Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)

Instant Replay: How A Partner’s Line‑Of‑Duty Death Led Me To Healing...The Moose, The Mentor and The Mourning

• Aaron...DJ, Musician, Superhero • Season 2 • Episode 119

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A quiet Christmas night, a routine call, and a moment that shattered a department—this is the story I’ve carried for two decades. I take you back to the cold, the silence, and the split second that cost my partner, Officer John Watson, his life, and I share how that night rewrote my career, my mind, and my faith. This replay isn’t shock for shock’s sake; it’s an honest walk through survivor’s guilt, the burden of “it should have been me,” and the hard, essential work of healing.

You’ll hear how John mentored me from my earliest ride‑alongs to my first years on patrol, why his calm authority shaped how I think about policing, and what it felt like to drive his unit in the funeral procession while questioning everything. I open up about the years I spent planning my own funeral, the compounding nature of PTSD in law enforcement, and the high cost of departments skipping debriefs. Then we get into what finally helped: EMDR therapy, a patient reframing of memory and blame, and a faith perspective that widened the frame enough for grief to move without crushing me.

If you’ve ever carried responsibility that wasn’t yours—first responders, veterans, caregivers, or anyone who walked away while someone else didn’t—this conversation offers language, tools, and permission. We talk about trauma processing, survivor’s guilt, peer support, and why community is a lifeline, not a luxury. Most of all, we honor John: a gentle giant, a father figure in a badge, and the mentor whose life still teaches me how to serve, heal, and keep going.

If this story moves you, share it with someone who needs hope. Subscribe, leave a review so others can find it, and send a note to murders2music@gmail.com—your encouragement helps keep this work alive.

Gift For You!!! Murders to Music will be releasing "SNAPSHOTS" periodcally to keep you entertained throughout the week! Snapshots will be short, concise bonus episodes containing funny stories, tid bits of brilliance and magical moments!!! Give them a listen and keep up on the tea!  

Hi, I'm Aaron your host and I would love to invite you to leave a review, send some fan mail or email me at Murder2Music@gmail.com. Does something I'm saying resonate with you...Tell me about it! Is there something you want to hear more about...Tell me about it! This show is to provide value, education and entertainment and hopefully find its way to the WORLD! Share, Like and Love the Murders to Music Podcast!

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SPEAKER_01:

