Original subtitles

Mandy was not allowed to have any boyfriend growing up.

You had to make sure you lived byThe Bible.

If you didn't, it was a sin.

[Juanita] The reason Mandy married Paul so quick

was because they were trying to do things right.

She seemed happy.

And that made me happy.

[Denise] At first, Paul seemed like a good man.

But the trouble was,

she knew nothing of him.

[Runyon] The folks who are quiet,

those are the folks that you may least expect,

but who could prove to be the most dangerous.

[police officer speaking]

[Paul speaking]

This case is one that involves an act of evil.

[Paul speaking]

[Denise] It was a tragedy.

It broke our whole family.

[Juanita] I would've liked to have ripped his head off

and fed it to my pigs.

[Paul speaking]

Mandy was really outgoing.

She was an amazing person.

She taught me how to ride bikes,

and we played dolls and went on trips to Tennessee.

[Juanita] Mandy was very quirky,

she was always being funny.

Being more silly than funny.

You know what I mean?

[laughing]

[screams]

[Juanita] She always tried to make you laugh,

that was how she came across.

She had a real personality.

My grandfather was the pastor of our local church.

We went to church,

it was like Wednesday night, Biblestudy,

Saturday night, you know, choir practice,

Sunday morning: morning service, night service,

so that was a big part of our weeks.

This is Mandy's baptizing photo.

She was like 15 or 16 there.

I did feel like we were sheltered a little much.

Dating and boys,

that was not something that they did in the church.

[Denise] Mandy was not allowed to have any boyfriend growing up.

Paw-paw was very strict on that.

[Juanita] You didn't have those relations until you were married.

That's something in all churches around here,

that's in this whole community.

It was a very strict way of growing up.

Couldn't do much of what you wanted.

You had to make sure you lived by The Bible.

If you didn't, it was a sin.

[Runyon] Paul Lemay met Mandy online,

they met on Facebook.

Paul Lemay came down to eastern Kentucky

by way of Massachusetts.

I think Paul was very smitten by Mandy.

I think he was very attracted to the idea

that a woman so far away wanted him.

That's what precipitated his relocation to eastern Kentucky.

The trouble was,

she knew nothing of him.

[Juanita] Paul was older.

He was 47 or 48.

He'd already lived life,

so she, in her mind, she thought he was smarter about things.

[Denise] Mandy liked that he was different, not from around here.

Paul would come every other weekend to Kentucky or to church.

[Juanita] Paul was portrayed to me

as a religious person and a good guy.

He was this big Christian guy who was really nice.

I was happy for her.

She had said that they had things in common,

that they could actually talk to each other for a long time.

She seemed happy.

And that made me happy.

They dated about seven months, at the most.

And then, they got married.

From what she had told me,

the reason she married Paul so quick

was because they were trying to do things right.

It was just a little, small wedding,

just a few people from their church that they went to.

It was a 15-minute ceremony.

It was nothing fancy.

My grandparents thought it was a good thing, too,

getting married to Paul.

They liked that he had a job,

could provide for her, and had two vehicles.

[Juanita] Paul didn't have much family nearby.

None of his family was there, I know that.

Looking back, that was very weird to me.

I've personally never met none of Paul's family.

Paul Lemay has this mysterious past

where we don't know a lot of his background,

and that may be by design.

It's possible that he doesn't want Mandy

or her family or anybody to know a lot about him.

It's interesting because we have someone who,

on one hand, has estranged or distant relationships from family members,

but, on the other hand, hasn't identified loved one that they've idolized.

It sets itself up for problems in the future.

Paul and Mandy lived in Oil Springs, Salyersville, Kentucky.

Just a little town, a back road.

Paul, he worked at a nursing home,

and he brought home the money.

He paid for the home that they lived in.

[Denise] She didn't have to work at all, Mandy didn't.

He'd made sure she had everything she needed.

Didn't matter what they are.

At first, Paul seemed like a good man.

From what I seen anyway.

[Juanita] But, sometimes,

Paul would say a lot of negative things on Facebook.

That may have been his way to get his point across,

was through social media.

Say the things on there that he couldn't say in person.

It's a Facebook post from Paul.

[reading]

"All my life, I've been called no good, that I'm worthless

then I will never amount to anything.

I finally had enough and I came here to Kentucky

where I've got myself a home that I paid for.

