My Story

Persecuted and Prosecuted, the Short Summary of My Story

The War in Heaven is Here and Now, 9/7/24

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that His true followers will be falsely accused.  To be falsely accused is Heaven's credential that a person is truly following Jesus. Just as in the days of old, people who allow satanic forces to influence them use civil and religious governments to do their bidding.

Since the age of 30, I had been trying to follow Jesus. I raised a family, was a leader in several churches, and helped start two Christian schools that now graduate hundreds of Jesus following young people every year.

In 2005 my oldest son, a true saint, passed into the next life after a three year struggle with a brain tumor. His remarkable story was told on the front page of the national edition of the Wall St. Journal.

His passing led me to focus even more on following Jesus. My first wife never recovered from his loss and ended up leaving me after 28 years together.

In January of 2017, I experienced a miraculous conversion to the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter-day Saints, leading me to move to Utah in 2018, in search of a new wife and a new life.

In 2019, I found a new wife and a new life, and was sealed to her in the Temple.

In nine months of marriage, we started a group home for wayward teens and got her two teenage daughters back in church.

But in 2020, at the onset of the pandemic, I agreed to allow her homeless ex-husband to live in our basement until he was able to move on.

He was and is truly possessed by evil, and with her, hatched a plot to destroy me.

On September 1, 2020 my then wife called the police and accused me of abusing her. This was a complete fabrication of lies.

The very next day she left our marriage bed and began co-habiting with her ex-husband. I found out later they had been accused of drug dealing when they were married a decade or so earlier.

While the police took no action on her initial claim of abuse, she was just getting started. She began relentlessly stalking me, both in person and through the legal system. She found a corrupt lawyer to help her, and lied to get a stalking injunction against me, when all I ever did was to try to get her mental health treatment, and to advise others who had trusted her of her ongoing mental health crisis.

I was never served her temporary stalking injunction, so was not subject to it. A local police sergeant, demonically influenced, decided I had been served it, and had two criminal charges filed against me for allegedly breaking it, even as I had no contact with her whatsoever.

When I got a temporary stalking injunction against her on December 8, 2020 I was told to go to that same police department and have her served with it. Instead of serving her and getting my house and possessions back, that same demonically influenced police sergeant had me taken to jail on completely false felony charges. This, at age 60, was my first ever time in jail. I spent 6 days there before being released. The false charges that put me there were never formally filed against me, as there was no basis for them at all. 

The next month, my ex-wife made more false allegations against me. One of those led me to be charged with the crime of a false written statement, though at trial in the Orem Justice Court, the charging officer admitted I had not made any false statements. Yet the Judge found me guilty, after the demonically influenced prosecutor bombarded him with irrelevant lies about the stalking case. That same prosecutor then realized that such irrelevancies would not play well after the verdict was appealed to District Court, and promptly dropped the charge. 

This incident taught me that a fair trial is impossible when a prosecutor is willing to lie in court against you. 

Because of that, I reluctantly took my attorney's advice on the original two charges related to breaking the stalking injunction, and pled no contest as a plea in abeyance, with no real consequences except mandated mental health treatment, where the therapist understood I had been falsely charged, and released me from that treatment after a few months.

In the spring of 2020. my ex-wife's corrupt lawyer was successful in getting me declared a Vexatious Litigant, based upon the courts failure to grant me the multiple domestic violence and stalking injunctions that I had filed against my ex-wife and her now live in lover, even though he later pled guilty to assaulting me in one of those cases. Later the Utah County Attorney refused to prosecute him for perjury for when he lied to the court at the domestic violence hearing.

I then found the great love of my current life, and married her in October of 2021, even as my ex-wife has continued to stalk me all along.

She has a friend who has turned away from the Church, after having been Temple worthy. In an effort to help , I gave her friend an opportunity to participate in my food trailer business. 

That was a disaster, as, on the second day of operating, her friend judged me as unrighteous for raising my voice at another food trailer operator who showed up in our spot for the express purpose of blocking our operations. The yelling at me caused the police to be called for a second time that morning, and they, incredibly, charged me with disorderly conduct.

This led to a guilty verdict in Orem Justice Court, which I again appealed to the District Court, as I had proof that the witnesses had lied in the Justice Court trial and thought that the Orem prosecutor would do the sensible thing and drop the charges when confronted with the irrefutable evidence that the witnesses had lied. 

But this Orem prosecutor decided to go ahead with the District Court trial, and the main witness lied again and again. The accuser, who had made the call to the police that had me charged, was not present, making this to me an unconstitutional trial, as I was not able to confront my accuser. Nevertheless, the judge found me guilty, and I was sentenced to pay a $150 fine.

The headline of this short story is to let all know that the War in Heaven is indeed here and now. Those who closely follow Jesus, even doing as He did, living lives of signs, wonders, and miracles, will be falsely accused even as He and all the early apostles were. Is this the consequence of truly doing the work that saints are called to do? Is it possible to do the work that Jesus did without these trials and tribulations?  I believe it is not, for as Jesus said, those who are not for me are against me, and the spirit world is very much alive all around us, and those evil spirits influence all those who are not truly following Jesus, as they also influenced me before I fully surrendered my life to Jesus, and thereby received the baptism of fire and the Holy Ghost, on January 26, 2017.

Your One Choice, My Life's Lesson

To live for others, or not.

Living for others is God's Way. God is Wisdom and Love. As you Love, you become Wise.

This is the key to abundant and eternal life. Living this message, and spreading this message, brings joy.

You are always standing on an infinite spiral staircase.

As you choose to love and serve others, you are lifted up to be as God. You bring joy to others and experience joy.

At those times you choose not to love and serve others, you descend the spiral, and experience depression.

Every moment of your life gives you an opportunity to love and serve others. In person, and virtually.

Spread this message, always, and experience joy, always.

1. The Consequences of Not Living for Others

When you don't follow God's Way and live for others, you become the opposite of Wise, you become Foolish. The Wise and the Foolish live in two completely different worlds, heavenly or hellish, as with Wisdom comes Faith, Hope, and Love, the great gifts of God to those that walk in His Way.

1. The Source of All Conflict

As the Wise and the Foolish live in different worlds, they see the world through different lenses. They then do battle with others over what is true. This is the source of increasing contention in the world, as the Wise are granted more Wisdom and the Foolish, more foolishness.

1. The Example of Jesus

Jesus became famous by spreading this message, even dying to spread it, and rising to prove His Truth. But you don't have to know the name of Jesus to follow in His Way, some religion may help, but no religion is necessary to follow in His Way, to live for others, by serving others.

This message is brought to you by Treyeshua. I was given that name by Jesus in a sacred encounter with him that occurred before I joined the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter-day Saints in 2017 after years of working my way through many different religions.  My legal name is Tom Tomeny, and I am on the ballot for Governor of Utah in 2024, as yet another way to spread this message. That site is Vote the Jesus Way. 

May the Lord of all, the King of kings, and the Lord of lords, by whatever name you know Him, bless you and keep you and have your eyes shine His countenance upon all those you encounter. As we all do so, we not only experience heaven individually, but turn Earth into Heaven as it was ever meant to be.

Learning this Truth has been a long battle for me, reflecting the spiritual war that went on in my soul over many decades. While this message and its application are religion independent, my discovery of it was greatly aided by my relatively recent membership in the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter-day Saints after having followed and been a member of many different religions and been non-religious for a time.

There are two more main pages on this site, My Journal, and Lessons Learning, please consider reading those as well, and perhaps Lessons Learning first.

This video shares my experience of joining the Church, it was produced in 2020, during one of the most difficult periods of my life. 

This evolving LifeBook is my true story, after moving to Utah, about 5 years ago. 

For years now, I have been the objective of a relentless stalker and this is that story. Evil spirits work by influencing those who do the physical stalking, including my covenant companion and many others who have not yet come fully to fully embrace the Truth.

You are also the objective of this same relentless stalker. Please consider learning from my testimony here, hopefully to help guide you as we face our common adversary, choosing to make ourselves the focus of our life instead of making giving love to others the focus of our life.

Our lives are to be of light, for He is the light, even Jesus Christ.

Introduction, written on 7/15/24

My Life of Light is a LifeBook. Feel free to print out what you wish, but know that this book is alive and much will be added as my life progresses and  I have time to add details on people and events described, either changing the narrative text or by adding links. And that my perspective will continue to mature over time.

All feedback is welcome, particularly if you are named here. My perspective is my own and you may feel I have unfairly characterized you, yet that is not my intent. My phone and text number is 801-318-3122 and my email is ttomeny@gmail.com, Also, please contact me if you are interested in sharing your own LifeBook, a site for that purpose, LifeBook Library.com, is in development for that purpose. I am offering my life of light in hope that all shall one day offer their lives of light, their testimonies of what God has done in their lives.

Everything here is true to the best of my knowledge at the time it was written. Real names are generally used so that some may shine in their actions while others may be shamed by their actions. Yet, all are children of God, and I believe all will eventually truly follow Jesus, to live in His Light even as I try to best do myself each day. For Jesus is the Truth, His Way is the Way, and one day soon every knee will bow and every tongue confess His name, the name above all names, Jesus Christ.

Inspiration 7/15/24

I have now lived in the light for decades, at first a faint light, but now a bright light. The Light that is LIfe, the Light and Life of Jesus Christ.

My path is the Jesus Way, for He is the Lord of Lords, and God of Gods.

Some of the Way involves institutional religion, and some does not.

In the end, you are a Lord, you are a God, even as spoken, by He who is the Lord of Lords, and the God of Gods, Jesus Christ.

Dedication 7/15/24

This work is dedicated to those I love, and, as I follow Jesus closely, that is all.

Gratification  7/15/24

My most sincere thanks to all the saints that cross my path, and especially those most critical as I often conflate His work in me with what little I do. To HIm alone be all glory, honor, and praise.

Organization, written on  7/20/24

This work is a "LifeBook" a term coined to describe an online testimony of one's life, with this being a sample of it. Each text block, produced within the free program Google Sites, has a source and date. This can be envisioned as a Text Tree, where the main trunk is the main narative, which is displayed in ordinary text, has a writing date at the top, and can be read simply by scrolling down the page from the start of this Lifebook. Branches of the Text Tree can be explored by clicking on the embedded links (most not here yet), which may lead to more text or images or audio video objects. And those branches will, eventually, have their own branches. The LifeBook formatting is still evolving.

Text blocks that are not part of the main trunk are displayed in bold. Images and videos are part of the main trunk but are formatted as images or videos, with their own titles, captions, and dates.

The dates shown are when a text block was first written, even though there will be editing revisions after that date.

The overall goal of this project is to get others, many others to write their own Lifebooks. A URL only cost about $12 a year and Google Sites is free. So for $1 a month, each of us can testify of what God has done in each of our lives and share that with the whole world online for that is what the Bible tells us to do in Revelation 12:11:

"...they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony..."

On Naming Names, 8/11/24

A few of the earliest readers of this LifeBook have had concerns about the fact that I name names of those who I feel have done evil against me during this saga that was essential to forming my character to be more like Jesus. 

No person named in this true story has had their name mentioned without considerable prayer and reflection, and without me attempting to use the three step process prescribed in Matthew 18:15-17 before naming them, and their offense, in this work.

Matthew 18:15-17 is the process I learned well while being a leader at Legacy Christian Academy, which I helped found in 1999, and Coram Deo Academy, which I helped found in 2000, both very significant ministries today, in the Dallas, Texas area.

