S-Town · Serial Productions

Chapter V

March 28, 2017·1 hr 1 min·5 clips

Tyler's mother warns he'll be in jail Monday with nine felony charges, as John's ghost still haunts them.

Chapter V opens in December 2015 with reporter Brian Reed receiving an urgent Facebook message from Tyler Goodson's mother, Maya, warning that Tyler faces a grand jury indictment on felony theft charges related to items he took from John McLemore's property after John's suicide. Tyler's grandmother, Ms. Irene Hicks, explains the situation over the phone, listing nine felony charges and expressing exhausted, conflicted love for her grandson. Ms. Hicks' household is a portrait of compounding hardship: she cares for a son with a bullet lodged in his brain, supports her depressed daughter Maya, recently housed a sex offender relative, and has Tyler and his pregnant girlfriend living in a half-finished house in her yard. She describes playing Andrea Bocelli as a signal to her family that she is too upset to be disturbed, and admits she has been playing it constantly. Reed then flashes back six weeks to a courthouse parking lot in Woodstock, Alabama, where Tyler failed to appear for a misdemeanor trespassing hearing, sending his lawyer instead because he didn't want to lose a day's factory work. John's cousins Rita and her husband Charlie had driven ten hours from Florida only to watch a two-and-a-half-minute adjournment. In the parking lot at sunset, Rita speaks candidly to Reed and speculates — acknowledging she has no evidence — that Tyler may have encouraged John to drink cyanide while intoxicated. Reed notes that phone records, witness accounts, and the police report contradict this theory. Two months later, Rita calls Reed privately while Charlie is out of town to share a discovery: she contacted the state motor vehicle office about John's pickup truck and learned that someone had signed John's name on the title in July, a month after his June death, and sold the truck to a man for $3,300 via a Facebook post. The buyer confirmed he purchased it directly from Tyler. Rita also discovered Tyler allegedly sold John's Mercedes for $900 through a similar scheme. Rita distrusts the Woodstock police, particularly Officer Jerry Lightsey, whom she believes has been protecting Tyler due to a longstanding personal friendship with Tyler's family. Reed confirms that Lightsey is indeed a family friend and recounts Tyler giving Lightsey a tour of the house he is building from John's lumber. Reed describes the house as a remarkable, scavenged structure incorporating the white trailer from John's property, bus lumber, driftwood, telephone poles, and a horse's watering trough converted into a shower. Rita, a meticulous record-keeper like her cousin John, has been keeping a daily journal of every interaction since John's death, and Reed notes he appears in it on day 18. Rita recounts the chaotic first days after John's suicide: the confrontation with Tyler in the driveway, the hospital visit where Tyler called Mary Grace 'Mama' and claimed to be her adopted son, and the social worker's decision not to release Mary Grace to Tyler after he couldn't name her doctor or medications. Rita says she eventually decided to fight for Mary Grace after learning Tyler had been at John's house loading items. The episode also includes a darkly comic digression about Rita requesting John's gold nipple rings from the undertaker as a keepsake. Reed reflects on Tyler's worldview, shaped by an abusive father later convicted of child sex abuse, a suspended license that spiraled into compounding fines — what John called 'fine slavery' — and a habit of conflating serious injustices with petty grievances. Tyler maintains he did nothing wrong, citing bills of sale for the buses and claiming police gave him permission. The episode closes with Tyler learning of forgery allegations and deflecting, and Reed noting that the feud has worn both sides down, making them cruder and smaller versions of themselves.

As heard by us

A Facebook warning and a warrant put Tyler's family under real pressure.

Chapter 5 is less a detour than a tightening of the screw: a Sunday evening Facebook message, a warrant for Tyler, and a family left bracing for the chance that he will be in jail Monday.

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Why you'd press play

A jail warning turns into a family argument over blame and loyalty.

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