Behind The Mic: Two Years of Murders to Music

Two years ago, I hit record because I didn’t know what else to do with the pain. I was coming out of law enforcement against my will, carrying the weight of homicide and child abuse work, and trying to make sense of a nervous system stuck in survival mode. This anniversary is me pulling the curtain back and telling you what changed, what didn’t, and why this podcast became a lifeline for me and, apparently, for some of you too.

I talk about the highs and lows of the last 160 episodes, including the moments that forced real self-reflection: the armor we hide behind, the pride we don’t want to admit, and the secrets that quietly shape our choices. I share how therapy helped me start processing trauma and why changing your relationship with a memory can change your whole life. I also talk openly about faith, what it looks like when you drift, and what it takes to come back and rebuild something solid.

And because the title matters, I explain the “Murders to Music” transition. Music was the thread that kept me sane, and it became the bridge into a new chapter, from being present on people’s worst days to helping create their best days through Streamline Events and Entertainment. I also shout out the guests and stories that left a mark and remind me why vulnerability is still worth it.

If you’ve been carrying stress, PTSD, grief, doubt, or just that midnight spiral of thoughts, I hope this gives you something real to hold onto. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review. What part of the journey do you want me to go deeper on next?

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!

www.StreamlineEventsLLC.com
www.DoubleDownDuo.com

@StreamlineSEE
@DDownDuo

Youtube-Instagram-Facebook

Transcript

Anniversary Recap And Gratitude

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Murders to Music Podcast. My name is Aaron. I'm your host, and thank you guys so much for coming back. Today, this is a very special day. This is the two-year anniversary of this podcast being out. Can you believe this podcast has lasted two full years? This is actually the 160th episode of this podcast. So thank you guys for coming back and listening. Thank you guys for being loyal supporters of the show. Thank you guys for the email, the fan mail, everything you guys do to support this show, sharing with friends, listening weekly. Thank you so much. I couldn't do it without you guys. And so on this week's show, what I want to do is I want to just recap the last two years. I want to spend just a few minutes talking about the highs and the lows and just the different stuff in the show. I think this is going to be kind of like a behind-the-scenes episode, if you will. And uh let's get on with this. So, you know, if you guys have been listening for a minute, uh, you'll know that when this show started, I was broken and I was very lost. This show started back in 2024, and it started because I was out of law enforcement, I felt like I was going through therapy, I was learning some things about myself, and I wanted to share those things with the rest of the world. But during that time in my life, I was very broken, I was very lost, and I was in, I would call a trauma state, if you will. It was a reactionary state versus a proactive take control of my life state. I was very reflective in the day-to-day episodes of this or the week-to-week episodes of what was going on in my life during that time and how and why I ended up where I was. And where was I? I was coming out of law enforcement against my will. I had been a police officer for 21 years. I had been a homicide detective and child abuse for about 11 years. I wasn't ready to quit, but yet I was being forced out medically. So the podcast was a way for me to take everybody on that journey with me. And as I'm going through that journey of self-discovery and therapy and the different types of modalities of therapy, be it EMDR or neuromodulation or talk therapy, whatever it was, it was an opportunity for me to share those day-to-day circumstances with the fans out there and with the people listening. And why is that important? Because in my heart of hearts, I am here to help other people. God put me on this earth to help other people and to show other people a maybe a better way to do things or some way to get out of crisis or some way to solve the problem that's in front of them. And I believed that I couldn't be the only one that had this pain, that had these circumstances. So, with that, I believed that my pain was given to me for a purpose, and that is how this show got started. Through the different conversations, we have spoken about ups and downs. We've spoken about life lessons. And again, all I wanted to do was help others with my experiences. During those conversations that lasted, well, they've lasted two years now, there was a lot of self-reflection that

