One Deception From Murder

Joe collier deception Hey – a Florida story! We’re heading to St. Pete beach in Florida on a hot and steamy summer. Candy Williams, a 30-something woman who had relocated to the beach from Kansas didn’t mind the heat. She had always wanted to live by a beach, what she considered paradise. There’s not much time before the summer would end and she’d be back to work as a school teacher. Since time was slipping past quickly, Candy headed to the beach to soak up every ounce of summer left. Laying out on a chaise in the sand, she notices a cute guy checking her out. A storm starts rolling in, so she heads in to get a drink at a bar along the beach. Weirdly, the cute guy shows up at the same spot as her. He introduces himself as Joe Collier who also happens to be a transplant from the Midwest. The two hit it off and Joe asks for Candy’s number. And just a few hours after meeting, Joe rings Candy up. They meet at a nearby restaurant and they make the usual small talk. After some drinks and laughs, Joe must start feeling comfortable because he opens up to Candy and tells her how he’s been trapped for years in a loveless marriage, but that he had finally made the jump and had gotten divorced. Candy was flattered that Joe would open up to her about such a sensitive subject so soon. He tells her how much he’s been torn apart, missing his son that now lives with his ex wife, but that he’s ready after so many years of misery to find his soul mate. Candy feels the spark and she’s really into this guy. So much so, that she asks Joe to her place to keep the date going. Things get hot and heavy fast and Candy tells Joe she wants to slow it down a bit. Joe’s a gentleman and backs off, and the two fall asleep cuddling. Almost immediately, Joe starts showering Candy gifts. Candy thinks she’s found the man of her dreams. However, when Candy’s friend meets Joe, she feels he’s a bit disingenuous, though she does admit, she’s an overprotective friend. I always say, listen to your friends! Just 3 months into the relationship, Candy is all in and head-over-heels. But, Joe has a problem. He admits to Candy that he’s in a tough situation financially. Candy says, “hey, no problem. How about you move in with me and we’ll both save money. Their relationship just gets better while living together. There is something Joe does, though, that Candy is a little uncomfortable with. Candy is a pretty private person, but Joe likes to take surprise photos of her when she’s in the shower or in times she’s naked and vulnerable. Candy doesn’t let it bother her too much, though, she trusts Joe completely. One day, Candy comes home from work and sees a note for her. The note is from Joe. It says he’s sorry, but he’s just too broken up and missing his son and he needs to try to work things out with his ex so he can be with him. Joe and all his things are gone. To make it weirder – there are post-it notes hung EVERYWHERE around that just say sorry on them all. Candy is devastated. She was so in love and having her future crumble without any warning just breaks her. After the initial shock, Candy starts to get pissed. She looks up Joe’s ex wife’s number and calls her. She finds out they had never divorced, they hadn’t split and Joe had just made up a big fat lie to Candy. Candy tries to refocus on her life and move on, but just a week later, Joe is at her door knocking. He says he made a huge mistake, he can’t live without her… Candy is of course still in love with Joe, she has missed him terribly, but Joe had a way of talking himself out of a lie. He claimed that he was filing for divorce and had just panicked that he would lose his son completely in the divorce. He promises that he’s officially ended it with his wife and the papers are filed. Candy’s resolve cracks and she takes Joe back. You know Candy’s bestie called bullshit on this. But, Joe does everything he can to make it up to Candy. Once again, she’s flowered with gifts. He even asks her to marry him. Candy accepts. To make things even more unbelievable, Joe tells her he’s landed a job earning 6 figures. The only downside to that is that the job is in Atlanta. Candy doesn’t want to leave the great life she has in Florida, so smartly, she stays put and the pair agree to a long-distance relationship. Once Joe moves, he starts to get emotionally distant as well. He calls less and less and doesn’t answer Candy’s calls very often. The bills the two shared still come to Candy’s house and she sees that Joe has been on the phone a lot, but not with her. He’s also sent flowers to someone, but it’s certainly not Candy. Turns out, as soon as Joe got to Atlanta, he also got a new girlfriend. Once again, Candy is crushed. A repeat of the last breakup happens. Joe swears it was just a fling and is desperate for Candy to take him back. Joe does everything once again to try to win her back. Again with the gifts, flowers… he goes way overboard one day when Candy leaves her house and steps out into a yard full of fake baby pigs – her favorite animal and balloons and sorry signs. Joe is such a smooth talker, and he starts breaking Candy’s resolve. She has been missing him terribly and in a moment of weakness, she takes him back. She laid it out this time that this was his very last chance and there would be no more. Now, it’s Candy’s birthday weekend and she, Joe and some friends are together celebrating. Now, Candy’s best friend, Kathy, the one that doesn’t trust Joe is at this party. She gets a call during the party from a mutual friend that couldn’t come. She’s told that this friend has found Joe’s profile on a dating site. Kathy decides not to ruin Candy’s party and holds back on sharing the info until the next day. Candy is disgusted and throws Joe out. She’s humiliated and feels like a dope for taking him back so many times. Joe decides he’s not done with Candy, though. He’s constantly calling, emailing, even sending letters. It gets so bad that Candy takes out a restraining order on him. Like it often does, the restraining order does nothing. Everywhere Candy goes, Joe shows up. It gets to the point that Candy thinks he must have a tracking device on her car because it’s literally EVERY time she’s out, that he shows up. As many stalking victims do, Candy begins hiding away in her house. She takes out another