Speaker 1: Welcome to the Docerty Gang, a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Katie Studios. Docr To Gang is the true
Speaker 1: story of three siblings. Twenty nine year oldly Grace, I'm
Speaker 1: the oldest. We have a very, very loving family. Our
Speaker 1: family is very accepting. If you make a mistake, our
Speaker 1: family will shoot you out and they will quickly open
Speaker 1: their arms. Twenty six year old Dylan. I wish it
Speaker 1: had not happened the way, and I wish I had
Speaker 1: never been put in that position. And obviously if I
Speaker 1: could go back, I would change a lot in twenty
Speaker 1: one year old Ryan. I'm not good at covering my track.
Speaker 1: I'm not good at lying. I'm not good at being
Speaker 1: a cheater. And I'll even'll wake behind me like a
Speaker 1: mile wide. The three went on an eight day fifteen
Speaker 1: state Crimes free in two thousand eleven that rocked the country.
Speaker 1: They liked the notoriety, They liked the fact that they
Speaker 1: were on the Monday, liked that they were getting national attention.
Speaker 1: That just played in the hole, you know, Bonnie and Clade.
Speaker 1: They went from wielding an eight key forty seven while
Speaker 1: trying to outrun police in Florida. The police tried to
Speaker 1: pull the sibling Joe the first speeding, but instead officers
Speaker 1: say the Doherty's pulled out a gun firing December twenty
Speaker 1: shots to robbing a bank in Georgia. What do you
Speaker 1: get out of it? You get federal charges, you get
Speaker 1: to FBI chasing, and you're gonna get your picture taken
Speaker 1: to leading police on a high speed car chase across
Speaker 1: Colorado ending in a shower of bullets fifty But that's
Speaker 1: not where the story begins ten years, because we're coming
Speaker 1: up in ten years and I mean, we've done thirty years.
Speaker 1: This is the Dockerty Gang Episode one. We can't change
Speaker 1: the past, not yet. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a crime producer
Speaker 1: at Katie Studios with Stephanie Ledecker. We've been working with
Speaker 1: producer Beth Greenwald and The Dockerty Gang for months now.
Speaker 1: The three siblings have agreed to tell their story for
Speaker 1: the very first time, each from separate prisons. Lee Grace
Speaker 1: Dockerty is at Federal Corrections Institute Aliceville and Alabama. Ryan
Speaker 1: is in the United States Penitentiary Tucson in Arizona, and
Speaker 1: Dylan is at the Federal Corrections Institute in Bennonsville, South Carolina.
Speaker 1: This call was from the federal prison. The last time
Speaker 1: I spoke to my dad. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: ever talked to anybody on their death bed, or had
Speaker 1: anybody that you know asked you to do something while
Speaker 1: they're trying I guess, but it's the definitely weighed on me.
Speaker 1: You know, it was something that I really later on
Speaker 1: took the heart. They didn't say, you know, respect your mom,
Speaker 1: or do good in the school, or be nice to
Speaker 1: your sisters or anything like that. You told me the
Speaker 1: last thing I remember him telling me he was looking
Speaker 1: out for your little brother. I don't know if he
Speaker 1: knew and was going to be right there soon, but
Speaker 1: he thought about four hours after that. That's older brother,
Speaker 1: Dylan Dougherty. He was just twelve years old when he
Speaker 1: made a promise to his father on his deathbed that
Speaker 1: he would take care of his little brother. It would
Speaker 1: change the course of Dylan's entire life. Here he is
Speaker 1: speaking with Beth Greenwald. Family always seems to be the
Speaker 1: most important thing to all of you guys. Is it
Speaker 1: because you lost your dad? It was just the way
Speaker 1: that you were raised For my dad, you know, family
Speaker 1: was everything, and that's definitely where I got those ethos
Speaker 1: from from him. You know, family, trump's all. No matter
Speaker 1: what happens in your family is always tiring. Do you
Speaker 1: think things would have been any different if you're if
Speaker 1: your dad hadn't passed That's a big question. But John Daddie,
Speaker 1: I think things would be a lot different if my
Speaker 1: father had passed away. Their story was covered in the
Speaker 1: national media and it made us want to know more.
