Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)
Come on a ride along with a Veteran Homicide Detective as the twists and turns of the job suddenly end his career and nearly his life; discover how something wonderful is born out of the Darkness. Embark on the journey from helping people on their worst days, to bringing life, excitement and smiles on their best days.
Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)
Frozen Justice: A 13 year olds experience with death
Have you ever wondered how a rugged upbringing in Alaska could shape a career in law enforcement and music? Join me, Aaron, as I kick off the inaugural episode of the Murders to Music podcast, a heartfelt exploration of my journey from Kenai's wilderness adventures to a 21-year tenure as a police officer specializing in homicide and child abuse. I'll reflect on the vital role that pride and ego played in my career, and how these experiences inspired me to create Streamline Events and Entertainment, blending my love for live sound, DJing, and event management. Authenticity is the cornerstone of this show, punctuated by personal struggles and the invaluable support I seek from you, my listeners.
Travel back to my teenage years, where a fascination with law enforcement was sparked by books like "The Onion Field" and hands-on experiences in the Boy Scouts of America's Explorer program. Hear gripping tales of my early police work, including my first encounter with a dead body, which profoundly influenced my emotional resilience. This episode also explores my personal life, from meeting my wife Stacy under challenging circumstances to the heartbreak and lessons learned from losing my mentor, John Watson. Discover the emotional rollercoaster of my son Justice's battle with a congenital diaphragmatic hernia, leading us to Portland and eventually to my transition from law enforcement to a passion-filled career in music. Tune in for an episode rich in life lessons, purpose behind the pain, and a genuine quest to bring joy through music.
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Well, what is going on everybody? How's everybody doing today? Thank you guys so much for coming back to the channel again. So this is officially the very first episode of the Murders to Music podcast. Last week I was able to kick off a trailer which got some great reviews and some great feedback, so I really, really appreciate that. So today I want to introduce myself to you. Where did I come from? How did I end up to where I am? Where did I grow up? How did I grow up? It's gonna be a little story time. I'll tell you guys some stories along the way and then, towards the end of this, if you stick around, I'll tell you something I'm struggling with and maybe you guys can help me. Maybe you've been there before, maybe you're there right now, and I'll tell you something I'm struggling with specifically with this show. So here we are, guys.
Speaker 1:My name is Aaron and, like I said, I am running this whole podcast called Murders to Music, and in the trailer I introduced the idea that I've spent 21 years as a police officer and the last 11 years I spent doing homicide and child abuse. During that entire time, since I was 13 years old, I have been involved in music. I've been involved in live music gigging. I started playing drums at five years old. I started doing front of house engineering with the local school districts, uh, where I was living at about 13 on the tech crew If any of you guys have ever been there and I was a super cool kid, so that is where I kind of got my start in this. Uh. Then I went on to law enforcement and now that I'm out of law enforcement which I'm totally blessed to have made it through a career and I'm totally blessed to have helped the people along the way I think that's super cool. Um, I'm proud of my career. Pride is something I'll talk about in the show, and I didn't realize how prideful I was and how much ego I had until I'm looking back. We all learn. One of the things about the show is going to be authenticity. It's going to be I'm going to talk about and when I have guests on, we're going to talk about the good, the bad and the ugly of life and uh. So that's kind of where we're at anyway. Back to law enforcement. So in your law enforcement world, uh, I finally got out of that and I opened up streamline events and Entertainment. To take all the years of musical knowledge and expertise and experiences I had in live sound and DJing and entertaining and mixing and being on a stage and emceeing and I brought all of that to Streamline Events and Entertainment where we do weddings, corporate events all around the Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 1:This is not necessarily a commercial about Streamline, but more about me and how I got here. So let's start in the beginning, when I was three years. Just kidding. So back in the beginning, I was born and raised in Alaska. I grew up in, born in Anchorage, grew up in a town called Kenai and went to school in a town called Nikiski.
Speaker 1:Kenai Peninsula has about 60,000 people, total for four or five of the combined for four or five of the larger communities of the combined for four or five of the larger communities. My town of Kenai has a population year round of about 7,500, 8,000 people and in the summertime that can triple or quadruple, with tourists and people coming to town to fishing. The Kenai river runs through the heart of our area. The Kenai peninsula is Alaska's playground. It was a great place to grow up. Peninsula is Alaska's playground. It was a great place to grow up. It's the kind of place where, as an eight, nine-year-old kid growing up and coming home from school.