Broken Lost And Starting Therapy

SPEAKER_00 3:40

occurred. And I don't believe we can truly heal until we truly look inside of ourselves and figure out who we are at the core. It is very easy to live behind a shield of armor. In law enforcement, that shield of armor could be the bad guy, tough guy attitude. It could be the protector, it could be all the guns, it could be in the sitting in the corner, it could be the paranoia, the hypervigilance, right? That could be what we hide behind that truly doesn't allow us to expose who we are on the inside. Outside of law enforcement, I believe we are still just as susceptible to hiding behind a fake facade. It could be your Facebook life, it could be your work life, it could be the lies that you tell yourself that everything is perfect. And I think we are all, we are all guilty of this at some point. And that is what I wanted to pull the curtain back on. I want to take a peek behind the curtain and just expose the noise that we tell ourselves, the issues that we may really have inside. Again, because I believe that we're all human beings trying to walk this earth. Human beings are flawed species. We're going to have problems. And you know, we don't need to recreate the wheel every time. Chances are we're all living with some of the same issues and problems: insecurity, depression, fear, doubt, financial, family. All of those, I believe, can ring some bells in all of our worlds. And I'm going through it in such a way that I'm learning about those things. I'm learning about myself. And I want to share, I wanted to share my experiences with the world. So when you tackle those same problems and you lay down on your pillow at night, everything is quiet. It's just you, the pillow, and the silence. That is when the problems really come to the surface and your mind won't stop racing. Well, my I was hoping that something I said in these podcasts could help you in those moments and give you some hope to cling to. A lot of things came up during the self-reflection portion of my life and of the last two years. You know, on the air, live on an episode, I recognized my pride issue. I recognized the fact that I thought I was Billy Badass and the I I the sun revolved around me. And that came out live on an episode. It's out there for everybody to hear. You know, when I spoke about on a different episode, my why, one thing that came out, when I start thinking about why I was so tenacious, why was I so eager? Why was I so overzealous? Why did I work 30-something hours straight all the time? Why did I turn over every rock? Why did I seek out the child sex abuse and the murder cases, the cases where victims couldn't speak for themselves. When I was thinking about that and through therapy, this came out as a first-time disclosure. I hadn't told my wife, I hadn't told friends, I hadn't told family, I hadn't told anybody. But when I was nine, 10, 11 years old, I was molested and raped. And that is a secret that I held on to for years. That is a secret that nobody knew. But inside, I've got to believe there was an internal drive for me to validate the other victims of this world and the people out there that couldn't speak for themselves and bring those cases to a conclusion. That was my why. Why I did what I did. Why did I work myself into a medical frenzy where my where my medical condition took my career away from me? And I believe that was my true why. That is on this podcast. I spoke about my faith journey. I've spoken about living a life of faith since I was 19 years old, and how in recent years I pulled away from that and I faded away from that for different various reasons. I isolated and insulated and got away from it. And then how, you know, on the flip side, I came back. I recognized what was going on, and I strengthened that relationship again. But faith is something that is spoken about in this podcast, and I don't steer away from it. And then finally, towards these last few months, there has been this acceptance of who I am and where I am and the family that I have and my job and my life. And the not only do I accept it, but I'm thriving in it, and it is such a good place to be. If you were to listen to the last two years, I believe you would see the arc of my life going from lost and broken, and then reflection and then self-discovery and growth and faith away to faith, and then finally the acceptance of who I am and the thriving in my current life. And that is such a beautiful, beautiful arc. Early on in this podcast, there was a lot of negative and darkness because that's the world I lived in. But towards the last few months, it's been more positive and bright. And I think that