It is a three step process, if you feel someone has sinned against you, go to them in private and share your concern. In many cases you both learn it was a simple misunderstanding. Sometimes what happened is truly sinful, not only were you harmed, but it was intentional harm, and then you ask them to repent and offer restitution. If they refuse, go to them again, with several other witnesses, and ask them again to repent. If they refuse to repent, the third step is to let all who might also be harmed by them know their name and reasonable details of why you are publicly naming them for that transgression, again in hopes that they repent. While it is a process that God commands us to use, it is still not appropriate to use in most cases, as the greater commandment of God is to show grace and mercy towards all, even as He does, and let small matters go, as they are surely mistakes, and we all learn by our mistakes.

There are many times and circumstances where this process cannot be followed exactly. For instance, one of the largest sins against me in this story was by a Detective Potts, of the Saratoga Springs Police Department, who had me jailed, my first time ever at age 60, for six days for things that are and were not even remotely criminal. He is either very foolish or did, in my case, something very evil. Because of his position of authority, I did not contact him directly, but reported his conduct to the Saratoga Springs police department, and it was after that report that he had me jailed. 

Yet, as all things work for good to those who love the Lord and are called by Him (Romans 8:28), those agonizing days in jail have and will work for good, for my good, and for the good of all as I expose the injustices found there. 

      Chapter 1, 7/12/20 

Life is Good, Really Good 

On December 13, 2019 I was sealed to my Covenant Companion, hereinafter called CC, as I may not be able to use her name, for legal reasons that are not yet clarified.

On my 60th birthday, July 12, 2020,  CC arranged an elaborate celebration. We lived in Saratoga Springs, Utah in a wonderful house owned by CC in a wonderful community that was built around the turn of this century around the natural hot springs on the west side of Utah Lake, a beautiful natural lake in Utah county.

For the celebration we rented a boat and spent much of the day on the lake. CC hired a professional photographer to document this occasion, but those pictures of that amazing day are unavailable to me now. 

In the days after that birthday, our life changed as we became the foster parents to an amazing young woman, age 14, who was also very troubled. She joined our household that included CC’s two teenage daughters, aged 14 and 16, and she occupied the newly remodeled Princess bedroom.

In order to accommodate her, we had to have two other people leave the house, CC’s middle of 5 daughters and CC’s ex-husband, Michael Jason Black, because both had criminal records so neither could legally live in our home while we were employed by the State of Utah as foster parents.

Jason had been living in our basement for a few months after we drove to San Antonio, Texas in our RV van to rescue him from homelessness as the Covid pandemic was just then starting. He is the biological father for CC’s two youngest girls, as her other three girls had been fathered by her first husband. Jason and CC had once been arrested on drug charges, but both were released and not convicted as CC told me that all of the people in their drug selling group had refused to testify against the other members to the police during the time that they had spent two weeks in jail while interrogations were done.

CC and I met in September of 2019 at a weekly entrepreneurs event called One Million Cups that was hosted at a venture capital firm called RevRoad in Provo, Utah at the time. I had moved to Utah permanently the month before, seeking a new life and a new wife. I had arrived a happy man, as evidenced by this photo taken a few months before when I was spring skiing at Squaw Valley, a resort that overlooks Lake Tahoe in California.

Our first date was at Outback Steakhouse in Orem, Utah as that was CC’s choice. I lived in Orem, a few blocks from there, but picked her up in Saratoga Springs, 20 or so miles away, and returned her to Saratoga Springs, for about 80 miles of driving, because she could not afford gas to meet me.

At the end of the date, CC invited me into her nice looking suburban home, but the glass screen door had tape all over it, which I later learned was from the foreclosure notice she had recently removed.

The inside was total squalor, with CC and her daughters sleeping on filthy and torn mattress pads as there were no beds to be seen. The rest of the house was equally filthy and in disrepair. 

CC was and is a very smart woman. She has two masters degrees, and a license as a Behavior Analyst, but keeping a job and paying her mortgage had not been working out for her.

I met CC’s two youngest teenage daughters that night, and they both seemed remarkably happy and well adjusted to their living conditions.

I sensed, by the Spirit, that night that I was to be married to CC. I saw her chaotic lifestyle as my opportunity to be her savior as I could bring her back to be with our Savior. And, for her own reasons, she sensed the same, and we were practically, if not formally, engaged on that first date.

CC told me she was not sealed to either of her previous husbands, as neither had been Temple worthy, so I saw her as my eternal companion. She had been through trials and tribulations in 49 years of life, likely more trials than most can imagine.

Her mother and father are both great saints of God. Her father had a career as an Army officer, a professor at BYU-Hawaii, where CC grew up in Laie, and then a professor at BYU-Provo. While I never met him, I routinely sense the presence of his spirit, particularly when I’m cooking and cleaning as CC shared stories of his cooking and cleaning. He passed about a year before I met CC.

Her mother is a dear friend who lives here on the Wasatch Front. She has raised an amazing family with numerous children and grandchildren. Unfortunately, due to CC’s erratic behavior, they have been mostly out of communication with each other for years now.

CC and I were sealed in the Salt Lake Temple on December 13, 2019, shortly before that temple closed for renovation. It was a wonderful event, attended by family members and a few dear friends, including Dorothy and Larry, the picture of them below was taken in 2021.

A Facebook Post from 5/31/19

Serve, Testify, Pray

These three activities appear to me as the most fundamental duties of the saints.

Two are of the spirit world, and one of the temporal world.

Perhaps the proper balance is this imbalance.

Too often, I observe saints and near saints losing this perspective.

For service in the temporal world leads to rewards in the temporal world, and it is easy for that to lead one astray.

Service opens the door to testimony, and prayer opens all the doors of heaven.

So seek first the Kingdom, and when all else is added...

Continue to seek the Kingdom!

For the Kingdom IS, through, with, and In, Jesus Christ.

We then went on a wonderful honeymoon in our Roadtrek van, driving to Carmel, California and other spots along the west coast. These were amazing days and the honeymoon seemed to last for our entire marriage as we traveled extensively all over the country. Once the legal matters are cleared up, I hope to post the photos of those amazing days, but for now, here is the photo that I am using in my billboard campaign to market this site. It was taken on June 17, 2020 with no apparent purpose at the time, but with clear purpose now, as is often the case when you closely follow Jesus. 

In March of 2020, the Covid pandemic hit, and hit us in an unusual way. This is when CC’s ex-husband, Michael Jason Black, started to live with us, making for a six person household at our home in Saratoga Springs, where he lived in the basement while four of us lived upstairs.

By that time, the house was fairly in order. We had purchased new beds and other furniture, and it was reasonably clean and orderly. We had caught up the mortgage by getting a new agreement with reasonable payments. And our Bishop, Jayme Woodhouse, no longer needed to pay CC’s bills, as I caught up on the utilities and HOA fees as well.

The only “black spot” was Jason living in our basement. He spent almost all his time sleeping or playing video games, often with his two teenage daughters. He went from being an okay house guest to being a vocal and defiant jerk, refusing to pray with us at dinner and mocking God and our prayers. He did not pay his rent after the first month, and never got a job, despite being a highly skilled computer security expert, he claimed that his felony record and imprisonment, for selling drugs in Texas, prevented him from getting a job. Instead he, to me, falsely claimed SSI benefits, for some sort of anxiety disorder. And while it was forbidden by us for him to smoke on our property, he routinely violated that by smoking or vaping both tobacco and marijuana, obtained legally due to his health condition.

Sometime in that spring, I was summoned by Bishop Woodhouse to an extraordinary meeting. I wasn’t in trouble but rather he called me in to compliment me on what he termed the amazing progress in our family, as we now regularly attended church, and the girls attended YW events. Shortly after that meeting, I was called to an Elder’s Quorum position to be the social organizer for married couple’s events. The first one was named, Steak Night at the Stake Center, but it never happened due to Covid.

Bishop Woodhouse confessed something distressing at that meeting. He said he had been talking to CC without letting me know since the beginning of the year about her mental health problems, and had been paying for her mental health sessions over in Provo with a friend of her deceased father. This appeared to me as a gross violation of our marriage, but did not immediately press the issue with the Bishop, especially as he had just complimented me and our new family on our progress.

Shortly thereafter, I attended a single session with CC and that therapist, only to discover that she had been telling him that I was the source of all her problems. He was extremely rude to me, treating me as if I was an abuser, when no such thing was even remotely true. In hindsight, it appears that CC was setting him up to be her star witness if and when she might ever turn on me.

An email I received from CC on 5/6/20

Shine Bright and Beautiful
Once upon a time in a place far far away there was a dark planet. It was cold, and well, dark. Until one day a star came into the planet's orbit. It gave light and warmth for about half of everyday. The creatures of this planet loved the bright ball of gas that shone down on them until one day a human stayed out in the sun playing all day and got sick. The doctors called it heat stroke and warned them they should drink lots of water and limit time outside during the hottest parts of the day. All was well again until someone got a terrible burn from the sun. This human was mad at the sun and said she shouldn’t have shone so bright or long. Others chimed in likewise, But it was a small majority. Then someone died of skin cancer. More humans began to blame the sun for heatstroke, sunburns, cancer and other issues from staying out in the sun too long. They said she was trying to kill people. Instead of changing their behavior they began to wish the sun would not shine so bright. The sun felt sad. She had not intended to hurt anyone. She tried to shine less bright or hide behind clouds in shame but to no avail. Some humans were never happy. And if one human was happy that she was behind a cloud another was mad because she was. She could not please everyone. Humans were so hard to please in fact that one day she decided to stop trying. She decided to shine bright and beautiful and stop caring what other people thought. Humans would then call her selfish and unkind but she knew better. She loved the world enough to stay and give them light and warmth even if they didn’t appreciate her. There were some who put on sunscreen and drank lots of water and stayed out of the sun when it was too hot or bright. They loved their sun and praised and thanked her. These were the voices the sun decided to listen to instead of the ones who were always mad, always blaming others and always unhappy when they couldn’t control her. 

Truth be known no one can control anyone but themselves. Those who can not control themselves expect others to control themself so they don't have to change. 

There are those who still think that they can make someone feel something. This started because people would say you made me angry or you made me feel sad. People started to believe it just as the sun had but they too will learn that some people choose to be angry or feel sad and blame others even if it's not their fault. Until people understand that they will still try, as the sun did, to hide behind masks of smiles they don't feel, say things they don’t believe or act in ways they don’t want to but feelings are a choice and even if everyone hid they would soon learn as the sun did that some people are never happy because how we feel is a result of making a choice, not on others making a choice. 

I feel happy because I choose to feel happy. I feel safe because I choose to act in ways that keep me safe. I feel loved because I act in loving ways and that love is reciprocated genuinely. 

I feel _____, and it's all my fault.

How do you feel?

Chapter 2, 7/18/24

Troubles Begin 

Even as we both were very happy in the spring and early summer of 2020, we both felt that we must find a way to financiallly sustain ourselves, some sort of new venture that we could do together to both serve others, and provide for ourselves long term, rather than living off my savings.

First, we sought to take advantage of older attempts at financial prosperity, of which there were three. I had a pending lawsuit in Texas against a mechanic in Texas that had destroyed one of my dry cleaning delivery vans about 3 years earlier, that case was settled favorably in 2020 by one of the best lawyers I ever had the privilege to hire, Richard Harrison of McKinney, Texas.

A second matter also involved a legal settlement, as I filed with a program run by the Catholic Church for compensation due to abuse at the hands of a Catholic priest when I was about 10 years old. That effort did not work as they refused to pay as apparently the priest who abused me was not on their list of known predators and my evidence against him was difficult to corroborate four decades later, as he had died, likely of HIV, decades earlier.