I have a beautiful, loving wife

and anyone says otherwise, they are a liar."

He was very fragile, I could see that.

He never opened up, wouldn't talk.

Maybe there was a reason behind it.

There was

a madness in his old life that I didn't know about.

[Tussey] Paul Lemay's Facebook posts say to me

that this is someone who's vulnerable

and identifies with this role of someone

who's been victimized and has to take on the world.

[Juanita] At the time, me and my husband had separated,

my children were tiny.

Mandy, she's like,

"If you want to, you can come here,

you can stay with me and Paul."

She's like, "We can spend time together, get back to being sisters,"

and so, in my mind, it was an awesome idea, because I loved Mandy.

[choking up] She was my best friend.

[gasps softly]

[Denise] Mandy, she loved her hair dye.

She started dying her hair crazy colors.

It was blue, purple.

One time, she mixed it up, it was half blonde and half blue.

[Juanita] One time, we were going to dye,

you know, dye both of our hair the same night.

And we was going to go out get the hair dyed,

and Paul wouldn't allow us to do it.

To Paul, it was an unnecessary thing,

so she couldn't, she wasn't allowed to do it.

I don't know why he wouldn't allow her to do it.

I'm trying to answer this for you

but I can't find a rhyme to the reason of why he wouldn't let her.

I suppose he treated her like a child.

The fact that Paul Lemay's relationship with Mandy

appears to be more like that of a father and daughter

is indicative of his controlling nature.

It's also interesting that in this day and age

where social media and videos of one another are very common,

that there's actually very little of that with Paul Lemay and Mandy.

If he can control the little day-to-day tasks that she does,

he can ultimately control her life.

[Juanita] Paul would work and he would come home,

and I would say, "Hi, Paul,"

and he would say, "Hello," and then, you know, that was it.

He would always lock hisself in his bedroom.

[Runyon] The folks who are quiet and brooding

and, kind of, seething underneath,

those are the folks that you may least expect,

but who could prove to be the most dangerous.

[Juanita] He would always lock hisself in his bedroom.

I thought it was weird.

He wouldn't associate with the rest of us.

Nobody really knew what was going on in there.

[Juanita] Paul could be quiet, Paul could be shy.

Behind closed doors,

Paul could be a creep.

He would lock hisself in there like a hermit crab.

One time, she had opened the door

and asked him what he wanted for supper,

and he told her, "I don't care what we have for supper,

I don't care if we effing eat or not."

In my mind, she was trying to take care of him

and do what a wife should be doing for her husband.

And he was straight up disrespectful to her.

This is Mandy at a rough time.

About 25, probably.

This was the time she'd get into arguments with Paul.

[Juanita] A lot of the times, they would argue,

they would argue in the bedroom,

in their room.

And we tried to stay away from that,

'cause I had kids and I didn't want them to hear that.

So we always tried to stay out of the arguments.

It was always behind the bedroom door.

[door slamming]

Mandy would go in her room and she would come back out, and she'd be like,

"Oh, it's happened again.

Paul, he's in one of his moods."

I don't know why she chose to stay

but I think a lot of it is that she was actually

building a home and building a life.

And it's just like, to her, it was nothing much, she'd grown used to it.

[Tussey] There's indication that the arguments

between Paul and Mandy are escalating.

It begs the question of, you know, what's happening there.

Is it that he feels he's losing control,

and his own insecurity is knocking at the door?

When someone like Paul doesn't feel in control,

he may lash out impulsively.

[Juanita] One day we was going up to see Mom,

and we had made it from Salyersville to Prestonsburg.

And we had made it that far, before he had called her on his break,

and there was a heated argument

to the point that she pulled over,

then we turned around and went back.

Anytime Mandy had to do anything,

she had to run it by Paul and make sure Paul was okay with it.

He had came home from work and he said he wasn't feeling good,

so he went in there and he laid down and went to sleep.

And me and Mandy and the kids had went out to Walmart.

And he was so mad when we come back,

because she had left without saying something to him

that she went into the room and wasn't allowed back.

She didn't come back out that night.

Here's the situation where Paul is about 20 years older than Mandy,

yet, he has, effectively, grounded her.

When individuals are that controlling and domineering,

it makes you wonder, "What else is happening behind closed doors?"

[Juanita] Felt like she was trapped in a prison.

