Unraveling Accusations and the Search for Peace

Imagine the chaos when a mother's suspicions lead to devastating accusations, tearing apart her family and leaving a man fighting to prove his innocence. In this intense episode, we unravel the emotional and legal turmoil surrounding Courtland Lovelace, as he works tirelessly from behind bars to clear his name. Courtland claims he's an easy target due to his past and alleges that jealousy and external influences drove Lea to fabricate accusations against him. As he shares his side, highlighting evidence and witnesses that support his claims, we explore the complicated dynamics of trust and betrayal in the shadows of a tumultuous relationship.

On the flip side, we delve into the heart-wrenching journey of a mother caught between protecting her children and navigating the legal quagmire that ensues when her best friend is accused of child abuse. Discover the layers of complexity as she battles with past allegations and procedural delays, all while maintaining guardianship of her children. This episode underscores the critical importance of evidence, therapy, and clarity in the pursuit of justice, bringing into focus the relentless quest for closure and the hope for peace amidst the storm.

Transcript

Trust and Betrayal

Speaker 1 0:00

All right, I hear you.

Speaker 2 0:04

Yeah, what's up man, what's up you out there, you ain't got reliable sources. What's going on?

Speaker 1 0:10

You tell me, you tell me the story.

Speaker 2 0:15

What you want to hear.

Speaker 1 0:18

From start to finish, like are you guilty of what you're in prison for?

Speaker 2 0:26

No, I'm not, that's one.

Speaker 1 0:30

Okay.

Speaker 2 0:33

I believe that I was a great target because of my past, and my past is my past. That's something I had to deal with, but when it came to Leah and her kids, I've never even thought about doing anything like that. I don't know what happened. I don't know how the story got together. Leah denied medical treatment for these kids numerous times. I had that under my bed and I also have a statement from the one I have 22 years for saying that I didn't do nothing to him. But two weeks later he had a whole different story and I'm also hearing. There's a video out there with me just saying what she did was wrong and she's scared to tell it to my family yeah, I heard about the video too.

Speaker 2 1:15

I'm not I'm not, I'm not. I'm not here to. I don't care who believes my side, but if you want a reliable source, you can give me an address. I can send you paperwork. I ain't got no time. I'm a grown-ass man. I'm trying to go home.

Speaker 1 1:31

Yeah, you're working on an appeal.

Speaker 2 1:37

Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:39

Okay.

Speaker 2 1:39

I direct the bill.

Speaker 1 1:41

And how's that looking for you? Yeah, I'm aware of that as well.

Speaker 2 2:02

I'm aware of that as well, so you're aware of that and you don't post the right thing. Leah is a horrible person. She could make up stories. Whoever else can make up stories. I did one thing in my life and I did my time and I told the truth.

Speaker 1 2:19

All right, so you're saying Leah's flat out lying. What do you think Leah's motivation to lie is?

Speaker 2 2:33

Truthfully, I want to go with jealousy. Leah was madly in love with me. Leah wanted to marry her, all sorts of shit and I also believe that Anthony, the dude she was dealing with, played a big part in this also.

Speaker 1 2:48

Okay, so I asked Leah, I can't really tell you anything Like Uh huh. I asked Leah if she had Any type of dealings with you and she said no. She made that clear. Y'all never had any type of romantic dealings.

Speaker 2 3:03

And if that's what she made clear, then I can't, I gotta, I gotta Feel the love on my mind. I'm of romantic dealings, if that's what she mean. I got to seal the line with my mom and I'm going to call right back.

Speaker 1 3:09

All right bet.

Speaker 4 3:13

Listen.

Speaker 1 3:15

Yeah, it's.

Speaker 4 3:17

But I'm going to be honest. That explains why, when I said to him, don't trust her because people will turn on you, he was so warm. I don't say that, don't do that. That's what that was about. Their friendship was more than what I thought it was.

Speaker 1 3:35

Yes, it sounds kind of complicated.

Speaker 4 3:39

This is all fucked up and she's never going to come clean because she'll go to jail. You're going to jail for that, for perjury yeah you want to jail for it.

Speaker 3 3:52

She took the stand. Reporting and monitoring an incarcerated individual's use of institutional telephones constitutes consent and your calls may be provided to law enforcement agencies. To accept accept charges press 1. To refuse charges press 2. Preventing suicide is important. If you have concerns during this call, please contact the individual's facility to communicate with them. Thank you for using Securus. You may start the conversation now.