The third attempt was to revive a pizza food truck that I had owned and operated in Colorado prior to moving to Utah. It was intentionally the world's ugliest food truck, as it had been designed for pizza delivery only, and was intended to only ever be seen by employees, not customers. CC, her kids, and I endured an excruciatingly long drive from Arvada, Colorado to our home in Saratoga Springs, Utah in a truck that struggled to go 45 miles per hour, and much less up the hills on highways through the mountains. It ended up on the RV pad beside our house where we refurbished it to make it operational again.

One newer venture had started in December of 2019 when we purchased two 7 seat vehicles for use as Uber/Lyft vehicles. We both drove for Uber and Lyft for a short time in an effort to understand the lives of rideshare drivers, and to develop an enterprise that would make their life better, with the idea of leading the way towards a co-op type enterprise owned by the drivers rather than what we viewed as the overly greedy companies that dominate the industry. My first ride was remarkably an Uber executive going from his family home in Lehi (though he spent most of his time in California at HQ) to see his mother at the cancer treatment center at the University of Utah. He gave me a $20 tip and a lot of information about the company and its future plans.

And as is always the case when focused on serving others, God blessed us for our desire to improve the lives of rideshare drivers. When Covid hit, the federal government provided unemployment benefits to rideshare drivers, and both CC and I each received around $20,000, even though we had driven only about 6 weeks.  That was enough money to cover what we had paid for the Ford Explorer and Honda Pilot that we had used.

But our biggest venture was a new one, to build an empire of our own by providing services to troubled children. Helping children was CC's passion, and she had obtained credentials as a Behavior Analyst, with two masters degrees. But jobs had not worked out for her, as she always felt the institutions where she worked were more interested in maintaining the institution than in serving the children, and her outspokeness had led to her dismissals.

CC was aware that the state of Utah paid large sums, tax free, to those who provided foster care to the most troubled of children. I was aware, from a young man who used to be a pizza delivery driver out of the Pizza Truck back in Arvada, Colorado, that his hugely wealthy uncle had become so wealthy by providing lifetime care homes to those that needed such services in Colorado and other states. 

So it seemed like a reaonable path to follow, even as I had no relevant experience in that industry,  CC surely did. And it did not take long at all for this to happen. We were jointly hired by Eric Reynolds of A Home Team, who was in that line of work, to provide care for a particularly difficult teenage girl who at the time resided in the state hospital. We were paid, according to Eric, the highest sum ever paid for the care of a single child, $175 a day.

Getting hired required us to spend thousands of dollars to upgrade the house, both of us getting credentialed in CPR and food handling, and submitting several personal references from people who had known each of us for over two years. I was shocked to find out that CC had not a single person who she had known for more than a  year who was willing to give her a written reference. Instead she accepted and submitted reference letters from two people who must have lied on her behalf, as they were both from people I understood she had known for less than year. CC had lots of friends,  yet they all were of short duration.

I will not be giving the name of our foster child. She was beautiful, bright, and not at all someone who would generally appear troubled. Her parents, who had divorced, were good and decent people. 95% of the time, she could and did pass as the amazing young woman she was. But at the other times, she was very difficult. I was sure, at the time, that the love of Jesus, which we gave her, would overcome all. CC was sure of not "just" that, but that her skills in behavior modification would fix this poor girl's tormented life in short order.

The bonus of taking in our foster child in was moving Jason Black out, as he could not legally live in our house anymore with her there, due to his felon status. In an act of mercy, we agreed to rent him our white Chevy Avalanche, for it was sleepable in the summer until he found a place to live. He never paid that rent, and damaged the vehicle while it was in his possession.

Our foster child began living in our home in late July. CC was very energetic, and sure she would be able to take care of her almost entirely by herself, surely as I continued to cook and clean the house, as had become my custom since our marriage. I experienced great joy in those months caring for CC and her children, as they had experienced a hard life. CC had been driving an older mini-van that had been gifted to her, and I discovered during that time, she had never made a single house payment since "buying" the house, and had been chosen to purchase the house by the prior owner, who had competing offers, due to her status as a single mother with several children.

CC was friendly with the nationally known author of The Spark, Kristine Barnett, a book that details the emergence of her autistic son into becoming a world renowned physicist, as he was allowed to learn in his own way by his inspired mother.  We had several long telephone conversations with Kristine, and that helped CC decide, at the last moment, to go on a trip to south Florida, to visit a car wash, that operated almost entirely with a staff of autistic people.

We were on a mission to save a small portion of the world. We both believed that it was our calling to do all we could for the "least" of people, to love them all with the love of Jesus. We felt, at the time, that we were called and chosen to do great things to eventually bring His love to all. The URL to our website, though never developed, was witnesscouple.com, which was based upon the Temple practice of the time to have a witness couple in the presentation of the endowment.

In additon to our foster child, and our planned new pizza business that would, like the car wash, employ autistic people, CC had continued during our marriage to voluntarily work for the IM Foundation, which to me had a vastly too broad objective to change the world. On the day we met for the second time, at another Million Cups event in Provo, she and the director of that foundation, Paul Feyereisen, took me across the street to lunch at Denny's as they saw me as a prospective donor. In a way, I ended up being that foundation's biggest donor, as CC was able to volunteer a large amount of time to one of their principal projects while my savings financed our lives.

The primary project at the time for the IM foundation was establishing suicide prevention centers in area high schools. CC did an amazing job of establishing the first one just a few miles from our home, at Westlake High, during the spring and summer of our marriage.  It opened to serve the students around the time of the early end of the school year in 2020, due to Covid. 

What CC submitted to the agency to help attract a foster child in May of 2020, with human names edited.

Our family is unconditionally loving and adventurous. We like family outings and game nights. Our family consists of Tom age 60, CC age 50, Older Daughter age 16, and Youngest Daughter age 14. Tom, who also goes by Trey, is a successful business man and enjoys helping other entrepreneurs navigate business endeavors. CC is a behavior analyst with a masters degree in special ed. She taught k-12 behavior units for 15 years and went on to work in client homes with kids on the autism spectrum. OD is homeschooled and working on getting her GED because traditional school was not the best fit for her. YD took 2 years off public school to find themself and returned to school recently before schools were closed for the year. YD is very social and misses that side of school being out. Currently, Trey stays home and takes care of the house cooking, cleaning, and planning family activities while CC works at Westlake High School as the Wellness Coordinator at the Westlake IM Wellness Center implemented to address the rising suicide rate among teens. We are passionate about inclusion and individualization. If you are an adventurous person that likes to get out and do things and wants to join a family that will unconditionally love and accept you while helping you grow and progress we would love to meet you and see if we are a good fit.  

Tom and CC are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and regularly attend services there and at the Seventh Day Adventist Bible study as well as frequent other non-denominational services. Trey is a recent convert to the LDS faith and has chosen to take the best of all his religious background rather than give one up for the other. Tom was born to a Jewish family, raised Catholic and followed many other faith's in his search for truth. CC was born and raised LDS but was inactive for many years until rejoining the faith 20 years ago. We have a very liberal view of religion and seek spirituality over organized faith in most cases. The kids both choose not to attend services with us which is ok too.

We live in a nice 5 bedroom house in the established Saratoga Springs HOA neighborhood. There are 2 pools in the neighborhood.

We have 3 pets. Teko is a 7 yr old male Rottweiler/Bassett Hound which just means he has the tricolor of a rott and the short legs of a Bassett. He's super kind and protective of the family so barks when people pass by but other than that he's happy to just lay around and likes to be pet. Luck is a 2 yr old female Black Lab/Boarder Collie mix who is super happy and fun. She loves to play like a little kid. She's friendly and will help Teko bark at strangers to protect us.

We have a male black cat we rescued after it injured its tail named V. He comes and goes whenever he wants but when he's inclined he likes to be held and pet. V is especially find of cat nip and laying in the sun.

We separated the backyard so the dogs have their own space and we have ours.

We currently have space for one new friend though we plan to have the basement finished and have room for at least one more in the future.

The private bedroom is on the main floor near the full bathroom shared with OD and YD until we add the new bathroom downstairs.

We have an RV for camping, a 4 wheel drive truck for adventures including off roading and 2- 7 seat SUV's to ensure everyone can play. 

We are registered with the National Ability Center in Park City and often go on outings with them to learn new and fun activities as well as how to accommodate even the most challenging disability.

When we married, I was aware that CC had been diagnosed as bipolar at about the age of 16. I too, had once been diagnosed as bipolar at the age of about 31. I viewed, and continue to view, such diagnoses as highly subjective and often wrong. I can only speak for myself, and what I observed in CC, that it is a diagnosis attached to high energy and highly creative people who are willing to see and do far beyond the expectations of the world. In spiritual terms, it is Satan's way of suppressing those who are most likely to rise up and defeat the world, and show others how to do so as well.  It is even mentioned in the Bible, when the future King David hid in a Philistine mental institution to avoid being killed by Saul. The inference being that David, like many prophets old and new, and even Jesus Himself, were considered mentally ill by the "normal" people of their day.

My understanding is that the old language of "demon possessed" has become our language of "mentally ill" and is often applied to our enemies whom we don't yet understand the purpose of their energetic lives that go well beyond most others hopes and dreams. CC and I both believed wholeheartedly that we were truly following Jesus in helping to save His world, for His Kingdom. And I still believe that, even now as I write and run for Governor of Utah, not that my desire is to rule and reign, but to love and serve the people of Utah.

Posted below is something that most, including Latter Day Saints, may consider "crazy". It was presented at the time of posting with question marks, as I am surely in no position of authority to declare any of my ideas as Truth, that is a privilege reserved for He who holds all the keys to the Kingdom. It is instead, a work of speculative theology, similar to the books of Terryl and Fiona Givens, or those of Adam S. Miller. I believe and understand that God allows some of us to "look around the corner" and see what might be true, while others, our true Church leaders, are the righteous and proper authorities who actually declare truth.

A Facebook post I made on July 8, 2019, two months before meeting CC.

The fullness of the Gospel?

An amazing personal revelation that may indeed be a general revelation?

Last week, I attended the 18th Ward in Salt Lake City on Sunday morning, and much to my surprise, the President and Prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter-day Saints, walked in shortly after I did. We sat face to face, me in the congregation on the audience right side of the podium, and President Russell M. Nelson, on the stage left side of the stand. The meeting lasted an hour, and I believe we were close enough to literally breathe the same air.

And that is important, because it is in sharing the air we breathe that we share our very spirits. There is abundant evidence that our spirits are where we truly live, move, and have our being. The evidence is both scriptural and experiential, and it will be my pleasure to provide both at the appropriate time.

More specifically, our spirits are millions of individual oxygen atoms, which are God's quantum storage devices of our memories and who we are. Oxygen atoms (atomic number 8 are what our blood carries to our brain (scripturally, "the life is in the blood"). Our brain is not the container of our memories, except for a small current portion, but the processor of our memories, which exist in the air around us.

So we are constantly sharing our spirits with those around us as we breathe. This is why a general revelation is possible in me as a personal revelation, as I recently shared the air/spirits with not only President Nelson, but with Apostle Ballard, and the other general authorities present at that meeting. Of course, the Holy Spirit of Jesus, and of Our Father, is also in the air everywhere and may inhabit all those it pleases.

When we are incarnated into our bodies here, we are actually being sent to "spirit prison" so that we may return someday to spirit heaven. In the spirit prison of our bodies, we learn what we must to fully convert our spirit into a Holy Spirit. And as a Holy Spirit, aka a full Saint of God, we join in the communion of Saints.

If we have the rare privilege of converting while still alive in the body, we have the greater privilege of ministering to all those around us who are still in spirit prison. I understand this to be the essence of Doctrine and Covenants 138 as received by Joseph F. Smith early in the 20th century.