Pride Trauma And Finding Faith Again

SPEAKER_00 8:30

is such an awesome experience to be able to share both sides of that life with you guys. It's a new me. It's a me that I when I go back and I listen to those old episodes, I don't even recognize the Aaron that's talking. I don't recognize that person anymore. It's it and it's it's a beautiful thing to do. And I think being able to memorialize or document these things over the last two years has been, it's actually very, very therapeutic and it's pretty awesome. And I'm glad that I've got to share it with people and they've got something out of it. That is the absolute best part that God has given me life experiences that I can share with other people and as a result, maybe have saved their life. I know I have saved some people's life. Nick, I love you, brother. I know that I have saved some people's life out there with the experiences and the and the willingness to share and be vulnerable. So that is pretty awesome. On this podcast, you guys have heard about the fights with my wife. You've heard about the worst calls that I've been on, you've heard about my experiences within the family and with my kids. And, you know, all those things have been great things to share because I've shared everything with truth, honesty, and vulnerability. And in this world today, I believe it is so, it is so not common for people to be vulnerable. And especially to tell the world I have a pride issue, I was raped as a nine-year-old, and I don't know what I'm doing, I don't have the shit figured out. That is such a hard thing for people to do. And I just thank God for giving me the strength to share it with you guys to hopefully help you guys wherever you are in this very moment. When I started this podcast, I didn't have an instruction guide. All I knew was I could order some stuff off Amazon, I could get the microphones, I could get the processors, I could get the computer program, and I can piecemeal this thing together. And that's exactly what I did. So as I listened to those early episodes, I hear some mistakes, I hear some stuff, but it's just raw learning as we go. And um, for me, that was a great experience too, because when you start off doing something and you have no clue, you're just jumping into the deep end of the pool and you don't even know how to swim. Um, it's nice to see yourself progress and grow. And that has been something that for me, yeah, I think a lot of people don't think about what it's like to run a podcast, trying to find a topic every week or a guest every week, or reach out to people only to be rejected, but then find the really cool diamonds in the rough that are willing to tell their stories. All of that stuff is new to me, and all that stuff is the everyday grind, every week grind of putting this podcast out. But again, continuing to have listeners like you is pretty amazing. Don't be scared to jump off in the deep end if that is ever something that you were wanting to do. Whether it's podcasting or whatever it is, you can do it. We all have the strength to take on new things and master them, which is something that I think is amazing to have the bandwidth to be able to do that. Everything that I've tried to do on this show, you know, not only am I dealing with vulnerability and honesty and truth, but I'm always trying to either provide some kind of entertainment, education, or provide a value to people. And that is something I've got different types of shows, as you all know. And we've done shows with that are typical Tuesday episodes. Essentially, those are case studies of just the everyday nonsense that happens out there in the world. There's snapshots. I did the turning point series, and then you have the everyday episodes where I just dive into life. And not knowing, again, not knowing, nobody telling me to do that. I just kind of figured it out as we went. But in doing that, it provided

Building A Podcast From Nothing

SPEAKER_00 12:15

some sensitive insight to the different experiences that not only I had, that but that my guests had. And those things are experiences a lot of times we as human beings want to pretend don't exist. The fear, the darkness, all that stuff. We want to pretend that those things aren't out there in this world and that we are just super solid. But we know that is not the case. We know that those things exist, but we just have to shine a light on them. And the cool thing about working night shift for so many years is around the back of that building is a dark and scary place until we shine some light on it. And all of a sudden we can see what's in front of us, we can deal with it, we can assess it, and we can move on. And that has been one of the purposes of this show. Now, the the name of the show is Murders to Music, right? So you got to talk about where's this music. So the music has been the thread that has kept me sane during my entire career. And by music, I mean playing music, performing music, entertaining. And it just allowed me to go to a different place during those darkest moments of my world. And that is the music side of murders to music. And I think it's super important for me because, you know, in law enforcement and all the attention to detail and communication, all that stuff was great. But coming out of law enforcement, I still wanted to help people in a special way, but it had to look differently than when it was their murder day or their child molestation day or their worst day. It had to look different. And I think that God gave me the passion for people, and that's why I opened up my business streamline. Streamline, we do lighting and sound production, DJ and live music for weddings and corporate events, but a lot of weddings, and that's what I want to focus on. You know, at one part, at one point in my life, I was a part of people's worst days, and now I get to help them create their best days, and that is such a shining light for me, and I love it. So that is the murders to music transition from darkness to light. That is the basis and the idea behind the title of this show, which really um shines

Why Music Keeps Me Steady

SPEAKER_00 14:20

a lot of light on who I am as a human being. But the cool thing about this show is it's not just shining the light on who I am. I have had some amazing guests over the last couple of years, and I want to talk about their stories. I want to talk about some of the guests, I want to talk about some of the highlights. And in doing this, I don't want to sound like a commercial, but I do want to tell you guys the episodes because you may want to go back and listen to an episode where so-and-so was talking about such and such, but I don't want you guys to have to go through and find each episode. So, you know, the first one, episode three, and that is a conversation between me and my now 21-year-old son. He was born with a severe internal birth defect and given a 0% chance of survival at birth. We were Medevact from Anchorage, Alaska to Portland, Oregon, where we spent three months. He survived. However, in 2020, he got really sick and he started circling the drain and nearly died on the operating table. We hear about his whole story, and it's easy for me to hear about that story from a parent's perspective because I know what I was thinking and feeling, but it's the first time he opened up and told us what it was like to know that he was dying and the perspective he had on that entire circumstance. So that was super cool. Episode number six talks about one of my cases, and it was the most haunting case that I ever went on. And in short, a 12-year-old killed herself. And it was the circumstances surrounding that death that uh haunted me and the other first responders on that scene. And this is one of those cases where every time I thought about it, I was crushed with emotion because of the baggage that I carried with me because of that case and the circumstances. Now, the cool thing about therapy is and God's timing is that in his timing, we unpack these boxes, and in his timing, we are able to process these things, uh, change our relationship with the trauma. Because, like I've said before, the trauma that people are triggered, the trauma we have is just based on the relationship we carry with a set of circumstances that occurred to us or around us. When we change that relationship, when we change the filter that we look through or the angle we perceive the situation at, oftentimes we can offload some of