Speaker 1 4:21

Hello, yeah, yeah, all right so yeah, like I said Hello, yeah, alright.

Speaker 1 4:28

So yeah, like I said, I was asking her if y'all had romantic dealings, and she made it clear y'all didn't. I mean I could read the messages right here to you. Hold on, yeah, you can read them. Yeah, so the first thing that I asked her was it's not a funny matter, I'm not about to make you look bad at all, but if I'm not mistaken, you dealt with Courtland Lovelace and I'm currently covering a story. She said ew, no, the fuck, I didn't. That was my best friend. We never had no relations at all. If you're going to say stuff, please make sure it's facts. So I'm asking you right now did you have a physical or a romantic relationship with her? Yes, I did. It took you a minute to answer that.

Speaker 2 5:24

Because I don't feel like that shit should be brought up. I really don't care about none of that. You know I was saying I was young, that shit ain't. I don't even think about that shit yeah, but I mean. Let her run with that. I'm so clear. What I care about is letting the world know I never touched them kids. I love them to death. That's the only thing I care about. So by you posting what you're posting, you should have got facts first. My family, my family, got a lot about austin.

Speaker 4 5:58

Anything you ask your mom, she's gonna tell you he never asked us, courtland, he, I, I failed him and he never asked us.

Speaker 2 6:05

But what I'm saying is he should have. He should have reached out as somebody that got a podcast and doing cases and stuff. He should have reached out and seen what's the real?

Speaker 4 6:14

I keep telling y'all that people reach out to him. That's how that happened.

Speaker 1 6:24

For sure. I mean, it's not like I'm canceling out you having your side of the story.

Speaker 4 6:44

Like if I didn't, if I didn't inbox him, people would still assume, courtland, you know everybody's so scared of what you did in the past and now voicing their opinion about the story of today. You understand, courtland, that's what happened in court. They were so busy trying to hide your past and wondering where she got a story from like that.

Speaker 1 7:00

That's where she got the story from and she made it in depth my whole thing is if y'all was best friends and everything was cool, where did this come from and why would she do that to you? Why would she jeopardize your life like this? Why would she play with your life like that?

Speaker 2 7:22

Like I said in the top three. You know, when I first got locked up, people had their own little sides. That was around her. Jasmine told me that she heard it was Anthony and Jasmine told me that she immediately had gotten to it because she got back with Anthony. Anthony used to beat all her kids me and Anthony got into a fight because my dad gave one of my parents, which was her oldest son, and he had bruise all over his body and I'm not going to self-incriminate myself, but I was ready to off him and he had something on Leah. Leah had something on him. So they just squashed the relationship and around the time I got locked up they wound up getting back together, me and Fort, maybe like a week before I got locked up over the quarter on situation One day I'm working at McDonald's.

Speaker 2 8:07

She calls my phone. She asks me to come babysit the kids. I said I'm at the clock, I'll be there in a second. I get to the crib kids. I set them up the clock, I'll be there in a second. I get to the crib. The crib is spotless. If people know, leah Leah's house is always dirty. The crib was spotless and the police is in the house waiting for me.

Speaker 2 8:22

When they arrested me they asked me can we take this easy? They'll tell me when we get to the car what happened. I get in the elevator. I don't want to hear that. I want to know what the fuck I'm in cuffs for. The story was. Ms Morales told us that you made her kids do things to each other. That was one. I get to the precinct, I'm down there for about eight hours. They come and question me now if I did things to them. My first thing to them get them tested. Leah denied medical treatment twice that, three times that day. She only got medical treatment because they threatened to take away her kids. She only received counseling because they threatened to take away her kids. So when the medical records got brought up, they tried to state on the medical records that they can't tell. If anything they there was no lacerations or nothing, nor can they expect to be due to the time frame. They try to say it takes two weeks for things like that to hail.

Speaker 2 9:24

Leah took her kids to the doctors two weeks after I was arrested. Yeah, you can ask any parent in the world. If somebody's saying their kid's molested, are you not going to go get your kids tested to make sure they're okay? You know what her answer was. She didn't catch me doing anything to them. That's just a little bit. I could go for hours. I don't have the time, but I could go for hours. So that's why I was kind of tight that it just got posted like that without knowing anybody knowing what's really going on.