If the Church were functioning perfectly, as it will in Kingdom come, all these true Saints and their wives, would form the true Melchizedek priesthood. But as most still see through the glass darkly, the current priesthood has both impostors and is missing many, many true Saints, and that's okay, because this is how we progress.

When we die, our spirits are released from our body that is spirit prison. Science has proven that when a living body becomes a corpse on a super accurate scale, that several ounces are lost as the last oxygenated air leaves the body. Being lighter than air, we are truly "caught up in the air with Him" and many report seeing their own body laying under them in near death experiences.

Where our spirits go next is, as all things, by the will of God. Holy spirits, who have learned the lessons of life here, are one in the Holy Spirit, and I believe completely free to occupy the bodies of whom they may, the bodies of those truly in Christ, for those bodies are truly temples, the Body of Christ.

Unholy spirits are most likely assigned to other bodies to continue to learn as they must (hello HIndu friends). So we both have only one (eternal) life to live and may be subject to reincarnation if we continue to fail miserably.

This post is but a small sample of what has been revealed, but I hope you get the idea. I look forward to your comments. Most of all, pray to know if it is true. Let all Truth be established by multiple witnesses, and especially the Holy Ghost in you. I offer this, and all that I am, to you in the name of Jesus Christ.

So this was the beauty before the storm. We enjoyed a fabulous adventure to Florida and back, before inviting our foster child into our home, thereby inviting a spiritual battle of epic proportions that continues to this day of writing, 7/16/24, as we are to appear in court today against one another, again. The picture below shows a sample of our travels from coast to coast in the 8 months of our incredible marriage.

Chapter 3, 7/19/24

The Great Storm 

August 24, 2020 was terrifying. My beloved CC had to be rushed to the hospital as she was unresponsive after a panic attack. Earlier that evening, she had expressed, in extreme fear, that I was going to leave her. I had absolutely no such intention, as I was likely at the time one of the happiest men on the planet, as our life together was magnificent.

And about a week late, in a certified letter dated August 25, 2020, CC was banned from ever using the services of Revere Health. I was not present at the time, but that letter referenced inappropriate behavior she exhibited at their facility in Provo. The incident involved their mask policy, something we both had objections to. A redacted partial copy of that letter is posted below.

These two incidents were precursors of much worse to soon come. My beloved CC had, to me, lost her mind, what was previously the "mind of Christ" as promised by Philippians 2:5, "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus".

The modern terminology for such mind losing is mental illness. Anciently, in scripture, such a loss of a good mind was termed demonic possession. I believe that Jesus healed more of demonic possession than of any other illness.

I had partial knowledge of what I was taking on when sealed to my CC. She had made a public testimony of her previous mental illness in a post written on the IM Foundation site, excerpted below.

My CC was and is very disturbed. She recently, three and a half years after our divorce, forced me to appear in court in response to completely false allegations that I have failed to support her since our divorce. As we were married for a short time, there are no such provisions for her support in the divorce decree, so according to my understanding of the law, she has committed numerous felonies in filing materially false statements with the court. The wise judge appeared to see right through her, as she showed up with an emotional support service dog, and claimed her whole recent life has been destroyed by PTSD due to alleged severe abuse from me. The judge refused the hearing and ordered mediation, but my CC has not done what the judge ordered to arrange mediation, and my certified letter about it to CC has never been returned as having been received.

The big event happened on August 31. That morning we got out of bed after a particularly intimate night, and again saw what she had written and kept up for about 8 weeks, "I am the luckiest woman of all time and most blest" on her dresser mirror, a photograph of that is below. I thought she was every bit as happy at the time as I was.

Waking up and reading that message was a wonderful start to a day that would become the most hellish day of my life, even worse than when my oldest son TJ had died after a long battle with a brain tumor at the age of 14 in 2005, for I knew what to expect then, what began with CC on August 30, 2020 was completely unexpected to me.

Things went south at our Sunday family dinner that day. CC went on a, to me, bizarre rant with our foster child, announcing she was implementing a complicated point system to evaluate her behavior. I had no forewarning of this and objected to such, as I believe love is the answer, not to duplicate an institutional system with a young girl who had already spent years in an institution. CC became very angry at me for arguing against her new system. She said she was the one with the credentials that had secured a financially lucrative foster child so she would be the one making the decisions regarding her.

Shown below is an image from our security camera that day, during dinner, the cameras were new and still on China time, so the time stamp is ahead of us by about 14 hours. Because our foster child's behavior was often erratic, we had installed full camera coverage in the upstairs common areas of the house. I have not redacted this image as the only person identifiable is me, with my back to the camera, large body, and grey hair.

CC went to bed still angry that night. During the argument over the proper care of our foster child, she had used language the like of which I had never heard her use before, and she did so right in front of the children. In retrospect, her mental health incident had started about a week before, with the anxiety attach and outburst at Revere Health, and significantly escalated on this day over dinner, as I pointed out the absurdity of her points system being introduced into our loving home.

The biggest mental break came in the middle of the night, and I admit some responsibility. The next day was to be the first day of a new school for our foster child, and the first regular day of the wellness center at Westlake High with CC staffing it. CC loved starting new projects, but does not have the temperament to stay the course with them, instead she always moves to something new. I believe now it was this prospect of having to settle into a routine that caused her mental break.  In her mind, she, godlike, had already spoken this new reality into existence and now should be free to move on to bigger and better things. She was already talking to Eric about a second foster child, and we had even discussed purchasing the home next door when that very old resident passed, in order to expand our group home for troubled teens, building our own empire to solve a pressing problem in the world.

I am an early to bed and early to rise person in recent years. Last night I fell asleep at 8:00 p.m. and now rise to finish this chapter at 3:00 a.m. after 7 very sound hours of sleep.

And so it was on the morning of August 31, 2020, only I was not quietly writing that night. I was instead working in our basement, assessing a wall I had put up the day before as part of our finish out project. It was less than straight, and, intending to straighten it, I used the compressed air nail gun to put in a few nails to hold it, which is a quiet operation.

Then all hell broke loose. I used just enough of the compressed air for the compressor to come to life, and that is not quiet at all. This noise woke CC up and she came downstairs, completely naked which was unusual, and began screaming at me for being so totally insensitive to her as to make such a noise. According to her oldest daughter later that morning, it was not the compressor noise that awoke her, it was her mother's screaming at me.

After about 5 minutes of prolonged screaming, all 3 of the teenage girls were wide awake. CC proceeded to say that our marriage was now over, and that she and the girls were leaving. I protested that was a ridiculous move, as we had been very happily married less than 24 hours ago, but to no avail, as she told the girls to get in our van to leave. 

I did not and would not give the keys to the van to CC, perhaps that was a mistake, for maybe the four of them could have slept it off in the bed there and returned home in a more reasonable fashion. They instead left in CC's mini-van, only to return a few hours later to get clothes for school that day, and then they left again.

It was at that time that I spoke with the oldest daughter, and whe confirmed to me it was her mother's screaming that had awoken her, not the air compressor noise.

Then, after school, CC came back with the police, alleging that I had abused her. Officer Miller, who also figures later in this story, concluded correctly there had been no abuse and did not arrest me. 

The rest of that morning is explained in this email thread between me, CC, and the director of the foster agency and his assistant that starts with my email to the agency at 4:40 a.m. the next day, September 1, 2020. Things escalated over email, and I ended up calling the police for them to do a wellness check on CC's mental health as a threat to herself and others, identifying her likely location as Westlake High. In the first email my concern was only for our foster child, and I did not yet then mention CCs break with reality, but later, as that became more apparent, I did report her condition with the call to the police.

An email thread between CC and me on September 1, 2020

Please meet at our house on Tuesday?

3 messages

Trey Tomeny <ttomeny@gmail.com> Tue, Sep 1, 2020 at 4:14 AM

To: Natassja Sperry <natassja@ahometeam.org>, Eric Reynolds <eric@ahometeam.org>

Cc: [CC] Tomeny < [CC] @gmail.com>

Natassja and Eric:

Can we please make the monthly meeting late Tuesday afternoon at our house?

A few weeks ago we installed audio/video cameras that cover all of the upstairs of our home, and pick up sounds from the basement real well also. We plan to get more cameras for the basement soon so [foster child] can enjoy the new TV room when on good behavior and invited by others.

At this meeting, I would like to share some of {foster child] behaviors with you to help you comprehend the magnitude of the issues, and particularly the almost instantaneous cycling between very happy and intensely angry. In reviewing  the footage I have also discovered a bit of very intentional "sneakiness" as she apparently listens carefully for the closing of our bedroom door prior to exiting hers.

If the software was better, or I was more technically adept, this video can be shared over the internet, but for now that is beyond my capabilities. It will also be instructive to observe [foster child] reaction as we review some of the video in her presence. Don't be surprised if it triggers a full on outburst, but maybe seeing herself will be therapeutic.

And, for some reason, I did not receive the invitation to this meeting even though it did autofill in my Calendar, which I don't always check.

We are doing everything we can to help[foster child]. She functions kind of like the red light that floated midair in a famous Star Trek episode. When she is cool, there is peace in our home, but when she gets hot, it is affecting everyone, and that only makes matters worse for her. Please help us in any way you can, particularly by making this meeting at our home.

Trey

[CC] Tomeny <[CC]@gmail.com> Tue, Sep 1, 2020 at 5:50 AM

To: Trey Tomeny <ttomeny@gmail.com>

Cc: Natassja Sperry <natassja@ahometeam.org>, Eric Reynolds <eric@ahometeam.org>

Eric and Natassja,

Last night I had to take [foster child] and the family to stay at a friend's house because Trey is acting erratic and wouldn't leave. The police assisted while I got the things we needed from the home. He has been asked to leave and get the medical help he needs so everyone feels safe. I believe this is likely the result of a concussion he got a couple of weeksago and left untreated. I informed [birth parents] and they have asked that Trey not be anywhere near her especially not left alone. I agreed.

I  will not attend his personal meeting, nor will I subject [foster child] to his "proof" that she is behaving bad. It would not only not be theraputic but traumatic and then have informed him he should leave the therapy up to the professionals.

This whole experience has been too much for Trey. We do need to have a meeting about how to proceed. Please let me know what works best for you in time and format. [CC]

[Quoted text hidden]

Trey Tomeny <ttomeny@gmail.com> Tue, Sep 1, 2020 at 6:20 AM

To: [CC] Tomeny <[CC]@gmail.com>

Cc: Eric Reynolds <eric@ahometeam.org>, Natassja Sperry <natassja@ahometeam.org>

Eric and Natassja:

As you may have surmised, either myself or [CC] is having some sort of psychotic breakdown. Please visit our house as soon as possible to see the video evidence of what is going on. I will be contacting her extended family, and particularly her brother who is an Assistant State Attorney General, so you can understand her very troubled mental  health history. She is alienated from most of her family due to breaks like this over the years. I knew about it when I got into this marriage, but have seen miracles happen in other marriages with an occasional mental health crisis and I believe that can happen here. Call me anytime and beware her attempts to manipulate [foster child] parents, the video evidence is incontrovertible to any reasonable observer. I also share below email threads between [CC] and I earlier this morning after my prayer time when I decided to take action.

Trey

Trey Tomeny <ttomeny@gmail.com> 5:26 AM (1 hour ago)

to [CC]

Dearest [CC]:

You should have a copy of the email I just sent to Eric and Natassja requesting that our meeting be here at the house today so we can review video.

I have no plan to show video of your outbursts but do plan to show them what is going on with [foster child]. You are being abused, but not by me, and the video is very clear on that.

