October 21, 2025 • 11 mins
Gary and SHannon break down Netflix’s The Perfect Stranger, a gripping body-cam-told true-crime doc that’s impossible to look away from.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Perfect Neighbor is on television, but it is truly
a true crime story.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
For lack of any redundancy that we have not had
on this show.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
It's a documentary about a woman in Florida, she is white,
who shot and killed her neighbor, a black mother of four.
This happened in twenty twenty three, and it's all pieced
together using footage from police body cameras.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
The story is the topic of True Crime Tuesday. The
story is true, sounds true? No, it sounds made up.
I don't know. Garry and Shannon present True Crime.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
And I were well, Dad, just on the emergency favorite Children.
No Riff's office or any of you guys over here,
guys with this lady.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
No, we will play office because gust from across the
street say you shouldn't be screaming and running around. Okay.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
It starts as this neighborhood dispute. Apparently Susan Lawrence from
June of twenty twenty three. A. J Owens was the
thirty five year old mother of four who was shot
and killed by Susan back two years ago.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
So what it starts documenting and again this is no
talking heads, just two years worth of recordings of police
interacting with the neighbor the shooter in question. She's sixty now,
Susan Lawrence, and her calls she called habitually nine one
(01:48):
one about kids playing in the neighborhood, and the neighborhood
looks like a nice possibly cul de sac, unclear, o'calla Florida.
Just kids look like they're playing out in the street.
And it's almost such a welcome sight to see kids
(02:09):
playing out in the street that it adds another layer
of heartbreak to the story because these kids are out there,
they're playing with each other. There's maybe three different families,
three or four different families of kids are all playing together,
riding bikes, playing football, doing stuff that kids should be doing.
They're not you know, they're not knocking Fortnite. I'm just
(02:30):
saying you could knock Fortnite. They're not isolated in their
hovels on their screens with their headphones on, not interacting.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
They're kids being kids.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
And it's there's no spin on this because it is
just bodycam footage, so it's not like she's spun as
being the ultimate Karen. That's what they end up calling her.
By the way, the families is that Karen over there? Oh,
she yelled at us again? Who yelled at you?
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (02:56):
The Karen over there, the quintessential name for the woman
who is zero fun and highly involved with rules and
making sure no one else has any fun. And the
hoa lady, all of the you know, all the cliches
rolled into one and in her repeated calls to the
(03:19):
police to have them come out. And so the police
we routinely are coming out to this neighborhood and she's like,
it's the kids again, and they're screaming and they're hollering,
and she starts saying things that the kids are saying.
The kids said they were gonna beat my ass, or
the kids said this or that, and the kids buy
and large are black and this is a white woman.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Has to be said, it's just the facts of the case.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
But when the cops go out to talk to these
kids and the kids are talking amongst themselves and stuff,
the kids don't use language like this, the kids, and
they're not on their best behavior in front of the
cops either. You can tell that they're uh, they're kids
just having a good time. They're not backtalking the cops.
(04:03):
But they're also not Eddie haskelling their interaction with the cops.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
You can kind of see who.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
These kids are when the cops are not around by
the bodycam footage, and they don't seem to be the
kids that would be threatening anybody's life.
Speaker 4 (04:15):
The story of how they came to all of this
footage I thought was pretty interesting as well. And how
they came to even deciding that they were going to
turn this into a documentary was pretty interesting. It is
up for an oscar, but I mean not up for
an oscar, but it is. It does qualify for an
oscar because they did release it in theaters as well.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Pretty early on the mom that was killed the GK,
she goes by aj she says, you know, and this
is probably maybe ten minutes into the documentary and it's
available on Netflix, by the way, it started last week,
but it was out last week. But she says, you know,
I'm never out here, I'm never outside. When the cops respond,
she's like, but my kids, they said that they're to
(04:56):
have problems with it. They liked the guy that lived
there before this. He'd let them play football in this
empty grass area next to the place where she's living.
And it wasn't a thing, and I don't usually cut.
She doesn't want anything to do with the drama. She
wants her kids to go outside and play. She just
came home from work. She doesn't want to deal with
this woman across the street, and she is the one
(05:18):
who ends up being shot and killed in this altercation
when the woman the neighbor, essentially takes a piece of
property from one of the kids and she just goes
over to get it. But it's just it is it's
madness about grouchy, grumpy old neighbor who doesn't want the
kids laughing and playing, and it just it escalates. And
(05:43):
the thing with this woman is she looks like your
average just white woman in Florida, middle aged, living her
life alone. Wants to just be alone and that's what
she wants to do, and she's annoyed by the kids.
