elbadrasco.

A few years ago, some documentary filmmakers from Morgan Freeman's production company filmed Todd when they were thinking about making a movie about him. After he died, we listened back to those recordings. I was stunned by how poignant his words were and his passing, the gained meaning became even more profound.

Death is part of life, It is a real chapter of life. You have to accept that as you've done enough, you've done everything that you can do, accept the things you can't change, and embrace the things that you can. So that's what I had to do to make myself be okay, because I feel like I'm somebody that wants to see you want it all, but sometimes you have enough.

As we were making Hello John Doe, when he thought we were capturing the story of Steve Patterson, we didn't realize we were documenting the last years of Todd's life too. You've heard Todd talk about losing his brother and sister.

I was two years old, but I still remember fragments of the emotion.

What he hadn't told you yet was that he had open heart surgery when he was just eight years old.

There was a period of time I wasn't expected to live, so growing up, I really never expected to be here today. So I feel like almost my entire adult life, I felt like I was living on barred time. I wasn't planning on being a grandfather, but yet I'm here. So it gives you a different point of view. I don't feel like life was owed to me. I felt like I was granted life that was beyond what I expected.

I always wondered what was driving Todd?

So you do have to appreciate it, and I do. I do appreciate it. It's like, so what do you do with it?

I guess this was that he was compelled to do something with the time he was given. He didn't just help one family, he helped dozens, hundreds.

And it was a strange niche with missing and unidentified. You don't just choose that, it chooses you. And maybe that's what's kept me here for so long.

It just feels like Todd was born to do this kind of to nestle into people's lives at their darkest points.

I do make friends really quickly with people, and that's just my nature. Some of my best friends are dead, but it's okay. They were dead when I met him, and it's like, why is that weird? And I don't think that's inappropriate, not at all.

I don't.

I think it's absolutely necessary and matters of life and death, it's absolutely necessary that somebody truly knows that you're going to do everything you can to resolve it for them. Just because somebody's unclaim doesn't mean they're unwanting.

All this to say, when Todd died, I hope he'd already meet peace with it.

I think death is such a stigma because people it's something you don't want to do. You know, It's like nobody wants to die. You heard the saying everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. It's just like it's easy to just like, let's just forget about that. Let's push it away. That's going to be a long time from now. I don't want to deal with it. It's only sad, it's only bad. Let's not think about it. But it's just like it is a part of life.

In this video, Todd was in the car showing the producers around Livingstone. He was wearing a basel cop and he had a look on his face. I came to know fairly well, it's kind of a lopsided grinnin like he's already thinking five steps ahead of you. You've pulled up to the cemetery where his brother and sister were buried.

I think if you can prepare for it and accept it, because you're not going to change it. I would love to change it if I could. But I realized that instead of avoiding it and pushing it off, evading it, you got to think about what do I need to do before I'm here? What do I need to do to finish up some things in life before I lay

In that interview, Todd talked about how he felt about dying, but he didn't talk about everyone he'd leave behind, and he didn't give us instructions on what we're supposed to do without him. Lately, Todd's family's been wondering how to live in a world without him. His son, Devin, who's twenty two, saw his dad's work up close.

He went to Kentucky one time I was with him when he exhoomed a grave. I was there for a part of that, and that was really really cool. He was just in his element.

Todd never shielded his kids from what he did for a living.

From a pretty young age, I knew exactly what it was because I I had to know. I was always nosy and it was never like a traumatizing thing. It was always just like, oh wow, Okay, that's fascinating.

Which meant that when the time came, Devin felt better equipped to deal with grief than most.

I mean, if there's anybody that's helped me realize that it happens to everyone and all different kinds of ways, it's him, and I don't know, I feel like it's given me a better outlook on it.

Not shielding his kids from dath meant Devin and his brother Dylan grew up with a pretty unique understanding of it.

They had to roll with Todd's morbid sense of humor.

I remember specifically, growing up, we had this head in the house. It was a skull and it was facially reconstructed.

That's Todd's older son, Dylan, So.

It looked like a woman's head. It had the eyes and everything, and we had a small chihuahua and we didn't want the dog getting into that and messing with it, so at night that that head would have to be in my room. He'd get up at like four o'clock in the morning to go to work when he worked at Hutchinson, the.

Factory down the street where Todd helped make air conditioning parts.

Every night when I went to bed, I turned that head away from me because it was creepy. And every morning when I woke up, it was facing me. And he never admitted to it. I was like nine years old allways, stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, he never admitted to it his whole life. But I mean I had not Marrius about that thing.

