I called him at 11:04 that morning. He was on his way to take Jackson to his other grandmother’s. It was the second time he called me that hour, which wasn’t like him, and something in his voice just didn’t sound right. I told him to make sure he called me back.
I had no idea that would be our last conversation. He never hid anything from me. He always told me what was going on. But this time, he didn’t.
And I was supposed to go home for lunch the next day at 11:00. He died at 12:00. I still feel like I could have stopped him. But I didn’t know.
Jared was my twin brother. Having a twin is both a headache and a blessing. The blessing part is you’re born with your best friend. Nobody was closer to me than Jared.
Still no one is closer to me than Jared was. We grew up watching the footage from September 11th play over and over on the news. My mom had gotten us home from school, and we were all scared. The twins sat on their knees right in front of the TV, and then they both turned to her and said, “Mommy, we’re going to go fight those bad guys one day.
”
From then on, it was army costumes for Halloween and getting into shape. Jared was dead set on being a soldier since we were kids. I told him, “Well, he go, I go. ” At first I said it to try to talk him out of it.
That didn’t work. So we both went up and signed up. But my daughter had just turned one. I looked at Jared and said, “I can’t leave this baby behind.
If I didn’t have her, I’d be with you. ” He said, “I’ll be fine. You stay with her. ” He treated my daughter Maddie like a princess.
When he left for Afghanistan, I physically had to start seeing a therapist because I thought I was going to lose my mind. Once he got deployed, we would go through three weeks without hearing a word. That was very hard. Knowing he was over there in a war zone.
Every now and then he’d Skype us, but he couldn’t answer any questions. We’d ask, “Hey, where are you at? ” and he’d say, “Dad, I cannot tell you that. ” We’d ask if he was seeing any action, and he’d say, “I cannot confirm or deny that.
” It was like talking to a robot. He told us about being on patrol in a big military vehicle called a Buffalo. It’s like a semi-truck but super armored. Their job was to scan for IEDs.
He said that wasn’t the problem—you’d run over them and it would just shake. But when he was the gunner on top, he’d have bullets flying right past his head or right across his face, and you can’t duck. You have to turn and shoot. He got hurt while he was in the army.
He was climbing down from the Buffalo and somebody above him dropped a gun. It hit Jared in the head. He fell off the vehicle onto some rocks. They started giving him opioids for the pain, and it just changed him.
He got in a little bit of trouble over there, and everything sort of snowballed. The army and him decided they were going to part ways. Jared went into the army thinking he’d be there until he retired. So when he came out, he was upset.
He was half and half when he got home. Half of him felt like he had unfinished business. Half of him felt like he was happy to be home. The PTSD was so obvious.
He started seeing a therapist right away. But he was never satisfied. He wanted to make a life out of the army. That was his plan.
It was a little shaky at first, but once he got his feet on the ground, he got a girlfriend, and before too long they had a child. That was one of the best things that happened to him as far as his PTSD—having that child. The world changed for him then. He wasn’t worried about the world anymore.
He was worried about that little baby he had in his hands. That became his world. You could tell he was trying to be happy, trying to make everyone smile. But in the back of his mind, what he had to do in the army still hurt him.
Loud noises, big booms, stuff like that would always put him in a panic. We went to watch fireworks downtown on July 4th, and the boom of the fireworks was way too much for him. Another time, just a few weeks into our apartment, there was a loud boom and Jared got into a cold sweat. He was freaking out, hiding in his closet, rocking himself.
I just held him and said, “Hey, man, you’re home. We’re here. ”
The day he died, I got home and his car was still there. I thought he was at work.
That’s weird. I parked my truck, got my stepdaughter out, and we went upstairs. When we got to the top of the stairs, my door was slightly ajar. The dogs were freaking out.
Tex, Jared’s unofficial service dog, loved Jared more than anything. I couldn’t get that dog to calm down. I walked in the house and said, “Jared, hey man, I’m home. ” I didn’t get an answer.
When I turned that corner, I looked at the board and I saw a suicide note. It said, “I’m sorry. I love you. Please tell my sons I was a good man.
”
I went into a panic. I started kicking the door. When I opened it, I started seeing blood. I was on the phone with my wife.
