Replay - Consequences: Jacob Landin - Method & Madness

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Method and Madness is a true crime podcast and contains
descriptions of violence. This episode features themes of child abuse,
sexual abuse, and intimate partner abuse. Listener discretion is advised.
All witnesses, persons of interest, and or suspects are considered
innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. This

(00:28):
is Method and Madness Consequences Jacob Londine.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
It gives me hope that every time I tell his story,
we are that much closer to getting justice for Jacob,
and that, I think is what pushes me to continue,
because there's a lot of times when I want to stop,
and every time I tell a story, every time somebody
offers to share Jacob's story on their platform, that gives

(00:56):
me hope that people care, that he's not going to
be forgotten.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Today, I have a very special episode for you. From
time to time, I like to share with you my
experiences on this journey as a victim advocate and podcaster.
One of the best parts is the people I get
to meet along the way. One of the worst parts
is meeting those people under very tragic circumstances. My guest

(01:39):
today is someone I first met briefly at Crime con
in Vegas, twenty twenty two. We then got to hang
out at the True Crime Podcast Festival in Dallas in
August of twenty twenty two. Eric Carter Landine is the
host of True Consequences, an Albuquerque based true crime and
mystery podcast with a focus on New Mexico and the

(02:02):
American Desert Southwest. He's also an all around great person
and somebody I'm proud to call my friend. Today, Eric
is joining us to talk about a case that started
his journey as an advocate, A story of a murder
that occurred in nineteen eighty seven. It's the murder of

(02:22):
Jacob Landin, Eric's baby brother. This case is not a mystery.
It is known who is responsible for Jacob's horrible death,
though justice has not been served, but it's coming. This
is Jacob's story. Let's dive in.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
My name is Eric Carter land and I am Jacob
Jeremiah Landine's big brother. Jacob was born on July first,
nineteen eighty six, in Edinburgh, Texas. He was my parent's
third child, fourth if you count the twins, so Randy
was the first child. He was part of a twin

(03:20):
pairing and the twin was miscarried and then Randy died
an hour after birth. He had a weak heart. He
was born in nineteen seventy eight. I was born in
November of nineteen eighty and had some challenges, but was
relatively healthy and pretty happy kid. I was lonely as

(03:44):
a single child. I wanted a brother. I wanted a sibling.
I didn't really have to be a brother, but I
was secretly hoping for a brother. So my father my
mother were very religious. My dad was a Pentecostal evangelist,
and that looks like somebody who travels around the country

(04:04):
and puts a tent up and starts saving people. And
so I was raised in a pretty religious home, and
so I prayed for Jacob. I prayed for him every
night when I said my nighttime prayers, and I would
tell my mom any chance that I could that she
was going to get pregnant and she was going to
have a boy, and all the plans that I had

(04:27):
for being a big brother. And it didn't take very
long my prayers were answered. I remember the day I
found out. We were at the park and I had
just ridden my bike for the first time without training
wheels and wrecked into a bush and was crying, and

(04:48):
my parents kind of knelt down around me and to
distract me. I think they had to plan on telling
me anyway, but they took that moment to distract me
from from the pain I was in. And I jumped
up and started running around the park, yelling and jumping
up and down. I was super excited to be a
big brother.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
Jacob was a ten pound bundle of joy and big
brother Eric was thrilled watching a baby grow and start
to develop their unique personality is such a delightful experience,
and Eric described his baby brother as fearless.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
One time, he was in the kitchen pulling all of
the drawers out of the cabinets and there were knives
and forks and spoons and everything falling around him, making
a ton of noise. And I ran into the kitchen
to see what he was doing, and I'm like, Jacob,
what are you doing? And he just looked at me
and he started laughing. He had this funny laugh. He
sounded like Eddie Murphy kind of. He would do this

(05:46):
little like I can still hear it. It was crazy.
It was a crazy laugh. I don't know where he
got it from. Nobody in my face laughs like that.
But that was him. He was fearless and happy and

(06:06):
such a bright light. And it's incredible because it's hard
to imagine a baby having such a huge impact in
our family, but he did. He was your wish. Yeah,

(06:27):
he was my answered prayer.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
Eric tears up several times during our conversation. You can
probably hear it in his voice. It's not only touching,
but it's also another reminder that no matter how many
years have passed, how many decades, that emotion can still
be so raw.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
It doesn't go away. It gets more manageable, and it
gets I guess, easier to cope with, but it doesn't stop.

Speaker 1 (06:56):
He takes me back to the beginning. Right after Jacob
was Eric was five that summer and his mom, Brenda,
had her hands full with a baby and a small
child who was about to head to kindergarten. Eric's and
Jacob's father, Jean, traveled a lot and was gone for
weeks at a time.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
My mom couldn't work because she didn't have family out there,
and there wasn't anybody that she could rely on to babysit,
so she was with us, and my dad wasn't really
good at being responsible and remembering that he had a
family at home that needed funds to be able to

(07:38):
eat and pay our bills, and so my mom was
often left without food to feed us, and there were
times where we would have to rely on the kindness
of strangers in order to eat. And my mom was
really sad and depressed about it. And my dad had

(08:03):
made this relationship or friendship with a woman and they
were emotionally connecting. I don't think that they were physically connecting,
but they were emotionally connecting. And my mom found out
about it, and that was the last straw for her.
She couldn't take it anymore. She needed to be where
her family was, which was in New Mexico. She needed

(08:25):
to be in a place where she had support so
that she could take care of the kids because my
dad was not fulfilling his obligations as the father.

