Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence, and is not.
Intended for all audiences.
Listener discretion is advised.
My arms always up almost litterly.
Bellevue, Washington is a clean suburb just outside Seattle, where tech wealth keeps the housing costs high and the lawns neatly trimmed. This is how I like them. It's a family oriented town, filled with gorgeous parks and trails, a place of true Pacific Northwest tranquility. But on the morning of light tenth, twenty twenty, that tranquility was broken. As the sun shone over the neat hedges and parked cars. Gunshots rang out in an apartment parking lot. There was a man down, gasping for air.
We just turned sego gunshots and we came screaming right there.
It sounds like it's right outside.
I lived in any residence in Lakemont behind the apartments.
About five or six shots.
It sounded like a a light. Helder Ribbon, I think I just turned seven gunshots. Someone screaming outside helped.
It sounds like it's out a building sixteen and we can hear the screaming.
I'm just d seven shots and it looks like somebody has been shot, I mean the overlook at this month.
The calls were all coming from the same complex. Neighbors peered through blinds, clutching their phones, straining to make sense of it all by the sound alone, then, amidst the beeping dispatch board, the most crucial nine when one call finally got through.
Okay, is this so.
Overlake at Lakeland?
Yes?
Okay? And what's going on there?
Uh?
My husband's that shot? Okay?
It's your husband?
Yeah.
The woman on the phone was d D Foe Moon. Her husband, forty eight year old Baron Lee, was the one bleeding out on the pavement.
And is it possible for me to speak to him?
Is he away?
Yes?
Once?
Okay, reluctantly did passed the phones. Who her bloody husband as other neighbors rushed over to help Hi?
And where he shot her?
Can you hear me?
More than three moments?
Are okay? Need? Okay? I hardy cure my arms?
A literally my shirt?
Okay, sir, okay?
Where is the gun? The gun?
With the gun?
It's fun here.
Hurry can you.
Hit a hurry?
I can't hit the.
Deed.
He took the phone back after Baron dropped it on the ground in agony because yes hi hi, hi, yes, okay?
Who shot him? Okay? So the person is no longer there, no o in there, ma'am.
I need you to get a clean where I crossed in a plye pressure over the wound. Okay, well boon them, okay. I need you to get some clear I lost in a prie pressure okay.
Even in the harsh unforgiving some light. It took a moment to realize Baron's black shirt was drenched. Three shots had torn through his chest. Did he fought to stay calm? Her hands trembled as she tried to help. Then out of nowhere, a female neighbor appeared, clutching a first aid kit and reaching for the phone.
Hi, I knew hi bet Hello?
Oh here, yes, hello?
Can you hear me? Yes? I can hear you. Okay, So I don't want to find pressure right now. Yes, my name is CHRISA.
I mus find pressure to the chest room.
Okay. Did you see which way that person white you said he left on foot? Did you see which.
Way it was? Okay?
So where's.
I hear?
I hear okay? And is it just his chester is but also his arm arm okay, we have it's okay, I'm okay.
I want to verify with the one person or multiple ye.
Okay.
Finally the chaos cracked open with a wall of sirens. The crowd parted as police cars tore into the complex. No one knew yet if the gunman was a man or a woman. All anyone could say was this. The assailant and the green hoodie vanished under the bridge towards the shopping center across the road.
What is the person still there with?
Did you just hear this?
Yeah?
So I just heard this, and I looked up my back window and I watched someone run away, the person that shopped them. They had a great hoodie with their heard up green kitchen gloves and they pissed up their shell case students as.
They ran off.
As the caller walked outside to see if he could help, he noticed a clue abandoned on the pavement and.
They had picking up their Then he's out there, he picked up.
The shooter had chosen to attack Baron at eight thirty am, just as he was heading out to his car to go to work. Baron hadn't been robbed. His car was left with the keys right beside it, and his wallet was on his person. This was a personal attack. The gunman had targeted Baron, stalked him, and chosen the perfect time to strike. But who could harbor such a deep grudge against Baron Lee? A middle aged car salesman with
a wife three kids in a quiet, uneventful life. Baron and his wife Didi had blended their families and had been together for years. They had two teenage kids from Dede's first marriage and one son from Baron's first marriage. As Baron lay in surgery fighting for his life, police started piecing together the few clues left behind. The good thing was that witnesses were everywhere. This was a large apartment complex, and people all looked outside when they heard the gun going off.
So I just walked out to the window in my master bedroom and I saw an individual sprinting down the stairs toward the street.
Okay, And then did he go to the building across the parking lot from you, or the carports or where?
Did he go?
Right along the carports down the stairs?
Okay, so right between the building and the car ports.
Yeah, But I heard the footsteps on the concrete as I was walking to the window, and then I saw the individual jump up on the curb there and then run down the stairs.
Okay. Using canines, the police tracked the scent of the shooter all across the complex, under a bridge, and into the parking lot across the street. But then the dogs stopped. This indicated that whoever did this got into a and fled. The suspect was at large.
What kind of stature did that person have?
It looks slim, bill, That's why I thought at first it might have been fireworks, because it looked like it could have been a kid almost probably five four or five six.
Somewhere that range.
It's hard to tell looking down, but definitely not taller than me based off of running next to the car, real quickly, gray hoodie fully over it. Could not see skin color, long pants on. I can't remember if they were bluer, right. It's weird how some things you remember so vividly and other things are just a blur. Yeah, and then holding something. I thought it would look like a bag in the right hands, like a football as the person was running down. Okay, and like I said,
I couldn't see skin color anything else. Okay, so no skin color? Can you tell gender? It was either a teenage boy most likely, or could have been a woman.