This meeting is crucial to the ability to maintain our ministry to [foster child]. Officer Miller explained to me yesterday that your call was for "domestic violence", so even that single call could very likely end our career as professional parents, even as there was never any basis in fact for the call to be made. I brought Officer Miller into the house for the express purpose of getting him on our audio/video.

I believe that [foster child], and your desire to do the very best for her, is triggering some strange behavior in you. I don't think you need medication, but you do need a constant awareness that you can be "not yourself" at stressful times. Much stronger than the video evidence is the fact that you did call the police not only absent any evidence, but full well knowing that there is counter-evidence.

It is important that you stop blocking me. Not talking to me only reinforces any fear spiral you may have been driven into. I do not believe you talked to me all day yesterday except at a few moments of max stress and in front of the kids.

7/21/24, 4:00 AM Gmail - Please meet at our house on Tuesday?

Please respond by calling me. On the night of your recent emergency room visit you repeatedly said your biggest fear is not having me next to you. I can't be next to you when you shut me off.

Your eternal companion who loves you greatly,

Trey

[CC] Tomeny 6:33 AM (45 minutes ago)

to me

Wow. That is a horrible idea and you're right you probably just cost us our only income and it wasn't because I called the police but because you're calling a meeting with our boss to show them how crazy everyone but you is and it will backfire, good job. We are not going to show [foster child] how bad she is to prove anything. That wouldn't be theraputic it would be traumatic. You should let the trained professionals worry about treatment and go get your own help. Nobody believes I'm the crazy one. They believe rightly that if you poke a sleeping bear it gets angry. You are coming across as gaslighting where you set up someone else to look crazy to hide what is really happening. Nobody is falling for it.

 You need to leave my house. You have scared everyone with your bad behavior. You have made everyone on edge by keeping them up while you hammer away in the basement and bang dishes around at all hours of the night. You need sleep. We all do. I think this is likely a result of the concussion you got and refused to take care of. If you care at all about me you will get out so I can take care of my family. It is your only hope of saving our marriage. I don't allow abuse. The physically keeping us awake is physically and emotionally damaging. The posturing, raising your intensity, and blocking people to force them to talk to you is emotionally scaring. Your scary comments that God told you to punish me by making me angry and it being for good is manipulative and spiritual abuse. Your refusal to let me take the van so we had a place to sleep and shutting off the credit card is financial abuse. You need help. You are right, I will always remember this day.

Remember this:

Trey: Remember this day. It is the beginning of the new year and the new life for the people of God.

My God doesn't punish for his righteous purpose. I'm not on your path. You are chosing ego over righteousness and you'll go there without me.

Trey: You are wrong. I am doing exactly as The Spirit leads, for I am willing to listen and obey, are you?

I'm blocking you for the rest of the day. I can not deal with you and the responsibilities I have all day. I am 100% okay advocating for a God who is unconditionally loving and accepting and protecting myself and children. You can act anyway you feel inspired to but you will have the consequences. I don't allow anyone to intentionally hurt me even if they use God as their excuse. You will treat me with love and care or not be a part of my life.

Trey: I am treating you with absolute love and care. Any reasonable observer will agree you have launched into a "fear freakout".

Fear Freakout is exactly what you're doing. The mirror your looking at is trying to help you take a look at yourself and offers the opportunity to heal.

You choose to heal or stay stuck and we move on without you.

Be out by 1:30pm today.

Trey Tomeny <ttomeny@gmail.com> 6:52 AM (25 minutes ago)

to [CC]

Expect the police to visit you at the wellness center. You have ideations of what went on while I have solid video evidence of your outrageous behavior and my calm demeanor throughout. My guess is this is why you can't remember why your daughter [CCs "normal" daughter] no longer has anything to do with you, and you don't remember the reason why. You are not yourself now, and likely weren't then either.

I will leave the house when you return all of my property, including the car you are driving, as per our prenuptial agreement. I am waiting on a call from Bishop Woodhouse now and plan to talk to Paul later. You are currently, as the evidence shows, a threat to yourself and others.

[CC] Tomeny 7:11 AM (7 minutes ago)

to me

I took the day off because of the emotional stress your causing.

And so it was. A beautiful marriage and family destroyed in about 24 hours by a mental breakdown. She accusing me of such and the reality of her condition, which, if you continue to read, becomes more and more obvious. I had believed her when she told me her mental health problems were over and we were sealed in the Temple eight months before this day. And I had believed she was capable of caring for our foster child at the time we took on that great responsibility. And I had been very wrong on both counts. I had a Covenant Companion who chose to be subject to the will of evil.

Chapter 4, 7/24/24

Days of Tribulation

The next six months were hellish, likely for both of us. I sent CC many emails asking her to get mental health help, not once expressing any anger towards her. She would later claim those emails somehow constituted me stalking  her. I still have all those emails, and will produce them for the whole world to see if necessary.

Upon leaving, she immediately took up the companionship of her ex-husband, Michael Jason Black, who had moved out of our house when our foster child had moved in. We had rented our Chevy Avalanche to him for a time, but he never paid the rent on it  and still had it when she left me. I found it parked two blocks away at one of CC's friend's houses, and drove it back to our house using the second key. While it had been away, a big dent appeared on its forward hood, clearly intentionally caused by someone. That vehicle would play a large part in the story of the months to come.

That dent prompted one of my first calls to the Saratoga Springs police. They did nothing.

I kept possession of the house under the logic that I was the one who had paid for it. CC had purchased the house about two years before we met, using a down payment provided by her mother. She had never made a single payment on the house and it was near foreclosure when we met. And she had filed bankruptcy to forestall at least one foreclosure. After we were married I made payments on the house for the time we were together, and continued to make payments long after we split, hoping she would come back into her right mind.

We also had thousands of dollars of building materials in the house that were intended to finish the basement, including a tankless water heater. We had previously, while we were together, installed new wood floors in all the bedrooms, built a loft in the bedroom with a high ceiling, and installed flooring in the space above the garage, providing a large storage area. I read online that if your spouse left you, don't move out of the house unless forced to, and that day had not yet come.

Thus began about six months of total hell, likely for both myself and CC.

Our Bishop and Stake President could have each intervened yet failed to do so. They cited this as a marital dispute and understandably decline to get involved in those. Yet it was, and is, no marital dispute. It was, and is, a spiritual matter, as my dear CC was no longer herself, but nothing less than a demonically influenced daughter of God, hell bent on destroying me with no regard for the Truth.

This is the great lesson of this trial, for me and those with eyes to see and ears to hear. Evil is a very real and present danger to even the saintliest. It lurked near Jesus Himself in the form of His apostle Judas. It lurks near me in my CC even now, years later. But please remember always, we do not war against flesh and blood, but against the evil spirits that may come to influence them. God allows such evil to come upon those whose hearts are not yet truly set on Him. The presence of such spirits in our world is the source of the challenges we face, we must learn to respond in the Way of Jesus, which is to love these enemies, such that they are cast out by our loved ones and than all can live in His peace.

The details of this hell are numerous and I will, over time, flesh a lot of them out here. For now I will let it suffice to say that everything I did to get CC back ended up pushing her further away. For my good intentions were uniformly judged as evil by those under the influence of evil, as they projected their evil onto me. 

And this appears to me to be a daily occurence in the lives of the unsanctified. They look upon the world through their own dark lenses, seeing good as evil and evil as good. And even that is God's design, for how else can we truly learn good from evil but to have experienced both?

CC's lies about abuse and my subsequent behavior turned my "going after my lost lamb" into "stalking" in the blind eyes of the law. After being denied a domestic violence restraining order by a wise judge, Sean Petersen of the 4th District Court in Provo, she enhanced her "facts" and was granted a temporary stalking injunction against me for doing the sort of ordinary things that one does when trying to rescue a beloved spouse from a mental health crisis. I don't know that I can fault Judge Christine Johnson for her many erroneous rulings in these cases, as she was lied to consistently by both CC and CC's lawyer, who is really demonically influenced in this case, Laura Cabanilla. The evil spirts that influence Laura Cabanilla are, to me, the great force for evil in all this, aided and abetted by several other demon influenced lawyers who were supposedly defending me. 

Lest it appear that I see myself as righteous and most others as demon influenced, that is exactly the world that Jesus found himself in 2000 years ago.  He was surrounded by people who lived for themselves, having not yet learned the lesson to live for others. And so it goes today, as most people are part of the "great unwashed" as they have not yet come into the Way of Jesus, by baptism and/or a sincere commitment to follow His Way, which is to serve others rather than expect to be served. A small portion have committed themselves to following Jesus and His Way, and we rightfully call those disciples, but even then they must go through the refining fire. Actual saints, as compared to Latter Day Saints, are fewer and far between. If you are an actual saint, you will now comprehend what is written here. If you are not, what is written here may even now enrage you. That enragement is the influence of evil spirits in you, as you have likely not yet been cleansed of such by the baptism of fire and the Holy Ghost.

The baptism of fire and the Holy Ghost happens in a person who, like the prodigal son, has come to end of themself. With a contrite heart and broken spirit, they give up "their" life and take up the life of Christ. And then go forth boldly to proclaim Jesus Christ and His Kingdom come, no matter the consequences.

We of the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter-day Saints are blessed to have a Prophet, Apostles, and other leaders to show us the Way, as best followed here in our time and place. Many saints, raised in other traditions, go for years without such leadership, such as did my dear friend David Alexander. If you are blessed to have such leadership, listen closely to them as they are truly inspired by He who is the source of all true inspiration. You need an endowment of power from on high, as that is what makes a Latter Day Saint a true saint, and as Anthony Sweat of BYU explains, attending the presentation of the endowment in the Temple is not the same as being truly endowed, and that, to me, explains the great spiritual difference between our generation and that of the pioneers, as I write this section on Pioneer Day.

CC has attended the presentation of the endowment many times as a lifelong Latter Day Saint. Our second date was a single's event at the Payson Temple. Our sealing was in the Salt Lake Temple shortly before it closed for renovations.

Yet it is clearly possible for disciples to turn away from Jesus, as was the case in John 6:66, "From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him." Please note the significance of that chapter and verse number.

I don't believe it is possible for true saints to turn away from Jesus. In fact, the evidence is large that saints would rather die than turn from Jesus, which is why there are so many martyrs. When you are endowed with the power of God, and live in His peace and presence, this is understandable, When you are not yet, this likely is not understandable to you, yet.

So the solution for CC, and me, and you and all the people of the world is to be not just disciples, but actual saints. For the difference between living in the Kingdom of God, which is where true saints live, and living in Heaven, is that in Heaven, all the residents are saints, and therefore the forces of evil have been banished. 

And this is why saints are compelled by their love, for others as themselves, to bring the Kingdom of God to all on the Earth, which is to transform Earth into Heaven, even the Heaven spoken of in Genesis 1:7-8 which says that above the water below (think of lakes, rivers, and oceans) and below the water above (think clouds) this land of which we stand, the firmament, is indeed also Heaven.

Our choice of life in the Kingdom of God is accompanied by it's opposite, which is to live in Hell. This is the unfortunate choice that my dear CC made upon leaving me. She has destroyed her life in the last 3 1/2 years even as I have been lifted up in the Kingdom with an amazing new life.  Yet we do not condemn her, but instead continually pray for her restoration, the restoration available to all by repentance. We are assured by the promise of God that she will be restored, so it is not a question of IF, but of WHEN. God graciously allows each of us all the time necessary to make that decision ourselves, but in the literally "mean" time, we suffer until we make that decision.