Speaker 1 (08:35):
So Brenda took the kids and moved from Texas back
to Soakoro, New Mexico, to be near a family. They
settled into Eric's and Jacob's grandparents' house, and Brenda got
a job at a local grocery store. Between their grandparents
and their aunts, Eric and Jacob had plenty of babysitters
and Brenda could start saving money to get them their

(08:56):
own place. It was around this time that a friend
of the family started coming around more and more. To
ensure that nothing gets in the way of a potential prosecution,
we will not be using this man's real name, Eric
has chosen to call him John for this episode.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
John was my dad's best friend. He had known my
mom his whole life. My mom had known him her
whole life. His sister was married to my mom's brother.
His aunt is my godmother. His dad pastor to church
that my dad kind of interned in. I guess you

(09:35):
could say it's not what it's called, but that's what
he did. He worked there and learned how to preach
through through this man through his best friend's dad. That's
how they became best friends. My mom knew him, they
went to school together, My family went to that church.
This person wasn't a stranger. I guess that's why I

(09:58):
say all of this. This was somebody that my family
knew very well. This was somebody that my family trusted,
that we believed was a good person. So he had
inside information into my parents' relationship and the fact that
it fell apart and the reason that it fell apart,

(10:19):
and so he used that information to swoop in and
save the day with my mom. He started showering my
mom with affection and attention and gifts and money and
offering to help and to give rides and just being

(10:40):
a very nice, helpful person. He's also expressing to my
mom that he has romantic feelings for her and that
he wants to be in a relationship with her. It's
the furthest thing from my mom's mind. She's just gotten
out of this marriage where things were awful. She's trying
to get her life back together. But he's persistent, and

(11:03):
he is persuasive, and so he wiggles his way into
our lives and my mom starts dating him.

Speaker 1 (11:12):
You may recognize what Eric is describing as love bombing.
Mental health professionals describe this as a tactic where an
individual quote unquote bombs you with extreme displays of attention
and affection, particularly in the beginning of a courtship. Why
is that a bad thing? Because it can and often

(11:33):
does lead to abuse, including gaslighting, manipulation. Tactics utilized to
control it starts with being swept off your feet. One
article medically reviewed by doctor Sabrina Romanov describes one red
flag a sign that you may be involved with a
master manipulator. As quote, they chillingly seem to know what

(11:54):
you want to hear. These signs and the red flags
that accompany them, we're certainly not discussed in the nineteen eighties,
and even today, when awareness is spread at a fast
rate through social media, anyone can become a victim of manipulation.
And by all outward appearances, John appeared to be normal.

(12:17):
Eric explains that he was an upstanding member of the
community and worked for the county. This wasn't some random
person off the street or someone who was giving off
bad vibes in any way. But then injuries started happening
to Jacob.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
At some point he invites my mom to move in
with him in his mobile home, and she's not really
wanting to, but we do spend some time there, and
there's times where we spend the night there. There's you know,
Jacob has a crib there and I have a bed there,
And eventually we do end up living with him, and

(12:58):
Jacob starts to have injuries that are unexplainable, and things
start happening that are just really weird that don't make
any sense. And one injury, Jacob had a scrape on
his ear, and John told my mom that I had
hit Jacob or kicked Jacob or something, or I dropped

(13:20):
Jacob out of his crib. He said that he had
left me alone with his kid with Jacob so he
could take his kids to his ex wife's house. I
don't remember that happening. I can't think of a single
instance where it would be a good idea to leave

(13:40):
a six year old in charge of a three month old,
even for fifteen minutes. It just doesn't make any sense
to me that he would do that. But that's what
he claimed. And he claimed that I picked Jacob up
out of the crib and dropped him, and that's that's
how he got hurt. The crib was really high, it was.

(14:03):
It had to have been like four or five feet high,
and so it would not have been easy for me
to do that. I would have had to have taken
a chair from the kitchen or somewhere, pushed it in there,
picked him up out of there. I'm not saying that
it's impossible, it just doesn't make sense to me.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
At the time that Jacob started getting these injuries. John
was distancing himself from the incidents. The story that he
left the house and left a six year old Eric
to keep an eye on infant Jacob came out in
a police report months later. Jacob's injuries were conveniently attributed
to his older brother, Eric did it while nobody was looking.

(14:48):
Brenda was never there when the injuries occurred, and understandably
she believed the other adult in the room when he
said that a six year old was the cause. When
Jacob got a head injury and had to be treated
at the hospital, John blamed Eric.

Speaker 2 (15:05):
I don't remember it, but that you know, I was young,
so that doesn't really mean much either. Could it have happened, maybe,
but I don't I don't know. I don't know about it.
Jacob had a hematoma on his skull and it had
to be lanced and drained. John told my mom that

(15:28):
I kicked Jacob in the head and that's and that
he saw me and that's where the injury came from.
I've since talked to medical professionals who have told me
that it is not physically possible for a six year
old to kick a baby with the force of strength
required to cause that to happen, for it to build

(15:51):
up fluid and to start like it was actually a fracture,
a skull fracture. We didn't know that until later, but
there was just no way that I would have been
able to kick him that hard, to do that to him.
So my mom was really not sure what was going on.
You know, I'm being accused of hurting Jacob. I'm being

(16:14):
accused of being jealous of Jacob, And so she decides
to send me to be with my dad in California
to get me out of the situation. Not that she
thought I was actually hurting Jacob, but she just wanted
to clear up any doubts and also see what was
going on.