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Murders to Music Podcast. My name is Aaron. I'm your host, and it is 2026, y'all. It is Thursday, January 1st, 2026. Let's ring in the new year together. Hey, you guys, I'm gonna so last week, whenever I got on here, I spoke about my partner being killed in the line of duty on Christmas Day 2003. And there's been several emails that have come in and messages that have come in asking me to tell that story. Well, I've already told the story. So in popular demand, by popular demand, I am going to replay that episode. So this is a replay of The Moose, The Mentor in the Morning. And you get to hear that full story start to finish. Maybe you've already heard this, maybe you haven't. You know, surprisingly, this podcast has not been downloaded near as much as the others. So I know there's a lot of people out there who have not heard this story. And I want to make sure that you guys get the full scoop as to what happened in 2003, Christmas Day, when my partner was killed in the line of duty, how that affected me, how I got over it, and how maybe you can find healing on the other side of a major life event in your world just by giving it perspective and reframing. Before we jump into that podcast, I really want to I really want to ask for some encouragement, you guys. Hey, if you guys are getting something out of this podcast, if it has touched you in a way, if you come back and listen every single week, if there's something in this that is speaking to you, I am in need of encouragement right now. I'm in need of some encouragement to go on and to keep pushing this thing forward. And, you know, I don't know what it is, but I'm in a little bit of a slump. So if you guys, if you guys are getting something out of this, please let me know. You can email me at murders2music at gmail.com. That's murders the number two music at gmail.com. You can also send me a fan mail. If you check on that uh podcast you're listening to right now, that streaming service, it may say send me a text. Send me that. I'll get that. No, that's only one-way communication. I can't reply to you. So those are some ways to communicate with me. But if you guys are getting something out of this, please let me know. Um, fill me up a little bit. My cuppeth is emptyeth, and I need it to be filling over it so I can continue pushing this forward. Throwing this podcast out every week is a lot of fun, but it's a lot of work. And right now I'm just in a slump. And that's the way life is. Sometimes that happens, right? But we got to have the community around us to support us, and life is about community. If we don't have community with where we're living and what we're doing, then why are we even doing it? And you guys are my community. You guys are my hope. You're my foundation. You are the reason that I do this every single week and spend hours and hours recording and editing and uploading and money. I don't make a single dime from this podcast, but I spend hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours putting it out there, hoping that you guys get something educational, entertaining, or valuable from these shows. And I know you are. Please fill my cup, give me some encouragement, shoot me an email, shoot me a message, a text, whatever it is. You guys, I love you guys so much. You guys, it's January 1st, 2026. Have a wonderful year, wonderful, wonderful year. Set those goals, achieve those tasks that you guys want to do, just make this year a perfect year. Remember, all the stuff in the world is not important if you don't have that community and that love right around you. Take care of those closest to you guys. This next episode I'm about to replay is The Moose, The Mentor in the Morning. It's the story of John Watson, my partner, who was killed in the line of duty in 2003 on Christmas Day, which is also his wife's birthday. I'll talk about survivor's guilt that I held on to for over 20 years, and you'll hear about the way that affected me, my life, affected him, his life, and how I ultimately got over it. Ladies and gentlemen, stay tuned. Here it is. The Moose, the Mentor, and the Morning. Tonight we're going to explore the first and most traumatic event that occurred in my police career. Now, this event was the foundational building block for ultimately my leaving the police department with BTS. I'm not going to get into a lot of details about the scene, so you don't have to worry there. But it is very important to understand that as a result of this incident that was significant and affected a lot of lives, that as a result of this incident, it shaped the way I was as a police officer. It shaped the way I dealt with people. It shaped the way that I planned my funeral. Now you might say, why are you planning your funeral? Well, I thought that was normal. According to my therapist, uh, it's not normal to plan your own funeral. However, since 2003, I have planned my funeral. I have changed the pall bears out throughout the years, depending on who was in my life at the time. I've changed out the music as new songs came up and as old songs went away. I have picked Bible verses. I have literally planned my own funeral. Now I haven't planned my death. I have at times, but not recently. I haven't planned my own death, but I have planned my in the line of duty funeral. Why is that important? Well, let's talk a little bit about my career. First, I want to tell you about a call that I went on in 2002. I'm at the police department. It's a late, late one night. It's winter time. I remember that night it was very, very cold outside, minus five, minus ten degrees. And being at the police department, um, I was sitting in dispatch and we got a call of a prowler. Somebody called from a neighborhood close by and they heard what sounded like a prowler walking around the outside of their house. It was a dark night. I remember the moon was up and the moon was bright. It was a clear sky. I drove to the location, which I was familiar with because I had been there for calls for service plenty of times into that