CC spent those six months, aided by Sister Cabanilla, stalking me and pursuing legal actions against me, preposterously accusing me of stalking her. I made the mistake of countering her legal maneuvers with legal maneuvers of my own, which had the effect of showing me how non-saintly most of those involved in administering justice in Utah County are.

Many of the Saratoga Springs police force appeared to me as the particularly in the grips of evil. And I have learned recently that this is true of police forces all around Utah, as testified to by a man I recently met online, Eric Moutsos.

By the hand of God, on October 11, the Saratoga Springs police staged a no-knock entry into CC's home which I occupied at the time. They forced me out of the house, not allowing me to take any of my belongings, and presented me with two pieces of paper that they had printed out in their car that they thought was a temporary stalking injunction against me giving them the authority to do what they did. I have never been back to that house ever and it took months and thousands of dollars of legal fees to recover some of my property. Here below are copies of those two pieces of paper.

According to Utah law, a person is not subject to an injunction such as this one until they are served an injunction. These papers do not in any way, shape, or form constitute an injunction. An actual injunction must be hand signed by a judge to be valid. An electronic version must include three specific components that are not present here. This is not, and was not an injunction. Bound by my Temple covenants to do everything reasonable and legal to continue to get CC the mental health help she so desperately needed (and still needs) I chose to ignore this non-injunction and payed a huge temporal price for doing so.

The STATUS, on the top of the first page, makes it clear that I was not served prior to that day. And these papers were not service of the injunction for the reasons listed above. Court papers such as this are almost always served by a duly authorized person, which can be the police, but usually is not. The Saratoga Springs police officers that day, to me, were more interested in their egos, thinking they were doing good, than in actually following the law that they have each sworn to uphold. This reflects their spiritual condition, for those who are not with Jesus,  not His saints, are against Him.

This is the inherent danger of a saint living in a hellish world. While you are properly thinking celestial, those around you are thinking telestial, if they are thinking at all. The challenge for saints in the world, is to be like Jesus, and learn how to condescend and live in this world, without being condescending in attitude towards God's children who still live in this world, sometimes no matter how long they have lived or how many times they have attended the presentation of the endowment in the Temple. Even as I now write, surely many readers feel me as condescending, even Joseph Smith is and was accused of being boastful of his blessings as he closely followed Jesus Christ.

At this stage, I had hired a wholly ineffective for me lawyer, Grant Dickinson of Moody Brown in Provo. A bit before the service of the injunction, CC and/or Jason Black had stolen the white Avalanche from me out of the driveway by using the second key. At the time, the covered bed of the Avalanche contained the personal property of a homeless man whom I had invited to stay with me in the house while we got the pizza truck prepared to again be licensed and in business as a way for him to escape homelessness, as he was an experienced restaurant cook. It was apparent to me, on the day of our expulsion from the house, that the Saratoga Spring police had objections to my allowing a homeless person to live in the community.

And this is where most all consistently fail to follow Jesus, in judging others by their appearance and status and other characteristics not of their choosing. Just this evening, I was upset by a Brother Ellis, who runs a popular LDS Youtube channel called Ward Radio, as he once again lashed out at a huge group of people he calls Boomers, as the source of the troubles for his younger generation.

A few days after being expelled from the house, I was standing in the field that is the Lehi Farmer's market, talking with Dorothy Durant, who was a friend of CC's and the proprietor of that market, it is her and her husband who are pictured in Chapter 1 here. It was in the afternoon, and we observed CC drive by in the white stolen Avalanche. Dorothy encouraged me to follow her in order to retrieve the Avalanche after she parked it. While I explained that it would not be a good idea for me to have any contact with CC as the police thought they had served the injunction, Dorothy was adamant that we get the stolen Avalanche back, and she got in my car with me to drive to the house, hoping to find it parked in front  there. 

CC was clearly stalking me by even driving past the Lehi Farmers Market property, as she knew I also had become friends with Dorothy and Larry. She had taken a job at an Amazon Fulfillment Center, and her route home from there would not have put her past the Lehi Farmers Market other than to stalk me.

When Dorothy and I arrived a few hundred feet away from the house, the Avalanche was indeed parked in the driveway. Dorothy asked for the key so should could take it and drive it back to her place. And that's when a strange thing happened, as CC exited the house and got back in the Avalanche, starting to drive away in the opposite direction. Yet she apparently saw Dorothy in her rear view mirror, and turned around specifically to talk to Dorothy. I have fairly complete video of all that then happened, including the  picture below copied from a video taken from quite a distance.

CC then called the Saratoga Springs police, claiming I was stalking her. Legally, I could not have been stalking her, as stalking requires two incidents, and I had made no contact whatsoever with her, and I had driven there at Dorothy's insistence, and stayed well away. And I was not breaking the temporary stalking injunction as it was not served, I had received two pieces of paper that were not a stalking injunction. Me and the homeless man I was trying to help needed to get the Avalanche back so he could use it to continue to refurbish the pizza truck.

And, as she was calling the police, CC did not leave the area. Instead, she drove around the corner to an intersection she knew we would have to go through on the way back to Dorothy's. Here is a picture of that, as she once again is stalking me by being somewhere she knows I will soon be.

This day led me to be charged with two misdemeanors, one of which was upgraded to a felony when I refused to settle on the misdemeanors. This is when I  first learned of how corrupt the Utah County justice system is. They prosecute obviously innocent people, and when those people refuse a settlement, they up the charges. So those most innocent end up facing life altering consequences. And this is not unique to Saratoga Springs, as you may read later of multiple incidents in Orem. There is no apparent understanding of "innocent until proven guilty" according to my experience and my understanding of many other's experiences all over Utah. It is clear to me that demonic forces has taken control of "justice" in Utah. Taking advantage of our law abiding people's trust in authority to run all over innocents.

Chapter 5 7/25/24

Legal Follies

Until I finally hired a good attorney, Craig Johnson, my life was in chaos as it was under the direction of several terrible in this case lawyers, CC's lawyer Laura Cabanilla, and my lawyers, Grant Dickinson, Chris Dexter, and Brixton Hakes.

Laura Cabanilla may have been hired by CC because CC knew she was morally compromised. Cabanilla is the "author" of a book "A Handbook to Divorce in Utah" that is at least partially plagiarized from similar books, and this book is still sold on Amazon today. When I first spoke to Cabanilla on the phone, it was clear to me that she did not have any comprehension of CCs mental health history or her mental health crisis. She was handling it as a typical divorce case, wanting her fee for routine work, and moving on.

I happened to be in downtown Provo a few days later, and walked into Cabanilla's office on Center Street, with the firm of Esplin & Weight. Cabanilla was not there, but her book was, displayed on the counter. I left with a copy and, when home, happened to flip it open to a page that said "Watergate words". It struck me immediately that a book supposedly written, by Cabanilla, in 2016 would contain any reference to Watergate. So I starting searching various phrases from the book on Google, finding out that significant parts of the book had been plagiarized from other similar books.

Perhaps this was unintentional? Perhaps a ghostwriter had cut corners in writing the book for Cabanilla? Looking to answer these questions, I went to Cabanilla's Facebook page and found this from early 2017 along with several similar posts, she was clearly proud of her work. This photo was taken from her Facebook page today.

As it is apparent to me that Laura Cabanilla continues to fraudulently advertise herself as the author of "the book" on Utah divorce, I will likely get around to filing my complaint against her with the Utah Bar. Last week she formally withdrew herself from the divorce case, and I have vast amounts of evidence of her not bring truthful during all of the cases against me. I probably made a mistake when I notified her, and her firm, of her plagiarism, as that likely caused much of my further legal troubles, as she was not fighting for CC, but fighting for her reputation and law license. To me, Laura Cabanilla represents the very worst of our legal system, a member of the bar who pursues her own profit and convenience above the truth. I understand that she also was not paid by CC, who again filed bankruptcy after running up huge fees with Cabanilla. I don't understand why CC doesn't take legal action against Cabanilla herself, as Cabanilla appears to me to be as responsible for the dissolution of our marriage and CC's subsequent financial troubles as anyone.

Cabanilla was joined in making this legal mess by several of the attorneys I hired. The first one, Grant Dickinson of Moody Brown in Provo, is arguably directly responsible for the criminal charges against me relating to the  incident with the Avalanche featured in the last chapter. He advised me, on the phone and in writing in emails I still have, that it would be okay for me to get the Avalanche back for my homeless friend to use if I did not drive it. He further advised me, on the phone as it was happening, to avoid the Saratoga Springs police in order to not be arrested. That advice is likely what turned the Saratoga Springs police against me and had them take me to jail for non-crimes two months later. 

Instead, without my consent, Grant Dickinson agreed to have me served the stalking injunction by serving him, which apparently happened by email. That 4 page document was, by the hand of God, also lacking the judge's electronic signature as required by law. I have a copy that is clearly lacking the 3 elements necessary for a valid signature. Yet Grant Dickinson, who was hired to notice details like that, missed that and told me I was subject to temporary stalking injunction because it had been served on him. By that time I had decided to fire him, not knowing I was jumping from the frying pan into the fire when it came to less than competent legal representation.

I first hired Chris Dexter of Orem based upon the fact that he is a generalist and, after this mess blew over, I would likely need legal representation on other matters. I did not understand at the time, when he kept saying "we're good at what we do" that what he is very good at is selling legal services. In my cases, he was terrible at actually providing legal services. I learned after a few months that the only way to get Chris himself on the phone was to call and say you have a new case/fee for him and then your call goes right through. If you are calling to see how a case is progressing, or much worse, from jail, you may as I did, get no response.  I think I first had a substantial conversation with his young associate, Brixton Hakes, when I had already been in jail for three long days, and then only because he was at the jail on another case.

The level of the combined incompetence in that office on my cases is bizarre, yet I have still not found another lawyer willing to sue them for malpractice. All they ever really had to do was to point out that I had never been served an actual stalking injunction, to the police, to the prosecutor, or to the judge, and all my criminal charges would have gone away. But they never did that to my knowledge.  There was a special hearing held on the validity of service in front of Judge Johnson on January 25, 2021 and Chris Dexter had Brixton represent me even as we all sat together in his conference room for that video hearing. Brixton never even mentioned the lack of signature on the documents the police had given me, which should have easily won the day. Instead, the criminal charges against me continued, and when I spent thousands of dollars to appeal that decision, I learned that I could not even appeal on that basis since Brixton had failed to bring it up at that hearing.

A Timeout for Spiritual Understanding

How do all these unlikely events happen to a completely innocent person? That is what was on my mind as I went through all of this. Two times I was not served an actual stalking injunction. Four lawyers who are most likely usually competent and trustworthy, in my cases at least were incompetent and dishonest. Police who didn't know what an actual court order looks like, and that it must have a judge's signature.

At some point, you may conclude, as I did, that these events are orchestrated by God for a greater purpose. Jesus said, in the Sermon on the Mount, that His followers would be subject to false accusations. And here I was facing numerous false accusations, even at times from my own lawyers.

The reality that is the very heart of this LifeBook is to share with all that we live in a world governed not by men and women, but by the spiritual forces that influence those men and women.

If you live in Jesus Christ, and He lives in you, He protects you even as He did me by making sure I was not served with actual temporary stalking injunctions. And He shows those in Him the spiritual states of the people we are around, many of them church members, but few of them truly transformed by His Spirit and living in Him.

You are not invincible to the world of evil as you live in Him, for even He went to the cross on false accusations. What you are given is the title of this LifeBook, a life of light. Able to see His hand and have His peace in all you say and do. Knowing Him and His purpose that this life is but a small sliver of our eternal lives, and if we are called, as I am here, to raise a bit of hell in the Temple, as he did, we do so not for revenge, but to help bring all unto repentance that all may soon live in His light and peace.