Speaker 1 (16:34):
As if a case of infant abuse isn't horrible enough,
in this case you have the extra layer of blaming
an innocent child for it. Is it easier for adults
to believe a child was hurt by another child. Quite possibly,
But you heard Eric earlier. This wasn't some random man
off the street or a babysitter or the family hired

(16:55):
without properly vetting him first. This was an old family
friend that he was an abuser and lying about it.
Was far from anyone's mind. After Jacob suffered this head injury,
Brenda definitely had her concerns and generally, if a hospital
treats a child and is concerned about abuse or neglect,

(17:16):
they will make a phone call.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
The doctor even called Child Protective Services after the brain injury,
after the skull injury and reported it as potential child
abuse case. There was also an anonymous call that was
made by a neighbor to Child Protective Services and this

(17:41):
woman said that that a man was abusing a baby
in the house next door. I don't know what she
heard or what she saw, know that the investigation happened
and that an agent from Child Protective Services showed up
at the house. But from what I understand, John chased

(18:05):
her away and yelled at her and told her to leave,
and she did. I don't know why or why like
there were no further questions that were asked or no
follow up.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
Eric explains to me that around the same time that
John left Jacob and Eric alone, allegedly, Eric's dad got
a call from John's ex wife. She advised him to
file child abuse charges against John, but wouldn't say why.
And with Eric off living with his dad, there was
growing concern about what was happening to Jacob.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
My mom at this point is really starting to be
suspicious because Jacob's behavior has changed a lot. His injuries
have continued even though I'm not there, and so she
starts to limit how much time Jacob is alone with
John to the point where it's almost nonexistent. It's almost
like he's never alone with John. And part of that

(19:04):
was the fact that the injuries continue, but also one day,
my grandmother was watching Jacob and when my mom picked
him up, she said to my mom, I is something
happening to Jacob because he's acting really weird. And my
mom said, well, what do you mean, and my grandma said, well,
you know, he always likes to be picked up, and
he likes to play Superman. He likes to be lifted

(19:24):
up over your head, and these are the things that
he always enjoys. But now when I do it, he
starts freaking out. And my mom says, well, I don't
think so, don't. I don't know. I haven't seen anybody
doing anything weird or hurting him. And my grandma says, well, look,
and she picks Jacob up and Jacob starts screaming and
crying and like grabbing her hair and trying to jump

(19:46):
out of her arms into my mom's arms. And so
my mom goes to John and says, hey, are you
hurting Jacob? Are you doing something? Are you playing rough
with him? And John says no, why and she tells him,
you know, mom noticed this, and he's like, no, all
I do and he grabs Jacob all I do is this,
and he picks Jacob up over his head and Jacob

(20:07):
is literally trying to jump out of his arms into
my mom's arms and is screaming at the top of
his lungs. And my mom says, I don't know what
you're doing, but you need to stop. Do not ever
play with Jacob like this ever again. And he's like,
I won't. I won't, I promise, and so she's like, okay.

Speaker 1 (20:28):
This was a stark contrast to the fearless baby that
Eric described. Even as an infant, Jacob had figured out
that it was hilarious to try and knock over his
own baby swing while he was in it, just for
the thrill. What had changed, Let's take a break. Mother's

(20:55):
intuition was knocking loud for Brenda. Once Jacob's fearless, joy
full personality began changing. He was becoming scared and no
longer enjoying the things he'd gotten such a laugh out
of before.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
At this point, there's just there's no leaving John alone
with Jacob. At this point, this is it. My mom
is now like something's up. I don't know what's going on,
but you know, I need my mom. I need my
sisters to help me take care of Jacob so I
can work. On April ninth, nineteen eighty seven, Jacob's nine

(21:33):
months old. I'm in California. My mom's at work at Supermart.
She works I think ten to seven that day, or
eleven to seven. My grandmother calls my mom at six
o'clock or at five forty five probably, and says, I
want to go to church. Jacob has been feeling a

(21:53):
little bit better, but I don't want to bring him
because he's been kind of fussy. He hasn't been feeling
good ever since he had the brain injury, aches, allergic
reactions to medication, just a bunch of things were going
on at the same time, and so my grandmother's like,
I want to go to church really bad, but I
don't want to bring him. What do I do? And
my mom she knew her sisters were busy, so she's like,

(22:14):
I guess, I guess you could take him to John.
I get off in an hour. What's the worst that
could happen in an hour? So my grandma takes Jacob
to John. My mom instantly has a bad feeling about
the situation. She goes to her boss and she says,

(22:35):
I need to leave. I need to go home. I
just have a bad feeling. I don't like this. I
don't want to be here. I want to go home
and see my baby. And her boss laughed at her
and said, no, you can't. It's going to be busy.
You have to finish your shift. I need you here.
So she busies herself and tries to not think about it.

(22:57):
Tries not to think about it.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
Another layer of this day was that John had told
Brenda that there was a trailer available for them to
go look at a possible new place to live, but
it wasn't currently hooked up to electricity, and therefore they'd
have to go see it before it got dark. Now
Brenda had the added pressure that she had to hurry
and go look at this place immediately after work and

(23:22):
wouldn't have time to pick up Jacob from her mom's place,
so it just made sense, as uneasy as she was,
that John would just watch Jacob for a short time.
The following segment contains disturbing details.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
A little bit before seven, John comes running into the
grocery store in a panic, saying that Jacob is unconscious
and not breathing and he's going to the hospital. At
the same time, there's an ambulance driving down the road
with its sirens on, and that was Jacob being taken
to the hospital. My mom gets there and he's lying