If you were to think about things that have happened in the last twenty four hours forty eight hours over the last week, do any incidents or concerns send out in your mind in this complex here that would have resulted in a situation like that.
No.
I mean, as far as I know the family, wonderful family. I think they have a special needs kid and they've never done anything but smile and be polite, along with everybody else in the area.
So it just was a complete shock.
It was a complete shock. Baron Lee was a kind hearted car salesman. We smiled at every person he met. Now he was at Harbor View Medical Center full of bullet holes. Baron had been shot nine times all over his body, from his legs to his arms and chest. At Harbor View Medical Center, surgeons worked fast, pulling bullets, tying off limbs, fighting to keep him from slipping away. The cops were already writing it up as a homicide. Inside the o R, no one gave up. After hours
of surgery, Baron opened his eyes. He didn't just live, he remembered everything.
Hi, my name is Baron Lee. Originally from Hawaii and now reside here in Istaklau, Washington.
Baron's survival was a miracle. There was no way he should have lived, but he did.
Total nine shots, I took two to the arm, to the right arm, to the left leg, I believe, one on the one on the right leg, two on the left arm, one in the chest, and one in my hip.
I believe.
Baron said that the morning was like every other except that his step children were in Florida visiting their grandparents, so it was just his wife, Didi, and his son Eric. Baron his wife and child goodbye, then headed down the stairs towards his car.
And I come out of the house and I'm probably about twenty five thirty feet from my car and I just unlocked it with my fob and I hear pop. So this is July tenth, twenty twenty. So I'm thinking, oh, someone's still firing fireworks. Right, So I looked to my left,
I didn't see anything. As soon as I look to my right, the second shot goes off, and that's the one that hits my right arm and shatters my right arm completely, ends up dropping my keys and my fob, and I see this person with green gloves and a mask, aiming a revolver, I mean, just shooting at me.
Baron's first instinct was to use his car as a shield, so he moved as quickly as he could while the rounds kept coming.
So I run to the car. He's still firing at me. As I open my car door with my left hand, I take a shot into the back of my leg, and then another shot in the back of my leg, and I end up falling to the ground. I end up pulling myself behind the car door while the person's firing at my car, lilding it with bullets. And then a few seconds later, it seems like instantaneously that person standing over me. He comes around to the car door
and he's standing over me. First shot goes right through my chest and out, and I'm thinking, oh shit, I'm going to die, Like what am I going to do?
That's when it all hit him, the reality of what was happening, But nothing compared to the pain.
It's like, initially it feels like you're getting punched and pierced at the same time, so like you feel that searing pain that goes through from the bullet, but the impact feels like someone just punched the crap on it, you know.
It's like that's when Baron made a quick decision that probably saved his life.
So I decide, I'm going to throw my head and body under the wheelwell of my steering wheel. The steering will call them and protect at least that part. So if they're gonna shoot me, they got to shoot my body or my legs or whatever, and not any fatal parts, hopefully, right. So I dive in and he unloads the rest about I think six more shots on the left side and then runs out of ammunition. I see him bend down pick up some shellcasings, and then I hear him run off.
That's when neighbors arrived and started tending the baron. He screamed for them to get his wife, afraid he was going to die right then and there, right in that parking lot.
They do that. She comes out. My wife's like, oh, you'll be okay, you'll make it. You're strong, don't worry about it. And I remember having a full blown conversation where they're asking her to to take care of the kids that I love them.
When officers arrive, they tied tourniquets on Baron's limbs. He was losing his vision. The pain was overwhelming as they lifted him into the stretcher.
As the adroning start wearing off. And I'm taking a breath. What's going through my head? Every time I'm breathing? Is this my last breath? You know? I felt like I'm dying right, Like I was in so much pain, and I was like, oh my god, am I going to end up? Stop breathing, you know, because I know people get shot. You see it on TV. Right, They're slowly fading out, And I'm thinking, oh my god, I'm going to be you know, this is my last breath. This is my last breath. Am I dead? Now? You know?
That type of thing.
As a strength started to fade. Baron's racing thoughts about who would care for his family faded into something different. The ambulance raced across town while the paramedics ripped off Baron's clothes, desperately trying to locate all the bullet ones. That's when he felt himself slipping away.
And I remember I felt at ease. At one point. I was I was imagining myself in a metal or pasture, very calm, serene, and I was tired and I just wanted to go to sleep, and the paramedic basically shook me and said, hey, you got to stay awake. You gotta stay awake, and I'm like okay, okay, And then I remember I was like almost gone. I was like my eyes had closed and all I felt was this searing pain. He stuck his finger in my wound to wake me up, and I was like, oh, fuck, don't do that. I'm up.
I'm up.
I won't I won't go to sleep right And from then on I was up until surgery.
When Baron finally woke up from surgery, he was bewildered, but his first concern was his children. Did He assured him that everyone was safe, and then detectives arrived.
And actually the investigation started right away. I remember Detective Parrot and the Detective Grandness both showed up at Harbor View. They had told me that I was under protection media. No one was allowed into the hospital to come visit. The only person allowed was Dede. Dedey was the only one that was authorized to come up and see me.
The detectives wanted the obvious answers, like oh, I don't know the hell would do this.
When they interviewed me the first time, I basically said that it was Sharon without adult it was her.
Sharon Kelly was Baron's first wife. I know, I know Sharon and Baron. Let's just be adults here and try to move past it. Okay, But Baron's wife, Dede shook her head. Sharon was Eric's mother, She would never do something so horrible to the father of her son. Was this just Baron's trauma talking?