Mandy would say things like, "I feel like I'm in jail sometimes," you know.

Paul was very controlling.

The last two or three months that I stayed there,

we didn't really go anywhere, or do anything.

Pretty much the only thing he allowed Mandy to do

was to do the grocery shopping.

[Denise] Um, he wouldn't let her go anywhere

and do anything or see anyone.

When she stopped coming around, I knew something was up.

Several times, I told Mandy that she didn't have to put up with that,

she could leave.

But she just, she never would listen.

It's like she, it was her relationship, I needed to butt out of it,

it wasn't any of my business.

Me and the kids would stay in that room

on the opposite side from where her and Paul would stay.

We'd just kept on back there unless we needed to come out and use the bathroom.

It was like, we were walking on eggshells, so to speak.

Tiptoeing around the house.

I wish I would've stepped in and done something

'cause I feel like I could've helped her out.

And I wish that I'd just let her know that I cared more, you know.

I wish I'd got her out of there.

Paul is this quiet fella who keeps to himself.

But as time goes on,

his Facebook posts starts to get more aggressive.

[Juanita reading]

Now I'm, kind of, beating myself up

for not putting him on my Facebook.

I've never seen these.

It just hurts me.

I mean, I didn't, I've not seen those.

[gasps softly]

[sobs]

From a religious perspective, Paul maybe referring to the enemy as Satan.

It's also possible that the enemy is his rage,

his insecurity.

This is an example of an individual

who seems to be fighting to control their behavior.

This Facebook post is Paul is really trying to bury those demons

and keep himself from crossing that line

from verbal aggression to physical aggression.

Had I seen this at the time, I'd have been angry.

I'd try to help her.

[Runyon] It begs the question,

what kind of threats could Paul may have been making behind closed doors?

Regardless of which way we go, we're heading into the abyss.

Things are about to get worse.

[Juanita] One day, one of the kids had climbed up on the table,

and had knocked over a couple plates and cups

that were sitting on the table from when they were eating,

Paul, he didn't really explode or anything,

he went into the room, he had hollered for Mandy to come in there,

and I don't know what was happening to Mandy.

Like I said, she was in that room,

they were locked in there, I don't know.

They were in there for over an hour, and when they came out,

they had got a change or two of clothes for each one of them,

and she told me that they'd be back.

That's when Paul and Mandy had left there.

I could tell something was wrong.

It's not often my sister calls me crying.

She told me she was scared for him to be around the kids.

If I didn't get the kids out of there before they got back,

that something was going to happen.

He might hurt them or something.

There's increasing evidence

that Paul Lemay is becoming unraveled.

That's particularly worrisome,

because individuals who threaten or hurt children

tend to lack remorse and empathy for others.

[Juanita] It did, kind of, scare me at that point.

So the best thing for me to do for my kids was to leave.

[thunder rumbling]

[Juanita] When I left there, with the kids,

things with Paul and Mandy got a lot worse.

The trouble was Paul would act normal sometimes.

Sometimes, he didn't seem like a bad guy at all.

He was nice, he was polite.

To me, it was strange.

[Tussey] We're seeing this Jekyll and Hyde personality.

We have someone who's, on one hand, saying,

"Mandy, I love you, my beautiful wife."

And on the other hand, someone who is controlling her,

potentially, threatening children,

not giving her money to go to the store.

So we see these two diametrically opposed personality behaviors.

And that's actually quite common in individuals

who perpetrate interpersonal violence.

There was a couple of months after I moved out,

she was telling me that he was getting a lot more aggressive.

She was telling me that Paul was starting to be more physical with her.

Started out with him shoving her.

And then, it got to where, he would get in her face

and he would get more violent with her.

She said that she was scared that if she didn't get out of there,

that she wouldn't get out of there.

She called me

and told me she did leave Paul.

She said she was at a friend's house,

that she was scared of him,

and that she didn't want to go back home.

She told me they were good people, she was safe.

I didn't really question it.

She was out of the bad situation

so, in my mind, she was good.

And she told me she was going to come over for Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving was really important to our family,

'cause it's the only time we actually sit down around the table

and gather around and pray over the food.

[Juanita] I was excited.

I'm not going to lie, been months since I'd got to see my sister,

so I was excited.

[line ringing]

The family are ready to eat Thanksgiving dinner.