I said, “Paige, I got to go. Call my mom. I got to call 911. ” She said, “What do you mean?
” I said, “He’s dead. ”
I got on the phone with 911. They said, “I need you to check for a pulse. ” When I went around the bed and went to pull myself up, I felt the gun.
I looked at the gun. I looked at him. I saw the bullet hole through the bottom of his chin. I said, “Sir, he’s cold.
” I grabbed his leg. It was ice. I’ve never felt a body so cold. There was blood in his mouth, just sitting there, and it had run down onto his shirt.
I said, “Sir, there’s no point. ” He said, “Just check for a pulse. ” So I had to put my hand on his neck. My mom got the call while she was getting out of the shower.
She told me later that she heard my voice on the phone with Jacob, saying, “Mom, he’s gone. He’s gone. ” She said, “What? ” And she just dropped.
She wailed. I pulled over to the side of the road on my way over. I just remember sitting on the side of the truck. I can’t tell you how long I was there.
After that, the girl Jared was seeing approached me. They had collected all of our family in the clubhouse at the apartment building. I hadn’t even had a chance to process what I had seen. But she said, “I need to tell you something.
” And she told me: “Jared was texting this girl. ” Apparently, she was underage and the parents were threatening to send him to jail. Jared was an army veteran who fought for our country and was dealing with PTSD from the things he saw. He was looking for compassion.
He was looking for somebody to spend some time with. He got on a dating site. He was talking to women he thought were attractive and might have something in common with. The next morning, everybody was over.
My dad had finally showed up. After a few hours, I said, “We need to tell you something. ” The girl Jared was seeing was with us the whole time. So me, her, and my wife pulled the family aside and told them what she told us.
Mom wanted Jared’s phone, but they wouldn’t release it. It wasn’t until two weeks later that we finally saw the text messages. He was being accused of sending unsolicited pictures to a minor. It flipped everything upside down.
He never sent a pic to a minor, and he never asked for one. There was a picture of a girl in a bra. He had sent back a normal picture of himself and said, “I’m a dad of two, three if you include my dog, Tex. ” When you looked at Jared’s profile, it was what you would expect an American veteran to be.
Some of the pictures he sent to her were nothing obscene. They were pictures of his life, of his dog, of him enjoying himself. And these guys took that and ran with it. Then they contacted him and told him they were the girl’s parents.
The parents messaged him: “You’re going to go to jail. You’ll never see your son again. ” And then they even spoofed the number to make it look like Greenville County was calling. “I’m a detective so-and-so.
” The girl told us that a detective had called him while they were at the grocery store, telling him to do what these parents told him or they’d arrest him. That was a red flag right there. If you’re in trouble for having underage pictures, the cops are not going to tell you, “Hey, just pay that person. ” The cops don’t do that.
He thought people were going to see him as a pedophile. And that is what I think made him do what he did. The detective gave him Mr. Harris’s phone number to call.
So my son, instead of running the other way because he was taught honor, calls up the father and says, “Hey, let’s get this straightened out. ”
They made him believe he was the scum of the earth. They made him believe he was doing something that criminals do. That people with no morals do.
That people who have no backbone do. And Jared was the exact opposite of that. He died on September 11th. We buried him on the 18th.
We didn’t get the phone back until September 27th. When we got it back, we all agreed to meet at my house. I just kept saying, “No, something’s not right. ” My mom is a firecracker, and if it wasn’t for her, we wouldn’t be here today.
I started reading all the texts. When the parents messaged him, the dad said, “Hey, look, we can overlook this. Her mom wants to send you to jail. ” When I came to the part where the mom said, “Well, the only way I’m going to accept it is if you’ll pay to have her phone contract ended and get her a new phone.
” He said, “Okay, okay, okay. If I do this, then that means that phone’s mine. ” Because he needed to see that they were telling the truth, that he asked for lewd pictures. “That’s not something I would do even if I was talking to a girl.
And by the way, I’m a manager at AT&T. I know that it costs that much. ” So he kind of gave him a little pushback there, but the rest of the time he begged. When I got to that part where she said, “$1,189 and it’s got to be in the bank tomorrow or whatever,” I just went, “Oh my god.