And Dedey had told them, oh, no, it could be disgruntable worker at his job. You know, he works in the car business. Maybe they're mad or I don't know, maybe her ex husband sent you know, Dedie's ex husband sent somebody. And you know, they said, there's all kinds of possibilities, and in my mind there was no other possibility.
It was easy to dismiss a man shot nine times, confused, scared and searching for answers. His divorce from Sharon had been nasty, but now they barely talked unless it was a drop off when they exchanged care of Eric. And yet what if he wasn't wrong? Dede said Baron was crazy, Sharon was not responsible. Still, the cops promised they'd look into it. They had to, but first they chased the leads.
They did have CCTV footage from nearby businesses and traffic lights around Baron's apartment complex, and on those tapes something stuck a red Ford truck idling on the other side the bridge just after the attack. Then the shooter ran up and climbed in. This vehicle was distinct. It was a Ford F series single cab with diamond plate, bedcap and tinted headlight covers. Using traffic cameras across Bellevue, police tracked the truck. Thank goodness for twenty four to seven
government surveillance. Eh well, it worked because they got lucky. One frame had the plate. They ran it and discovered that the red Ford was registered to a middle aged man named Arthur Mendez. And just like that, the case had a new name, a new direction, and a very unexpected turn. In July of twenty twenty, forty eight year old Baron Lee was on his way to work that the car dealership when he was ambushed outside his apartment by a stranger, shot nine times in the legs, chests,
and arms, and left for dead. But somehow Baron survived, while detectives were stalking out a house in Mount Vernon, tracking the red Ford pickup that helped the shooter. Vanish Baron was facing something else entirely, a long, brutal recovery without the use of his legs or his left arm.
The first three months I was in a wheelchair. I couldn't walk, I couldn't do anything other than go in a wheelchair. When I was in the hospital, they wanted, because it was the middle of COVID, they wanted to send me home immediately. So they basically said, every day we're going to have you try and walk a little bit. And since you have two steps at home, your goal is to walk down two steps. If you can walk down two steps, we're sending you home. So I ended
up going home in seven days. But when I was at home, you know, obviously I wasn't walking around.
I was still in a wheelchair with Baron immobilized. DDE, his wife, was the glue that held the family together.
D D's amazing, an amazing woman, and I owe a lot to her, not for just a shooting, but but she went through while I was going through rehab, was amazing emotionally, Physically, I don't know how she did it.
Every day.
I had to have my wounds dressed twice a day, so she had to go through all the bullet wounds and take out the gauze and put in new gauze and you know, clean it all out every single day, on top of taking care of Eric, feeding medications, all that, and then taking care of Sophia and Nathan, cooking, cleaning, laundry, all of that by herself with no help and still smiling, still being positive, still being supportive, still encouraging, and not asking for anything back at.
The time, because that's the thing. Not only did Dedie have to take care of Baron and her two teenage children, but Baron's son from his first marriage, Eric, is special needs. Eric has dystonia and hernictorus. These are two very serious conditions which means it will require twenty four to seven care for the rest of his life. Dystonia is a developmental disorder that causes a person to have awkward posture
and move with twisted, repetitive motions. Crenicterus is a condition developed at birth when billy rubin builds up in the baby's brain. I think I said all those things correctly, but I'm sure, you'll let me know anyway in the comments. Anyway, this results in cerebral palsy, learning disabilities, and hearing loss. But the reason this all happened to Eric was not an act of God, but instead it was due to
negligence from the medical system. When Eric was born, you see, Sharon decided at the last minute to change from her obgyn to a midwife at a birthing center after her obgyn told her she had to watch her wait during pregnancy. Guess she didn't like that. Anyway. Eric was born safely at the birthing center and then the new family returned home. But after a few days, Baron noticed something was off.
After they sent us home. The very next day, the birthing center sends a home nurse to get Eric's he'll proc test, which is a genetic testing, and so they come over and then they leave, and then over the next few days, I start noticing that Eric is severely jaundice. He looks yellow. So I call the birthing center and tell him, hey, you know, Eric's Eric's getting yellow and little concerned, and they're like, oh, yeah, that's normal, babies usually are a little jaundice. Just put him in some
sunlight and he should be okay. So I did that. Next day, he's not getting better, and so I called him up again. They're like, oh, no, no, that's normal. He's you know, he's the Asian. Of course he's going to be a little yellow, you know, like that's normal. I was like, that's that's a weird you know, it seemed weird, but as a first time parent, I wasn't completely sure. So it wasn't till day seven, or the evening of day seven. My son was just crying and
wouldn't stop crying. And he had been pretty even keel, I mean, it was the demeanor was really quiet, you know, he smiled, but he didn't cry, cry or do anything. So this was concerning that he kept crying. So the very next morning, this day eight, I go to my normal doctor and I take him there and my doctor says, hey, you need to take him to the emergency room.
So Baron rushed his eight year old son to the emergency room, praying that everything would be all right.
I'm headed to the er with Sharon and basically she's like, no, no, we need to stop with the birthing center, telling that they all know what's wrong. With him, and so, you know, against my better judgment, I listened to her. It took her to the to the birthing center. We get to the birthing center, they're like, oh, yeah, he's john this. We need to probably give him some milk. So they get bottled milk and they start feeding my son, and about an hour later they realized that his temperature is
going up. It's spiking and he's not getting better, and they're like, oh, you need to get to the hospital.
Baron was beside himself, a million thoughts rushing through his head as he packed up Eric and Sharon in the car to go to the place he originally wanted to go, the emergency room.