Speaker 1: This man hunt has been going on for more than
Speaker 1: a week. Harmed, dangerous, and all in the same family
Speaker 1: that led to a twenty mile long chase at speeds
Speaker 1: of over a hundred miles an hour. Are they three
Speaker 1: goldenhearted siblings willing to risk everything for each other or
Speaker 1: were they just looking for notoriety. My brother is going
Speaker 1: to be on the run. I'm going to be on
Speaker 1: the run. I'm on probation, and I burned all my bridges.
Speaker 1: It's a really strange feeling to be untethered. You don't
Speaker 1: have anything that means anything to you anymore. You've lost
Speaker 1: everything that matters. You can't go self surrendered. That doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: You're still gonna get the same amount of time you're
Speaker 1: gonna get whether or not you keep going from There,
Speaker 1: feature film based on the cross country crime spree set
Speaker 1: to be released later this year. Here's the movie's writer, director,
Speaker 1: and producer Sean McEwen, who's known the siblings intimately for
Speaker 1: eight years. The Doctor He's grew up in a small
Speaker 1: house in La Couchee, Florida, located about fifty miles outside
Speaker 1: of Disney. Mom Barbara was a nurse, and dad known
Speaker 1: as Doc, worked in construction. And five kids in seven years, Lee, Grace, Dylan, Devon,
Speaker 1: Aaron and Ryan growing up. The key lesson they instilled
Speaker 1: on their kids with family first and loyalty is everything.
Speaker 1: Youngest Dockery, Ryan talks about their mother. My mom went
Speaker 1: crabbing and fishing with me. My mom took me places,
Speaker 1: my mom did ship with me. My mom careen love
Speaker 1: for me. My mom tried real hard, but we were
Speaker 1: just really willful kids, like I'm gonna do what I want.
Speaker 1: My mom was always a worker in the family, like
Speaker 1: my father did construction and demolition and stuff. But honestly,
Speaker 1: I think that my mom's payout class tis and my
Speaker 1: father was able to kind of be like more of
Speaker 1: a stay at home father with us kids, which was
Speaker 1: a blessom. Here's oldest sister Lee Grace. Kids. We were
Speaker 1: not the best of children. We are really bad. We
Speaker 1: saw you know, we had behavior problems in school. If
Speaker 1: we did get in trouble, you know, sometimes even my
Speaker 1: dad would laugh at off. So we were raised strict,
Speaker 1: but not maybe as strict as other kids. Ryan's always
Speaker 1: been the baby of the family. You know, when you
Speaker 1: grow up as the youngest child. Me and Ryan have
Speaker 1: seven years age difference. He was the type of kid
Speaker 1: that everybody just gravitated toward him. He was like the
Speaker 1: golden child in our family. He was easy to love
Speaker 1: and he was just so easy going. If we laughed
Speaker 1: at a joke, he laughed. He just wanted to be
Speaker 1: like the big kids. You know. We could be hungry,
Speaker 1: We could be spending our last ninety nine on a
Speaker 1: Hamburger and he would split it with me. Everything with
Speaker 1: Ryan is fifty fifty. He wants to be able to
Speaker 1: share things. He's so generous. Dylan was not afraid of anything.
Speaker 1: He was always there to protect us, even at a
Speaker 1: young age. I always looked at Dylan like he had
Speaker 1: this like hero complex. He always wanted to save somebody,
Speaker 1: even as we were adults. It was always like I
Speaker 1: knew I could do whatever I wanted because I knew
Speaker 1: that John was there to protect me. You know, I
Speaker 1: could say whatever I wanted, I could fight with anybody,
Speaker 1: and my brother was always going to back me up.