neighborhood. I parked half a block away, pulled up, my headlights were out, my taillights were out. I walked up. I remember as I approached, I could hear the squeaking and creaking of the frozen snow beneath my feet. When I got up to the complex or the house where it was, there was a duplex. There was a left and a right side. I'm approaching, if I'm looking at it, I'm approaching from the right side, and the person, the reporting party, is on the left side of the duplex. So I'm approaching from the offside, which is intentional. It's a tactical way to approach. Now there's no way for me to sneak my way around this property without making a ton of noise because of the snow. The snow was knee deep or more. It was frozen, it was crusty. So as I approached the right side of this duplex, it's about 10:30 or 11 o'clock at night, and this gentleman came out onto the front deck. And I remember him vividly. He was a good-looking dude. He had on a leather jacket, maybe a white sweater of some kind underneath. And I remember he had an exposed gold chain hanging out over it. He looked like he was dressed up to go out somewhere. So he asked me what I was doing. And I said, Hey, well, your neighbor called and said that they thought maybe there was a prowler. So they wanted me to check it out. And he recognized that I didn't have anybody with me. I was by myself. And he says, Well, do you want me to walk with you? And up there, it's a different world. Yeah, I would love to take you with me. If we're going to get into a fight, I'd rather do it with somebody who is pro-cop and you know going to be with have my back. You see, the Kenai Police Department was so small. Sometimes shift minimums were only one or two people. So if it was more than one call going on, then I might not have backup on these calls. And we got used to working alone. So we made our way around the back of the house. The only thing illuminating the night was the moon. I had my flashlight, but we didn't have it on. Made my way around the back, and as soon as I got around the back of the house, I saw it. There was a moose. The moose was there, it was making noise. That's what the caller heard. So I turn on my flashlight, double check. It's just a moose, it's just a moose. Uh the guy and I turn around, we walk right back on our same tracks. I walk him back to the door, shake his hand. He says he's gonna go out to a bar and have some drinks over in Soldatna. I wish him the best of luck. We fist bump, we move on with life. I go to the neighbor, I tell him it's a moose, and that's the end of the call. I go away, I don't think anything more about it. So that was in probably November-ish of 2002. So now let's go to June 12th of 1960. On that day, a young man was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His name was John Patrick Watson. John Patrick Watson was a young man that grew up in Michigan, joined the Army, served his country, and after getting out of the army, decided that he wanted to become a police officer. John became a police officer for the city of Kenai, the city that I grew up and I lived and I worked in. He became a police officer in 1985. John worked on patrol. He assisted with the detective unit. He was an all-around good human being. Now, I first met John one year after he came onto the police department. It was 1986. In 1986, John was still a rookie officer. I was eight years old, and I came to the police department for my first ride-along. I remember the day, it was a winter day, and I remember that I met John sitting in the library of the Kenai Police Department. And you might think of a library as a nice, I mean, if a if a building has a library, it's got to be cool and nice and clad with nice wood and fabric. No, this is about an 8x10 room that has three walls of books. The fourth wall has a dry erase board and a window. And in that time there was a large table in the middle, and all the police officers sat around and smoked cigarettes and their pipes and chatted and just bullshitted about life. That's what they did. When I came in at eight years old, that's the first experience and memory I have of John Watson was him in that room. For the next few years, I would go to the police department and I would rent books. I would check out books from that library. Now, no, none of the books had been written in the previous decade. They were all old, but I got to read some books about law enforcement, and John was my liaison. He was my point of contact when I would go in there and check out books as a youngster. He was always very nice and very kind. At 13 years old, I became an explorer. An explorer is a youth between 13 and 18 years old. It's part of the Boy Scouts of America, and we wear a uniform. Now it's not a Boy Scout uniform. My uniform was navy blue with gray pockets and eplets. It looked like a police uniform. I had a police badge. I wore a duty belt. On that duty belt was pepper spray, handcuffs, flashlight, radio, rubber gloves, and some keepers. Keepers are things that hold your belt together. So as we would go on these ride-alongs, we would get exposure to different officers. And I found two officers that I really liked to spend time with. It was John Watson and a gentleman named Jesse Rouse. Now, at 13 years old, these guys were ancient. Now, they were really in their 30s and 40s. But to me, they felt old and experienced and just knew what they were doing. You got to remember, I grew up around John, coming in and talking to him. So John was a familiar face. I remember that between 13 and 17 years old when I moved to Phoenix, I logged about 3,500 hours of patrol time with the police department. Now, what I'll say that a different way. What that means is I wasn't very cool amongst my peer group. Because while my peer group was out drinking and partying, I was in a police uniform. And it's tough to be cool when you're wearing a badge at 13, 14, 15 years old. But it's the life that I wanted. And I got to spend time with people like John. So um I got to spend time with John. I got to spend time with Jesse Rouse, and uh I got