As soon as we get into the er, a whole team comes into the room, grabs him, puts them on the stretcher, and takes them up to the newborn ICU and like, we don't even know what's going on, and so they're like, we'll have someone meet with you, and they end up putting us into this room and about a few minutes later, there's like ten or eleven doctors and nurses come in and they're like, you know, we got to you have some things to discuss with you about Eric, and they tell us that he has a
severe case of hyper bilerub and he said there. They say that most children, when their bill Erubin levels are at fifteen or so, they'll put them under the blue light and that usually brings them down. And they said it goes over twenty. Typically they have to do a blood transfusion, taking out the bad blood and putting in new blood. They said my son was a forty seven.
Eric's billy Ruben levels were astronomical. Baron knew that this was serious, but he had no idea why it happened. Why had Eric's levels spiked so severely.
Apparently the person that did his genetic testing didn't submit it right away, and so my son had a genetic disorder called galactysimia where he can't break down galactos. And galactos is one of the components in lactose. Lactose breaks down into two parts, glucose and galactos, and the glucose gets burned up as few and galactose usually gets passed
through the body through your urine. But the person that has galactysimia is not able to break that down, and that galactos will flow through the bloodstream and get trapped up inside the and that's what happened to my son.
The nurse from the birthing center had neglected to send Eric's genetic testing oft in time, this very serious and life threatening condition went unchecked, and then Eric was given milk by the birthing center, which was essentially like giving him poison.
So the doctors are telling me all these scenarios about how he could die. If he does survive, he's going to be a vegetable, or best case scenario, if he does survive, he'll have no motor skills, so he won't be able to talk or walk. And fortunately he did survive. But they were correct.
Eric was six years old when Baron was shot, and though he was not a vegetable by any means, he did require constant help as a medically fragile kid. So not only was Deeed tending to a frustrated and traumatized husband in a wheelchair, she also had a son in the same condition, plus two teenagers who were terrified that there was a crazed psycho on the loose wanting to kill their stepfather. It was absolute hell for DDI, but She kept a smile on her face the entire time.
Just goes to show some women are truly fantastic. She was the rock in this situation as Baron struggled.
I wasn't easy to deal with as well. You know, through that rehab I had, you know, emotional issues, I had physical issues, so you know, I had temperaments. You know, obviously with what I went through, my patience was very low, and she had She was the water to my fire, you know, and she made sure that she got me balanced and told me things were going to be okay
and we're going to make it. And we had financial issues that we were stressing about and a lot of other things that you know, we had to deal with them. Most people don't understand, you know.
Well, Baron worked on his physical rehabilitation. The police were setting their sights on the investigation. They checked out dde's ex husband as well as Sharon. D d's X was out of the state at the time of the shooting, and then he admitted to having some beef with Baron. He claimed he had nothing to do with it. He checked out. Sharon said the same thing. In fact, she told cops the only person I know in Bellevue is
my ex husband and we rarely talk. The exes were checked off the list for now, and police narrowed their focus on the owner of the shooter's getaway car, Arthur Mendez. Arthur was about the same age as Baron, and he lived in Mount Vernon, a town about an hour and a half away from Baron's house in Bellevue. Instead of just going right up to the door and knocking, police decided to stake out the Mendes house to see if they could get some activity on the truck. The red
F one fifty was the key. Detectives had pulled even more footage from the day of the shooting and now confirmed that the truck had arrived at Baron's apartment two hours before the attack, circled back and exited. They were also able to secure traffic light footage that showed a clear shot of the passenger in the truck, a slender person wearing a distinctive gold chain. This person, the alleged shooter, also had a habit of tucking the seat belt under
his arm rather than across his chest. They were certain that this truck was the key to finding Baron's killer, as a group of officers staked out Arthur's house. Another team investigated his life on social media. Arthur was fifty six years old. He had a couple of kids, loved Jesus, and was a big football guy, but he had no known ties to Baron Lee. In fact, Arthur wasn't the one who drove the red F one fifty. It belonged
to his son, seventeen year old Quincy Mendez. Quincy was your typical high schooler who flexed on social media by posing for bathroom selfies. He also devoted his life to wrestling and had dreams of joining the military. He worked at a tire shop and drove his F one to fifty there for every shift, so the cops tracked him one afternoon. They hit the jackpot when they noticed a
friend in the car with him. This friend wore a gold chain and he tucked his seat belt under his arm, just like the passenger on the surveillance video had BINGO. But the detectives had to keep Baron and his family in the dark. Chasing down Quincy was a covert operation and they couldn't risk any gossip.
I worked with the detectives. They kept asking me stuff you know here and there, but they wouldn't disclose anything that they found. They told me that they wouldn't because they wanted to keep the integrity of the investigation in place. And he said, I understand that. I said, I'm not in aarage. I said, just do what you gotta do to make sure you can get a conviction. That's all I care about.
The detectives found out that Quincy Mendez went to Mount Vernon High School, and when they visited the schools administrators, they were able to identify the alleged shooter as Joseph Good. The school administrators confirmed that both Quincy and Joseph were good kids, they never caused any trouble, and they had zero criminal records. Still, it was time to talk with Quincy and Joseph and find out what the hell was going on at the station. Joseph folded his hands and listened to the detectives.
So before you decide on that, okay, we have some informing that we're willing to share with you at this point. Okay, So if you want, before we get into that, you can hear us out about what we have to say and then make a decision about that.
Okay. Does that make sense? Yeah, that sounds so pretty.