Speaker 1: You know. It was like my my protector. Even though
Speaker 1: he's two years younger than me, I looked at him
Speaker 1: as my equal. Here's Dylan. When he was a child,
Speaker 1: his father wanted the best for him and felt he'd
Speaker 1: have a few more opportunities living with his aunt and
Speaker 1: uncle while still staying close to his siblings. Dylan was
Speaker 1: legally adopted by his aunt and uncle, who he refers
Speaker 1: to as stepmom and stepdad. I would say definitely a
Speaker 1: good older brother. I just imparted all of the called
Speaker 1: the wisdom that I received from our father and from
Speaker 1: my stepdad and even my grandfather. My mom had five
Speaker 1: kids in seven years, so there's not a whole lot
Speaker 1: of space in between her, so we were all relatively
Speaker 1: close to the same age. I think I was kind
Speaker 1: of cool growing up. We're all kind of at the
Speaker 1: same point in life together. So while the Doctuli's had
Speaker 1: fun and leaned on each other during their childhood, things
Speaker 1: were tough there wasn't a lot of money, and things
Speaker 1: got even tough when once dad died. The siblings were young, Lee,
Speaker 1: Grace was bull you dealing with s twelves, and Ryan
Speaker 1: just seven years old, So it was hard on the
Speaker 1: kids and possibly even harder on mom. The death of
Speaker 1: father William Dockerty known as Doc, was tough on everyone,
Speaker 1: especially mom Barbara. She was left with five kids to
Speaker 1: raise on her own. So my dad was very young,
Speaker 1: he was only forty one years old. My mom was
Speaker 1: left with all of us kids. Everything fell to my mom,
Speaker 1: all the discipline, all the finances, and it was very
Speaker 1: difficult for her, you know, because my dad was the
Speaker 1: love of her life, her soul mate, so she was
Speaker 1: going through losing her love and then also the father
Speaker 1: of her children. And that made it really, really difficult
Speaker 1: because my mom really had nobody to turn to. Her
Speaker 1: family was very distant with her, so they weren't with
Speaker 1: my mom's you know, nobody had my mom's back at
Speaker 1: that point. She was by herself. She did everything on
Speaker 1: her own. She always said the same thing, your father
Speaker 1: is my best friend. I cannot live without him. So
Speaker 1: I think that was a point where my mom realized
Speaker 1: the person that she loved most of the world had
Speaker 1: passed away, and I think it really really affected her,
Speaker 1: you know, I think even more than she than she
Speaker 1: put out there, because she was just struggling. He had
Speaker 1: nobody to turn to. At this point, everyone was doing
Speaker 1: the best they could. Older brother, Dylan, the one adopted
Speaker 1: by his aunt and uncle, had his sight set high
Speaker 1: and was on the straightened arrow. When I went to
Speaker 1: ninth grade, my mom started home school met uh did
Speaker 1: homeschooling for about a year and then enrolled in the
Speaker 1: community college. And I went to school for a few semesters,
Speaker 1: and then I just thought it did death really wasn't
Speaker 1: what I wanted to do. I started working young don't
Speaker 1: drive into construction and started making money and doing a
Speaker 1: grown man's job when I was sixteen. And I was
Speaker 1: making a grown man's paycheck at sixteen and was living
Speaker 1: at my parents house, so I had funny of money
Speaker 1: to spend. Lee Grace was living a rougher life, CouchSurfing
Speaker 1: at various friends places, often with her younger sister Aaron.
Speaker 1: We were like gypsies. We were from here to here
Speaker 1: to here. You know, we moved so much. I probably
Speaker 1: lived in about twenty different places, so there wasn't really
Speaker 1: one address that I was using. I was just kind
Speaker 1: of going, you know, by the seat of my pamp
Speaker 1: and my sister would be there with me. Aaron and
Speaker 1: I were going from family friends to our boyfriend's apartments.
Speaker 1: We were fourteen and fifteen, so that was a direct
Speaker 1: result of my dad's coffee. It was right after a
Speaker 1: dad died when Lee Grace went off on her own
Speaker 1: with her sister. Things were tough at home. Her relationship
Speaker 1: with Mama's volatile, and the only way Lee Grace could
Speaker 1: deal with grief and guilt was to get out of
Speaker 1: the house. I wasn't dealing with my dad's death very well.