to learn a lot from both of those men. So then I remember um one night I'm riding with John, and John was a big guy. John was six foot two, six three, two fifty, two hundred and sixty pounds. He was a big man. And he'd get out of these patrol cars. They had caprices and crown victor uh Ford Crown Victoria's. And I remember he used to get out and he used to open the door, kick the door open with his foot, and he'd reach up and grab that A-pillar and pull himself up out of the car. And then when he'd get back in the car, he'd open the door, step into the apex of the door, grab that pillar, and fling himself down into the seat. Well, one night I'm riding with him and he flings himself down in the seat and he reached across with his offhand and closed the door, but he forgot to move his hand off that eight pillar, so he closed all his fingers in the door, and he started screaming, and I was trying not to laugh. And uh, it's just one of the memories that I have of riding with him, and uh he closed his fingers in the door. Another memory, I was 14 years old, and we make a felony traffic stop. A felony traffic stop is a stop on a felony situation. It could be a stolen vehicle, it could be a warrant, it could be a gun call, it could be whatever. And I don't recall exactly what this call was, but there was two police cars. We were at the Kenye Spur and Gill, which is uh right on the edge of town. They made, it was a daytime traffic stop. We made these felony traffic stop, two police cars, one bad guy car. They called the guy out on the PA. He walked out, walked backwards, knelt down on the ground, put his hands on the back of his head, and John told me, go and handcuff him. That's the kind of trust John's letting a 14-year-old child go up and handcuff a 40-year-old man for a felony traffic stop. I went up, I handcuffed him, I brought him back, and that's the first time I handcuffed somebody for a felony. I arrested somebody for a felony, and it was pretty exciting. And John trusted me and knew that I was capable of doing what I what he wanted me to do. So that was really good. So then I moved to Phoenix, Arizona. When I moved to Phoenix, John stayed in touch with me, and uh an opening came up at the police department. I applied for it. John was a strong advocate for me, and I came back and finally got hired with the police department. Well, after I got hired, John was my mentor. He was a field training officer for me. We worked alongside of each other, uh, he taught me a ton of stuff, and there's a field training program that officers go through. And that means you ride with uh seasoned officers for a period of time, you're judged, you're rated, you're graded, and either you pass or you fail. And John was one of my field training officers. So as life moved on through the police department, we uh we got to know each other quite well. John was a family man. He was born and raised. No, he wasn't born, but he was raised and grew up in Kenai as an adult. He raised a family there. He was a Christian, part of a church. He helped with the Boy Scouts, he assisted um to assemble and form a Harley Davidson motorcycle club. John was the kind of police officer that was a father figure. I was a hard ass. If I could go out and write 60 or 70 tickets in, you know, a shift in a town of 7,000 people, then uh and wonder why my name got scratched into the stall at the local Safeway store that Aaron's an asshole. Um, John wasn't that guy. You would have never seen his name scratched onto any stall because John was the kind of guy that would mentor and teach and take the time as a police officer to guide, counsel, father, and use these opportunities as learning moments. Now, it doesn't mean John wouldn't arrest you or kick your ass if needed, but he was a big gentle giant. That was John's approach to law enforcement. That was his approach to life. So in late November, early December, about the same time that I had that moose call, we had I was a defensive tactics instructor. And I would hold defensive tactics courses for the police department. And we held one at the Kenai High School, and John was in attendance. And if you're listening to this and you've ever been a DT instructor, or you've ever tried to get a bunch of cops to get into a mat room and not start screwing around, well, that's exactly what I had to deal with. Uh, we were in there, people were messing around. You try to keep control, but you got to remember, I'm a two-year cop, one-year cop, trying to teach John Watson, uh, an 18-year veteran, defensive tactics stuff. And I wasn't taken real seriously. I remember that there was one move we were trying to do, and John was just such a man of stature and size that you know he didn't need our tactics. He just got out of it because he was a big dude. And uh that that's one of my memories of John as far as a training site goes. And I talk about all of this because now we're up on Christmas of 2003. Christmas. Of 2003, uh, I had been at the police department for about a year and a half, and my wife wanted to go on vacation to visit her family in Arizona. I was supposed to work Christmas night of 2003. However, um, I asked for it off and it was approved by my sergeant. Now that meant that somebody had to cover my shift. Because remember, sometimes we only have one or two people on, especially on the holidays. And in this case, John Watson got told he's gonna cover my shift. John didn't want to cover my shift. He didn't want to cover my shift because it was his wife's birthday. And he wanted to be at home with his wife, rightfully so, on her birthday, which was also Christmas Day. But John wasn't given a choice, and he was told he was gonna cover. John was a guy who didn't mind sharing his feelings or his thoughts or his opinions in a very loud and boisterous way. John made it very clear that he didn't want to work and it was bullshit, but he was gonna do it because he was told to, and he's a company man. So I go on vacation, feeling a little guilty that John is covering my shift, but the sergeant told him he had to, so he has to.