So you're okay with talking to us at this point? Do you have to like answer questions and stuff? That's up to you you, Like you said, you've read your rights to Yeah, the right to answer questions. You don't have to answer questions at any time.
If you want to fill uncomfortable, you can just say, yeah, I've heard what you wanted to say.
I don't want to answer that, so I just rather have like because I don't want to get about any of the stuff.
So I'm had to have so And that's fine. You're you're more than entitled to that.
What we like to do is just have you give us opportunity to to share with you what we have and then you can make a decision.
Does that make sense? Yeah? Yeah.
Joseph didn't seem to really grasp what was happening, but like a good alleged hit man, you wanted to seem agreeable, so he nodded along as the cops told him about the attempted murder they were investigating in Bellevue.
So when, like I said, we had that shitting in Bellevue.
After we went back, we found this this vehicle point into a gas station, don bellgue. You recognize that pickup at all them? Yeah, kind of, I don't know. Yeah, I'm not sure.
Yeah, sure, you've never seen that pickup before. I know a few people who've on those. Anybody that you know that owns a pickup like that?
Joseph said his friend Quincy had a truck like that, but they didn't hang out that much anymore. In fact, the last he heard the clutch went out on Quincy's truck.
Because you said the clutch has been out for a long time. I was just trying to put a reference on six five, six months. I don't know, five or six months clutches, I don't I don't know. I'm not exactly se So there's that picture.
Therefore I answer all the questions.
I feel like I'm doing it.
And just like that, Joseph shut up, smart boy. Because the cops weren't done with them, not even close. They started churning out warrants, pulling everything they could from Joseph and Quincy's iCloud accounts, Instagram, snapchat, emails, text you know, the entire profile of your life you put online. At first, it was just teenage noise, selfies, memes, dumb jokes all useless, But two months in, buried in the noise of selfies and memes, a detective spotted it. An email receipt from
brick House Security, a company that sells GPS trackers. Why would a teenager need a GPS tracker in the's car was still in evidence. Investigators checked under the tailgate and lo and behold, there it was, the GPS tracker, still clinging to the frame with a strip of cheap duct tape. The detectives contacted brick House, pulling every record they had related to the serial number on the device, and it was registered to none other than Sharon Kelly Baron's ex wife.
Yes, I purchased a GPS tracker from you guys about five years ago, and it's the subscription, of course is no longer asked? Is I am able to log in? But it looks like you guys may have changed the website.
Or service or whatever that you've used. I want to reactivate that device, and then I'm not sure how. I'm not sure how I can if it's like track you or what.
Warser devices are, it still looks the same.
So would you like to reactivate your service or your tracker?
I would like to reactivate it.
Baron was right. This was all Sharon, and apparently she'd been plotting this for five years.
Now.
The cops had to figure out how thirty year old Sharon got two teenage boys to shoot her ex husband. I'll tell you what, Some women out there are pure shit. Anyway, Joseph lawyered up when they took him into custody, but Quincy. Quincy wasn't quite as smart.
Well, yeah, we had an incident in Bellevie, and that's what we're here to talk to you about.
They told you what you were arrested for.
They did.
I was asking and they were just like, shut up and just leaver these typetives.
That's all right, That's all I told me in honest Okay.
Yeah, So like we said, it was, it's a pretty serious thing. But as we said, who right now? Who think you're more minimal? But I think you've a minimal and you're.
Involvement in it, Like I think there's other people that are more.
I don't know, let's explain it.
So there's other people that obviously haven't played a greater role in what happened.
I'm not catching him up. I think as we talk about it and probably make more sense.
But okay, So to be clear, you're under rest for.
An assaults salt and assault, yes, uh, and it's a pretty serious one.
What salt you're want to solve this? Well, you don't like beating up someone, harming another human being? Yeah, harming another human being.
We also know that there is another person involves that needs to be held accountable for a much larger role in this and than you seem to have played. Okay, and that's the big part of what we're interested in.
Today, right, there's a reason we're talking to you, so we know there's more to what you guys did when you're in Belfield your time, because we've already talked with him.
The detectives told Quincy they already knew what happened, which was of course a lie, and now they needed his side of the story. Who falls for that shit? Oh right, right, right? Dumb people which are usually you know, criminals. Quincy said that when Joseph approached him about driving to Bellevue, he wasn't in his right mind.
I can't rather remember.
Because I was on shrooms and I was on shrom you know, you and Jada were smoking strings.
For the first time smoking shrooms.
Huh.
To be fair, this Cops drug education probably came from a Vhess tape. Quincy admitted that he was at Joseph's house tripping on shrooms with Joseph's sister when Joseph came home and said they were going to Bellevue the next day. Joseph said he had something big to do and there'd be money in it too.
He told you told me at the end, like do you want do you want five grand? I was? I pretty much came in then option okay, I said, yeah. How much did he say he was getting? I don't know. I did. That's the standard question negotiating one on one. He said, well, you give me a god, I mean that's a lot of money. Five grand?
Yeah, I just find how much does he get in?
Well? I think he said like probably thirteen His cut was thirteen years was five? So eighteen total? Or was there another person in there just getting a cut of that that? I don't know?
He just told me for me said it was just he's game pained on game paid as it does it.
So the question becomes, where did that money come from?
Right? Because I haven't gotten any money, but.
What I'm saying, is he didn't have that money to pay you, Right, He's getting thirteen from somebody, right, yeah, So what does that lead you to believe is just happening here? Someone told him to do it, right, Yeah, he's he's being paid. He's breaking you off a piece for being a driver.
Basically, right, Okay.