Speaker 1: She wasn't holding up her end of the bargain, and
Speaker 1: I always I felt so much blame and so much
Speaker 1: guilt for my dad dying because I was the oldest child,
Speaker 1: and heart attacks are paused by stress, and you kids
Speaker 1: stressed your dad out, and now he's dead, and what
Speaker 1: are we gonna do. We don't have any money. Dad
Speaker 1: didn't leave a will, we didn't have life insurance, so
Speaker 1: it was like, you know, you're fourteen years old, You're
Speaker 1: worried about getting your drawer's license, and going to up
Speaker 1: dances and problems, and now I got to worry about
Speaker 1: biblings and my mom. This chaotic living situation Ledley Grace
Speaker 1: to drugs, stripping, and never holding down jobs for long.
Speaker 1: I never was able to stay in the same position
Speaker 1: for any amount of time, because when you're in that
Speaker 1: phase of your addiction, it's very hard to get up
Speaker 1: in the morning. You're not cooked, you're working when you're hungover,
Speaker 1: or you're coming off a bad high, or you're coming
Speaker 1: off a binder. So basically I had explained my situation
Speaker 1: to some of the people that I work with, and
Speaker 1: they basically said, we understand, thank you for telling us,
Speaker 1: but you need to go home and come back in
Speaker 1: a year when you've got your mind right. And instead
Speaker 1: of taking that advice, I basically quit the job. Leaving
Speaker 1: the traditional nine to five world would impactly Grace for
Speaker 1: years to come, enabling her drug habit and driving her
Speaker 1: deeper into addiction. And I went right back to dancing
Speaker 1: because they don't care. You know, you come in at
Speaker 1: six o'clock at night, seven o'clock at night to start
Speaker 1: your shifts. They're not expecting you to take a drug test,
Speaker 1: you know, they don't care a futurine Jewish pokes. You know,
Speaker 1: you could do whatever you want as long as you're
Speaker 1: making me quients happy. You can be intoxicated at your job.
Speaker 1: So that allowed me to flourish as a d answer.
Speaker 1: There was no restraints. So if I wanted to be
Speaker 1: on van x, if I wanted to be on roxy
Speaker 1: Hood and that was what he enabled me to support
Speaker 1: my habit likely Grace youngest Dougherty Ryan was also having
Speaker 1: a tough time. He was living with his mom, getting
Speaker 1: in and out of trouble with the law and not
Speaker 1: going very far. Here he is speaking with Beth Greenwald again.
Speaker 1: My mother always hald like a really strong work ethic
Speaker 1: and so like. I think I got my first job
Speaker 1: when I was like thirteen years old, fourteen, and then
Speaker 1: I always worked and went to school at the same time.
Speaker 1: But then I got kicked out of high school. They
Speaker 1: didn't give you like a suspension and let you come back, no,
Speaker 1: so like, and then I had to go to adulthood
Speaker 1: and then I got my g D. And what did
Speaker 1: you do after you did the adult education thing? I
Speaker 1: funked around a lot. I just sold small amounts of
Speaker 1: drugs and hung out. I didn't really have that much ambition,
Speaker 1: so I just kind of like a hedonistic streak in me.
Speaker 1: And I like to do drugs and I like to
Speaker 1: lay on the beach man. I like to go so finn.
Speaker 1: I like to drive around. I like to do things
Speaker 1: you'd like to do in your nineteam drink too much
Speaker 1: and drive to Ryan's brother, Dylan stepped in and help
Speaker 1: Brian get back on track. After a while, my brother
Speaker 1: told me, if you want, I'll get you a job
Speaker 1: over here. And I moved to the Pepford Hills and
Speaker 1: hung out with my brother and I got to know
Speaker 1: him a lot better, and thembre about five years in
Speaker 1: my life I got to spend with my brother, so
Speaker 1: I was really grateful for that time. And he taught
Speaker 1: me a lot about the counter work on cars. He
Speaker 1: told me how to do a lot of things with
Speaker 1: my hands because I was raising in a household essentially
Speaker 1: with all women, so like missing a lot of man
Speaker 1: type of education. And that's the type of ship that
Speaker 1: I got a crash course in from him. Ryan was
Speaker 1: twenty years old at this point, and not only was
Speaker 1: he doing well professionally, but his personal life was in
Speaker 1: a really happy place. Well, my baby's mother was pregnant.