He was always causing trouble. He loved pranking people.

Todd and his cousin Tina were like brother and sister, only seventeen months apart. Once, when they were adults, they went to the grocery store while both of their kids were at karate practice. They opened Todd's trunk in the parking lot.

Todd said, watch out for her and be careful with her, and I'm like who. He points to a box and it was a box of bones. And he was taken somewhere, you know, And this wasn't uncommon for Todd to have something like this in his car.

Then later in the night, Tina opened the trunk again, something fell.

Out, and I was terrified to looke. I just covered my eyes. I said, please tell me it wasn't her. Please tell me it wasn't her. It was my twelve packag of popes. But still I was terrified.

He was always up to something.

When Todd and I drove across North Carolina to meet Steve's family over Memorial Day weekend in twenty twenty three, he took every opportunity to tell me about his many irons in the fire. Todd's ambitions went way beyond the Department of Justice. He had ideas for at least two other podcasts. There was his screenplay about the Bounty Hunter.

I think he left a legacy at the school too, because a lot of those students with his special needs class, he really changed their lives and impacted their families. And I think that he'll be talked about for a long time around there, especially with the sudden loss, like they really were prepared to have him in the coming years.

So were we.

In the final months of production on this podcast, I told Todd that some of my friends and co workers had encouraged me to take some time off after the show was released. I could rest a little recharge think about the next project. Todd scoffed told me to keep going. There were too many stories to tell. Honestly, I liked hearing that from him. He had a motor he'd rest. Later, his sons told me Todd was feeling really good about

And he said that he had a really good like end of the year, and he just he hadn't been this happy in a long time. He was about to go back to work Wednesday would have been his first day back. He was so excited.

You'd think work was his life.

But if you were here, he'd tell you the most important things happened at home. He haspecially loved his grandkids, Connor and River. He talked about them all they time.

He loved my kids. He said, if we could just have skipped the kids and went straight to the grandkids, that he could not have been naster to my kids. If that was the only thing he ever accomplished, was making those two kids, those two grandkids possible, then that would have been enough for him.

Todd and his family all basically lived on one block. Todd and his wife, Flri were in one house. Dylan and his family were within eyesight. Todd's parents were there too, even Todd's brother for the Matthews family taught us everywhere.

When I walk out the door, I could almost see him walking down the driveway to his house. I can't look out the door without seeing some plant he's planted, some tree planted.

When Todd passed away, his family took on a unique assignment writing letters to him.

Then they buried them with him.

My mother's letters in his left breast pocket, my letters in his right breast pocket. My kid's letters are in his hands. He would have loved those letters. Things we all should have said to him every day, but you don't get a chance until it's too late. Sometimes. If he was miraculously able to come back and get possession of those, that would be his most cherished things he could possibly have in his life if.

He did come back.

A few of his relatives kind of joked about Todd's return from the beyond. Family member Brent Right even made a joke about it at the funeral.

I'm still in somewhat of disbelief.

I still think this might be one of Todd's pranks.

Now.

I'm just waiting for him to pop out in the corner somewhere and say a.

Hi, I got you.

This was a part of Todd too.

There was something about him that was a little supernatural, like he had a direct line to the dead. When Todd started telling me about this and I brushed it off, but there was something about the way he said it, I kind of just began believing it. Here's his son, Dylan.

Off the record, of course, but I made a joke to a lot of the family members. I think you better stay away from Uija board for a while because your house will be possessed with the spirit of Todd. Well, you can't. I don't mind. He would enjoy that joke.

I think Todd had a sense of humor about death and the afterlife.

My mom even said she's like, I'll know if it's possible to come back, because she said, if anybody's coming back, he's coming back. He always said he would too. He's like, I'll haunt her. But you're just joking, you know, But just joking.

He's not really talking about a ghost hiding under a white sheet. Todd's beliefs I think were really more spiritual. He talked about being on one side of the veil that separated life and death. The way Todd talked about it, that veil was more sure for him than for most.

I can kind of feel his presence sometimes, Like when I'm thinking about him, I'm just like, like, this is weird. Like I can feel that you're here, but I can't see that you're here. It's just crazy.

I like to think he's right.

I hope he had a way to see the hundreds of people who showed up for him in his funeral. I think he'd be proud of the way his son summoned the courage to be interviewed on maybe the hardest day of their lives. I think he'd be thrilled to see the release of this podcast, a project he'd been ostensibly working on for twenty years. But it really all started with Tent Girl. This is Rosemary Westbrook again, Tent Girl's sister.