Standout Guests And Hard Stories

SPEAKER_00 16:50

that trauma, offload some of that baggage, and be able to have the memory, be able to remember the experience without all of the emotional parts that go with that. So, why do I tell you this? I tell you this because the young lady killed herself because her parents took away her cell phone. At least that was the straw that broke the camel's back. I processed that on a Friday, and over that weekend, I found text messages in my daughter's phone where she was contemplating suicide and self-harm, and I verified there had been some self-harm. Well, had I not processed that emotionally, I wouldn't have had the bandwidth or the knowledge or the experience to help my daughter through what she was going through. And it because I was able to process it, I was able to help my daughter, and as a result, by God taking me out of law enforcement and losing my identity and some of my daughter's issues, her losing her identity, we were able to have that conversation. And as a result, I believe I have my daughter today because of it. I don't know that I would have had her had I not been able to process that call and had the bandwidth to help my daughter. Episode number 16. My co-worker, Mr. John Beale, he talks about losing two children, both very young, I believe three and five years old, and doing CPR on them. And these are sudden, unexplained deaths, but they're not SIDs. And then the process that he has to go through to identify what killed his children. And then when his family turned on him, believing that he was doing something wrong, now this is a police officer. And when the family turned on him believing he was doing something, actually turned him into child protective services because his two kids had died, only to find out that this is not something he was doing. This is a genetic issue, and his other kids are also at risk of dying. So what is it like to live every day wondering if every time your child gets sick, they could die? John tells his whole story on episode number 16. But then there's Ashley, episode 19 and 20. Ashley is one of my victims. She's a survivor, she's a sex abuse survivor. Her father molested and raped her over a thousand times between the ages of three years old and twenty years old. He got her pregnant at 15, he aborted the baby. He saw her as his girlfriend. And Ashley held on to this delayed report at 23 years old because she wanted to protect others that she felt like might be getting abused. And finally it tore the family apart. But in a strange turn of events, the mom knew about the whole thing, and the mom found the evidence and burned it and destroyed it so the case couldn't be moved forward. Little did she know we had other evidence and we could move the case without it. And as a result, Dad is spending the rest of his life in jail. But Ashley bears it all and tells all of the secrets because she wants to help other people who might be in that position. I already spoke about identifying my pride. That's episode 22. We talk about faith, faith on the front lines, episode 26, where myself, a friend of mine, James, who's a police officer and an army veteran, and then a local pastor, Tim, we get to there and we talk about the dirty truth and what faith looks like on the front lines of law enforcement, military, and your corporate careers. What is it like to be a Christian on Sunday, but walk into that corporate environment on Monday where you feel like a stranger and alone and you're on an island? Well, we talk about all of those things with honesty, truth, and vulnerability. Episode 32 is Jeff Hall. Jeff Hall is an Alaska State trooper retired. He's now 70 years old. He's been involved in four officer-involved shootings, including one from a helicopter where he shot a serial killer that was moving his way from Chicago through Canada into Alaska, killing a dozen or more people. And Jeff tells the story about Manley Hot Springs and what that day was like when they went out knowing they were going to confront somebody that would like to kill them. Episode number 39, I talk about my why. I talk about my sexual abuse experience and why I had such a drive for law enforcement. Episode number 42 is cool because that is Jason. Jason was at the Jason Al Dean shooting and he survived the shooting with bullets raining down around him and his wife as they ran to flee for their lives. He talks about the entire story of what that Jason Al Dean Las Vegas shooting was like and what the next day, 24 hours look like in surviving that episode. So feel free to listen to that podcast, and that's episode number 42, and that's surviving the Jason L. Dean concert. But then there's episode 53. Jay Dobbins, an ATF agent that infiltrated the Hells Angels for two and a half years and ultimately indicted 53 people. Jay is on the show. There's movies made about him, there's TV shows made about him. He's on the show telling his story. And he goes further to talk about what it was like and how it affected his faith and how it affected his family and how it affected his relationship with his wife and his kids. And then when they burned down his house. Episode number 53 with Jay Dobbins. Imagine. Imagine being a Marine veteran, you come home, you find yourself sick, depressed, alcoholic, and life isn't worth living. So you shoot yourself between the eyes, but it doesn't kill you. The bullet just circles your brain, gives you a bad headache, and makes you blind and what makes you blind, and also you lose hearing in one ear. But then your life isn't over because you have to learn how to live that way and survive. But not only do you learn how to survive, you learn how to thrive. You teach yourself new skills like whitewater rafting, skydiving, kayaking, mountain biking, all of the extreme sports. But even more so, you realize that sometimes computer programs are designed for people with disabilities and sometimes they're not. So you teach yourself how to write computer code and you create award-winning programs for people with disabilities, and you're blind and you've never done computer code before. Check out that episode. That is episode number 84. Episode number 101 is with Kat. Kat is a Las Vegas firefighter, a lady who served an entire career of 21, 22 years. Talk about the ins and the outs, the ups and downs, the depressions, and the highlights of what life is like as a career firefighter, a female in the Las Vegas metro area. Episode number 101. Episode number 113 and 122 are both uh hard to listen to. Episode 113 is with the widow of Bill Bowman. Bill Bowman is a Clackamas County Sheriff's Deputy who was shot and killed in the line of duty by a fellow coworker. During a training exercise, the fellow coworker accidentally loaded a live round into the rifle. And during a hostage sniper scenario, Mr. Bowman was shot in the head with a live round by his coworker. Here, what the aftermath was like, the good and the bad by the widow as she survived that incident. And then episode number 122 is with the mother of another fallen officer, Tara O'Sullivan, with Sacramento Police Department, was killed in the line of duty while in her field training program. And you hear from them hear from her mom as she tells the story about what Tara was like growing up and what it was like getting the call that day and surviving that incident. Uh it's pretty emotional at the end. Be prepared for the last question that I ask the mom. And then episode number 146 is the last one that I'll talk about. That is surviving the savage seas. That is a man who is now 70 years old. When he was 15 years old, he and his family left on a yacht from Scotland to travel around the world. During that time, their yacht got attacked by killer whales. They had six people had to live on a three-foot by five-foot dinghy in the middle of the ocean for seven weeks until they were rescued. You hear about all of the tales being lost in the middle of the ocean, what they had to do to survive, and he just tells an amazing story, episode number 146. I have had so many more guests on the show, and I just want to say thank you to all of the guests who came on and told their stories with vulnerability, honesty, and integrity, all for the purpose of helping other people heal and sharing the life lessons that God