Quincy swore he had no idea who the money was coming from, but he was high, and five thousand dollars sounded pretty good. Money was coming from, but he was high, and five thousand dollars sounded pretty good for a drive to Bellevue, even if it was some sketchy shit like oh, I don't know emptying a clip? Oh, before you say, it's a magazine not a clip. Just shit the fuck up?
What does it mean to take a whole clip? Or someone shoot someone? So, you know, but yeah, but in my head, it's just like.
I thought it was just fluffy, honestly, like.
He who does you know that could have put him onto a job like that? Put him on a job like that.
You know, Like, who's gonna say I need somebody to get shut I.
Know, I'll call you.
That.
Not anyone I would know of all my phraser. I see.
The more they talk, the more it really did seem like Quincy was just the tag along who got roped into something too big for his warped little mind to handle. We are only showing you about two percent. This excruciating interrogation went on for nearly four hours.
So is it some scrapp you're supposed to go knock off or what? No, you're know what kind of person? No? Did you ever find out what kind of person it was? He ever talk about it?
Just it could have been just a normal Joe Moo citizen who's walking down the street.
Or was there a game banger or what? Who was the person I was supposed to be taken out? Oh No, I don't know.
He just talk about the dude that that that this dude that was it.
He did say anything. It was just like this dude right here. I was like, what about him?
He's like, we need he, we need the club.
So yeah, he told me we need to do what he said Again, I didn't the clip the club? The clip? What does that mean to you? He was gonna cap him? Yeah?
Get I'm telling you guys straight up, I'm being honest. I mean everything I am right now, to be helpful to you guys right now. I do not know who he's connected with. I do not know who his big homies are. He told me I did it. It was fun that I did it. I regret it. I shouldn't have it just for money or any But I don't know whose his connections are.
But the cops didn't need Quincy to confirm what they already knew. Sharon Kelly was behind it. They had the brickhouse GPS data, they had the emails to Joseph. They also had the texts between Sharon and the boys solidifying their guilt.
And the conversation between Sharon and Joseph was that the job wasn't done, that they'll need to go back, and Joseph will say, well, we need money up front because you didn't pay the same thing yet, so we need some of that money, or at least half upfront. And apparently Quincy said he didn't want to take part of any of it. They didn't want to participate or help or have anything to do with it anymore.
So when the cops showed up at Sharon's door with handcuffs, she didn't ask what is this all about? She didn't feign ignorance. She dropped her coffee cup and screamed inside to her brother, call my lawyer. But what still haunted detectives was the question no evidence could answer. Why Why would the mother of a special needs child who saw him every weekend hire teenage boys to kill her ex husband.
Sharon wasn't going to talk, but the cops didn't need her to because Baron was alive and willing to tell them everything. In early July of twenty twenty, Baron Lee was shot nine times by a teenage hitman. He should have died, but somehow he didn't. Now his ex wife, Sharon Kelly, sat behind bars, the mastermind of it all. She wasn't talking, but to her dismay, Baron was alive and he remembered everything. Because what no one knew then was that Sharon hadn't just tried to kill him once.
She'd been laying the groundwork for years.
She had tried to run me over twice prior once in twenty fifteen. This is before I ended up fleeing the state of Washington because I wasn't getting help. She actually had me on her hood and she was She actually tried to hit me. I ended up jumping up and ended up on her hood and she drove, you know, couple hundred yards before I was able to roll off
the car and get away from her. The second time was in front of the Kirkland Police Department during a cussy chanceror and they said that basically it was a themistic issue and that we would have to deal with it in family court, which just boggled my mind. So someone tries to kill me, but it's a family issue. So I ended up going to family court and I'm told in family court that we just need to learn to co parent better.
Sharon and Baron's amicable phase was short lived. They met online in two thousand and five. Baron was working in Nevada at the time, and Sharon was young, pretty and looking for someone to take care of her. Though they were over a decade apart, they pursued a relationship through phone calls and texts, and before long, Sharon left Washington to meet Baron in Nevada.
And she wanted to come down to Vegas and she asked if it was okay to bring her to younger brother with her to meet me, and you know, stay a couple of weeks, and so I was like, yeah, you know, if you want to come down and visit, no problem. You know, I was single at the time, nobody lived with me and you know, at space. So she came down to Vegas and she brought her her brother Timmy and her brother Joshua, who were like five and I want to say five and seven or five and eight at the time.
With her young brothers and toe, Sharon showed up in Las Vegas, and surprisingly, Baron welcomed them with open arms. Being a product of the foster care system himself, Baron just couldn't turn anyone away.
We hit it off, and then, you know, the interaction I had with her brothers surprised her as well. Her brothers were so used to just doing whatever they wanted and having you know, no discipline, and so when they came to stay with me, you know, set some ground rules and basically the way they treated her was not very good, and I, you know, I told him that that's not you know, allowed, you know, and that kind
of stuff, and started parenting them. And the two weeks that they were going to stay ended up turning into like four months thying with me.
Their relationship moved quickly. They decided to move back to Washington so Sharon could be closer to the family. Baron agreed without hesitation. After settling in, they got married. Baron believed they shared the same ambitions, a driven, adventurous future. Sharon had away with words. Soon they decided to start a family. Then Eric was born. His birth was traumatic, leaving him severely medically fragile. Baron stepped up. Sharon did not.