There is nothing. I don't think that anybody could ever match what he has done. And if it wasn't for Tod being so damn persistent, we'd still not know where she was. So what is Todd mean to us?

Everything?

And who's to say that he might leave a little tidbit of information here, little clues you don't know that you know. Do I believe in God?

Yes?

I do.

Do I believe in Todd? Yes? I do.

Hey Steve, it's Kate, Hey Kate. How are you?

I'm good?

How about you?

The last we'd heard from Steve, he'd been surprised by his biological mom, Sandy, at a hotel room in North Carolina. Todd wanted Steve to find peace, and he thought that meeting his.

Birth mom would help that along.

But after that day, Todd came to realize that Steve deserved a head's up. He should have had the chance to decide whether it was time to meet his biological mom or not. The surprise reunion caused a bit of a break in Steven Todd's relationship. I suspected Steve had some complicated feelings about Todd. The last time he saw Todd was in that hotel room last August. He was shocked by Todd's death just five months later in early January.

It was a lot of a mixed emotions because I don't know, I didn't get to tell him marry Christmas, because we it was kind of weird between us, just because we had met. And he brought my mom there.

You know.

I feel bad about that, I really do, because he didn't tell me that he was bringing my mom at the motel room.

He sprang it all on him.

That's Steve's girlfriend, Janette.

He brung it on Steve and that was just not what he wanted and how it was all handled was wrong, and like that. I feel like they did it without me and Steve's mom there on purpose because they knew how he felt and Steve wasn't going to stand up for himself, and so there was a little tension.

I guess no one expected this to be the last conversation between the men. Todd said to himself in the last episode. He expected that in a few years they'd reconnect and continued on the path together.

I wish I had told you to marry Chris.

Steve had just beat himself up over that because he didn't reach out Christmas, and like, you don't think that you're not going to be able to like fix it, and so you know, Steve struggled with that a little bit, because you fight and then you fix it, and like they didn't have time to fix it.

Steve said that even when they were distant, he didn't forget how Todd got into his life in the first place.

I didn't learn respect for him, not at all. I just think.

It just could have handled it could have been handled differently. Well, that doesn't change how Steve felt about.

I mean, I love Todd, yeah.

Absolutely, I mean it was just like a normal family fuss.

He felt like we were brothers. Yeah, And he told me that numerous times.

I'd never heard this from Steve, that the brotherhood may have felt reciprocal to him too. All along, Steve had been getting to know his biological family. He never knew along the way he came Todd too.

But he was one of the greatest people I've ever known in my life.

Yeah, for sure.

Oh it was great. Man. He came to bat for me when nobody else came to bat, including the FBI, the police, just anybody. I mean, he believed my story. He was the only one before anybody ever believed it.

And if you could have heard see when he called me, because he's like he believes me, like he's gonna help us. He believed me. It was just insane. Yeah, nobody believed us.

Man.

If it wouldn't have been for him, I wouldn't even be where I'm at right now. I would still be a missing person.

Steve says he's still talking to his sisters.

I love my sisters that I'm just the same dude I was. I had a good childhood with my mom. I'm just a normal guy with just a fucked up story.

Thanks, thanks, going, Okay it is Yes, it was rust for a little bit, but that was in rough Like people don't find things out like this about themselves.

But you.

What good.

Then Steve said something that knocked the wind out.

Of me and I just wondered, who's gonna take his place? Oh, I mean, I'm not the smartest man in the world computers, but I would like to do that too. Really, I mean, if I could change somebody's life like he changed mind, man, that would be good for me.

Steve wants to volunteer with the Doe Network, the online platform Todd started at the beginning of his career. I can't think of anything more meaningful. Todd and his wife Lori had been married for thirty six years. You met Laurie in episode one. Todd always talked about the two like they were something even more than soulmates, that they were meant to be together. Laurie's dad was the one who found ten Girl, so in a way, the two were intertwined.

Early on, he loved to make people lay off. The biggest thing he did is he liked to scare you. You could jump out anywhere, you could come out of the bathroom, out of the hallway, wherever he would jump out and scare again. He would have the biggest laugh. But we would always get mad, because you know, you don't like being scared.

But I got to work. I was doing him the same way, and he didn't like it as well either.

Laurie also told me that Todd loved being outside. He'd spend hours out there in silence, just thinking. He left to have his hands in the dirt planting something new.