Speaker 1: I like that whole experience, Like she was never more
Speaker 1: beautiful to me than when she was pregnant. She got
Speaker 1: big as a goddamn beach ball, and she was the
Speaker 1: prettiest I've ever seen their little chubby. Here's Dylan again
Speaker 1: talking about Ryan. He just needed an opportunity, That's all
Speaker 1: I needed with the opportunity, and I forwarded him the
Speaker 1: opportunity to do better. And this call was from the
Speaker 1: Federal prison better. And he was doing and he was
Speaker 1: doing good. He was doing the right things. He was
Speaker 1: going to work, he was being productive. He would have
Speaker 1: been taking care of his kid in his with his girlfriend,
Speaker 1: and he was in a position to be a part
Speaker 1: of his DS life and be a positive influence and
Speaker 1: obviously working. On August first eleven, everything changed. Ryan was
Speaker 1: set to appear in court for something that happened two
Speaker 1: years prior when he was a teenager. Ryan intended on
Speaker 1: pleading no contest to two felony charges, the first sending
Speaker 1: a minor harmful information, the second lewd and the siviest conduct. However,
Speaker 1: when he got to court, the deal he thought he'd
Speaker 1: agreed to had changed. He explains the original agreement his
Speaker 1: lawyer presented him with. My lawyer promised me. He's like, yo,
Speaker 1: when you come to court, you're gonna get probation for something,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna be a non sex offendery charge and
Speaker 1: you're not gonna have to register. You're gonna have to
Speaker 1: do five years of probation. And I'm like, all right, bet,
Speaker 1: I'll sign up for that. We're going to take a
Speaker 1: quick break here. We'll be back in a moment. Two
Speaker 1: years prior to the court appearance, Ryan had sent sexually
Speaker 1: explicit text messages back and forth with an underaged girl
Speaker 1: he'd never met. He'd stayed out of trouble after that,
Speaker 1: but it was now time to face the fallout from
Speaker 1: what he'd done. On that day in court August first,
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, Ryan's lawyer informed him there was a
Speaker 1: different prosecutor and a completely different deal on the table.
Speaker 1: And then I get the court. The son of a
Speaker 1: bitch is late. He's like, all the state attorney has changed.
Speaker 1: It's not the guy anymore. And the best deal she's
Speaker 1: telling the cut with you his twelve years reprovation. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, fuck that ship. We'll crank it up and
Speaker 1: go to trial. I've already paid your almost twenty racks,
Speaker 1: which the majority of my mom, Paige, who could ill
Speaker 1: afford it. Ryan's attorney went on to explain what going
Speaker 1: to trial would mean for him. It was an impossible choice.
Speaker 1: But if you go to trial, they're gonna pull your
Speaker 1: bond and put you in jail. Right now, Well, my
Speaker 1: son was supposed to be born ten days from there.
Speaker 1: I don't want to miss that. Like I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm just bad, bad, bad, bad and worse like shitty option,
Speaker 1: worse option, worse option. When Ryan went to court, older
Speaker 1: brother Dylan had planned to go with him but didn't.
Speaker 1: It's something that haunts Dill into this day. But it
Speaker 1: was very odd the whole way that everything got forward
Speaker 1: and transpired. I was supposed to go to court with
Speaker 1: him that day, and I was busy. Might have been
Speaker 1: that things would have happened differently. I would have what
Speaker 1: would happening. I probably have told him we'll going to trial,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. But Ryan had to make
Speaker 1: the decision on the spot, and he chose probation. I
Speaker 1: came from the courthouse immediately to the probation office. He
Speaker 1: said I did not need a monitor, and then I
Speaker 1: got to the probation office and they were like, you
Speaker 1: need one, and I argue with the p O and
Speaker 1: he was like, well, we can figure it out down
Speaker 1: the road, but fuck you for right now. You'll do
Speaker 1: as I say, or I'll violate you right here and now.