SPEAKER_00:

Kind of my thought and feeling.

SPEAKER_01:

So um Christmas night at 7 41 p.m., the troopers asked for assistance in locating a newer Silver Ford Explorer for excursion. You see, a citizen had reported that they were having Christmas dinner, and this strange man and his girlfriend and a dog came into their house in a rural part of the area. They ate and then left. Once they left, everybody wondered who the guy was, who invited him. A stranger just came in, nobody said anything, he didn't say anything to anybody. The girlfriend sat in another room, he ate, he left, and everybody's like, Did you invite him? I didn't invite him, did you invite him? Nobody invited him. So they realized that there was something weird, so they called the Alaska State Troopers. Alaska State Troopers were able to put out a bolo or a be on the lookout for that vehicle, and they had a license plate. The license plate came back to an address in the city of Kenai. John was at the police department and got the call for service. He had to drive about on icy roads, 15, 18 minutes away from the police department. It was 17 degrees below zero that night. I was in warm Arizona, and John had to drive across town to a rural part of the city, way outside of the core main area, to look for this suspicious vehicle. Didn't know what the circumstances were, but that's what he had to go do. So he left the police department. You see, the citizen reported to troopers the suspect and a 21-year female had left the residence in an excursion, and the subject appeared intoxicated and agitated. Troopers were attempted to locate the vehicle in order to conduct a welfare check on the male, the female. When Watson went to the home that night, he wasn't able to find the vehicle in the driveway. So he put out on the radio that he wasn't able to locate it and that he was tenator in service. In order to get to this person's house, the registered owner's house, you have to take about three-quarters of a mile to a mile of winding neighborhood roads in order to get to it. So as he's leaving, remember it's Christmas, it's about eight o'clock at night, it's 17 below zero, it's dark, there's not a lot of traffic on the road. As he's leaving, he sees the vehicle pull in to the neighborhood. So at 8.16 p.m., he reported that he had seen the vehicle matching the suspect description and that he turned around and tried to traffic stop the vehicle. The vehicle did not stop immediately. The vehicle continued driving and pulled down a long and windy driveway to the register's owner's address, to where the vehicle lived. Officer Watson contacted the male who got out of the car. A female got out with the dog, and Watson allowed the female and the dog to go into the house. John was the kind of guy that it just made sense. He needed to talk to the male first, and he would allow the female to be warm inside the house because of the cold temperature. The area that they were at, it was a single house at the end of a long, windy road. It was dark, it was cold, it was crisp. It was a very hollowed night. So he got out and he contacted the male. When he contacted the male, something occurred, and we don't know exactly what it was, but something occurred, and the male came at him in an aggressive manner, and as a result, John tried to detain or arrest him. When John tried to arrest him, a fight ensued based on the female who witnessed. A fight ensued, and ultimately the gentleman got a hold of John's gun and from behind John shot John once in the bulletproof vest and then shot John in the back of the head, killing him. Before John was killed, he was able to put out a call for help on the radio. And he put out a routine call for assistance, not an emergency call. And when he did it, you could hear in his voice that things weren't right. Now it was a limited crew at the police department, but the ones that were there gathered their stuff and went out to go back up John. I'm not going to tell the officer's story, who was the first one responding, but I will say that when that officer arrived, John's car was in the driveway. The overheads were on. I believe the door was open. There were some a figure or figures in the window of the home. And John was laying dead between his patrol car and the front door of the house. It was obvious that John was deceased, and at this point, more assistance was called for. Ultimately, he was found guilty and is serving 101 years in prison. This man is the same man that conducted the welfare check with me one month earlier. Remember the guy in the leather jacket with the white sweater and the gold chain? It's the same person who shot and killed my partner one month later. You never know in this line of work who you're contacting. So how does this affect me long term? Well, you see, the next morning at 5 a.m., I got a phone call from, I believe it was my lieutenant at the time, Kim Wanamaker. Kim called