This was a total scam. How did he not get this? ”
In this particular scam, there are several variations. They go onto a dating website and pretend to be a young female, or in some cases a young male.
They start interacting with people through the dating website. Once they have dialogue, they reach back out pretending to be the young person’s parent, saying that because of the interaction with this victim, the young person is now suffering from some kind of mental issue, or they’re underage and may have said something inappropriate. And then they start saying, “Well, we can deal with this. My wife’s mad, but you can talk to me and I’ll try to calm her down and we can work around this.
” In Jared’s case, they reached out first saying, “Hey, this is what’s going on, this is what the accusation is. I’m going to put you in contact with the parents and you guys can sort it out so that law enforcement doesn’t have to get involved. ” And obviously that’s not how law enforcement works. But people get stressed out at the time and don’t think to reach out for help because they might be embarrassed or worried they’ll get in trouble.
Dealing with some of the things he was dealing with put him in a state where, when they told him enough, he began to think, “Did I do something wrong? I must have done something wrong. ”
I got on the phone with the detectives the next day and said, “Look, I think he was scammed. ” My mom called them too.
She said, “Look, I need help. I can bring you the phone, I can show you what I found. ” She started describing the text messages and how weird they were, and she told them about the oddball number they had requested money from. When she showed them that, it spiked some interest because they had had several cases in the past where it wasn’t necessarily the cause of death, but you started looking and saw the same traits in other cases.
The world was talking about these schemes where people were basically extorting others for money on sex trades. So when she said that, it was like, “Huh, we might have something in our backyard. ”
They came in with the phone and some printouts. And that’s when they reached out to the city police.
The case was received in January. It was very time intensive. With unlimited plans nowadays, you can make unlimited phone calls and unlimited texts. So they had to sort through a lot of information via texts and phone calls.
My mom received a text from the scammer’s number. She said, “Hey, this is Cathy Bollingham, Jared’s mom. He can’t talk to you anymore because he’s dead. Did you know that you were bullying and shaming a veteran who fought for this country and was very much dealing with PTSD?
You targeted him. ” She sent them pictures of him dead in the casket. All of us looking over him. She was brutal.
“I’m going to find out whether or not there’s an actual daughter because I don’t believe it. ”
A week later, she got a message on Messenger. A woman named her account “Angels Among Us. ” The first thing she said was, “Ma’am, you don’t know me, but I know what happened to your son and my brother knows who’s responsible for the scam and he wants to give you their names, but he’s going to need protection.
” My mom messaged back, “What do you mean he needs protection? Where is he? ” She told her he’s at Lee Correctional. And my mom said, “Are you telling me that my son got scammed by prisoners?
” She said, “That’s exactly what I’m telling you. And my brother was in the cell when you were texting them. ”
My mom flipped out. The detectives drove to Lee Correctional, which is about three and a half hours from Greenville, to talk to two inmates whose names had come up in the investigation as possibly being involved.
That feeling based on their short responses was indicative of someone trying to avoid answering truthfully. Both individuals had extensive criminal backgrounds. They got geolocation data on some of the phone calls and plotted the coordinates into the system. The phone calls from that number during the time frame of the search warrant pinged at a tower directly near Lee Correctional.
Lee Correctional is in a very rural area, so it wouldn’t make sense for somebody to stay close to a tower near a prison just to make phone calls. Through those numbers, they found numbers that bled back to the suspects’ family members and friends, information about the communities they came from, and other scams they were running during the time they were speaking to Jared. Prisoners. They’re in jail.
How are they getting access to these phones? These scams, the inmates can’t help themselves and they start telling other people about it. Either they can make money, or they get the gangs involved for protection. Once someone comes up with a good idea, it spreads like wildfire.
Folks that come to prisons, they’re not dumb. They’ve run drug rings. They’ve scammed people. It takes a criminal mind and a criminal way of thinking.
They just took a life, not money. They took a life. It took until May 10th, 2019. That morning, my mom got a call at work.
They said, “We want you guys to be at a live news conference. We’re going to formally charge these prisoners. ” And they did a live press conference. On the afternoon of September 11th of last year, Jared’s twin brother Jacob returned to their shared apartment and found Jared deceased in his bedroom.