Speaker 1: And it's like you're excluding me from society to the
Speaker 1: point of where how am I supposed to succeed? Ryan
Speaker 1: raced home from the meeting with the parole officer to
Speaker 1: get to his house. The officer was set to do
Speaker 1: a home check shortly after their meeting, and Ryan wanted
Speaker 1: to beat him there. So I'm driving my ass off,
Speaker 1: and the whole time I'm kind of like paranoid that
Speaker 1: they can see how fast I'm going. I'm worried. I
Speaker 1: want to get home to get the guns out of
Speaker 1: the house before they get there. Dylan was there before
Speaker 1: I got home. I just unloaded on him and told me,
Speaker 1: first of all, we squared everything with the probation and
Speaker 1: ship like that in about court and what happened there,
Speaker 1: and I said, Bro, I just can't take it anymore.
Speaker 1: I have reached a point where I just can't do it. Bro,
Speaker 1: the officer ride to the house right after Ryan did.
Speaker 1: Dylan was staying there, as was Ryan's nine months pregnant
Speaker 1: girlfriend Amber. Since Ryan was charged with sexually inappropriate texting
Speaker 1: with the minor, the probation officer was looking for evidence
Speaker 1: of any children in the home, which would be a violation.
Speaker 1: The crib and other preparation for the baby to come.
Speaker 1: We're everywhere. The probation officers like, hey, when your son
Speaker 1: is born, you can't be around him, And I'm like,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about. It's gonna be borne in
Speaker 1: ten days. This is where she lives, where she's putting
Speaker 1: I don't know, but she can't be here. So it's
Speaker 1: like an impossible situation all the way around it, Like
Speaker 1: what what didn't you expect? What did you think was
Speaker 1: going to happen out of that situation that you put
Speaker 1: me in. Granted I did, I did what I did,
Speaker 1: and I put myself in that situation. It was my
Speaker 1: fault that it got to that point. But when I'm
Speaker 1: in that point, you're not helping me. You're hurting me.
Speaker 1: You're pouring water on me while I'm in the water.
Speaker 1: I'm drowning here, and you're like, hey, I have this
Speaker 1: cup of water. You look thirsty. In order for Ryan
Speaker 1: to meet the requirements of his probation, he had to
Speaker 1: provide his home address. It seems like a simple ask,
Speaker 1: but it was anything but Dylan helps explain why it
Speaker 1: really at all fulled down to the address. I think
Speaker 1: in the trial it's known as the yellow House. He
Speaker 1: doesn't actually have a street address. It doesn't have a
Speaker 1: physical address. And there's doing all these you know, hoops
Speaker 1: and loops and why he can't provide this address while
Speaker 1: the probation officer knows that he lives here and says, oh,
Speaker 1: if he doesn't provide the address and we're gonna fil
Speaker 1: him such and such. Ryan was given just forty eight
Speaker 1: hours to officially get his home address and to have
Speaker 1: two pieces of mail delivered to him stating the address,
Speaker 1: and to have that reflected on his driver's license. It
Speaker 1: was an impossibility a year's older brother, Dylan. That was
Speaker 1: the root cause, because I had the probation officer not said, oh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna come back and you know we're gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna Diviyl like you, and it was just like what
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? There was no way to
Speaker 1: get an address for the place because the place didn't
Speaker 1: in the house didn't have a mail box. The house
Speaker 1: was a part of a larger piece of property. In
Speaker 1: the house is like on the back corner of it
Speaker 1: on another street, and it didn't actually have an address.
Speaker 1: The house was just there with Miller's dress. That's why
Speaker 1: it's called the yellow house. And of course the neighbor
Speaker 1: has an addressed, and the other house and other si
Speaker 1: has an address, but for some reason, this house doesn't
Speaker 1: have an address. And I know this sounds really weird,
Speaker 1: but that is the fact. Ryan was frantic thinking about
Speaker 1: what would need to happen to fulfill his probation requirements.