(24:02):
on a bed, and she puts her hand on his
chest and he takes a deep breath, and the doctor
tells her that his injuries are so severe that he
has to be airlifted to Albuquerque, which is seventy five
miles north of where we lived in Sigoro. With a

(24:23):
life flight like that, nobody's allowed to fly with Jacob.
They have to drive the seventy five miles to the hospital.
When he gets to the University of New Mexico hospital,
he is in such distress and his injuries are so
severe that they have to rush him into emergency surgery,
and the doctor has to sign off on it because

(24:45):
my mom's not there, because she's driving an hour and
a half to get to him. He's in surgery for
several hours. And the whole way up there, John is
telling my mom I didn't do it. I promise you
I didn't do it. As an accident. He fell off
the couch, he hit his head on the coffee table.
It wasn't me, and my mom is just panicking. She

(25:10):
doesn't want to hear it. She tells him to stop,
to get to the hospital, and they find out that
Jacob's insurgery. And I don't know how much time passes,
but at some point in the night, the doctor comes
out to tell them that Jacob had died in surgery.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
John's story at this point was that he wasn't exactly
sure how nine month old Jacob had gotten injured. John
had been dubbing some cassette tapes and letting Jacob have
a bottle and a teething cracker, and at one point
Jacob had become sleepy, and so John placed the baby
on the couch approximately two and a half feet off
the floor. When John turned his back, he heard a

(25:51):
gasping sound and came back to find Jacob on the floor.
Emergency services responded and Jacob was then brought by ambulance
to the hospital. It was determined during Jacob's autopsy that
he had suffered a head injury about a month prior,
which was attributed to Eric kicking his baby brother, an

(26:11):
injury so severe that it wasn't possible to have been
caused by a six year old. Jacob also had an
old rib fracture. His death was caused by a severe
blow to the head, resulting in a skull fracture that
could not have happened from falling off a couch or
hitting his head on the coffee table. The pathologist found

(26:33):
that the fracture was due to the strike of an
open hand with severe force. And now Brenda had an
unimaginable road ahead of her and a truth that would
slowly reveal itself at the cost of others.

Speaker 2 (26:48):
My mom goes running away in hysterics, and she's sobbing
and yelling and just losing it as you would expect.
And while she's going through all of that and she's
running away and freaking out, John is standing in front
of the doctor and he looks at the doctor and
he says this looks really bad for me. This isn't

(27:10):
going to be good for me. I can't believe this
is happening to me. It was so strange that doctor
wrote it down in his notes that he seemed more
concerned with himself than his girlfriend or the fact that
a baby has just died. I am woken up at

(27:31):
about five in the morning by my dad, and my
dad tells me we have to go back to New Mexico,
that there's been an accident and that Jacob was hurt.
We get to the Albuquerque airport and we are picked
up by my mom and John and the police State police,

(27:52):
and we're taken to an interview. My dad and I
and John. Before I go in there tell me something
along the lines of don't lie, don't you dare lie?
You know what happens to people who lie? And the
police asked me a bunch of questions. They asked me
if I was jealous of Jacob, if I kicked Jacob,

(28:16):
if I hit Jacob, if I wanted to hurt Jacob.
They asked me if John ever hit Jacob, and I
said I didn't think so. I'd never seen him hit Jacob.
They asked me if John ever hit me, and I
said no, but he always acts like he's going to

(28:37):
And what I meant by that was he would often
raise his fist at me like he was going to
hit me whenever I was doing something that he didn't like,
but he never actually hit me. So I thought that
I had hurt Jacob, and I thought that I was
going to jail. I thought that I was responsible for

(28:59):
what happened to him. I didn't understand what was going on.
This is my first encounter with death.

Speaker 1 (29:08):
So you're being told by an adult, you know, and
six year old believes everything an adult says.

Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:19):
Eric is one of the kindest people I know, and
to hear him still dealing with this guilt is pretty unbearable.
Whether you're religious or not, I think we can agree
on one thing. There's a special place in hell for
child abusers, and an even hotter place in hell for
abusers who use a child as their scapegoat.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
Jacob's funeral was kind of a blur. I remember seeing
him in the casket. I remember say goodbye. It was
the worst day of my life.

Speaker 1 (29:56):
It wasn't about to get any easier for Brenda and Eric.
There was still a darkness looming underneath the surface that
John was carefully trying to conceal.

Speaker 2 (30:06):
John was really pushy with my mom. He wanted to
talk to her. He wanted to explain his side of things,
so he would go to her work. He would call
her work, he would leave notes on her car. He

(30:27):
would give notes to her boss to give to her.
He would leave notes at my grandparents house. He would
call my grandparents house all the time. He wanted to
talk to my mom. He wanted to explain his side
of the story, and the only place he wanted to

(30:48):
do that was Jacob's grave. I don't know why. I
don't understand it, but my mom refused. She would not
go to the graveyard to meet him. She just wasn't
going to do it. And I didn't really know or
suspect that John was responsible for anything until one day
when John got brave enough to go to my grandparents'

(31:10):
house to try to talk to my mom, and my
grandfather jumped out of his chair, which was something that
never happened when he was in his chair. He was
in his chair like that was it until he went
to bed. He jumped out of his chair and he
went running outside. So I followed him because I was
curious and I had never seen him move that fast,

(31:32):
And he goes up to John's car and he starts
banging on the window, and he says, why don't you
hit somebody who can talk you, son of a bitch.
And it was in that moment that I realized that
people suspected John had done something to Jacob. But it

(31:52):
wasn't until then. He's very persistent, and that's just a
nice way of saying that he was stalking us.