He had committed suicide. Suicide investigations are difficult. Detectives are often able to conclude that the departed took his own life, but physical and medical evidence cannot explain the why. Surviving friends, family, parents live every day heartbroken and sometimes guilt-stricken, and they want to know why.
Analysis of Jared’s cell phone messages showed that he had been communicating and texting with a woman days before his death. Additional correspondence was discovered. These were from individuals representing themselves as parents of the woman and calls from alleged police in the Greenville area. And we believe that Jared had no idea that he was being blackmailed.
Upon consultation with the 13th Circuit Solicitor’s Office, we determined that sufficient evidence exists to charge the two inmates with blackmailing Jared Johns in September of 2018. We believe these two inmates conversed with Jared via a dating app, sent images of scantily clad women, and then followed up with demands for money. Then we found out exactly who it was. Two names and two faces.
John William Dobbins Jr. , 59, of North Charleston, South Carolina. And Carl Richard Smith Jr. , 43, of Simpsonville, South Carolina.
Both men were charged with blackmail, which is a 10-year felony in that state. They said, “Well, the reason we’re charging them with blackmail is because in the state, manslaughter only carries like a five-year sentence. ” I can’t even wrap my head around that. But blackmail will give them 10 more years.
John William Dobbins Jr. ’s rap sheet literally looks 12 pages long when I printed it. He’s a bad dude. He had no conscience, none.
Carl Smith Jr. pled guilty. These are the guys that killed my brother. These are the guys that we’re going to take down.
And then after we take down these two, we’re going to take down everybody else. Jared was the first veteran they targeted. It was normal active military members, then it turned into veterans. And now they target everyone.
I got targeted two years ago. It was the exact same text they sent Jared, almost to the same word. Like there were two words that may have been off. Had I not been the mama bear that I am and boldly told him what I thought and got a response back from them to my phone, and had I not sent those pictures, that guy wouldn’t have solved it and laughed at it.
But when I finally got everything to them, they gave me a new detective, gave me two new detectives, and boy they ran with everything I had. The informant, he didn’t want to be moved, but they ended up moving him before they even talked to him. To a different prison. Because even he said he couldn’t even be seen talking to a guard.
If he got called to the infirmary for something, they’d know he was talking. So they literally had to move him, and it took a couple of weeks to get all that done. It really sucks that he went and he fought for this country, served in literally active war in Afghanistan, put his life on the line, got injured, made it back though alive. Two and a half years later, he’s dealing with his PTSD.
He’s working too. He’s got his dog, he’s got a son. He’s happy. And just out of nowhere, they target him.
And he doesn’t pay the money. He pays with his life. The news conference was on May 10th, 2019. Ten days later, John was paroled.
That was the worst part. We found out John Dobbins got out a few days after. I got the photos of Jared in the casket, and he was walking as a free man 45 minutes down the road from me. A whole lot of me, and my dad felt the same, wanted to take justice into our own hands, but of course we didn’t.
The fact that it took so long to get him back where he belonged was the infuriating part. I could go run into this guy in Walmart right now. He had been paroled for three years, walking around, living his life, living it up, spending the money, denying it. He even talked about it on Facebook.
I could see him on his Facebook page. He bought a brand new motorcycle the week he got out. Within two weeks, he had gotten a brand new race car. I mean, living it up on the money that literally my son died for.
They had already targeted and gotten over $500,000 from active military. Jared was the first veteran they targeted. They had scammed over half a million out of him already because their rank means everything to them. They pay.
They pay. So we went into this knowing we were going to fight. I didn’t know if I could handle myself because I wanted to kill him. The first guy, Ricky Smith, he agreed to testify against John, who was still denying it.
His sentence couldn’t run concurrent. Our judge allowed every single thing that the solicitor found out, and he found out so much more than John ever knew that he knew. More than 10, 12 times that $1,189 was a number for John that he was scamming left and right, even after Jared died. Mobile phones in prisons, contraband phones as they call them because they’re illegal for inmates to have in South Carolina, cause a myriad of problems.