Speaker 1: I mean literally, like if the probation officer would have
Speaker 1: done what I was asking him for, which was I said, hey, bro,
Speaker 1: let me get like one week. Because in Florida to
Speaker 1: do anything at the d m V office, you have
Speaker 1: to have your air certificate, social Security card, in two
Speaker 1: forms of certified mail. You have to have all of
Speaker 1: that in order to change anything on your driver's license
Speaker 1: or and to do anything in your driver's license in
Speaker 1: order to up foot in the d n B. That's
Speaker 1: all provable facts, and then the provable facts at the
Speaker 1: place that I was living, so I didn't even have
Speaker 1: a mailbox. All I have was a post office box.
Speaker 1: How long would it take to get a mailbox installed?
Speaker 1: How long would it take from them to get two
Speaker 1: forms to certify mail to the house. And I think
Speaker 1: everything to some extent was heightened again. They put you
Speaker 1: on probation instead of putting you in jail for a reason,
Speaker 1: but then they made it virtually impossible for you to
Speaker 1: hit the conditions of that probation, which means that you
Speaker 1: were just going to be sent to jail either way.
Speaker 1: Ryan felt completely out of options. In forty eight hours,
Speaker 1: the probation officer would be back and Ryan would be
Speaker 1: arrested for violating parole. He would go to jail, leaving
Speaker 1: his nine months pregnant girlfriend alone to have their baby,
Speaker 1: the son he would not be able to live with.
Speaker 1: The only thing I ever really like dreamed about that
Speaker 1: I really wanted mad would to be a father. And
Speaker 1: I'm not that hard to please write like I really
Speaker 1: wanted really amazing it, like I wanted are now so,
Speaker 1: I wanted it on a nice car. I wanted even
Speaker 1: blow and I wanted somebody to be able to share
Speaker 1: my life with and to have kids and to teach
Speaker 1: them better than I got taught, or to just have
Speaker 1: kids to enjoy. It's not experienced to be able to
Speaker 1: give one I good to them, to be able to
Speaker 1: give something back to other people too. But more than anything,
Speaker 1: Ryan wanted to be a father. It was really frustrating
Speaker 1: for me to see a situation he was kind of
Speaker 1: shoehorned into, you know, pitching hole or whatever you want
Speaker 1: to call it. And I didn't say to him, but
Speaker 1: I thought of my head, I might do. I be
Speaker 1: a man, You'll leave my son like a little video message.
Speaker 1: Put all the things that I have that are value
Speaker 1: in a bag, walk in the woods and eat a bullet.
Speaker 1: Let's stop here for another quick break. We'll be back
Speaker 1: at a moment. You know, I didn't know if I
Speaker 1: was going to do that or if I was just
Speaker 1: gonna make a vicious last stand, because I didn't care
Speaker 1: if it was just banging it out. This had this
Speaker 1: call was from the federal prison and nowhere to direct it.
Speaker 1: You know, that night, Ryan concocted a plan with Dylan
Speaker 1: and older sister Lee Grace. Ryan had his ankle monitor
Speaker 1: on and thought it might be recording him, so The
Speaker 1: three wrote notes back and forth. The plan was for
Speaker 1: Ryan to leave the very next morning and drive to Mexico.
Speaker 1: Once he crossed the border, he would call for his
Speaker 1: girlfriend and baby son so they could all be together
Speaker 1: as a family. Dylan and Lee Grace were never going
Speaker 1: to let him do it alone. I was just so
Speaker 1: upset at the situation. I didn't know what we were
Speaker 1: going to do. So when I went to my brother's house,
Speaker 1: my idea was, my brother's going to be on the run.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be on the run. Not only did
Speaker 1: Lee Grace want to support Ryan, but she'd recently hit
Speaker 1: rock bottom and had nothing tying her to Florida. I
Speaker 1: got hired at my first club June of two thousand,
Speaker 1: so by the time two thousand eleven came around, I
Speaker 1: had been a d answer for eleven years. I was jeating,
Speaker 1: really burn out. I didn't want to do it anymore.
Speaker 1: I wanted to settle down. I wanted to have a family.
Speaker 1: I wanted to have a good job where I made
Speaker 1: lots of money. And I guess I didn't really know
Speaker 1: how to put all those points together. Lee Grace had
Speaker 1: just broken up with their long term boyfriend, Brendan and
Speaker 1: was deep in her addiction. I had broken up with Brendan.