Speaker 1 (32:04):
John was frantically seeking any validation that he wouldn't lose
Brenda over this. Rather than being a partner to her
during her immense, unimaginable grief, he set out on a
mission to prove his innocence. So by July of nineteen
eighty seven, John told Brenda that he was going to
take a polygraph and prove once and for all that
Jacob's death was nothing more than a tragic accident. He

(32:28):
tells Brenda that he's going to Santa Fe to take
the polygraph and wants her and Eric to come along
to the State Police headquarters, and Brenda does, but she
and Eric are not allowed inside. They sat there in
the car for three to four hours while John was
inside taking the polygraph, and when he came out, he
proudly told Brenda that he'd passed. Brenda felt that she

(32:51):
finally got the answer she needed and they could move on. Surely,
if John had failed the test, he wouldn't have been
free to go oh, So Brenda agreed that she was
ready to move forward with John and accept that Jacob's
death was an accident. The Medical Examiner's office at the
University of New Mexico School of Medicine issued a report

(33:15):
with Jacob's cause of death listed as a skull fracture
due to blunt trauma to the head. With that report
is a case number that states an offense of involuntary manslaughter,
victim as Jacob Blondine and the suspect listed as John.
The case was never prosecuted, and Deputy District Attorney Bruce

(33:36):
Burwell stated, quote, I have determined that there is insufficient
evidence to justify filing criminal charges in this matter. At
this time, now that John had that hurdle behind him,
or so he thought, more of his agenda was coming
to the surface.

Speaker 2 (33:54):
He tells her that they have to get married, and
she doesn't want to get married. She literally just got divorced.
But he's like, we have to because I've committed insurance fraud.
She asks him what he means by that, and he says,
I signed you up for my insurance, you and Eric
and Jacob for my insurance, and I put on the

(34:15):
form that we were married, but we're not, and so
we have to get married or I'm going to go
to jail. I don't know if that's true or not,
but that's what he said. So they get married, and
that's when everything changes. That when we meet the real John,
that's when we get to see a side of John
that nobody gets to see. He becomes very violent and controlling.

(34:40):
My mom is and I start to get isolated from
the people we care about, from my grandparents and my family,
my friends. I get locked in my room anytime that
I'm alone with him for hours and hours with no
If I needed the rest, I would have to knock

(35:01):
on my door because it was locked from the outside,
and I had to hope that he could hear me. Usually,
his radio was so loud that he either couldn't hear
me or was acting like he couldn't hear me, so
I would have to find other ways of relieving myself
in my room, he shoved me in a dryer, locked
me in at one time because I used the wrong

(35:22):
knife to cut a sandwich. If I would look at him,
he would accuse me of giving him dirty looks, and
my mom would inevitably come to my defense and say,
he isn't giving you dirty looks, He's just looking at you,
and then he would start punching her. He constantly told
my mom the only way that she was leaving him
was in a body bag. We never knew what was

(35:42):
going to set him off. It could be anything. Literally,
anything could happen and he would fly into a rage.

Speaker 1 (35:49):
For Eric, at seven or eight years old, he was
walking on eggshells and learning to protect himself if need be.
He kept a kitchen knife, a lighter, and a can
of hairspray room, and he had a bat under his bed.
He never had to use them, but he would end
up saving the person he loved most, his mom.

Speaker 2 (36:10):
One time my mom and him were fighting was the
worst fight I had ever heard. He had locked me
and his kids in my room so we couldn't get out,
and my mom was screaming so loud. I was so scared,
and then she stopped, and I knew something was wrong.
I just felt it. I just knew something bad was happening,

(36:31):
and so I broke my window in my room. I
crawled out and I started throwing rocks through their window,
the biggest rocks I could throw. Broke their window, and
he runs outside and starts chasing me down the road.
I found out later that he had wrapped a wire
hanger around my mom's neck and he was strangling her
to death because she told him she was going to
leave him. And if I wouldn't have thrown those rocks

(36:53):
through the window, she would have died because she was
losing consciousness, which is why she stopped screaming. I ran
to the neighbor's house, call the police. My mom had
enough time to get away, get in the car and leave.
The police came a lot. There was a state police
living in the same neighborhood, two houses away, and they
never did anything. I didn't care. He believed him when
he said that my mom was crazy and was the

(37:15):
one that attacked him. They believed him, and they left
us there. They would ask her if she wanted to
press charges, and they would say, well, since you don't
want to press charges. There's nothing we can do for you.
It was the eighties. Doesn't excuse it. But there's a
lot we didn't know back then that we know now.
Police didn't know that a victim of inmate partner violence
their chance of dying increases exponentially second they decided to leave.

(37:37):
There's a lot of things that we didn't know back then.

Speaker 1 (37:40):
Imagine not only being abused by an intimate partner, but
feeling like even the police can't help you. It's the
plot of nearly every made for TV movie from the
eighties and nineties, and for good reason. Even in twenty
twenty three, Domestic violence is an epidemic in some countries,
and women particularly are dying at alarming rens. But John

(38:01):
was finding more and more opportunities to pray on the vulnerable.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
He started to sexually abuse me when I was about eleven.
He told me that if I ever said anything to anybody,
he would kill my mom and he would kill me,
and he would hide us and nobody would ever find us.
And I believed him, so I didn't say anything. I
learned how to survive, learned not to speak up, not

(38:26):
to make eye contact, not to talk to anybody, so
I shut down and became a shell of a person. He,
at the same time, starts grooming my cousin, My fourteen
year old cousin for sexual abuse is calling my grandparents'
house and making lude remarks to my cousin, talking about

(38:50):
the fact that he is in love with her and
that she's beautiful, and that he wants to be in
a relationship with her, but she can't tell anybody because
nobody would understand, and but that he wants to spend
time with her and he wants to date her and
all this stuff, but she can't tell anybody, So he

(39:12):
messed up. He thought he had found his next victim,
but he didn't know her. He didn't know who she was.
She had no reason to fear him. She's terrifying, honestly,
but she's also a loud mouthed and so she let
him talk and let him incriminate himself, and even told

(39:35):
him that she was gonna not say anything to anybody.
But the second she hung up, she went to my
grandmother and told her, and then she called my mom,
and then she called her mom.