me and said that John had been killed in the line of duty the night before and that I needed to come home. And he, I remember him saying, You don't have to come home, but it would, I suggested. So my wife and I, without hesitation, got on the first flight we could out of Phoenix and we flew back to Alaska. Now, flying back on that plane, at this time I was a one-year cop. I was excited. Uh if I heard a siren, I was fulfilling my dream, everything I wanted. But now I'm having to go back and process and think about I wasn't there. I didn't get to help. He was covering my shift. If it wasn't for me, he wouldn't have been working last night. Uh, it was his wife's birthday. He didn't want to work last night. He was forced into working last night. All of these things are starting to build into my head before I even hit the ground in Alaska. At that time, my nervous system wasn't uh dead. My nervous system worked fine because I was a brand new cop. So I was feeling all of these emotions. I get back to Alaska and the police department was a place of tension, emotions. Nobody knew what to do or how to do it. This was the first time a police officer had been killed in the line of duty with my agency. So there was a lot of unknowns and a lot of figuring things out as we go. I remember that when I got back, I didn't feel like a part of the team. I didn't feel like a part of the, I had nothing to say. How am I going to talk about my vacation when these guys are talking about spending hours at 17 below on the murder scene for John Watson? It was uh a tough place to be. I felt like an outsider and an outcast within my own agency. I felt like I didn't contribute to this uh situation. I did contribute, but I contributed by allowing John to work that night on his wife's birthday when he was killed. And it should have been me on that call. We went to the we planned the funeral, and uh I had to go to the airport and pick up Jesse Rouse, the other guy that I rode with. And Jesse Rouse came, and I remember Jesse Rouse wasn't a hugger, but he gave me a hug. And uh that day at the funeral, I got asked if I would drive P-15. I believe it was P-15. Either way, it was John Watson's car. The same car that he drove essentially to his death in, that had been a subject of an investigation, was now getting put back into the fleet, and I was asked if I could drive it in the funeral service. So I drove in that 10-mile procession, whatever it was, in the first car behind the hearse in John Watson's car with the lights on, with the siren on, and I had Jesse Rouse in the passenger seat. For once, the roles were reversed, and a retired Rouse was in the passenger seat, and I was driving. We went to the funeral that day, and it was the first time that I'd really got to process uh what was going on and take a minute to think. And I was standing on that stage with my fellow officers, and John's casket was out in front with the American flag stretched over it. And I remember seeing the two Alaska State troopers who are Alaska troopers have phenomenal looking uniforms. They're standing guard to the head and the foot of John. I remember carrying John in that day. I remember carrying John out that day. Uh, I remember standing there just bawling. I'm a six foot to 245-pound bald head badass cop in my mind. And I'm standing on stage in front of the entire community crying my eyes out. And it was later that another community member mentioned that uh, you know, I saw you crying up there. That's how I remember you. You were the one that was crying, and um, she and I are friends till this day. I didn't know her prior to that, but that's how she remembered me. There's a picture in the Peninsula Clary. And if you were to Google John Watson Funeral Alaska, there's a picture of his casket. There's a picture of me or my entire police department on the risers, and I'm bawling in that picture. Um, so we went through the funeral, and then John Watson's car got assigned to me. That was my police car now. So now I'm driving John Watson's car. And very soon after that, I started considering my own death in law enforcement. I had just watched my hero, a hero to many, a man who was big and strong and tough, and just a phenomenal police officer, just got murdered in the line of duty by a guy who I met one month earlier, and I trusted him enough to do a uh prowler check with me. And I realized that it could have been me and that I needed to start planning. So I started planning my funeral. I maintained my funeral file for until I left the police department. I haven't looked at it since. Until I left the police department, I would change my pall bears, I would change my music, I would change the Bible verses. As my life changed, I would manipulate and adjust my funeral file. But I was in it every year. And uh I thought it was normal to plan my funeral. I didn't realize that was the foundational building blocks of my PTS. Over