Jennifer Thompson

It was unexpected. It was out of the blue. It wasn't pre-coordinated.

And he said, hey, I am available this afternoon. I'm in your area. Are you available? I said, actually, yeah, I am. And he said, well, do you want to meet up? I said, sure.

I had entered a relationship with someone, and it made me really reflect on my situation with Michael because I can't say I didn't love him anymore. I was healing and moving forward, but it's not just done. And so I emailed him and said, I've met someone. I'm entering this relationship. Are you sure? Are you still sure?

We had a pretty amazing relationship. Yeah, it had a lot of brokenness in it, but I don't know. Are you absolutely 100%? Had he said, yep, I'm sure, I would have said, okay, carry on and move forward. But he didn't say that. And he wrote back, no, I'm not.

And actually, he told me that he didn't love her. I can't say what's true and what isn't. I don't know. But what he told me was that it wasn't like us. It was a convenience. They were partners. They each had things that the other needed.

And he looked very disheveled and frumpy, like just kind of hair was poofy and clothes untucked, which is different because he's usually very meticulous and neat and tidy, tucked in belt, you know, that kind of thing.

I'm going to kind of have some general chit-chat. And then he says, hey. You know there's a beach around here? And I said, well, it's Everett. It's a port. It's not very pretty, though. What are you looking for?

I said, sure, that sounds good. He said, I have some time. He said, but my car is really full. There's no room for you, so I'll just follow you. I said, that's fine.

Well, and the way there was very strange because he was driving so carefully, laying low, trying not to draw attention to himself. And this is a man that flips a U-turn when it's convenient for him, even if it's illegal.

No. At this time, he seemed very calm, but the tension was so thick. The unspoken was so loud, and I felt, I don't know, it was really, really a strange, because he and I have very easy breezy conversations, so it was very weird. It was very uncomfortable.

And so I went in, he went in and I came out and he was still in there. He was in there for a long time. And I sat on a picnic bench and just waited, waited. And he came out and he was just distraught. Something happened while he was in there. He came out and his entire demeanor completely changed.

He looks stressed out, like he's freaking out. He's just noticeably agitated and not okay.

I said, are you okay? And he said, no, I think I'm in trouble. And I said, real trouble or like perceived trouble? And he said, like 10 to 15 years felony trouble.

I also know this man to be very melodramatic, so I'm trying to assess him. I'm reading him and looking at him, and I'm thinking in my head, is this real? Is this not? At that point, he was sitting in my passenger seat, and I was in the driver's seat. And he was very noticeably agitated, rubbing his temples and the fingers of his hair.

really vigilant, watching around, a little paranoid, freaking out.

Yeah, at one point a patrolman had come by and he really, really went crazy and he said, I feel like they know. And I said, they don't know anything. You're just a guy sitting in a car in a parking lot. He says, you're right. It's just that guilty conscious thing. And

No, I didn't. I probably didn't want to know. Because if it was real, I didn't want to know. And if it was being dramatic, I didn't need to know.

He made reference to if he was to be pulled over, he was just trying to get out of this area. And if he had been pulled over and law enforcement had seen what was inside his car, he'd go away for life.

I think the part that disturbs me the most, my part of it, is when we parted ways that day, kissed him on the cheek. And that haunts me because he had a body in that car.

Michael looks at a dual personality. He was a family man by day and tried to live up this action hero persona in the background.

You know, we eloped. It wasn't a wedding.

Well, no.

No, he thinks he is. How do you mean? He wanted to be. He wanted to be. He idealized that. He read about it. He aspired to be that.

Michael Oakes was very infatuated with guns, weapons, and I think they made him feel powerful, strong, capable.

It's called On Killing, and it's a book about the psychology of killing.

Michael Oakes told me that he was in the small percentage of people who could kill without remorse.

Michael had a really strong sense of righteousness and love. He believed that bad people should be taken out so that the good people can not be harmed. The problem is he decided who was bad and who wasn't. And he felt that he had the right to just take a bad man out. And we would argue about that. We argued about that for years. Right and wrong. Can you kill? Can you not kill?

And it was a point of contention in our marriage.

I remember his hand coming up and slapping me across the face, and I remember it very clearly. And I was expecting, after feeling it, I was expecting the, oh my God, I'm sorry, oh my God. And he didn't. He said, get the f*** out of my house. And he chased me down the stairs. And I could feel his breath on my neck and his body behind me. It was horrible. It was horrible because I trusted him.

I trusted him and he had never, he had been angry before. He had shown aggression before, but never at me.

And I went to my mom's and I spent two weeks, just took my kids to Disneyland, went to the beach, just got away from it. And then decided that I needed to get an apartment somewhere because I couldn't go back to the house. On August 15th, he said, if you can't give me a date that you're coming back, We're done. And so he told me he wanted a divorce.

I think he's a very insecure man. And I think that he musters up confidence really well. He's an excellent salesman. He's an excellent presenter of images.

During the course of our marriage, he told me that he was capable of killing without remorse.

About May 2008, he told me that there was a potential job coming up that he was interested in taking about a woman and an ex-spouse that was harassing her.

They would basically use Linda as sort of bait to lure the ex-spouse toward her.

they would take him out.

Right.

No.

Yeah, we had, you know, mortgage, family, house, kids kind of thing. And I said, this isn't a good thing for you to be doing. And we had a big fight about it, big argument.

Eventually, I left the home in July of 2008 for separation.

In January of 2009, our divorce became final, and we pretty much stopped contact.

We still had this intensity together, and so it was just an email of, are you sure? Are you sure? Her instead of me.

They just said he was here on a job, a side job, and I knew what that meant, but I didn't ask for specifics.

When he was leaving here, he said he was going on and that there was risk involved, possible injury to himself, that it was fairly dangerous.

He texted me and said, job failed, I'm okay, no pay though.

He was really concerned about getting pulled over with the things in his vehicle. He wanted to get them home and get them sterilized. And he said, if anyone sees this now, I'm going in right away.

Mm-hmm.

The father of the woman was initiating the job.

I want the truth from Michael Oakes as to what really occurred on that day, October 28, 2009.

No.

Mark Stover's body.

I, in my 28 years of experience as a criminal defense attorney, have never, ever come across anything as odd as what happened in Dylan Adams' federal case.

And he informs us that Jason has been talking to prosecutors and that he is going to be testifying against Zach at trial.

Is that her lunch?