Speaker 1 9:49

Yeah, well, I mean, yeah Well, I mean, what's being posted is public information, nothing outside of public information. And then you have Leah's side of the story, and then Elliot, I'm sending you the video.

Speaker 4 10:05

Somebody send it to me.

Speaker 1 10:07

What video is that?

Speaker 4 10:09

I guess the video, the conversation, what parts that they had. They don't have the full conversation, but they have some of the conversation With Ponce that they had. They don't have the full conversation, but they had some of the conversation with that guy. Okay, yeah, send it to me, but I don't know who the guy is.

Speaker 2 10:25

I don't know if Jazzy knew who the guy was. I know he is Elliot. Yeah, he doesn't want to be brought up in this because Leah threatened him with jail before too.

Speaker 1 10:34

And who's the guy? Quay from Park Hill? Quay from Park Hill. I'll look into him. I'll definitely look into him.

Speaker 2 10:48

Like I said, I don't really buy anything. Get posted about me. I'm not. Words is words.

Speaker 4 10:54

He's just saying be fan yeah, I hear don't see my passion thing.

Speaker 2 11:02

Oh no, maybe he really did this. No, I did it. Innocent man sent to jail for 27 years. That's why I had the chance to go home and say, yeah, I did this, but I didn't. Because I didn't do it?

Speaker 1 11:17

Yeah.

Speaker 2 11:18

And also, I'm not in jail For my last three young kids, alright.

Speaker 3 11:32

Copy.

Speaker 1 11:37

Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 4 11:44

Yeah definitely fucking is going on in the world. But I should have known, because she knew what your penis looked like, so I should have knew. I should have known she knew what the fuck your penis looked like. I should have knew I got a minute left.

Speaker 2 12:03

I love you.

Speaker 4 12:04

I'll call you tomorrow, okay all right, so, elliot, I'll send. I'll send you what I, when the person sends it to me, I'll send it to you.

Speaker 1 12:18

The caller has hung up yeah, text it right to me.

Speaker 3 12:21

Okay.

Speaker 1 12:22

I appreciate it. You're welcome, all right. Yeah, hello. Yeah, all right, so we could talk now. Okay, all right. So what happened the day he got arrested? All?

Child Sexual Abuse Allegation Investigation

Speaker 5 12:43

right. So the day he got arrested, this is all. Everything happens in one day, you understand. I'm home with my kids he works at McDonald's at the block. I'm bathing them, you know, long story short, I catch them in the tub and I'm asking them, like you know, I never got caught having sex in front of y'all. So where did y'all learn these things from? And them two wouldn't tell me so when, yeah, and he just starts like a point this in his private and the other two start crying.

Speaker 5 13:26

So now I'm like pasting in my house. I'm like what the fuck? I don't know what to do. I don't know what to think. I don't even know, like, how to react to it. So I call the police. And In the midst of me calling the police, I'm like fuck this, he's about to come home. I don't want them to see him again. If they're telling me this, you know, yeah, I run outside, like because I lived in West Brain at the time, and across the street there's a pool. There's always cops sitting there. So I ran to those cops and I explained to them what just happened. Whatever that, I just called the police. But I had just spoke to him and he said he was on his way home. So now I'm panicking. I'm like they need to hurry up and come, because he's about to come home and they wait in the kitchen.

Speaker 5 14:01

They're like we're going to just wait here for when he comes. When he comes in, we're going to just arrest him. So when he comes in, I don't even. They told me, don't talk to him, don't say nothing to him at all. So I don't say nothing. He's like oh, what's going on? And as they walk out the kitchen they come, they arrest him. He's looking at me. He's like Leah, leah, what. He starts screaming, crying. He's throwing himself on the floor. The cops are yelling at him get the fuck up, get the fuck up. He's just like what did I do? Crying. So now they walk him out to the elevator. I stay in my house. I hear him like banging. I don't know if he's like hitting his head or like kicking the door, but he's like I didn't do nothing to them. He's just crying, screaming that he didn't do nothing to them. So now the kids are in the house. They're crying. It's just like a crazy-ass situation.

Speaker 5 14:55

We get in the car, we go down to Safe Horizon, I'm in the office. We're having an interview. They send them right. Doctor. I met with detectives, acs workers, uh, sexual abuse counselors. All types of people are in this office. They ask me what happened. I'm just explaining to them. Like you know, my children said that this person did these things to them I'm not sure what, so they they're questioning them. The doctor in the back takes, calls me and it takes me into the room and explains to me like they wasn't caught in an act of anything. So there's nothing visible. It was in the tub, so we're not gonna find anything right now yeah the only medical records.