I worked in the car in the street at the time. I worked for Toyota, and I worked twelve hour days to get up in the morning at six, and I'd come home about six and I would find Eric so looking with in his walker or you know, his little walker thing, and he'd be crying and screaming, and Sharon would be sitting on the couch watching Korean dramas or whatever it is that she was watching, and she would say, oh, yeah, he's been like that all day. And I'm like, then,
why aren't you changing him? Why aren't you doing anything. It would take me, you know, three four hours to calm him down, you know, because he had been, you know, in that high emotional state for so long.
Whether she was depressed, overwhelmed or just playing lazy. Sharon's mothering went from bad to worse. Barn new things were unmanageable. He tried to get help for his wife, but she insisted she was fine, and so was Eric.
So the last job for me was that I found out that she was having Eric. Someone babysit Eric, like they're not medically trained to babysit him, but they were babysitting him while she was going out and having an affair.
Baron had enough, not out of anger but fear. His son. Eric's health was on the line with estonia and her nictorus. Every day required constant specialized care, and Sharon couldn't handle it. She wasn't just failing as a mother, she couldn't even be trusted as his nurse.
And so I was like, okay, I'm done, you know, like this is it. So I came home one day and I picked up Eric and I was trying to leave the house and she's asking what you're doing, and I'm saying, I'm leaving him, taking Eric with me, and she got mad and started pulling on Eric, and I was afraid he was gonna get hurt, so I gave him to her and she starts screaming, you know, like like she's being abused or something, and just at the top of her boys screaming, and the neighbors end up
calling the police. When the police come, and she says, oh, yeah, that I'm abusing her and abusing my son, breaking furniture and doing all this stuff. And I'm like, I haven't even touched her, I haven't done anything to her, and I haven't broken anything. And so the police do their investigation and they realize that none of what she's saying is true, but they advised that one of us leave, and I said, well, she has my son. If she wants to go and leave with him, then go ahead.
I'll just deal with it in court. And so she takes off.
It was the point of no return. Two weeks later, Sharon filed the restraining order and the state put Eric in her care. That's what the state does. Favors women in situations like this. It happens all the time. Must be that male privilege I keep hearing about. That's when the war started. For the next five years, Baron fought for custody while Sharon played the system, demanding support and collecting benefits. Her son wasn't a child doer anymore. He
was a paycheck. At least that's what her family convinced her of. The woman Baron had fallen in love with had transformed into a bitter, entitled mother who expected sympathy from the world because she had a special needs child. A lot of that going around these days.
Her her family are you know what we call them career welfare cases, you know. And then her mom basically lives off welfare, uses welfare because she has multiple kids, so she uses welfare to survive. And their mentality and I saw this in text where like, you know, oh you can do this? Is this you don't have to work, you know, you can get welfare, you can live off
his child support. So it was more of like, oh, you know, I don't have to do anything anymore, and I can, you know, abuse the system and that type of stuff.
It became clear that Sharon wanted sole custody Eric, not to care for him, but because there was a million dollar settlement tied to his birth injury. Though they could not sue the birthing center directly, the insurance paid them for what happened to Eric.
I took that money and I put into a special needs trust so later on, when Eric's eighteen, hopefully that money will grow and help you take care of him when we're not there anymore. One of the things that I found when we broke up because I access to all of her phone records as well, and so there was text messages where she had planned, you know, to
siphon money out of our accounts. Also when we break up, that they were going to utilize the courts to force me to pay child support, and that eventually she's wanting to get access to the trust fund money.
Sharon had custody of Eric until he was three years old, and during that time she did her best to put him in a more medically fragile state, demanding a feeding tube, a tracheotomy, and a do not Resuscitate order, all things doctor said he didn't need. So she hospital shopped until she got the feeding tube and the DNR. What a bitch.
During this time, I expressed a ton of concerns because he was being hospitalized, he was being sick, she was trying to do things that didn't seem appropriate. But because I didn't have medical medical making decisions, she was able to go to the hospitals and convey what she wanted.
That's when CPS stepped in. Sharon was diagnosed with Munchausen by proxy and deemed unfit. Eric was placed in foster care pending a parenting plan. For Baron. It was a nightmare, a legal disaster. His life narrowed to one goal, bringing Eric home, but the courts leaned towards Sharon. I wonder why, oh, right, right? Female? This was despite her erratic behavior and her obvious lack
of concern for her own child's well being. Then came twenty seventeen, a custody exchange at the Kirkland police station. Sharon didn't just lose control. She threw Eric on the floor instead of placing him in a wheelchair. That changed everything. For the first time, someone besides Baron saw her rage firsthand. Baron and Dedi took Eric home. He stayed with him full time, but legally, Sharon was still considered the primary caregiver. Let's face it, the family court system is more than broken,
it's pure shit. Anyway, Baron didn't water to have contact with Eric for obvious reasons. Shared custody was just not an option for him.
She was after Eric. Was the way that Eric was being hospitalized or the things that she was doing. It looked to me like she wanted him to die, but in a way that no one was going to question her and say that he's it's because he's medically fragile, or this is you know, this is the cause of his death is because he had complications.
There was one incident where Eric's home nurse aid found him nearly dead at Sharon's house and he had to be rushed to the hospital. Things like this just kept happening.
And here's the thing is the family court system ignored it all. Like the GL was saying, hey, this this boy is not safe around her. He needs you know, and they ignored it all. They when it came to whatever she did, it doesn't matter who spoke on my behalf, whether it's me was, whether it was a GL, whether it was a social work, it didn't matter. The courts never listened.
Baron, Indeedie cared for Eric while Sharon had visitation. What she really wanted was money. If Baron was gone and Eric returned to her care, she thought she could get it. So she went through her little brother, the same one Baron once looked after in Vegas, and she found Joseph Good, setting in motion her final plot to get rid of her ex husband. Sharon's little brother put the word out amongst his friends at high school, and Joseph took the bait.