Speaker 1:We lived out in what you would call the country. It's Alaska. We lived on a lot of property. We had a gravel pit on our property where we'd go shooting and target practice From a very young age. We had a gravel pit on our property where we'd go shooting and target practice from a very young age. We had a lake right in front of us that had fish in it. We could go fish. There was a beaver dam not too far away from our house. A hundred yards from our house, there was a beaver dam active beaver dam. We'd routinely have moose coming through the yard. We would have wildlife all around us. In the wintertime it would snow so much that we sometimes would be stuck at home. We'd have three, four, five foot snow drifts in our driveway. I remember growing up as a kid and my dad would bring a plow truck home from work. If you don't know what that is, it's a pickup truck with a big plow on the front and you drive really fast and you hit the snow and snow flies and it was a good time. Those were some pretty awesome memories. This is where I grew up.
Speaker 1:I grew up at eight years old, coming home and going and getting my shotgun and going out in the woods and hunting for squirrels and birds and bringing them home and eating them. I wasn't quite a Davey Crockett, but it was a fun and a good time to do it. We did it with our friends. We'd go down to the creek and catch fish. It was a great place to be born and raised. It's a different world today. Those of you listening that have kids very few, I think, would we trust to go out and do some of the same things that we were doing as children. It's a different world. It's a dangerous world. It's a world that can't be trusted, maybe like yesterday.
Speaker 1:So at eight years old I watched a TV show called Cops. Maybe some of you have seen it and I remember it was a pretty big deal because where we live we didn't get a lot of TV. And about that time my dad put up a ginormous satellite dish. My dad, everything he did had to be bigger and better than the next guy. And, uh, we constructed a 60 foot, 70 foot tower steel in the backyard. On the top of that there was a large platform In your mind picture, a forest fire observation platform. Well, we were cool enough to have one in our yard and on the top of that was a satellite dish about half the size of my house, 10, 12 feet in diameter, with a big motor on it. We had to run power. I didn't, they did run power up it. All of this to say, after getting that satellite dish that pointed towards the East West some satellite number one 17, we were able to get the TV show cops.
Speaker 1:I watched that show and was absolutely fascinated by police work. I called up our local police department, the Kenai Police Department, at eight years old and asked them to go on a ride-along. They told me that I was too young and I needed to call back in a couple of years. So I didn't like that answer. So I kept calling and, before you know it, they finally agreed If I would stop calling, they would take me on a ride along. So I went on my first ride along at eight years old. It was a cold winter day.
Speaker 1:I remember I was so stressed over what I was going to wear to this ride along and it's crazy how, even as adults, we get stressed out over those things. But as an eight-year-old child, I'm stressed about what I'm going to wear and how I'm going to look and how I'll present to the people I'm going to meet. I wanted to impress them even then. So I remember I wore I don't remember what I wore for pants, so I remember I wore I don't remember what I wore for pants, but I wore some button up shirt tucked in and I had on a tan. Uh long waisted coat with red plaid on the inside, had a square hood on the back, the hood unzipped so it would lay flat, and I had this big red and whatever colored plaid patch right in the center of my back where my hood was unzipped. And I remember going. I went on that ride along.
Speaker 1:I rode with a police officer named Mike offers. Mike offers used to be a canine officer before I went on a ride along with him and, uh, as a result of that I was pretty impressed with the canine unit. He showed me all his dog pictures and it was pretty exciting. So I went on my ride along. I remember he took me to the airport and I went to the very top of the airport tower. He was also a pilot and we got to take a look at the planes coming in and out. That was a lot of fun and that was my first experience with a police department.
Speaker 1:They have a library there. You're able to check out books. I was able to check out books. I was able to check out books. There's a book called the onion field, uh, which taught, is a book out of California it's a true story where some officers got shot in the line of duty. Uh got to check out a book called officer survival. So I got to check these books out and take them home and read them, which was pretty cool. So I got to check these books out and take them home and read them, which was pretty cool. So then, at about 13 years old, I heard about the Explorer program, and the Explorer program was a program ran by the Boy Scouts of America, but it allowed young kids to get involved in law enforcement or different fields and explore what they were all about. So I started that journey At 13 years old. I couldn't wait to go down to the police department and hang out there full time. Back to the Kenai Police Department Explorers.