Dinner comes and goes but there's no Mandy.

[Juanita] Nobody could get a hold of her.

Nobody knew exactly where she was.

I was the last one to know where she was

and she was supposed to be at that friend's house.

As the minutes turned to hours, the hours turned to days,

I could imagine a whole host of thoughts,

you know, running through their head about where Mandy might be.

"Maybe she's in the hospital,"

uh, "Maybe she's just out having a good time."

You know, "Maybe Mandy has gone to see somebody else for Thanksgiving,

and maybe she'll turn back up."

Couldn't believe what happened next.

[Juanita] Mandy had told me she was at a friend's house and she was safe.

But then, we was having no luck getting a hold of her.

I tried contacting her phone,

her Facebook, her Messenger, and she just would not answer.

I didn't even know where to start to go to look.

I'd went out and I had printed off some photos to give the State Police.

The uncertainty of it all

was a very terrifying moment for that family,

just not knowing.

Despite the family's concern over Mandy being gone for over two to three weeks,

on December 17th, there's a post on her Facebook account.

[reading] "I needed to get away from the drama

and dry myself out.

I will contact the ones

and my family after the first of the year."

I knew reading that that day that that wasn't Mandy.

"I love you, please understand,

I'm going through hard times right now

but I will contact you after the first. Love you. Later."

That's words of an alcoholic.

Mandy wasn't an alcoholic

and didn't have to dry herself out.

Everything in this is spelled exactly as it should be

down to every last apostrophe and everything,

and Mandy always spelled things very weird.

Her spelling was never correct and everything in this was right.

And so, reading this when it came out,

everybody knew something was wrong.

Everybody knew that wasn't Mandy.

[Denise] Homer then contacted Paul

asking where Mandy was,

what was going on.

Homer asked him if he was the one that posted that letter.

Paul wouldn't speak back.

Then he said he was trying to find his sister, after a while.

Paul says, "I ain't heard from her in weeks either."

That's when they got mad and called the cops.

[line ringing]

[dispatcher Thompson speaking]

[Homer speaking]

[dispatcher Thompson speaking]

[Homer speaking]

[dispatcher Thompson speaking]

[dispatcher Thompson speaking]

[Homer speaking]

[dispatcher Thompson speaking]

[Homer speaking]

Homer was really annoyed at Paul.

He just wanted to know where Mandy was.

But she ain't spoke to nobody in over three weeks.

[Tussey] We know from the evidence so far

that Mandy has been controlled by Paul.

And the family's probably thinking,

"Maybe it's just their relationship."

It's very possible that Paul has Mandy trapped inside the house.

[Runyon] When the trooper arrives

to Mandy and Paul's residence.

He goes up onto the porch,

the blinds are drawn, he can't see inside the residence.

He hears a series of what he describes as thumps.

[thumping]

It sounded like someone was moving around in the home,

but nobody ever came to the door.

[inaudible]

[Runyon] So that trooper immediately radios for backup.

Paul, is, in fact inside the residence,

and is not coming out of the residence.

The Kentucky State Police show up very quickly,

it has escalated into a, "Barricaded subject,

who's refusing to come out and respond to law enforcement commands,"

and who's known to own a .22 caliber handgun.

They were concerned that Mandy was being held inside the residence.

As the Kentucky State Police

are trying to get Paul Lemay to cooperate with their commands,

they're looking for folks, neighbors, who might have any means to contact Paul.

One of the neighbors happens to have Paul Lemay on Facebook Messenger.

[cellphone vibrating]

[Runyon] And Paul responds.

Paul's still refusing to come out of the residence.

But as the time goes on,

Paul wants a cigarette.

The Kentucky State Police tell Paul,

"You got to come to us."

Paul is very reluctant to do this.

So the neighbor, Pat,

volunteers to take the cigarette to Paul who's standing on the porch.

At this time, when Paul comes out of the residence,

Paul Lemay is dressed in nothing but sweatpants and no shirt.

December 17 in Kentucky, it's very cold,

so the next door neighbor, Pat,

also offers his sweatshirt.

As soon as Paul Lemay gets that sweatshirt,

he is rushed by two troopers who were lying in wait.

And that's how the Kentucky State Police,

eventually, got Paul into custody.

The State Police begin a sweep of the Lemay residence

to look for Mandy.

At that point, they had no idea

whether she was dead

or alive.