Downloads Global Reach And Coffee Offer

SPEAKER_00 25:30

had given them. So thank you guys so much. I want to say thank you to all the fans that listen every single week and continue to share this podcast. Thank you guys so much. I can't be more honored to have you guys be a part of my life. I wish I could meet every single one of you guys. If I'm if you guys are ever in the Portland, Oregon area and you want to meet for coffee, please reach out to me. Murdersthenumbert music at gmail.com. Murders2music at gmail.com. I would love to buy you a cup of coffee. This podcast has had 59.1,000 downloads total. The number one episode is an episode called Frozen Justice. It is the first episode of this podcast, and it is where it all started, and it's where my downward spiral started mentally. There's 3,400 cities that are listening to this podcast in 111 different countries. We are from Alaska to Asia to Australia to South America. We are literally hitting the entire globe with the Murders to Music podcast. I want to thank God for giving me the wisdom and the strength and the experiences to share with other people. I hope you guys have enjoyed this. I hope you guys are loving the show. I hope you guys are getting something out of it. Again, educational, entertaining, or provide value. Thank you guys so much. We are gonna sign off, but I want to let you guys listen to episode number one. We're gonna go back to where it all started. Stay tuned. Here it comes. That is a Murders to Music podcast. Well,

Where It All Started Replay

SPEAKER_00 27:09

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? Uh, 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. 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 this 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. This is not necessarily a commercial about Streamline, uh, but more about me and how I got here. So let's start in the beginning. When I was three years,