Speaker 1:In those days we wore uniforms, look a lot like police uniforms. We had duty belts. They would allow us to handcuff suspects, which is crazy if you think about that today? The liability was so much different. We got to handcuff suspects. We got to help you run traffic control at accidents. We wrote reports on what we did. We got to do help with all the little medial stuff and crime scene processing. And the more you wrote, the more you got to do, the more they trusted you, the more freedom you had and ability you had to do things.
Speaker 1:At 13 years old I remember vividly standing in the dispatch center. I had only ridden a couple of times and I remember at 13 years old, standing in the dispatch center and we heard a call come in and that call was for a dead body that had been found and it was found in a Creek and the caller said that looked like that body had been there for quite some time and I was still waiting for my officer. I was going to ride with the come pick me up. So all of a sudden he shows up and he says hey, you know, we got this dead body call. We're going.
Speaker 1:And I remember in that moment that my anxiety and stress level went up because I'd never seen a dead body before. I was 13 years old, I was a child. So I remember that we went and got in the car and we didn't have to drive far. It was only probably a mile away from the police department and when we arrived there at the scene it was a parking lot of a vet center. If you're in the parking lot facing the building to the right, there was a valley and at the bottom of that valley was a creek.
Speaker 1:And I remember sitting in the car and my anxiety was through the roof and I didn't know what I was going to see and the idea of seeing a dead body that had been there for months potentially was alarming for me. So as we pulled up I kind of sat tight. I was brand new, I was nervous and the officer said well, you're not going to see anything if you don't get out of the car. So I got out of the car and we walked over and as we looked over the edge of that hill we looked down and there I could see it looked like a person just laying face down at the bottom of this hill and I'm like, well, that's not too bad. So we walked down to the bottom of the hill, we talked to the reporting party and he tells us hey, I'm down here in the creek and all of a sudden I find this body and I call you guys. That's all the information he had.
Speaker 1:So the police officers with and I walked down to the bottom of this hill. It was a fairly steep decline. I remember, um, my footing and, weird enough, I remember not wanting to fall and fall into this dead body. I don't know if I thought it was going to contaminate me or what little that I know. In just a couple of minutes I was going to be touching it. So we get down to the bottom of the hill and the officer I'm with takes a look at the body face down and he says well, do you got gloves? So I put some rubber gloves on. He's like all right, help me flip it over. So I remember reaching across and grabbing that opposite shoulder and rolling that body back over.
Speaker 1:Now, face up. It's the first time that I had seen a body, a dead body, at all, and to some extent it was everything I thought it was going to be. You see, this body had been laying there for about seven months and during that seven month period it had been facedown in water and sludge. And if you've ever been to macy's not sorry, not macy's, spencer's gifts. Around the perimeter of spencer's gifts, usually up near the ceiling, there are some plastic um molds, like halloween scary molds, and it's people or zombies or something coming out of these plastic molds and one of them has a person's face and his head is back, neck is extended so the big neck comes out, the chin and the face is all sunken in and that is exactly what this body looked like.
Speaker 1:All those nerves I had felt prior to this were gone. All the nerves and anxiety I had felt prior and upon arrival at that scene were all of a sudden gone. And I remember not feeling anything. I remember being curious. I remember wondering you know what we were going to do next, cause I'd never been on a scene like this, so I didn't know what the next step was.
Speaker 1:I was 13 years old. I remember helping bag the body and it not affecting me and being just numb and cold. My words today are numb and cold. Then it was just another day and I didn't have really any feeling. I was void of feelings, and that is an important thing to understand right now, as I can, as you continue to learn my story, it's important to understand those times where you have no feeling in life. Maybe you should be feeling something. Maybe you're not feeling everything that a normal person would feel. Pause there for a minute in the story. But let's think about if you're told that your loved one has passed away or something tragic happens in your life or something exciting happens. We don't all react or respond the same to that. Sometimes, if we're told somebody has passed away, we have an emotional breakdown. Other times we have no emotional outward response and it just really depends on how our nervous system processes that response and it just really depends on how our nervous system processes that. So back to the story.