the years after that, I let me talk about that. So we never debriefed on it. We never had a debrief. Remember, this was early on in my career, and we didn't talk about feelings. I never debriefed it. The others did, but I wasn't directly involved, so why didn't I need to go? Uh, what I did wasn't, you know, I didn't see the scene. I wouldn't see John dead, so why did I need to go to it? I don't even think I was invited to it. I never spoke to anybody about it. We never got counseling. We literally compartmentalized it, shoved it down inside, and pretended it didn't happen. That is the foundational building blocks for a life of hell. So over the years, other calls occurred and just compounded and built on top of John. And before you know it, I've got an entire wall of compartmentalized calls and trauma in my world that ultimately led to my decline and my I don't want to say breaking, but my need to leave law enforcement. It was the um compounding PTSD, the cumulative PTSD, and John Watson was the first thing that I recognize as a foundational building block in my demise. And I've always felt for 20 something years that I was to blame for his death, that I was the one responsible for having him there that night. It wasn't the sergeant's fault for backfilling the shift. It was my fault for taking a vacation and for making him work on his wife's birthday and Christmas Day. It should have been me. I was in better shape, I was more tactical-minded, and I felt like I would have handled that situation differently and maybe had the upper hand. Maybe not. But maybe I'd had the upper hand on the bad guy that night. I'm not blaming John for his own death, but I am saying that John relied on his size and um it a lot. I was more ready to kick somebody's ass all the time. I was um new, I was fresh in defensive tactics, and I just felt like it was my fault that John died. I felt that way forever. Um I felt like I wasn't allowed to take Christmas vacations. I have never taken, I'm gonna drink some coffee real quick. I felt like I wasn't allowed to take Christmas vacations, but in case something else happened or occurred. Um I left once and my world fell apart that night. And it was a really, really crappy place to be. And it wasn't until I came out of law enforcement and started going through therapy. Well, before I even got to therapy, I had to accept the fact that I was suffering from PTSD or PTS. And I didn't want to, because just like we didn't talk about our feelings 20 years ago, we sure as hell didn't talk about them today. And PTSD, PTS was for quitters and it was for people who weren't tough. It was for the they used to call at a sergeant call the weak sisters, uh, in air quotes, and that it was just for the people who were weak. I was not weak. I never wanted to be weak. I wasn't born weak, and I wasn't about to start today. Therapy was for people who needed a friend. I didn't need friends. Uh I wasn't here to make friends, I was here to kick ass and take names and you know, be better than all my peers around me. And um I wasn't interested in anything that a therapy dog had to offer. However, I had to do an interview with Workers Comp. And during that interview, as a result of the PTS claim that I wasn't accepting, but during that interview, they asked me to talk about 10, 12 different situations in my career that might have shaped my personal actions, beliefs, feelings, conduct, uh, changed the way that I was an officer, changed the way that I was a human. So I started with John, and I wrote them down chronological that I, as far as I could remember, I started with John, and I got to about five or six on that list, and I am an absolute wreck. I am balling, and there is no wonder that I am so messed up. And it wasn't until that day that I truly started to unpack the box of John Watson and all the guilt and stress that I had been feeling over 20-something years at this point with John and the feelings of blame and shame and survivor's guilt and just devastation that was in the John Watson box. I continued to feel that way until I started going to therapy. In therapy, we spoke about this during an EMDR session. EMDR is an amazing technique where you essentially, while activating the left and the right side of your brain, you go back and you put yourself back into the situation that you were in, in this case in 2003, what I was doing at the time, etc. And you talk about the events that occurred. And as a result, you're trying to change the relationship that you cognitively have with the events that. Back then, meaning a trauma is a trauma because of the guilt that I feel surrounding John dying. So the goal was to get it back to John getting killed that day and time and recognize cognitively that I'm allowed to take vacations, that other people can assign people to work. It was John's number and that I, while in Arizona, had nothing to do with John getting murdered that