Speaker 1: We had a really bad breakup, so that sent me
Speaker 1: into a tailspin. And I was basically going from friend
Speaker 1: a friend, getting whatever prescription drugs they had, doing them,
Speaker 1: and leaving the friend's house with their prescription drugs with
Speaker 1: or without their permission. So I had basically burned all
Speaker 1: my bridges with a lot of my friends, and I
Speaker 1: really didn't have anywhere else to go. And I was
Speaker 1: very upset that I wasn't in a good stable relationship,
Speaker 1: because relationships are very, very important to me, especially with
Speaker 1: a significant other. The fresh breakup with Brendan was amplified
Speaker 1: by old wounds Lee. Grace's youngest sister, Aaron, the one
Speaker 1: she spent years with couch surfing as a teenager, had
Speaker 1: passed away. She died of the same heart disease that
Speaker 1: killed their father and the entire family, but especially like Grace,
Speaker 1: was left angry and adrift. You know, I've always had
Speaker 1: that relationship with Brendan that he has been there for me.
Speaker 1: He's seen me through so many things, the death of
Speaker 1: my sister Aaron. He's seen me lose jobs, he's seen
Speaker 1: me in tears, hysteric, hysterically crying, you know, losing my mind.
Speaker 1: And he's always been there. He's always been that type
Speaker 1: of house that I can live at, you know, the
Speaker 1: guy that will always take you back. So when I
Speaker 1: lost that, I just felt like I had nothing and
Speaker 1: I just wanted to go on the run. Ryan was
Speaker 1: also devastated by the loss of their sister, Aaron. When
Speaker 1: my sister died, that was a vicious one because man,
Speaker 1: if you want to talk about a completely different person,
Speaker 1: that's where it felt like I developed two separate personalities
Speaker 1: that gone in my head at any given time. Dylan
Speaker 1: understandably had a similar reaction when Aaron passed away, or
Speaker 1: was like, I had to destrove at home, but you know,
Speaker 1: not guarantee tomorrow, and that's time with your family is important.
Speaker 1: It's just not something's gonna last forever. This idea of
Speaker 1: family being important above all else is what drove Dylan
Speaker 1: to join Ryan and Lee Grace on the planned escape
Speaker 1: to Mexico. You know, at the time, it was what
Speaker 1: I thought was best and most sound solution, and obviously,
Speaker 1: you know things that would do over younger, and maybe
Speaker 1: you should have slept on the idea before he had
Speaker 1: followed through with it, but you know those are all
Speaker 1: maybies and hips and fIF fifth would all be drunk.
Speaker 1: So I felt like everything was really snaptic head because
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, I'm not gonna lie. I
Speaker 1: was frustrated because you know, I brought I was younger,
Speaker 1: You did a lot of dumb stuff. I just felt
Speaker 1: like he was just unfair from the start. You know,
Speaker 1: they were bad decisions made under arrest. And obviously, if
Speaker 1: I could go back, I wouldn't change for change a lot,
Speaker 1: you know, as far as what happens. But you know,
Speaker 1: we can't change the pass, not yet. I think he
Speaker 1: was under so much stress that my brother Ryan, he
Speaker 1: did not know what to do. You know, he's a
Speaker 1: young man. He was under a lot of pressure from
Speaker 1: his baby's mother. I do remember that. I so paranoid.
Speaker 1: I thought that the ankle bracelet that I had on,
Speaker 1: you know, might be able even to pick up audio.
Speaker 1: It was just a whirlwind. People like, oh, it's far
Speaker 1: it's far off to pay, you know what. I was like, Well,
Speaker 1: open to the door and put your foot on the ground.
Speaker 1: More on that next time. The Dougherty Gang is executive
Speaker 1: produced by Stephanie Lae Ducker and me Courtney Armstrong, along
Speaker 1: with Beth Greenwald and Shaun McEwen. Editing and sound design
Speaker 1: is by Jeff Twa and additional producing by Chris Graeves
Speaker 1: and Jeff Shane. The Docrt Gang is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Katie Studios. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.