Speaker 1:We picked the body up, we put the body in a body bag and we sent the body off to wherever it goes, which was the morgue. Uh, I remember that the next day I got called and in a joking tone I got told that when they opened up the body bag, the larvae had hatched and flies flew out of the body bag. Which larvae had hatched and flies flew out of the body bag, which I thought was kind of comical, and you know, being 13 years old then I have to go back to the Explorer post for the next meeting and I went on a ride along and we have to give a report as to what we saw. And in that report I remember almost bragging yeah, we found it. We had a dead body. I've been laying there seven months. This is what it looked like. And I'm like man, I'm a big man on campus, right, I mean, I'm a pretty big deal. I was out on this call. Little did I know that was the start of my nervous system shutting down for what would be the next 30 years. So then I continued on with Explorers until I was 17.
Speaker 1:When I was 17 years old 17 and a half years old, between 13 and 17 and a half I had logged almost 4,000 hours in a police car, in a uniform, assisting and helping officers. I'd had a lot of experiences and I knew this was going to be my career. At 17 and a half I had been working for a company called Pizza Boys in the Kenai Slobodan area. I had worked there for a year and a half and I was in a management position for one of our stores. The store owner, commercial fished in the summertime. So at 16, 17 years old, I'm running his operation On a Friday, saturday night. We had easily put out two 300 pizzas and it was my operation, from personnel to payroll, to making pizzas and throwing dough and just keeping the business going. It was a great time. It was summertime, we were having a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:At about 17 and a half I decided that I wanted to move to Phoenix, arizona. So I moved off to Phoenix, got into a car I had saved some money from my pizza job and kissed my mom goodbye. She was working at the Katmai restaurant, which is there in town. My mom was a waitress her whole life until she passed away in 2001. And I remember I got into my truck not knowing where I was going except for Phoenix. So I ended up driving all the way down to Phoenix. As I got into Seattle I swore to God that if the traffic was as bad in Phoenix as it was in Seattle, I was flying home. It was a pretty terrible experience in the Seattle area. For me. It was my first time in a big city. So then we get down to Phoenix and I move into an apartment complex. It's pretty freaking cool. It's huge 7,000 apartments all inside of the four walls of the apartment complex. They had four swimming pools, they had a fitness center, they had a dry cleaning. It was a party spot and I was of partying age, so it was a good time. I had a fake ID, so of course I was going to use it and had a really, really good time for a little while there.
Speaker 1:I got a job with Walmart Kmart. While I was working with Walmart Kmart I was also going to school for criminal justice and I met a gal who is now my wife, named Stacy. So we met at work. We weren't supposed to be dating. I was lost prevention. She was a jewelry department manager and we weren't supposed to be dating because of the idea that if she stole I might be blinded by that and not do my job. But we dated anyway. We were rule breakers Pretty badass. So then she finally moved to another store and then we could tell everybody that we were dating. We dated for about six months maybe four, if you ask her, she knows the numbers and then we ended up getting married. So now I am 20 years old, married, living in Phoenix. She's going to school to be a teacher. We decide that we're going to move back to Alaska because there's a job opening at the Kenai police department. So we moved back to Alaska. In Alaska I'll spend the next nine years as a police officer.
Speaker 1:During that time I worked patrol, I worked canine, I worked a drug unit, uh, worked more moose accidents where cars hit moose. It usually happens at 3 in the morning, at 17 below. I got tired of that. During that time I had my son. First boy was Justice. When he was born it's a whole other story for another day. But when he was born he had a congenital diaphragmatic hernia, which essentially means there was a hole in his diaphragm and his guts were in his upper chest cavity and he was given a 0% chance of survival at birth. So when we talk about trauma to the system, your brain doesn't know if it's trauma work-related trauma, family-related trauma, whateverrelated trauma, whatever. This was trauma, but at the time I didn't realize it. We just knuckled down and got through it.