But you can see her behavior escalate, you can see
the grow inside her, and you can see how she
starts trying to manipulate the cops, and it's just it's
(06:06):
a it's an exercise in sociology really.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
On True Crime Tuesday, we're talking about the Perfect Neighbor,
which is the story of a neighborhood murder if you
want to call it that. Susan Lawrence accused of shooting
and killing A j Owens. Susan Lawrence was this fifty
eight year old woman in Ocalla, Florida. Aj Owens was
the thirty five year old mother of four when she
(06:32):
was shot and killed back in June of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Perfect Neighbor was definitely a good watch, very sad. I
was choking up there towards the end and getting pretty tearful,
but definitely recommend that to everyone to check.
Speaker 5 (06:48):
Out Higerian Shannon. It's Tina down in oc I watched
The Perfect Neighbor last night and it was heart wrenching
with those kids and what they went through when the
mom was killed and how they were told by the act. Yeah,
but it was a.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Great, great documentary.
Speaker 5 (07:09):
I think everybody should take a look and watch it.
Have a good one.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Plus that's the thing, Yeah, that's the thing.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
It's kind of like Adolescence where it's a hard watch,
but you should watch it.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Remember that show. Yeah, and I didn't want to watch it.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
I didn't either, but like you should, just to know
how things can evolve or devolve and they're absolutely right.
That's the part that sneaks up on you is it's
kind of suspenseful and you're thinking, well, how did things
get so bad? How it was there breaking point? And
you're just kind of, you know, going through all the
footage in your head is it's being shown to you.
(07:46):
And then when when the shooting happens and it's the
kids and it's the kids reaction, it just gut punches,
just gut punches it. It you get shocking, like sneakily
emotional of over this, or you should it should be
very hard to take at some point, but you know,
the police are like, what were you thinking? You know
(08:08):
somebody brought it up during the funeral. It's like, how
do you fire through a locked door? Your door is locked?
How do you say your fear for your life? Then
you're armed and you're going to fire through a lot
You don't know what's on the other side of that door.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
You know, if it was a kid on the other
side of that door.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
The person who made the film, or at least the
head of it, was geta Gendbier. I think it's how
I say her name specifically, but said that she got
involved the night that aj Owens was killed, immediately jumped
into action to try to help the family, and they
stepped in to sort of be liaisons with the media
(08:44):
in this case. Benjamin Crump, a civil rights attorney who's
made his name very prevalent in the last several years,
had an associated guy named Anthony Thomas who sued the
police department through the Freedom of Information Act to get
all of this body can footage. And they weren't necessarily
looking at it in order to make a movie. They
(09:08):
were doing it to help a Jay's family find stuff
that they might make sense to kind of peace out
for the news coverage that was coming up. And when
they realized they had all of this information, they had
the police body camera footage, they had detective interviews, they
had footage from doorbell cameras, they had cell phone footage
(09:30):
that all of it in there. They could tell everything
and not just the aftermath of the shooting and obviously
this family that's devastated that they lost their mom, but
the showing the community and the way that it existed
before this incident.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Now.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
She also says in an interview that she wanted this
to be a to change gun laws or the very
least the standard ground laws that exist, claiming that o'calla,
Florida was sort of the the birthplace of the standard
ground lows. Did you feel like they that they were
(10:06):
able to do that, I mean that they were able
to bring that up as a potential reason or a
way to get people to you know.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Yeah, I mean, but it's all the evidence, the body
of evidence that she was kind of taken the fight
to the kids.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
You know, she was asking for more fight. She was well,
and then claiming that she felt threatened. She was clearly.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
I mean, one of the things that was the takeaway
from the filmmaker is why didn't they bring a social worker?
Clearly this woman was not the picture of mental health.
Clearly this had the the propensity to.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Explode the way that it did.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
I didn't know that the police knew how many firearms
she had in her home, or weapons that she had
in her home. I don't know what knowledge they had
of that. I don't remember that watching it, but there
was an argument that they knew that she was armed,
and she was crazy, and she had a problem with
a bunch of just kids playing, and that was enough
for them to maybe bring in somebody to find out
what was going on behind closed doors or inside her
(11:05):
head before it got to this,
The Perfect Neighbor is on television, but it is truly
a true crime story.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
For lack of any redundancy that we have not had
on this show.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
It's a documentary about a woman in Florida, she is white,
who shot and killed her neighbor, a black mother of four.