Alaska Roots And Early Music Life

SPEAKER_00 30:05

just kidding. So back in the beginning, I was born and raised in Alaska. I grew up in uh born in Anchorage, grew up in a town called Kenai, and was went to school in a town called Nikiski. Kenai Peninsula has about 60,000 people total for four or five 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. It's the kind of place where, as an eight, nine-year-old kid, growing up and coming home from school, 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 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, 100 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. 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 Daffy 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. 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 lived, 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, ran power up it. All of this to say, after getting that satellite dish that pointed towards the east-west, some satellite number 117, we were able to get the TV show cops. 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. 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, 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, I rode with a police officer named Mike Alfers. Mike Alfurs 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 and out. That was a lot of fun. And uh that was my first experience with a police department. They have a library there. You're 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 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 in those days, uh, 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 run traffic control at accidents. Um, we wrote reports on what we did, we got to help with all the little medial stuff and crime scene processing. And

Explorers First Death Scene Numbness

SPEAKER_00 37:10

the more you rode, the more you got to do, the more they trusted you, the more freedom you had and ability you had to do things. 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 it 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 to 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. And I remember in that moment that my anxiety and stress level went up because I had 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 in the bottom of that valley was a creek. And I remember sitting in the car and my anxiety was through the roof, and I didn't know what I was gonna look, what I was gonna see. And the idea of seeing a dead body that had been there for months, potentially, uh 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 gonna 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. It's all the information he had. So the police officer is with, and I walk down to the bottom of this hill. It was a fairly steep decline, and 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 did I know in just a couple minutes I was gonna 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, 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, 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 face down in water and sludge. And if you've ever been to Macy's, no, sorry, not Macy's, Spencer's GIFs, 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. 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 gonna do next, because I'd never been on a scene like this, so I didn't know what the next step was. I was 13 years old. I remember helping bag the body and it not affecting me, it being just numb and cold. Uh 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 um 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. So back to the story. 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 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, it'd been laying there seven months. This is what it looked like. And I'm like, man, I'm a big man on campus. All 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

Phoenix Marriage And The Road Back

SPEAKER_00 43:40

17. When I was 17 years old, 17 and a half years old, um, 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 had 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, Slovatan 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. 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 uh kissed my mom goodbye. She was working at the Catmile 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. Uh, 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 uh 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. I got a job with Walmart Kmart. Uh while I was working with Walmart Kmart, I was also going to school for criminal justice. And I met uh a gal who is now my wife. Her name's Stacy. So we met at work. We weren't supposed to be dating. I was lost prevention. She was a jewelry uh 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 uh 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 during that time. I worked patrol, I worked canine, I worked a drug unit, uh, worked more moose accidents where cars hit moose. Uh, usually happens at 3 in the morning at 17 below. I got tired of that. During that time, I had my son. Uh first boy was justice. When he was born, it'll be it's a whole nother 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 whatever. This was trauma, but at the time I didn't realize it. We just knuckled down and got through it. In 2001, uh, 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 wasn't supposed to work on Christmas night. It was his wife's birthday. And uh 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.

Line Of Duty Loss And Lingering Guilt

SPEAKER_00 49:20

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. 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. And it wasn't until I get through the last year and a half, which we'll finally get to, but uh, since I've been doing 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. After all, this man was my mentor. I grew up around him. He was there that 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, 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. So after coming uh 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 Emmanuel 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 to move. 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 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 were 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. 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 2020 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 and 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. 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, uh finding your identity and 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,

Why Murders To Music Exists

SPEAKER_00 55:10

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. 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 the 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 uh live music engagement, how to read a crowd, um, 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 YouTube, 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. 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. I'm gonna continue to move forward. Just so you know, I'm gonna continue to move forward. And I think my life lessons and helping people is important. If you find that interesting, I think that that is gonna be, I think, the basis of my podcast. I am gonna talk live music. I'm gonna talk stories, I'm gonna tell some stories, I'm gonna teach and educate there as well. But uh I think the podcast, there's gonna be a lot of interviews. I'm gonna 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 because that's what I love to do. So there's gonna be a good mix, healthy mix of both. Originally I thought this was gonna be 60, 70% entertainment side, 30% life side. Right now, I think I'm changing those numbers. I'm gonna reverse them. I'm gonna 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. We're gonna break some of this down. We're gonna break down some of those calls in Alaska that I'm gonna talk about John Watson some more. I'm gonna talk about the handful of calls in a career that really stick out. Not because I'm gonna tell the details of the call and for storytelling's 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 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 gonna keep this thing going. I hope to get an episode out every week. 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, uh, 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 streamlinedj.com. You can leave messages right there on YouTube if you're watching this. Hit me up, find me, streamline events and entertainment, Aaron at streamline dj.com. 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.