night. But I couldn't, that was the intent. So I changed the relationship. And then as you come out of the EMDR, you've changed the relationship. And a trauma is no longer a trauma because you don't have the negative connotations or the trigger triggers with it. However, in EMDR for this, I could not come over or accept the idea that I wasn't to blame. We go, we went, the therapist and I went through all of our EMDR modalities and the disturbance level, how I felt talking about it was still super, super high, and I wasn't getting over it. I wasn't getting over it. And the therapist stopped the session and she said, I know that you are a Christian. Can we talk about God? And I said, Yeah, sure. She said, Who was with John that night when he was murdered? And I said, Well, the bad guy, the girl, and the dog. And he's like, She's like, Who else was there? And I'm like, Well, I said, God was there. And um immediately hit me that and whether you agree or not doesn't matter to me. Um but it was in that moment that I recognized that I wasn't to blame, that this our beginning day and our last day is already predetermined if you're a believer. And God had John right where he wanted him that night. That is the way the script was written long before I was involved. And me going to Arizona had nothing to do with what occurred that evening, and I am not to blame. And who am I to try to step in and mess with the hand of God? I do believe God was there. I believe God was with John, I believe John's in heaven right now. And I don't think that it is a coincidence or an accident that I wasn't there. I think it was divine intervention. And I think that God had a plan. And my plan, his plan was for me to be in Arizona, for John to be there, and for events to occur. And it was in that moment that I was able to unpack that box and release some of that self-guilt and be able to talk about this without completely breaking down, because that was the pivotal point that I needed to change my relationship with the events that occurred. I was not to blame. Unless you have carried that kind of weight on your shoulders for 21 years, it's tough to understand what it is that I'm talking about. It's tough to understand the guilt that you feel. And I know some of you listening have experienced what I'm talking about. You have been there. You've been the driver of the DUI crash. You've been there during war times. You're a police officer that's been there and held your partner while they died, and you felt like you could have done more. You should have done more. I should have been able to save him. These are all feelings that we have, especially as warriors out there fighting this battle. Whether it's domestic or international, it doesn't matter where the terror is. It's the feelings we have when the loved one around us gets hurt. And we're taught that we will survive another day and keep going. John didn't get to survive another day, and I did, and that's what layered the guilt on. I'm so thankful for the EMDR. I'm thankful for faith and understanding that this was God's plan and not mine. I'm thankful for my friends and family around me that have supported me over the years. I tell you all of this because I'm sure there is something in your world, or if you're still with me at this point in the podcast, something has connected. No matter what that trauma is, what that guilt is that you're feeling, you can change that relationship with it. You can change the emotional baggage that is surrounded by it. Your option, your availability to do that is here today. And for me, I never thought that I would not feel the guilt of John Watson dying as a result of my actions and the result of me being directly involved in his death when the truth is it really had nothing to do with me. This is just one of the situations that I've been able to work through through EMDR and through therapy and through PTS, whatever your situation is, whatever you're going through, know that there's people out there that can help you. You know, and maybe not everybody listening to this is having issues. Maybe you're like, dude, stop. I've never had issues. I don't have issues. I just wanted to hear your story. Well, that's cool too. I appreciate that. But if you're not having issues, somebody around you might be. Open your eyes, pay attention. If you see something, say something, help your buddy out. Thank you guys so much for sticking around for another episode of the Murders to Music podcast. This podcast is in memory of John Watson, memory of the men and women of the Kenai Police Department and Alaska State Troopers, and all the other agencies involved in that night, who absolutely took the bull by the horns, did what you needed to do in a very hard and challenging time, and ultimately found justice for our brother. Thank you guys so much. Have a great, great day.

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Aaron

Host