Speaker 1:In 2001, remember I was an explorer for all those years there was a guy I rode with a lot named John Watson. John Watson was a good friend of mine. John Watson was one of my field training officers. When I came to the police department, my first year of being a police officer, john Watson was killed in the line of duty on Christmas night. I had a lot to do with John working that night. Um, john was 18 months from retirement and he wasn't supposed to work on Christmas night. It was his wife's birthday and my family and I took a vacation to Arizona and, as a result of me being out of town, john Watson was forced to work Christmas night to cover for me and John went to a call. He went to a suspicious circumstances call and he never went home and that night was his wife's birthday. So he was not only murdered on Christmas, but he was murdered on his wife's birthday. And he was only at work because I took vacation and he had to cover my shift. He was only at work because I took vacation and he had to cover my shift.
Speaker 1:And it took me a long time to come to grips with that. It wasn't my fault for John and um, that I wasn't to blame for him being there that night and ultimately dying, blame for him being there that night and ultimately dying. And it wasn't until I get through the last year and a half which we'll finally get to but since I've known a lot of counseling that I was able to really come to grips with the idea that it's not my fault, john's dead and the belief that I could have been there. It could have been me. I could have done more. I should have saved him.
Speaker 1:After all, this man was my mentor. I grew up around him. He was there on that eight year old ride along. I met him. That day is the first time I ever met him. Um, he was my field training officer. He was my friend. He was my field training officer, he was my friend and as a result of him covering my shift, he's now dead and his family has to go without him and his daughters and his wife, and I blame myself for that for a long time. But I know, by the grace of God, that God had him there that night and there's a plan and it wasn't my time and it wasn't my place to be there.
Speaker 1:So, after coming full circle and Alaska nine years, my son was born with that CDH that I spoke about. We almost lost him when he was born. We ended up. We left home with a headache that day and we didn't come home for three months. Those three months were spent at Emanuel Hospital in Portland, oregon, where they were literally saving his life. Every day we were able to take him home and when he was five years old. He needed so much medical care that we couldn't get in Alaska. We had able to take him home and when he was five years old he needed so much medical care that we couldn't get in Alaska. We had to move.
Speaker 1:And we moved to the Portland Oregon area and I became a police officer for a police department here in the metropolitan area. I worked patrol and a couple of years later I went right into detectives and that's where I spent the next 11 years working. Homicide and child abuse were my primary cases. I worked, I worked a little bit of everything, but those are my primary cases and in the final years that's all it was because our murder rate went through the roof. I've got three wonderful kids, got a beautiful wife, I've got a great life and I am blessed to be here.
Speaker 1:The journey that we just went through, from a small child all the way to today, has taught me so much about life and sometimes the things that we learn about life we don't even know we're learning them in the moment. It's not until we look back with 20-20 hindsight that we see what God's purpose was and what the reason for the pain was, and the life lessons along the way coming out of law enforcement, I wanted to take everything that I had done that had made me happy throughout the years. That's where that music thread was and I wanted to take that and use that for good. And I wanted to bless people with the skills and the talents that God had given me not only my music skills and entertaining in that, but also the people skills of just relating to people, separating yourself from the situation and seeing people as human beings. That, right there, is what made me successful as a police officer, which is another story. That's why interviews came so easy for me and were very successful. Connecting with people on a human, emotional level is what was successful for me. I wanted to take all of that and put together a business, so I did. Wanted to take all of that and put together a business, so I did.
Speaker 1:Then I realized there is so much that I've experienced in life, whether it's on the law enforcement side, whether it's on the humanity side, whether it's the marriage side, no matter what that is. There's so much I've experienced and I feel that I want to give back and I want to help. So I started this podcast and this is the struggle that I'm having and I'm hoping that somebody can help me with. I have so much that I want to say Murders to music, crime scenes to music scene. I want to talk about the crime scene and what law enforcement did to me as a human, because I believe there are things that are parallels in my world, whether it's stress, ptsd, finding your identity in your job, working long hours and not giving your family the love, support and credit they deserve, taking people for granted, isolating and insulating from others, finding your coping mechanisms, drugs, alcohol, whatever it may be. All of those things I've experienced and I think that I can help somebody with those. I said it a moment ago I don't think God gives us pain without purpose.