When the troopers walked into the Lemay residence

they were met by the smell of death.

They could smell decomposition in the air.

When they get into this back bedroom,

they can make out a pile of blankets.

And sticking out from the bottom of that blanket

is what is obviously a human foot.

They pull the sheets back,

and there they find the deceased body of Mandy Lemay.

She had a single gunshot wound to the back of her head.

What's clear, at this point,

she had been there for quite some time.

[Denise] I got a call from Daddy.

He said, "She's gone.

She won't be coming back."

I fell to the floor.

My whole body was paralyzed for three days after that.

I never knew she went back there

to even think that could've happened.

[inhales deeply]

I'm done.

That's as far as I want to go.

[news reporter] A family in Johnson County

is wishing they would've seen the signs

after police say, their family member, Mandy Lemay,

was shot and killed by her husband.

Paul Lemay's statement to Kentucky State Police

during his recorded interview

tells us that Paul was obviously in a very troubled place.

[Paul crying]

My guess is that Paul did it so that nobody else could have her.

And she can't leave him.

[Paul speaking]

[Tussey] Paul, clearly, identifies as the victim.

Individuals who

fail to take responsibility for their actions

are some of the same individuals

who are callous and lack empathy and remorse.

She would've been alive now if she hadn't went back.

But Mandy couldn't make up her mind whether she loved him or not.

[Paul speaking]

[police officer speaking]

[Runyon] We learn through the course of the investigation,

Mandy had left the marital residence

and hadn't returned for quite some time.

But, eventually, Mandy Lemay returns home.

[Paul speaking]

[Runyon] She tells Paul that she's lost her telephone,

she doesn't have one and she needs a mean of communications.

She wants to be able to reach out to her family

and set up this plan to go spend Thanksgiving with her family,

to have dinner with them.

[Paul speaking]

We know that Paul Lemay is in the house at that time,

and he's likely hearing these conversations take place.

He understands that in a few more days,

when Thanksgiving rolls around,

Mandy is going to be back out the door again spending time with her family.

And, eventually, an argument between the two ensues.

[Tussey] At this point, Paul knows that he's lost Mandy.

He's lost control of the one person in his life, the source of his ego.

And now he can see that the dark impulses are going to seep back in.

It's almost like a volcano erupting, this is the last straw.

[Paul speaking]

[Runyon] The evidence, in this case,

shows that Paul Lemay went to his bedroom.

[police officer speaking]

[Paul speaking]

[Runyon] He took that revolver into the living room.

He put that gun to the back of Mandy Lemay's head,

and he pulled that trigger.

[gunshot]

Well, from what I was told,

he shot her in the back bedroom and dragged her to their bed,

and he slept next to her those several weeks that she was laying there.

[Tussey] In the very end, after she died,

Paul still didn't want to let her go.

This is indicative of yet another final opportunity for him to control her.

[Denise] I reckon Paul was trying to preserve the body

because he literally slept in a freezing house.

Next to her.

We all had the funeral.

It was hard for me to walk through the funeral doors.

And walked in and when I seen the casket, it was closed.

I didn't get to tell her goodbye.

[Juanita] I could've got Mandy out.

Mandy could've been safe, Mandy could've been here with us now.

[Denise] It would've been nice if Mandy could've met my children more.

I could've explained to them better how good a person she was,

how good of an aunt she would've been,

how much they would've been spoiled.

It hurts me every day that she can't be here with us today.

Paul was evaluated by two psychiatrists,

both of whom cleared him as competent to stand trial.

[Paul speaking]

[judge speaking]

Paul Lemay didn't actually go to trial.

He pleaded guilty to one count of murder

and one count of abuse of a corpse.

It's still very frustrating that he didn't explain everything in court,

why he did do it.

And so he thought he didn't have to give his explanation.

He didn't have to tell why.

That's what makes me lose sleep at night

because I'll never know why.

I'll never know why it happened.

I'll never know.

[sobs]

[Tussey] There's likely several reasons why Paul ended up murdering Mandy.

Paul wanted control from the very beginning

and he had it until the very end.

She was an amazing person.

[Juanita] Mandy would want to be remembered as the funny, goofy,

outgoing, people-friendly person that she was.

I like to think I'm going to see her again. [chuckles]

That's what keeps me going every day.

We'll see our loved ones again.