Speaker 1 (39:46):
When Brenda realized that the abuse was extending out to others,
that's when things changed. She'd been told so many times
that if she ever left, John would kill her, But
now with Eric's cousin being victimized, Brenda packed up her
things and took Eric back to his grandparents' house. She
then asked his cousin if she wanted to go to

(40:07):
the police, and she did, which, of course, said John
off into a tailspin. Desperate to preserve this good guy
image that he'd had around their county, John began calling incessantly,
to the point that Brenda had to take the phone
off the hook. Finally, it was agreed that Brenda would
only talk to John if it was down at the
police station.

Speaker 2 (40:29):
We went into the police station, and I disclosed to
my mom that I had been sexually abused by him,
because I knew now that we were out of there.
So we both went, myself and my cousin. We both went.
We gave interviews to the police, nothing happened. My mom
went to the district attorney and said, I want you

(40:50):
to file charges against him for the death of Jacob.
I'm now convinced that he's responsible for it and that
he's fully capable. In the initial investigation, they asked my
mom if she thought he was capable of hurting Jacob intentionally,
and she said, I don't think so. When she went
to the district attorney and asked him to press charges,

(41:13):
he said that they would not press charges because she
gave him an alibi, and that's what they're referring to
her saying, I don't think he's capable of doing this.
They also treated her like she was just a woman scorned,
making trouble for her poor husband, who is an upstanding

(41:36):
member of the community and doesn't deserve to be treated
like that, that she was just mad.

Speaker 1 (41:44):
Was he friends with the police or something?

Speaker 2 (41:47):
They played basketball every weekend. Yeah, they were very close.
So Mom and I leave and we are stocked and threatened.
For a couple years after we left, he would come
to my window at night, knock on my window and
say I'm going to fucking kill you and your mom.

(42:09):
Every night I would sleep under my bed. My mom
decides to wait until there's a new district attorney. New
one gets elected. We go talk to him, he says
they can't do anything. Another DA comes in, same thing.
This time we're told it's because there's a statute of limitations,

(42:30):
and at the time there was a statute of limitations
on second degree murder, and I do think that's the
only way that they can charge this because in New Mexico,
for first degree murder, you have to prove intent, and
that is a very very high bar to reach and
would not be possible in this case. There's just no

(42:51):
way that we could prove that he intended to her Jacob.
So the case was closed.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
So the years go by, and then in two thousand
and five, Brenda reached out to the state Police Cold
case unit and asked that Jacob's case be reopened. A
lot more information was revealed. On July ninth, nineteen eighty seven,
John took that polygraph exam at the New Mexico State
Police office and was asked did you intentionally strike Jacob

(43:26):
in the head area? On April ninth, nineteen eighty seven,
John answered no. To the question of did you intentionally
strike the baby in the head area before he went
limp John answered no. It was determined that John was
not being truthful in either of these responses, to which
he explained that it was due to his fear of

(43:47):
rejection by Brenda. He then admitted that he'd previously been
untruthful about his story and how Jacob got gravely injured,
and now is time to change his story. Now, he
was saying that Jacob was standing and holding onto the
armrest of a chair when John knelt down and rubbed
his beard on Jacob's legs. It was then that he

(44:08):
thought Jacob was about to lose his balance, so John
raised his hand to stop Jacob from falling. Jacob leaned
over John's head just as John abruptly raised his head,
forcing Jacob off his feet and onto the floor, striking
his head on the wooden arm rest. John then held
Jacob for about ten minutes before deciding to put him

(44:30):
down for a nap. He was drowsy but not showing
any outward signs of being hurt. John put Jacob on
the couch for a few moments, and the baby then
rolled off the couch, hitting his head again. It was
then that Jacob began convulsive and vomiting, and John attempted
to resuscitate him. In nineteen ninety, John's story changed again.

(44:54):
Now he was saying that he was playing with Jacob
and throwing him into the air. He failed to catch him,
and Jacob hit the chair hard. This is not surprising behavior.
Particularly in the heat of the moment or second degree murder,
the perpetrator panics and creates the story. When holes are
punched in that story, they amend and amend to fit

(45:16):
the facts. In nineteen ninety one, Brenda went to the
Sacoro Police Department and provided a statement regarding John's participation
in Jacob's death. She said that initially she thought it
was an accident, but that perhaps the whole truth hadn't
come out yet. At the time, Brenda was married to
John and told police that for the past few years

(45:37):
she'd suffered both verbal and physical abuse at the hands
of her husband. She no longer believed John when he
placed to blame on Eric for the previous injuries to Jacob,
and further feared for Eric's safety due to John's violent tendencies.
In August of ninety two, John was asked to come
to Secoro Police Department and he was placed under arrest

(45:59):
for embey abuse of a child. The story that John
provided at this time was that Jacob had been sick
and was on medication. Here's the statement directly from the
police report. The suspect stated that what really happened was
that Jacob Blondine would lean on his neck while he
was laying on the floor, and that he felt that