Speaker 1:I want to take what I've done and I want to be able to give back and I want to give something that's entertaining, educational, insightful, informative to my listeners. I also want to give back on the music side of things. I think that talent that is not shared is wasted and I want to give things back on the music side. I want to talk about all the music stuff how to set up live sound, how to set up for live music engagement, how to read a crowd gear, reviews, tech reviews, experiences and stories that I've had playing for 25,000 people on a stage. I mean those are cool things that I want to give back and talk about, but the struggle I have is trying to bring those two things together in one podcast. When you start anything, you go to the YouTube university and in that YouTube university they tell you to narrow down and focus to build your audience. That is where I'm struggling. I have all this stuff to share.
Speaker 1:I don't want to bore the music people with personal stories or life lessons or things that can help them, although I know they're struggling there as well. Remember I mentioned ego and pride huge. My ego and pride when I left the police department was huge. It probably still is huge. We just all have a blind spot we can't see. Now I can see what it was. Then I was super proud of myself and, much like the firefighter that has a sticker on the back window, I probably let everybody know. I don't want to bore the music people with cop stuff. I don't want to bore the life lessons people with music stuff. So I'm having a hard time marrying those two together.
Speaker 1:I'm going to continue to move forward, just so you know. I'm going to continue to move forward. Just so you know, I'm going to continue to move forward and I think my life lessons and helping people is important. If you find that interesting, I think that is going to be, I think, the basis of my podcast. I am going to talk live music. I'm going to talk stories. I'm going to tell some stories. I'm going to teach and educate there as well, but I think the podcast is going to be a lot of interviews. I'm going to teach and educate there as well, but I think the podcast is going to be a lot of interviews. I'm going to do some interviewing. That'll be part of that music part. I'll do interviewing on the law enforcement side. I'll just do interviewing in life with people. That's what I love to do. So there's going to be a good mix, healthy mix of both.
Speaker 1:Originally I thought this was going to be 60, 70% entertainment side, 30% life side. Right now I think I'm changing those numbers. I'm going to reverse them. I'm going to go 60% life, 40% music entertainment side. On my YouTube channel streamline events and entertainment YouTube. That is where I will post a lot of videos on tech reviews and technical stuff when it comes to sound and front of house engineering and lighting and setting a stage and playing a crowd and music selection all of those things. So for the YouTube channel, tune in there where you can see a lot more in depth on technical stuff. For the life channel, I want to be right here, eye to eye, talking to you. If you're listening to this, I want to be right there in your ear. Know that I post all of these on my YouTube channel so you have a video podcast as well if you'd like to see it or if you just want to listen on your way to work. I really appreciate that as well. So hopefully you guys are liking what you're hearing. I've got you from my childhood all the way through today in just about 35 minutes. I think that will set the stage.
Speaker 1:We're going to break some of this down. We're going to break down some of those calls in Alaska that I'm going to talk about John Watson some more. I'm going to talk about the handful of calls in a career that really stick out, not because I'm going to tell the details of the call and for storytelling sake, but I want to talk about the effects that it had on me as a human that I didn't even recognize until I didn't recognize myself. I want you guys to take away from this podcast life lessons that you can take home and change the impact you have on your family, the impact that you have on the people around you, the impact you have on your family, the impact that you have on the people around you, the impact you have on your coworkers If anything in my life can help you be a little bit more successful in yours, man, I hope you guys are along for the ride. Thank you guys so much for watching. Thank you guys for tuning in yet to another episode. I'm going to keep this thing going. I hope to get an episode out every week.
Speaker 1:We'll talk about a bunch of different topics. We'll do some interviews. You'll interview my family that has had to live with me, which has been difficult over the last 21, 25 years. Let's talk about it. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. I can't wait to see you guys or be in the car with you or be in your ear again until next time. We love you. Take care of yourself, take care of those around you. Just try practicing being nice to people around you. Go out of your way to do something nice and encouraging for those around you. If you guys have any questions, I'm an open book. If you have topics you want to hear about, let me know. You guys can get a hold of me at Aaron at StreamlineDJcom. You can leave messages right there on YouTube. If you're watching this, hit me up. Find me. Streamline Events and Entertainment. Aaron at StreamlineDJcom. I'm happy to take your questions. Give me a call. My number's online. Thank you guys so much. Until next time, see ya.