This happened in twenty twenty three, and it's all pieced
together using footage from police body cameras.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
The story is the topic of True Crime Tuesday. The
story is true, sounds true? No, it sounds made up.
I don't know. Garry and Shannon present True Crime.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
And I were well, Dad, just on the emergency favorite Children.
No Riff's office or any of you guys over here,
guys with this lady.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
No, we will play office because gust from across the
street say you shouldn't be screaming and running around. Okay.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
It starts as this neighborhood dispute. Apparently Susan Lawrence from
June of twenty twenty three. A. J Owens was the
thirty five year old mother of four who was shot
and killed by Susan back two years ago.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
So what it starts documenting and again this is no
talking heads, just two years worth of recordings of police
interacting with the neighbor the shooter in question. She's sixty now,
Susan Lawrence, and her calls she called habitually nine one
(01:48):
one about kids playing in the neighborhood, and the neighborhood
looks like a nice possibly cul de sac, unclear, o'calla Florida.
Just kids look like they're playing out in the street.
And it's almost such a welcome sight to see kids
(02:09):
playing out in the street that it adds another layer
of heartbreak to the story because these kids are out there,
they're playing with each other. There's maybe three different families,
three or four different families of kids are all playing together,
riding bikes, playing football, doing stuff that kids should be doing.
They're not you know, they're not knocking Fortnite. I'm just
(02:30):
saying you could knock Fortnite. They're not isolated in their
hovels on their screens with their headphones on, not interacting.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
They're kids being kids.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
And it's there's no spin on this because it is
just bodycam footage, so it's not like she's spun as
being the ultimate Karen. That's what they end up calling her.
By the way, the families is that Karen over there? Oh,
she yelled at us again? Who yelled at you?
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (02:56):
The Karen over there, the quintessential name for the woman
who is zero fun and highly involved with rules and
making sure no one else has any fun. And the
hoa lady, all of the you know, all the cliches
rolled into one and in her repeated calls to the
(03:19):
police to have them come out. And so the police
we routinely are coming out to this neighborhood and she's like,
it's the kids again, and they're screaming and they're hollering,
and she starts saying things that the kids are saying.
The kids said they were gonna beat my ass, or
the kids said this or that, and the kids buy
and large are black and this is a white woman.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Has to be said, it's just the facts of the case.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
But when the cops go out to talk to these
kids and the kids are talking amongst themselves and stuff,
the kids don't use language like this, the kids, and
they're not on their best behavior in front of the
cops either. You can tell that they're uh, they're kids
just having a good time. They're not backtalking the cops.
(04:03):
But they're also not Eddie haskelling their interaction with the cops.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
You can kind of see who.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
These kids are when the cops are not around by
the bodycam footage, and they don't seem to be the
kids that would be threatening anybody's life.
Speaker 4 (04:15):
The story of how they came to all of this
footage I thought was pretty interesting as well. And how
they came to even deciding that they were going to
turn this into a documentary was pretty interesting. It is
up for an oscar, but I mean not up for
an oscar, but it is. It does qualify for an
oscar because they did release it in theaters as well.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Pretty early on the mom that was killed the GK,
she goes by aj she says, you know, and this
is probably maybe ten minutes into the documentary and it's
available on Netflix, by the way, it started last week,
but it was out last week. But she says, you know,
I'm never out here, I'm never outside. When the cops respond,
she's like, but my kids, they said that they're to
(04:56):
have problems with it. They liked the guy that lived
there before this. He'd let them play football in this
empty grass area next to the place where she's living.
And it wasn't a thing, and I don't usually cut.
She doesn't want anything to do with the drama. She
wants her kids to go outside and play. She just
came home from work. She doesn't want to deal with
this woman across the street, and she is the one
(05:18):
who ends up being shot and killed in this altercation
when the woman the neighbor, essentially takes a piece of
property from one of the kids and she just goes
over to get it. But it's just it is it's
madness about grouchy, grumpy old neighbor who doesn't want the
kids laughing and playing, and it just it escalates. And
(05:43):
the thing with this woman is she looks like your
average just white woman in Florida, middle aged, living her
life alone. Wants to just be alone and that's what
she wants to do, and she's annoyed by the kids.