He planted a tree every year. He planted a tree for our anniversary.

He planned a tree for each kids a birth date, like he would plant a tree on the day they were born. He planted a tree on her grand babies birthdays.

Despite his money, projects and interests, Todd always made time for his family. He and Laurie would go out to dinner or go shopping. He met her dinner every single night.

Family meant everything to Todd. He always wanted us to get together. He always wanted to have cookouts, Thanksgiving, Christmas. We had always had to do things together.

Why do you think that was what about him wanted that.

I think it had something to do with maybe his brother and sister passing at an early age. He just always wanted everybody to be together, be happy.

I asked Laurie about what Devin had said about Todd being so satisfied. In the last days of twenty twenty three.

We spent the Saturday night with my family and then we went to a New Year's Eve party, and then we had New Year's Day and then the day after and we was just preparing for work and we.

Just we just got along. We were happy.

Just we did everything together and we talked about stuff and just I don't know.

He just said, Laurie, I did the best three days. He was just like, I finally got where I wanted to be.

They're incredibly close. But Todd kept a lot of his work to himself.

I think he hid a lot of his stress.

I think he stayed up many nights, tortured over you know, some of the cases that he worked on, you know, like the Steve Patterson case. You know, it did bother him. He really wanted to solve that case.

For her part, Laurie didn't give Tod's work too much.

Thought.

I wasn't interested in his work because I lived it, so it wasn't enjoyable for me.

But now I realize I'm going to have to live it.

Why do you feel like you have to do it?

I would love to see his work continue, and I don't know who else could do it.

Now, she's trying to learn how the dough network works so she can carry on the torch and carry on Todd's legacy of reuniting these families. Maybe she can help bring others peace.

I'm trying to do some research, trying to look for some missing people that hopefully I can take over and help him and just continue his work. My goal is to keep the donutwork going and just trying to continue what he wanted.

What's it been like to learn that what's involved.

It's a lot harder than I thought it said. It's a chorer trying to get through everything. And the enormity of how many people are actually missing or unidentified. I did not realize that so many people are struggling and suffering looking for their families, and all of these missing people and all the unidentified. There is people looking for them. There has to be, So it's just flowing my mind how many people it really is.

I told her host Steve wanted to help out too.

I mean, we'll accept any volunteer. I mean, the Do' network is a family of volunteers. You know, if he wants to volunteer, we'd be more than happy to have him. We can set him up. Maybe he can one day thought a missing person case.

It's given Laurie a deeper appreciation for her husband's work.

He showed me what it was like to have an impact on people in the world. He showed me how he was a great teacher. He showed me that you can get places by working.

I do think that Tod did make me a better person.

In the months before he died, Todd and Laurie would take walks together at night and they'd listen to early mixes of this podcast. Laurie would always want Todd to pause the podcast so she could ask questions, why did you say that?

Because you know, he just didn't discuss it with me, because he just didn't feel like I was interested in his work, which you know, I wish now that i'd show more than I was.

But I was always proud of him.

Laurie's been listening to this podcast as it comes out, but with every week that goes by, there are fewer episodes to listen to.

It's hard to listen to them. But it does give me peace because I know that's what he wanted. The podcast is very comforting and it's his legacy. It's what he wanted to do. It made him happy, and I can hear his voice even after he's gone. I'm just so glad he got the finish shit too.

It's just perfect coming.

I know, I know, maybe that was his goal in life.

Maybe that's what he was supposed to do. Finished the podcast.

Yes, yeah, And in a way, you're kind of finishing it for him because this will be the last episode.

Yes, that's true. That's true. It's pretty special and I will love him forever.

If you'd like to know more about do network or donate, visit donetwork dot org.

Hello.

John Doe is and original productions by Revelations Entertainment in association with First and Last Productions from Revelations. Our executive producers are Morgan Freeman and James Younger. From First to Last, Lindsay Moreno is the executive producer. Our producing partner is Neo on Hume Media. It was written and produced by Kate Michigan. Our editor is Katherine Saint Louis. She is also ne On Home Media's executive editor. Our executive producer

We have two more bonus episodes for you starting next week. Next episode, we talk to an expert about late discoverers adoptees like Steve Patterson, who discovered late in life that they were adopted to impact that house on their lives.

Join us.

Okay, guys, this is the end of the show. If you didn't like it, don't do anything. But if you did like it, you make sure that you rate, and review the show. It helps more people to find it and hear this wonderful story. Thanks again for listening.