restraining order on him and this seems to work for a bit. But, Joe weasels his way into her life through the computer. He has his friends start barraging her with messages telling her that she needs to take Joe back because he loves her so much. Candy ignores them for the most part, but one email catches her attention. It says that Joe has committed suicide. She wanted him out of her life, but not dead. BREAK Candy decides to call Joe’s parents to find out what happened. Joe’s parents had quite the story for Candy. She’s shocked to find out his real name is actually Peter Zimmer and that as an infant, he was adopted by a family in Illinois. When he was 14, his family moved to a rural farm in Wisconsin. Peter hated living so far away from his friends and away from the action of a city. At one point, he told his friends that he hated his parents and that someday, he was going to kill them. On May 23, 1983, Peter made good on his word. He stabs his mother 15 times in the garden, then drags her face-down into a shed on their property and placed a rosary on top of her. Next, he took out his 10 year old little brother. Then, he goes upstairs and goes into the gun cabinet. He waits his dad gets home, then shoots him and runs off. Finding the bodies and no sign of Peter, police immediately suspect the teen and put out notice to other departments. He’s tracked down pretty quickly, but at that time, in Wisconsin, juveniles couldn’t be tried as adults. Peter claimed his adoptive father beat him, his mom didn’t protect him and that his little brother had been treated as the perfect son and it was unfair. Even though Peter doesn’t seem to realize how serious his actions were or even show any remorse, the judge could only sentence him to be locked up until he was 19. While at the Ethan Allen school – the juvenile facility – he meets a girl named Belinda who was a 19 year old volunteer there. They end up getting really close and Belinda gives birth to their daughter, Nicole. Nicole’s mom kept the info about Joe’s past a secret from their daughter until she was grown. When he gets out of juvie, he changes his name to Jovan Collier and leaves Wisconsin, Belinda and Nicole in the dust. He also became a trust fund kid by inheriting the estate of his adoptive parent’s estate (worth almost $200,000. He manages to hide his past from everyone he meets, and every job he’s had for 20 years. Until… he reconnects with his biological mother and her husband. He tells his bio mom that his adoptive parents died in a car crash, the same story he tells Candy later on. His blood relatives sniff out the deception and they run a background check on him and find out what he had really done. Joe had also had a son with a woman named Leah, and I’m guessing this must be the wife he’d been with while dating Candy. These are the parents that Candy talk to and they tell her everything and that the suicide is likely just another lie Joe cooked up to get her attention. They’re right. Candy, now realizing the kind of monster she’s dealing with, goes to police. Of course, they tell her, “well, he’s done his time for those crimes and unless he’s caught committing a crime there’s nothing they can do.” Fortunately one of those cops must have felt they needed to do more because they don’t just leave it at that. They actually tip off the local news stations about the story to spread the word about this jerk. Now that his past is exposed, Joe doesn’t try to win Candy back. Instead, he decides to get back at her. His cards and emails turn from sweet and loving to vile and threatening. He says things like he’s going to burn down her house and kill her dogs. Candy is dealing with the stress of it all the best way she knows how, by walking on the beach, listening to the waves meeting the sand. During her walk, she starts seeing all of these flyers posted everywhere, even on stakes in the sand. She goes to look at them and they’re the naked photos Joe had taken of her with her phone number and address advertising sex services. She also finds out he’s signed her up for sex websites for people who want to meet for in-person sessions and for things like orgies and fetishes. She would come home after work and there’d be people waiting for her for sex parties she didn’t schedule. One day, while she was at the school working with her young students, a package came for her. She assumed it was a delivery for her classroom from the school, but when she opened it during class, it was a dead baby pig. At this point, Candy’s barely sleeping, feels trapped and knows she has to do something to protect herself. She makes an appointment to meet with the state assistant district attorney and tells them the entire story. They agree that her life is in danger. They decide to charge Joe with aggravated stalking which is a felony and carries mandatory jail time. Joe takes off. Authorities do catch up with him pretty quickly in a hotel in Georgia with a new girlfriend. They find a stolen gun in the hotel room and police are pretty sure his intention was to go back to kill Candy. He pleads guilty and is sentenced to 3.5 years in prison. While he’s in jail, a judge imposes an indefinite restraining order barring him from any future contact with Candy. In October of 2012, he was released from jail. Candy refused to go into hiding and decides to live her life how she wants instead of giving him that power. Fortunately, he hasn’t contacted her since his release. Since then, he has actually claimed that he did not send the dead piglet to Candy to threaten her but to help the her and her students prepare for an upcoming science fair project. “I sent that on to her out of the kindness of my heart for the benefit of her kids. Everything I do with good intentions gets turned into an evil thing.” You’d think doing some time would maybe wake the fool up, but in 2014, he was arrested for harassing an ex-fiancee after she called of the engagement when she found out about his twisted past. He ended up posing the $150,000 bond and when he pleaded guilty to 3 counts of harassment, he was sentenced to time served. He indicated that he was moving to the San Diego area and has managed to stay out of the public eye since then. I dated a psycho, season 1, ep 1 cinemaholic, murderpedia, abcnews.go.gom, galvnews.com, jsonline.com