By November 2021 Grant Dickinson was out and Chris Dexter was in as my new attorney. Chris was initially hired to deal with a Saratoga Springs Detective Potts, who subsequently told him that he was pursuing multiple felony charges against me in addition to the two misdemeanors that Saratoga Springs had filed against me for the Avalanche incident on October 14.

Chris got nowhere with Potts, and Potts was likely lying because no felony charges ever came forth that dated back before Chris's email to me about Potts' activity. When Potts had me jailed on December 8 of 2021, it was for non-crimes that happened after I hired Chris Dexter, most outlandishly this Facebook post of mine.

For the first time ever in my life, I spent 6 days in jail based on the above post being a felony! Detective Potts, in a conversation that he likely does not know was being recorded on my phone, tossed this picture with the 4 words, "I love you baby!" on the table in front of me in a Saratoga Springs police station interview room on December 8, and outrageously claimed this was indirect communication with CC and a felony.

This was a post on my Facebook account, not directed at CC in any way. She may have never read it. Potts admitted in writing that after I made the mistake of going to the police station that day, as an officer assured me I would not be arrested, Potts only then searched my Facebook looking for something he could take me to jail for. Detective Potts is a good portion of why this book is being written and advertised. From my experience, he is absolutely corrupt, and the idea of such having any power and authority is beyond outrageous. The charges that had me spend 6 days in jail were never brought against me formally by the Utah County Attorney, as there were no crimes whatsoever. 

Potts also appears to me very cowardly. At a time when no other Saratoga Springs police were wearing masks due to Covid, he appeared in that interview room wearing a mask. And he did not arrest me himself, instead he had a junior officer arrest me and take me to jail. And he is a liar, for he claimed to Chris Dexter many weeks earlier that he was investigating felonies committing by me, but when I was there in Saratoga Springs that day, he had nothing, but instead turned to my Facebook page to make up false charges against me based on recent Facebook activity.

I was in Saratoga Springs that day, December 8, 2020, which was CC's 50th birthday, because I had been granted my own temporary stalking injunction against CC that day by the 4th District Court. My injunction allowed me to take back control of the house and retrieve my personal property. I was specifically directed by the court clerk to take it to the Saratoga Springs police and have them serve it. I had called Chris Dexter to tell him I was going there to have it served but he did not take my call that afternoon, though his receptionist told me he would call me back in a few minutes.

Then I called the Saratoga Springs police to tell them I was coming to have the injunction served. Officer Mitchell assured me I faced no threat of arrest from them. But as soon as I got there, Officer Gian took my injunction from me and set it aside, and escorted me into the interview room. When I tried to leave the interview room, I was physically prevented from doing so by three officers who blocked me. Detective Potts showed up maybe thirty minutes later, as it was later reported he was summoned to come in specifically to do what he did to me. As I waited to be interviewed, that is when I started audio recording on my phone, and it continued to audio record until I got to jail and it was turned off to save its battery to call someone when I was released.

This account so far skips over a lot of what happened during the months of September, October, and November. During these months I was relentlessly stalked by CC, which is why I was finally granted by own temporary stalking injunction. She showed up often, and kept contacting me by text, phone, and comments of my Facebook posts. I have and may share the overwhelming evidence that she was stalking me while I was encouraging her to get mental health help. Because she was so focused on me, even if negatively, I then continued to hold out hope for her recovery and our reconciliation. I felt my Temple covenants with her required me to do all I did, even those things that could appear overboard to an observer.

I felt, and feel, that I made heroic efforts to rescue CC from her delusions and was treated as a criminal for doing exactly as Jesus followers are told to do, leave the 99 sheep to go after the 1 lost lamb. As evidence of that, from an unbiased observer, I offer this story.

In the spring of 2022, when I ran for Utah County Commissioner, I went to the Republican County Convention in Eagle Mountain to meet the other candidates. At that event, I had the chance opportunity to meet David Leavitt, who was then the Utah County Attorney, and explain the whole situation to him. That was the day he was practically booed off the stage by his fellow Republicans, and he was later defeated soundly in the election. But that day, he only appeared to have a single friend to stand by him in the hallway outside the gathering. That man was BYU math professor Gary Lawlor, who, upon hearing my story, stepped in to say what an amazing hero I was in doing all possible to rescue my beloved CC. 

I cannot reasonably write here all that happened between me and CC during these months. She was so relentless in stalking me, yet somehow so protected to not be caught and prosecuted. It was if God wanted her to have victory in her evil ways during this time. As if God wanted her to destroy our relationship so that I could move on to greater things, and so that she could descend even deeper into the hell she was creating for herself. A hell where, based on her recent appearance in court accusing me of more non-crimes, she still lives. 

On November 24, 2020 CC and I attended court mandated mediation of her divorce suit against me. Laura Cabanilla represented her for that and Chris Dexter represented me. We came to an agreement that she later broke repeatedly, as I had to hire yet another lawyer, this time a good one, Josh Egan, to eventually recover my property. That agreement, which was became an order of the court on January 5, 2021, required no  ongoing financial assistance whatsoever, as the marriage was of short duration. That fact did not prevent CC from recently filing a totally false claim against me that I have broken that court order because I have not paid her bills since our divorce. She is clearly still out of any right mind to me. She showed up in court a few weeks ago with a fake service dog claiming to now be disabled due to my actions those years ago. I continue to pray for her repentance and restoration.

An Update, July 29, 2024

Someone who has known CC for almost her entire life has been reading this LifeBook, and sent me the following:

She will never want to make money legitimately. She will also never (in this life) suffer the proper consequences for her lifetime of scamming, manipulating, lying, and using everyone she comes into contact with. You were just another victim of her lifetime of manipulation. She knew from the beginning what she wanted from you and what she would do with you after you served your purpose. What you experienced wasn't a sudden break in her mental health. It was a very calculated setup from the very beginning.

Chapter 6 7/29/24

Six Days in Jail

This was an experience I hoped never to have, but now see through the lens of developing my character and exposing corruption. Given the way time expands for me as I walk closer with Jesus, six days in jail felt to me like six weeks. I took 32 pages of notes in those 6 days, many exposing the corrupt and illegal practices that go on there. 

The Utah County Jail, like most bureaucracies, is full of otherwise good people, "simply doing their job". How they can work day in and day out in such an insane environment is beyond me. And insane is the correct word, for the inmates at Utah County Jail are mostly insane, mental health patients who, in prior decades, would be treated for their mental health problems, are now instead languishing in jail. Did they commit crimes, I am sure a lot of them did, but their principal non-crime is being mentally ill, some of which is surely not of their own choosing.

Another Update, 8/17/24

An Extraordinary Encounter with my Covenant Companion

Last Wednesday, 8/14/24, I had an extraordinary encounter as my CC showed up at a time and place where she surely should have known I would be. It was a regular meeting of a weekly event called One Million Cups, where entrepreneurs gather to share business ideas. 

CC and I first met, in 2019 at a One Million Cups event, then held in Provo, Utah.

And I proposed to her on the stage of a One Million Cups event, the one in Provo, Utah as I made a somewhat phony presentation to the group for the express purpose of surprising her with my proposal. Somewhere there professionally shot video of that proposal.

But this day was a wholly different CC from five years ago. She appears to me to have descended into hell on her life's journey due to her creating her own alternate reality. 

To protect myself from more false accusations from her, I audio recorded everything after I saw that she was there. 

And then something wild happened.  The scheduled presenter failed to show for the event, and the moderator, my friend Jim Beckstrom, who had likely not seen CC since her break with me, invited her to be the presenter. 

That's when I used my second phone to make a video recording of her presentation, holding it in my right hand so she could clearly see that she was being video recorded by me.

CC spent about 13 minutes making what I hope is the most unusual presentation in any Million Cups event ever. She appeared to me to be semi-psychotic, as, instead of talking about her business, she rambled on and on about her personal life, her genealogy, and her scrambled hopes and dreams. Jim interrupted to get her on business track after about 8 minutes had passed, but she soon returned to her rambling thoughts.

I asked her, publicly at the end of her presentation, to consider writing her own LifeBook similar to this one, as it would be a way for her story to get out to the world eventually. She answered that her story is her property and she would not release it without copyright protection as she feared that others would change her story. The beauty of this LifeBook method is that no one can ordinarily change your story, as it is published on a site that you control.

Later in the day, I shared the video with my family, who gained a deeper understanding of who CC is, and the challenges she faces. We concurred that CC has had a pure heart for the world, yet has been caught in the grasp of evil as she continues to spiral down towards the outer darkness as she lives in her alternate reality.  Perhaps CC's LifeBook is the one that all need to read to understand how God works in each of our innermost beings.

The next day, after a long phone conversation, I shared the video with her dear mother, who I believe then began to share it with other family members.  I hope and pray that CC will soon get to the end of her false reality and be restored to who she was, and is, meant to be. I pray for her daily that she will again walk closely with Jesus Christ and receive the healing that only He provides.

Being in jail was a hard lesson in empathy. I was truly stripped of everything and the six days, to me, felt like six weeks. What I was not stripped of was my relationship with Jesus Christ, and my life of signs, wonders, and miracles. 

Writing about my time in jail has been impossible, I write now on 9/3/24 even as I started this chapter at the end of July. In my opinion, every judge, criminal lawyer, and police officer needs to spend a few days in jail, so they can understand what they are doing as they attempt to administer justice.

Jail is not about justice, it is about punishment. It is a punishment that can be inflicted on innocent people without any trial or truth. 

Jail in Latter Day Saint Utah is particularly objectionable to me. The Church believes and teaches restoration, yet jail is not restorative, it is punitive. 

Trying to write this chapter has stalled my work on this LifeBook, so I, for now, am going to move on the rest of the story.

Chapter 7 9/3/24

Legal Troubles Continue

After my week in jail, I was emotionally devastated. What had happened to me was beyond my belief. I was still potentially facing numerous felony charges for things that were not crimes at all. All of the charges were related to me breaking a temporary stalking injunction, but I had never been served any stalking injunction, so those events were not even possibly crimes. 

And CC continued to relentlessly stalk me, so much that I filed another domestic violence petition against her, using evidence that had not been presented in my early petitions for stalking injunctions. But I was so emotionally distraught after the jail experience that I let her out of a "sure thing", according to the attorney representing me, who worked in Chris Dexter's office, on the day of the hearing. I had a video of CC taking a swing at me and knocking the phone out of my hands that was recording the video on an occasion back in September where she had come back to the house, accompanied by a professional MMA fighter, to retrieve some of her possessions. I declined to make the domestic violence order against her permanent because I knew doing that would cause her to lose the professional license and that seemed to me at the time to be punishment she did not deserve for having a mental health crisis.

That decision backfired horribly, as it became one of five or six court filings that I made during all of this that were either turned down as temporary orders  or where the final court ruling was against me or where I voluntarily withdrew the petition.

CC's attorney, Laura Cabanilla, used my compassion for CC against me by filing a Motion to Declare me a Vexatious Litigant, and was successful, that action cost me thousands of dollars to defend, and more thousands of dollars to pay Cabanilla's fees in filing against me, and that order limits my legal options, even on completely unrelated matters, to this day.  I knew nothing of the possibility of the Vexations Litigant designation, and I believe Chris Dexter and his associate are responsible for never informing me that was a possibility even as they took my money to represent me on the matter the protective order that I had voluntarily withdrawn from. Had I known that was a possibility, I can't imagine I would have withdrawn from it.