Speaker 5 15:31

There was never no denying of no medical records. I didn't wait two weeks to take my kids to the hospital. That is a lie okay okay, and then after that, after that, like because Corona came, so the case dragged out for so long, yeah.

Speaker 5 15:48

So we had to wait for so long to go to trial. By the time we went to trial, you know it was a trial I testified, my sons testified to what happened and they asked him to talk. None of this was brought up in court. That we was in a relationship that I was jealous. None of that was brought up in court.

Speaker 1 16:07

What about? What about what he's saying? One of your kids testimony Was stricken from court, from the files and everything.

Speaker 5 16:15

Yeah.

Speaker 1 16:25

Okay, that makes a lot of sense. That makes sense. That makes sense. So I only have one question for you throughout this whole ordeal, before going into the matter when you first let him move in, were you aware of his history?

Speaker 5 16:49

Okay, Were you aware of his history? Before he did that to his sister, he was living with me already, okay, so he was with me the whole time. When he got arrested, I was trying to reach out to the family to speak to them about what happened, but nobody would respond to me about it, so I had to wait for him to come home and when he came home, I used to sit with him whenever he would get paperwork from parole and when we sat down and we spoke about it. On many occasions he told me that his little sister, that he touched my angel, her dad, he did it to her and that he wanted to change and he wanted help Like he cried with me Like we cried together.

Speaker 1 17:22

I felt bad for him. I was a kid of two so I felt bad, like you know. Okay, yeah, okay. So he wasn't, so you didn't see him as a known predator.

Speaker 5 17:32

Yeah, yeah, like a kid.

Speaker 1 17:49

He was my other kid, I was taking care of him, yeah. So he says clearly, as you heard, that y'all had a physical relationship, that you wanted to. We never had a physical relationship I had.

Speaker 5 18:01

Any time man I wanted in and out of that crib when I had a nigga. He was always there, he lived with me. I'm not that kind of business to be having him wherever he had. No, you come in here with me, we together. So for him to be saying that we was having sexual relations how, how? When he never even seen me naked. I don't know what his dick look like. They lying.

Speaker 1 18:21

Yeah, I believe you. Trust me, I don't know what that man's dick look like. I believe you.

Defending Innocence and Seeking Closure

Speaker 5 18:28

And if I did something with him, I have no reason to lie about it. I'm not the one here that did something wrong to somebody he is. That's why he's making up all these stories and shit.

Speaker 1 18:40

Yeah Well, you're good in my book. You gave me everything I needed. I'm going to wrap everything up.

Speaker 5 18:52

And we'll finish this story so you can continue living in peace. Thank you Honestly. I want him to send you all the information about like because there's no appeal. They would have contacted me.

Speaker 1 19:02

Yeah, they're saying that an appeal's in process. That's what him and his mom is talking about. Okay, well then, I'll be at the whatever meeting it is whatever. Yeah, you would definitely get some type of a notification.

Speaker 5 19:18

Yeah, they're going to bring up all the evidence, evidence. And my sons are older now, so just know that they, they, they speak better than they did then?

Speaker 1 19:26

yeah, definitely, they're very highly educated and smart definitely so.

Speaker 5 19:30

I don't know. And then this story that they're portraying, that I made it up. I'm not the one who said that he did something to him.

Speaker 1 19:36

To them, they said that he did something to yeah, yeah, definitely, and you did. They did continue to go get therapy and shit like that right. Yeah, definitely, and you did. They did continue to go get therapy and shit like that right.

Speaker 5 20:03

Yes, they did yes, and nobody ever threatened to take my children. My children was never told to me. I was never threatened if I don't go to counseling or if I don't go to the doctor that they're gonna get taken. That's a lie. My children have been in my care since I got pregnant.

Speaker 1 20:18

Yeah, well, god bless you, God bless the family. I appreciate you talking to me. I appreciate you cooperating. It means a lot to me. Thank you, okay, and if I remember anything else I'll call you back. Absolutely, I appreciate you, leah. All right, thank you, god bless. Thank you for not exploiting my children and violating them. Absolutely not. All right Later.