(46:20):
Jacob Blondine was losing his balance and so he grabbed
his leg. The suspect stated that it felt like Jacob
was going to fall to the right, but that he
fell to the left instead. The suspect stated that he'd
moved fast to try and stop Jacob's fall, and that
he fell anyway and hit the armchair. There are other

(46:41):
details in the report, but notably, when John was asked
why he didn't tell the truth in the first place,
he said that he feared Brenda would not marry him,
and when asked why John reached out to a thirteen
year old and asked her out, John replied that he'd
smoked pot laced with cocaine that day, was really out
of it, and doesn't think he made that call. When

(47:04):
asked about the polygraph exam and failing the two questions,
John said he was really out of it on the
day in question and thought he was back in the
hospital when he was a child. He'd taken allergy meds
before the exam and didn't remember being asked questions. Further,
John stated that in an attempt to resuscitate Jacob, he'd

(47:25):
hit him on the back, and that it was possible
he'd hit him in the head. Here's Eric talking about
the case being reopened in two thousand and five.

Speaker 2 (47:35):
Sergeant Christian did a phenomenal job. Even with the lack
of supporting documentation that's missing, and there's a lot, there's
a lot that's missing, he still concluded that it was
very clear that this person was responsible for Jacob's death.
It's not clear if it was intentional or negligent, but

(47:58):
it's clear. John had four stories, maybe five, definitely four.
Some of them there was a thread of consistency through
some of them. I do believe that he was dubbing
cassette tapes that night. I do believe that Jacob was
fussy and he was probably given a tape to play with.

(48:21):
But the circumstances around Jacob's injuries are where the story
changes dramatically. And the first time, a couple of times
he tried to say that the injuries were related to
some sharp forced trauma, which it's very clear in the
autopsy that it was blunt force trauma, and the doctor

(48:42):
even went so far as to say that it looked
like about the size of an open palm of an
adult male's hand, and I think that a doctor at
a trauma one center would be able to identify that
kind of trauma, probably having seen it throughout his time
at University of Mexico Hospital. But his story changed a

(49:03):
number of times. We learned through that investigation that he confessed.
We only know that because there's one sentence in the
case file that says John does not need a polygraph
because he confessed. There's no recording, there's no signed affidavit,

(49:23):
there's no signed confession, there's no notes about what he
confessed to, there's no video, there's nothing. We don't know
what he said. We don't know what the circumstances were
around that confession. We don't know anything at all other
than he confessed. We also learned that he failed that
light etetri test. We know that polygraphs are not admissible

(49:47):
in court these days, and I know that they're problematic,
but at the time that would have been very damning
for anybody. And so the fact that he was able
to walk out of the state Police office, it just
blows my mind. I don't understand one of the questions
he failed was did you intentionally hit Jacob on the head?
He said, no, how did he walk out of there?

(50:11):
I don't understand it, And all this time, you still
don't You still don't have an answer. I don't know.
It doesn't make any sense to me. I know that
he came up with an excuse, and he said that
he was on a bunch of substances when he took
that test. Okay, but why did you drive us to
Santa Fe. Then, so the cold case investigator sent an

(50:33):
email or a letter sorry to the district's attorney at
the time, and he said, it's clear to me, I'm paraphrasing,
it's clear to me that Jacob died one way, not
the three or four ways that John mentioned. And based
on all of the evidence and based on everything here,

(50:54):
I think that this case could be prosecuted, should be prosecuted,
and could be won on The Attorney General wrote back
and said, well, actually we can't because of the statute
of limitations, and so we're going to close the case.
And that was it. So that was two thousand and five.

Speaker 1 (51:14):
Eric goes on to explain that in the last ten years,
the statute of limitations on second degree murder has been
repealed by the State of New Mexico, and there was
a Supreme Court case that created precedents for other cases
that were held under that statute to be able to
be brought forward to the court. We talk about it
all the time, the importance of advocacy, and how often

(51:37):
times is the families that are behind the scenes leading
the fight. It's the people that have been hurt the
most that also have to take on the enormous weight
of fighting for their loved ones. But there's hope because
advocacy can pay off. Here again is Eric.

Speaker 2 (51:56):
So last year we did the Ten Days of Jacob campaign,
and I asked I had originally asked the Attorney General
to open the case, and he said he couldn't, but
he did review it, and he sent a letter to
the then district attorney asking him to try the case

(52:16):
and offering all of the resources of the state of
the Attorney General's office, investigators, money, whatever he needs to
try this case. He ignored that. So I did the
Ten Days of Jacob from April first to April tenth,
ending on the anniversary of Jacob's death, and I asked
anybody who cared about Jacob's case. Anybody who helped cover

(52:39):
Jacob's case to ask people to call, to email, to
write the District Attorney's to Coro County and tell him
to do the right thing, tell him to bring charges
against this person. He lasted two days, which may be
really happy, because he was getting bombarded with calls and
emails and letters from all over the world. People were
calling from Ustroa, people were calling from England who have

(53:04):
been ignored in gas lit for thirty five years and
then to have the world show up like that. For
a long time, I felt like my mom and I
were crazy because we were the only ones who gave
a shit about the fact that Jacob was killed. Now

(53:27):
I know that's not true. He lasted two days and
he sent a letter to the Attorney General and he said,
we can't handle this. We can't deal with this. It's
too much for us. We're turning the case over to you,
which is the only way that the Attorney General could
be involved is if the DA turns it over or
if he bungles it. So Attorney General took it and