It was that easy. With Baron dead, the money would be all hers money, money, money, money, or so she thought.
But what Sharon didn't realize is the way the trust is set up, unless it's needed for medical reasons, that money will never be pulled out, and he can't be pulled out. It's cash. It's going to be pulled out to pay for medical reasons only. So in other words, if there's a medical bill, then it goes directly to the medical company, not to us, and then we pay them the medical company. But that wasn't what she thought. She thought she would have access to it.
For years, Sharon had threatened Baron and worse, their son, but what she did was so outrageous, so unhinged, that when Baron spoke up, he sounded like a man describing the plot of a bad movie. No one believed him, and the family courts only emboldened her. Every time Eric landed in the hospital or CPS got involved, she was given a pass because she's the mom years of getting away with it convinced her of one thing she could get away with murder.
As horrible as you may think that the shooting was shooting was the best thing that happened to me. The shooting gave me a voice. A lot of men go through this, and this is one of the hardest things as a man sitting on an island by yourself. I was telling people what was going on at work, my personal life, my family, and I would always get that eye roll, you know, not you know, not blatant, but you could tell like, yeah, he's full of shit type of look right, like, oh, he's not telling all the
truth or he's exaggerating. But the shooting a lot of people to see that, now what I say is true, right, Like what I've been saying all my life is true.
Joseph Good was charged with attempted murder and unlawful possession of a firearm, then sentenced to thirteen years in prison. Quincy Mendez received eight years for the assault on Baron and was sent to a juvenile detention center. Baron has since forgiven both of the boys. Sharon, on the other hand, was eventually offered a plea deal, taking her charge down to solicitation of attempted murder in the second degree, she'd
be looking at thirteen years, not twenty five. Then for shits and giggles, they lowered her charge a smidge more, probably because of the tits and puss, you know.
But in the plea deal, the prosecutor offered her one hundred and fifty months, And my argument to the courts was that the fact that they were reducing this the plea, she should have got the maximum of the reduction plea, not an agreed average of that plea. And so the reason I wanted that was one, at one hundred and fifty months, she would get out when Erik is seventeen. And my concern is that I'd have to deal with this family court bullshit again on top of having to
deal with her trying to kill me. So I told the court that one, she shouldn't get less time than the shooter or the driver, So she should get one hundred and sixty the maximum hundred and sixty five months, which will allow me to set up guardianship and do everything that's needed before she gets out, so Eric will already be eighteen by the time she gets out.
It was abysmal. It was outrageous. How could Sharon receive a lighter sentence than the teenagers she hired to shoot Baron? Without her, none of this would have ever happened.
That's what appalled me. Them all is like I even stated that in court, you know the fact that she not just ruined my life, in my son's life, but she ruined two teenagers as well. You know, I s They're like, you know, she deserves a lot more than what she was given.
Sharon is behind bars, and she'll be there until her son turns eighteen. But for now, one legal problem remains that Baron is still trying to fight.
Technically, Sharon still has custody. I wanted to go to trial and get custody, but she was in county for three years, and during that time they wouldn't allow me to move forward with the family court case, saying that she had a right to be there and that I couldn't move forward. So this whole time, I've been waiting to get custody, and because it took so long, they closed the case and I had to petition to reopen the family court case so I can still fight for custody. I still don't have custody.
It's unbelievable, But barn is still fighting for custody, for control, for peace. Sharon is behind bars for literal murder, but not forever. One day she'll walk free, and as co parents, their paths will cross again. Can you imagine they share a child? Not just any child, but Eric, a nonverbal, vulnerable boy, will need care for the rest of his life. Will he ever say he wants to see his mother?
Will she even care now that the money's gone? Sharon Kelly was evil, not misguided, just plain evil, munch housing by proxy, delusions of grandeur, abusing a medically fragile child. She was dangerous and calculated, and for years she had
Eric all to herself. Baron still lies awake, wondering what she did during that time, the early years shape a child forever, and if she left him in filth when they were married, through him on the police station floor in front of strangers, then what actually happened behind closed doors when she was alone, when she could get away with anything. But Baron can't live in those shadows, not anymore. This isn't just about Sharon's twisted plan to kill Baron.
It's about the man who survived it to be a father. That should have been the end of it, but it wasn't. It was the start of something bigger, a second chance for Baron. Now he's on the advisory board of a nonprofit organization for foster children called Root twenty one, and he's fighting to change the system, pushing laws to protect fathers and family court, including one bill in the House and another in the Senate. And at home with his wife died and his kids, he's building the life Sharon
tried to destroy. Baron didn't just survive by luck. He survived for a reason. For Eric. Everything he does is for his son. What a great dad. The shooting didn't ruin him, It revealed the truth. Sharon is a threat, and in twenty thirty six, she'll be out, free to Rome, free to plot. Baron knows she's not done after thirteen
years in a cell to stew on vengeance. So maybe he'll move to another state, to another country, whatever it takes, because in thirteen years he'll need to disappear before she finds him again and does even worse. Who knows what that bitch is capable of.
Well.
That episode was produced by Mish Barber way, one of our one of our long time producers. We've had producers here for I don't know what, six, seven, eight years now, so try to keep track of how long they put around.
She's very talented. Though very talented lady always puts that great stuff. I'm your host, Mike Boudet. In case you're lost, just browsing through the Apple catalog. If you like this show, you can help support it. You can go find a lot more of it at Swordskaille dot com or download our app on iOS and Android.
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