But you can see her behavior escalate, you can see
the grow inside her, and you can see how she
starts trying to manipulate the cops, and it's just it's
(06:06):
a it's an exercise in sociology really.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
On True Crime Tuesday, we're talking about the Perfect Neighbor,
which is the story of a neighborhood murder if you
want to call it that. Susan Lawrence accused of shooting
and killing A j Owens. Susan Lawrence was this fifty
eight year old woman in Ocalla, Florida. Aj Owens was
the thirty five year old mother of four when she
(06:32):
was shot and killed back in June of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Perfect Neighbor was definitely a good watch, very sad. I
was choking up there towards the end and getting pretty tearful,
but definitely recommend that to everyone to check.
Speaker 5 (06:48):
Out Higerian Shannon. It's Tina down in oc I watched
The Perfect Neighbor last night and it was heart wrenching
with those kids and what they went through when the
mom was killed and how they were told by the act. Yeah,
but it was a.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Great, great documentary.
Speaker 5 (07:09):
I think everybody should take a look and watch it.
Have a good one.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Plus that's the thing, Yeah, that's the thing.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
It's kind of like Adolescence where it's a hard watch,
but you should watch it.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Remember that show. Yeah, and I didn't want to watch it.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
I didn't either, but like you should, just to know
how things can evolve or devolve and they're absolutely right.
That's the part that sneaks up on you is it's
kind of suspenseful and you're thinking, well, how did things
get so bad? How it was there breaking point? And
you're just kind of, you know, going through all the
footage in your head is it's being shown to you.
(07:46):
And then when when the shooting happens and it's the
kids and it's the kids reaction, it just gut punches,
just gut punches it. It you get shocking, like sneakily
emotional of over this, or you should it should be
very hard to take at some point, but you know,
the police are like, what were you thinking? You know
(08:08):
somebody brought it up during the funeral. It's like, how
do you fire through a locked door? Your door is locked?
How do you say your fear for your life? Then
you're armed and you're going to fire through a lot
You don't know what's on the other side of that door.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
You know, if it was a kid on the other
side of that door.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
The person who made the film, or at least the
head of it, was geta Gendbier. I think it's how
I say her name specifically, but said that she got
involved the night that aj Owens was killed, immediately jumped
into action to try to help the family, and they
stepped in to sort of be liaisons with the media
(08:44):
in this case. Benjamin Crump, a civil rights attorney who's
made his name very prevalent in the last several years,
had an associated guy named Anthony Thomas who sued the
police department through the Freedom of Information Act to get
all of this body can footage. And they weren't necessarily
looking at it in order to make a movie. They
(09:08):
were doing it to help a Jay's family find stuff
that they might make sense to kind of peace out
for the news coverage that was coming up. And when
they realized they had all of this information, they had
the police body camera footage, they had detective interviews, they
had footage from doorbell cameras, they had cell phone footage
(09:30):
that all of it in there. They could tell everything
and not just the aftermath of the shooting and obviously
this family that's devastated that they lost their mom, but
the showing the community and the way that it existed
before this incident.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Now.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
She also says in an interview that she wanted this
to be a to change gun laws or the very
least the standard ground laws that exist, claiming that o'calla,
Florida was sort of the the birthplace of the standard
ground lows. Did you feel like they that they were
(10:06):
able to do that, I mean that they were able
to bring that up as a potential reason or a
way to get people to you know.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Yeah, I mean, but it's all the evidence, the body
of evidence that she was kind of taken the fight
to the kids.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
You know, she was asking for more fight. She was well,
and then claiming that she felt threatened. She was clearly.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
I mean, one of the things that was the takeaway
from the filmmaker is why didn't they bring a social worker?
Clearly this woman was not the picture of mental health.
Clearly this had the the propensity to.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Explode the way that it did.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
I didn't know that the police knew how many firearms
she had in her home, or weapons that she had
in her home. I don't know what knowledge they had
of that. I don't remember that watching it, but there
was an argument that they knew that she was armed,
and she was crazy, and she had a problem with
a bunch of just kids playing, and that was enough
for them to maybe bring in somebody to find out
what was going on behind closed doors or inside her
(11:05):
head before it got to this,
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