And then I was charged with yet another crime on January 22, 2021. I had generously allowed CC to use my Ford Explorer for 30 days beginning on December 21, 2020. Her response to my generosity was to make a large number of Facebook posts attacking me and my character. So when the 30 days were over, I directed her, through correspondence with Laura Cabanilla, to return the vehicle. She failed to return the vehicle to a mutual friend's house in Orem, so I called the Orem Police. In another unbelievable turn of events, instead of getting my vehicle back, or CC getting charged with a crime, I was charged with a Class A Misdemeanor for allegedly making False Written Statements in my report. This case was the beginning of a saga with the Orem Police, City Attorney, and Justice Court that continues to this day, even as that completely false charge was ultimately dismissed, after great cost to me, financially and emotionally.

In January of 2021, I moved into a room in a house in South Provo, just north of the overpass that spans the railroad tracks near 500S and University Ave. On that overpass was a billboard, "Been Bad, Call Thad" for a bondsman. I did not know at the time that Thad would become part of my story.

The house in Provo became another legal fiasco, as the other tenants made false accusations against me and I was forced to leave. One of the tenants appeared to me to be in the business of selling illegal drugs, and after I mentioned that to the Latter Day Saint landlord, Brenton Clark, who lived with his wife in the basement of the house, the false accusations started coming against me. I was and am still appalled that a young couple who appear to be devout Latter Day Saints, chose to make the decision they did based upon what appeared to them as better for their finances instead of doing the right thing. 

After that fiasco, I began to be seriously concerned about my mental health. Every direction I had turned for about 8 months had led to more trouble instead of peace. The more I had tried to help others, the worse it got for me. Having been forced out of the house in Provo, I went to an Orem mental health facility to see about an evaluation. That was yet another big mistake, as they admitted me on false pretenses and held me involuntarily for five days. Being  there was almost as torturous as my time in jail had been. And, like the jail incident, no attorney would take my case against the hospital for what they had done.  This appears to be business as usual for them, as a well known young LDS apologist, Kwaku El, had a similar experience in the same hospital in 2022.

Do I have mental health issues? By the standards of the world, I do. Mental health accusations against very spiritual people are found throughout history, even against King David in the Old Testament. Many old testament prophets were considered mad in their days. Jesus Himself was accused of being possessed for having a different, and true, understanding of God and His Laws. When at the mental hospital, I explained clearly and simply that I talk with God on an almost continual basis. Given that having such an intimate and personal relationship with God is the foundation of the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter-day Saints, I was stunned when it was used against me to admit me, and keep me, in a mental hospital against my will for five days.

However, as all things work for good, according to Romans 8:28, that hospital stay ended up being a key to resolving my legal situation a few months later. 

A lot of what happened legally with CC, is explained in this email I sent to Craig Johnson, who became my new attorney after I sent him this on May 9, 2020.

Mr. Johnson:

You were recommended to me as "the best of the best" Utah criminal defense lawyers by Thad of Sportsman's Bail Bonds, whom I met per chance a few months ago while skiing at Park City, which is where I now live. 

I was shocked by a call Friday afternoon from the attorney, Chris Dexter, who has been representing me on three misdemeanor cases, that Utah County has now filed, on the same facts as one of the misdemeanors, a felony case against me, associated with an incident on October 14, where the original misdemeanor is now scheduled for a preliminary hearing in the first week of June. 

I was shocked not only by the filing but by the fact that Chris called on a Friday afternoon, before Mother's Day weekend, and seemed as interested in collecting more money for another case as anything else.

I am as clean as the driven snow. Before my now ex-wife had a psychotic break on September 1, 2020, we were very happily, but shortly, married for nine months after being sealed in the Salt Lake Temple on December 13, 2019.

Since that time, she has terrorized me and attempted to destroy my life with lies to the police and the courts. She has been aided and abetted by Michael Jason Black, her ex-husband and father of the two daughters living at home, and by her compromised attorney, Laura Cabanilla. The two of them have convinced her, in her mental state, that I am the embodiment of evil and must be punished as severely as possible before I, in her words, "again hurt the women and children of the world."

The only thing I am guilty of is loving her too much. I am a successful business person and a devout member of the Church, though a recent convert having been baptized on July 8, 2017. My meeting [CC] in September of 2019 was accompanied by numerous bizarre coincidences that easily convinced us both that God had put us together, in a third marriage for both of us. I took her on in spite of knowing that her Saratoga Springs house was in foreclosure, she has $160,000 in student loan debt, and she and the girls were living in absolute squalor. She could not meet me for our first date because she had no gas money to drive to Provo. When I dropped her at home that night, the tape from the foreclosure notice was still all over the front door. 

I soon found that the way to succeed in marriage to her was to say "Yes" to everything she asked for and did without asking. And for some reason, God blessed us immensely for those 9 months. We quickly built a sort of business together, as specialized foster parents, using her considerable sales skills and master's degree in Behavior Analysis. We were being paid $175 tax free dollars a day for one child, and were told to expect a second child soon. 

I made a huge mistake in March of 2019 by saying yes to housing her ex-husband, a then homeless convicted felon drug dealer, due to the onset of the pandemic. We had to evict him in July in order to get the foster child. but he was back on the scene immediately and lives with her now, in the house I paid for, after her break on September 1. The foster agency, to her surprise, pulled the foster child almost immediately after she went to the foster child's birth parents on that first day with allegations that I had suffered a psychotic break. So as much as she has destroyed my life, she has also destroyed her own life. 

A week after leaving, she filed for a domestic violence protective order, that 138 page filing was denied. A few weeks later, she filed and got a stalking injunction using many of the same "facts" only this time, enhanced with further lies in order to be successful. The difference between the first filing and the second is enough to impeach her as a credible witness, and, if we could get it prosecuted, more than ample evidence of perjury.

Thank you for your patience in reading this far. It would take pages and pages to narrate all that has happened. The short of it is that I have lost confidence in Chris Dexter, and his associate Brixton Hakes, to get me out of this horrible predicament I am in.

Yesterday I spoke again to Claude Kelly, my closest cousin, who is a 35 year veteran at criminal defense, and is currently the head public defender for the 5th Federal Circuit Court in New Orleans. He cannot believe the sort of games being played against me here in Utah County. He knows me well, and dreams that he would ever have even a single client to defend who is as innocent of all charges and lives as righteously as I do.

Through this, I have been to jail for the first time ever in my life, for 6 beyond miserable days, been locked up in a mental ward for 5 terrible days, and spent thousands on my defense. The "felony" charges that had me in jail with no bail were for Facebook posts that did not mention her by name or even reasonable inference, and those charges were never actually filed. I have the three pending misdemeanors plus the new felony plus another misdemeanor that appears to be dependent on the outcome of a completely ridiculous written false statement charge in the Orem Justice Court. The mental health stay was prompted by Chris's suggestion that all this could go to mental health court, I had no idea that going to the hospital for an evaluation would result in me being locked up there as I was. 

And I, being a completely law abiding citizen for 60 years, still have no idea how the "criminal justice" system actually works if you are innocent. It all seems geared to overcharging everything in order to force a plea to something remotely close to justice. But I am truly innocent, and only guilty of marrying someone with a long and self admitted history of severe mental health issues She and the ex-husband know the system well, as I went to the Utah law library and got 115 pages of their combined criminal and other court records. No such records of any kind could be found on me in any state prior to this mess. They were both held years ago here in Utah on drug charges with a $30,000 bond set for each. 

So I pray that you are having a better Mother's Day weekend than I am. While I remain strong in my faith and joy in the Lord, all this mess is clearly the big "trial" of my life. I have done nothing retributive whatsoever towards [CC], even the harsher appearing decisions have been made prayerfully and lovingly. While we are divorced since January 4, and crazy circumstances allowed her stalking order to become permanent, we are still sealed in the Temple and she has indicated that she intends to keep that sealing as she has convinced herself that I am a great eternal partner, but having a psychotic break just now. 

Please contact me as soon as possible as I have a hearing with Chris Dexter on Wednesday regarding a Vexatious Litigant filing against me connected to the on appeal stalking case, and I may want to take further action before that hearing. I can afford the cost of defense, I cannot afford to have my life ruined any further by all of this. 

As much as I love Craig Johnson, and he did a good job for me, he still works within the system of criminal defense, whereby if you need to hire a defense attorney, you are highly likely to be asked to pay upfront for your defense. It is then the defense attorney's job to get the best outcome possible, and usually, if you are guilty, that means a plea bargain, which is much less time intensive for the attorney than going to trial. So your attorney, like the prosecutors, have a vested interest in a plea bargain instead of a trial, and that is what happens in most cases. And the prosecutors are incentivized to overcharge cases in order to get a plea bargain. In my case, I had no physical contact whatsoever with CC, yet a charge was escalated to a felony, surely to extract a plea bargain.

I hired Craig to represent me in three cases for a flat fee. One went to a trial, and two ended in a plea bargain, since the result of the first trial was so horrendous.

I should also mention at this time the good job done by another attorney, Joshua Egan. During the spring of 2020, he eventually managed to get my personal property returned to me, even making several trips to Saratoga Springs personally to make that happen after CC did all she could to keep me from getting my property back as ordered by the divorce court. He also worked on several other matters and was professional and very competent in all he did.

Josh Egan listened in on the call during my Webex trial in front of Orem Justice Court Judge Parkin, he and Craig, were both astounded when Judge Parkin found me guilty after the arresting officer flat out admitted in the trial that I had not made a false written statement. The problem was that Parkin had allowed Orem City Attorney Jake Summers to spend most of the trial talking about my the stalking injunction that had been put in place against me by my ex-wives lies and her attorney, Laura Cabanilla. When we appealed the verdict to District Court, the City of Orem dropped the case, surely realizing that such foolishness would not be tolerated in the District Court.

But it was after that farce of a trial that I had to make a decision on the plea bargain that was offered in the two other cases. Realizing that a trial could go any direction when you are facing people willing to lie about everything, I accepted a plea bargain of minimal consequence and those cases are now expunged.

So in a strange way, even the ridiculously false charges in Orem worked for my good, as I would not have accepted the plea bargain on the other cases without having had firsthand experience as to how an actual trial can go when the players involved are willing to construct false narratives to "win" and are not willing to uphold their oaths to seek justice.

Chapter 8 10/16/24

The End of This Particular Story?

I write now as some people are researching me as the ballots have been mailed, and I appear on them statewide as a candidate for Governor. Pictured below is a photo of the ballot I received in the mail yesterday, with my name and the name of my running mate.

Today also marks 90 days since CC and I appeared in court over her completely false charges against me for allegedly violating our divorce order, where she sought hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation.

CC was ordered by the court to arrange mediation through a certain mediator, and to notify me my certified mail, she never did this, and is therefore at risk of being found in contempt of court.

Following the advice of my friend and attorney, Austin Hepworth, who also appears on the ballot as he is running for Attorney General, I sent CC a certified letter about 10 days ago to inform her she was at risk of being found in contempt of court. The return receipt on that letter has never been returned, so perhaps she no longer lives where she used to, or she has refused to go the the post office to pick it up. Later today I may use the tracking number on that document to see what happened to it.

For now, I am wrestling with the decision to either file a Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Prosecution on the case, or to file a Motion for Contempt since she disobeyed the court's order. I reported her false written statements to the Provo Police months ago, but an Officer Gee, who took the complaint, refused to refer it for prosecution. Several attorneys have told me that lying to courts, either in testimony or written, is virtually never prosecuted. This, to me, is the grand fault in the Utah justice system, as those who bear false witness seem well aware that they won't be prosecuted.

I plan to update this now short chapter after I make the decision of what to file with the court.