(53:50):
reopened it and he is investigating it right now. So
it's good. It's good news, but we're not We're not there.
We're not at the point where we could even expect
charges to be brought forward. The last conversation I had
with them, they essentially had done nothing. And now there's

(54:12):
a new Attorney General who is very concerned with his luctability,
which is good for me because I can use that,
I can work with that, I can make it unpopular
for him to ignore us. And that's why I'm doing this.
That's why I'm reaching out, because the more people that
know about Jacob's story, the less likely it is for

(54:33):
him to ignore us. There's power in sharing Jacob's story.
It seems like the smallest thing, it seems insignificant, but
it actually is probably the best thing that somebody can
do to help the case. Tell somebody about Jacob, share

(54:54):
his story, either through this podcast or any other Creators
show that has covered this case. That's what it's going
to take. I was naive when I started this fight.
I thought that this was going to be, you know,
the bad guy did the bad thing, the good guy
gets the bad guy puts him in jail, and he
can't do the bad thing anymore. He's had thirty six

(55:15):
years to revictimize people thirty six years to hurt more people,
more kids. Who knows how many people he's hurt. And
the state is responsible for any of that that happened
after Jacob died because they failed, They failed to do
the right thing. I don't know why. I have things

(55:36):
that go through my mind. That doesn't mean that that's why,
but I have thoughts about why. So the last conversation
we had with the Attorney General's office, we were asked
to collect evidence for them, which is insulting. It's insulting
to my mom and to me. We've been begging the
State of New Mexico to do something for thirty six years.

(55:59):
The reason evidence is missing is not because of my
mom and I. We aren't the ones that lost the evidence.
So it takes a lot of balls to say that
to somebody who has been trying to get you to
do the right thing for thirty six years, and when
you finally agree to do it, you're shirking the responsibility.
And we did get an apology from the State of

(56:20):
New Mexico, but it's not enough. It's not enough. I mean,
I appreciate the apology. It's good to feel validated. It's
good to know that you finally hear what we've been
saying for thirty six years. But an apology doesn't mean
anything if you don't change your behavior.

Speaker 1 (56:35):
Here's a message from Eric about the journey he and
Brenda have been on for decades.

Speaker 2 (56:42):
There's a chance that we may never get justice for Jacob.
It's something that we have to live with every day.
Doesn't mean I don't have hope. It doesn't mean I'm
not going to keep trying. But there's always that thought
in the back of my mind. And so I say
that because primarily I am doing this for Jacob. Primarily

(57:05):
I am doing this to further the fight for justice
for Jacob. But my mom and I both agree that
if it helps one person telling the story, if it
helps one person to avoid that situation, or to see
something in a friend's relationship and reach out and try

(57:28):
to be there for them to get them through it,
then it's worth it. These kinds of conversations are not
easy to talk about. They're not fun, they can be scary,
they can be traumatizing to people, But we also can't

(57:49):
ignore this problem away. And as much as it makes
us uncomfortable to talk about it, as much as it's
difficult to listen to. This problem is so oh pervasive.
I guarantee you that anybody listening to this right now,
you either know somebody or you are somebody who has
experienced some form of intimate partner violence, domestic violence, or

(58:12):
intimate partner abuse. I guarantee you that. And if it's
that pervasive, why can't we talk about it? We can't
ignore this problem away. We have to face it. If
we don't face it, we can't expect it to change.
We can't expect things to get better. We have to
be honest with ourselves about this. We have to be

(58:34):
honest about it. It hurts to tell this story. It's
not fun, but it's also super important. Like I said,
John went through the entire cycle of Abuse textbook like
he was reading it line by line on how to
do it. These things there's a pattern to them. It's

(58:55):
easily identifiable if you just know what to look for.
But the way you're gonna know what to look for
is by listening to people talking about it. I think
my last thought on this is very fortunate to have
a grandmother who is incredibly wise and not the warmest

(59:16):
person in the world, but very practical. She pulled me
aside after all of this happened, and she said, I,
I really want to talk to you about this. You
have a choice to make right now. You can let
this consume you. You can let it turn you cold,

(59:37):
heart in your heart, turn you into the very thing
that you fear the most. Or you can decide to
do something different. You can decide to break this cycle.
You get to say it stops with me, You get
to say no more. You have that power, but you

(59:57):
have to decide to do that. And I am so
grateful for that, because that is the best gift that
I can give to my son. He never has to worry,
He never has to be afraid of being in our house,
he never has to wonder. Anybody who's gone through this,

(01:00:17):
they can make that choice.

Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
Here is today's call to action. Eric and his mother
Brenda are looking to hire a private investigator to look
into this case and to gather more evidence. You can
help by clicking the link in the show notes and
donating to the GoFundMe, or simply share Jacob's story with
someone else. If you or someone you know is a

(01:00:54):
victim of intimate partner violence or domestic violence of any kind,
you do not have to go through this alone. You
also don't have to leave your situation right away or
all at once. Contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline one
eight hundred seven ninety nine safe or text start to

(01:01:15):
eight eight seven eight eight, or check the show notes
for more resources. Thank you to my very special guest today,
Eric carter Landin, and thank you for listening to this
episode of Method and Madness. If you haven't already, please
leave a rating or review, and don't forget to hit

(01:01:35):
that subscribe button to connect. I'm on Instagram at Method
and Madness Pod to chat, suggest a case, or discuss
the episode. Reach out to me at Method and Madness
Pod at gmail dot com. Method and Madness is researched,
written and hosted by me. Sound editing is by Mowen Spoe.

(01:01:56):
That's it for this time. Take care of yourself. For
crisis support art text hello seven four one seven four
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