They allow the inmates to corrupt officers by moving money around. It destabilizes the prisons. It makes it unsafe for the staff. It makes it unsafe for the inmate population and it makes it unsafe for the public.
Some of these scams, they get on and say, “You know, we’re with the Greenville Police Department. We’re going to come arrest you because of what you did. You need to send this money in. ” And why are they able to do that?
Contraband cell phones. They would not do this on the wall phones. How are they able to receive payment? Contraband cell phones.
Everybody can bank on their cell phones. They can green dot, they can wire money, they can do all that stuff from their contraband cell phones. There’s just no good reason that I’ve been given by the industry as to why these phones are not being jammed. I remember doing the impact statement for the family.
I tried to write it down, but after doing it, I just decided it needs to come from her heart. I told the judge and John Dobbins what a great future Jared had and how he was such a great guy. He was always happy. He was always singing.
It was a tragedy that this man that was standing six feet away from me was able to take that away not only from Jared but from us. Because he’s a lowlife that’s in prison. He didn’t need all this money. He extorted.
I believe he was doing it for fun. I asked the judge to consider his parole that he was on and to give him the maximum sentence. In court, we were told that his girlfriend and even his mother were money mules. They were the ones going to get the money, and so they were all involved in it.
The judge was like, “Do you have anything to say to John’s family? ” And he’s like, “Y’all, I’m sorry. I can’t believe you guys, I’m so sorry for what I’m putting you through. Mom, I’m…” He went on and on and on to them.
And I thought, “You literally barely even turned and said I’m sorry to us. The people that you…” We got a life sentence out of this. The moment he took his last breath, my life changed immediately. Jacob’s, everybody’s life.
We got a life sentence when something like this happens. Five years. We weren’t happy with it. But we knew he was going back to jail.
In fact, he asked the judge to let him spend some more time with his family before they took him, and the judge denied him. He’d been there all day spending time with his family. It was a bittersweet day. I wanted him off the streets, but it still didn’t bring back Jared.
And now it’s just the fight to put cell phone jammers in prison. They have other tech where they could tell where texts and calls are coming from in the prison, but it’s not 100% effective. There are dead zones. The only way to truly stop it is to have a signal jammer that covers the span of the prison to keep any calls in and out from coming out of it.
The reason we need to be allowed to jam cell phones in prisons is simple. It’s public safety. It’s prison safety. Mr.
Johns is a prime example of the public safety aspect of this. This is costing millions and millions of dollars. It’s costing people’s lives. It needs to stop.
The federal government needs to have a hearing, and they need to change the law. Since all this happened, we have become aware of even more scams in South Carolina. The big word that came of all this is sextortion. My understanding of this scam is that it started small.
And over the span of six years, it’s nationwide. It started here in South Carolina, really. It was first military veterans. Now, it’s anybody who gets on a dating app.
It’s a relentless nationwide scam. And the fact that it’s so big and yet nothing’s done to stop it is sickening. I could promise you nine out of 10 men in the Upstate where I live alone has probably gotten the same text message of “You’ve done this the wrong way. You’ve talked to my daughter wrong.
” You could get on a dating app right now, swipe for a few days, and you’ll get that text. We’ve proven that we can’t keep the cell phones out. But, damn it, I can keep that signal from them being able to get it. Virtually, they’re out here walking amongst us, even though they’re behind bars.
The law needs to be changed to separate telephones from cell phones so that they can be jammed. I know 30 to 40 guys have been saved because of my son’s death. The amount of people that have messaged us or posted on the Justice for Jared group about how Jared’s story saved them—that’s enough for us to be happy. Not that Jared’s gone, but that Jared is saving lives like he wanted to in the army.
It feels good to hear these stories of “You saved my son. You saved my life. ” I didn’t do nothing. Jared saved you.
Jared saved all these people just by us sharing his story. Life without Jared is like part of you is always missing. To blow out two sets of candles is hard. My parents at one point said we won’t make Jared’s cake anymore, and I said, “Don’t ever do that.
” Because I’ve never had a birthday without two cakes. Every day is a reminder he’s gone. For families and friends of veterans or active military that have PTSD and are going through problems, just talk to them as much as you can. Be there for them.
When something like this happens to them, be there for them.
