A Secret She Thought No One Would Ever Discover | True Crime Documentary — The Hidden Truth That Changed Everything

Hello everyone and welcome back to True Crime Stories. I know many of you use these episodes to fall asleep. So before you drift off, I'd love it if you could leave a comment letting me know where you're listening from around the world. Also don't forget to like and subscribe if you're enjoying the episodes. In September 2024, a television personality learned that his wife had been unfaithful. He handled the discovery with dignity. He offered her a way forward, an amicable divorce, without bitterness, or a sincere effort to repair their relationship. She looked him in the eyes and said she did not want to lose him. What he did not realize was that four months earlier, she had begun writing to a man serving three life sentences for murdering his own family. He had no idea she was already asking that man a question no one should ever entertain about the person sleeping beside them. What would it take to make him disappear for good? He also had no idea that somewhere in Nevada, his precise schedule, his hotel address, and even photographs of his car were being entered into a phone and sent to a prison cell in Florida. This is the story of a marriage that from the outside, appeared to belong in a fairy tale, a proposal outside the castle at Disneyland, a wedding at the Haunted Mansion. And beneath that picture, a hidden exchange of messages that transformed a woman, known for advocating for people with chronic illnesses, into a defendant accused of conspiring to commit murder. Stay with us because the way this case came to light is stranger and sadder than you might imagine. Aaron Goodwin was born on April 1, 1976, and grew up around Portland, Oregon. Unlike some of the people he would eventually work with, he was not a child whose entire future had been shaped by one dramatic encounter with a ghost. His father's name was Don Goodwin, and Aaron grew up with a sister to whom he remained close for years. As children, the two regularly visited Oregon's enchanted forest theme park, what Aaron did have from an early age was a fascination with cameras and storytelling. He had no formal academic background in filmmaking. Instead, he developed his abilities the way many self-taught people do, by showing up and taking initiative. Around 1998, Aaron moved from Portland to Las Vegas. Although he was not enrolled at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, he attended a guest lecture on filmmaking there anyway. When it ended, he stayed behind to ask questions. Another young man in the audience did the same. Nick Groff, a UNLV film student searching for someone to help shoot his short films. One of the lecturers pointed him toward Aaron. That small encounter, two strangers lingering in a lecture hall a little longer than everyone else, would become the foundation of one of television's longest running paranormal programs. After the following years, Aaron taught himself camera work, editing and production. He filmed UFC events, worked on WWE broadcasts, and covered red carpet events throughout Las Vegas. He was more than the anxious man-viewers would eventually watch screaming his way through a band into silence. First and foremost, he was a professional cameraman. Nor was he simply the frightened television personality audiences would later recognize. Having before ghost adventures existed as an idea, Aaron had the technical ability to capture footage in the dark under pressure, while everyone else's attention was somewhere else. Through Nick Aaron eventually met Zack Beggins, a Las Vegas DJ whom Nick had hired for his wedding. Their conversation moved from wedding arrangements to filmmaking and unexplained phenomena. By 2004, the three men, friends before they were filmmaking partners, were hauling borrowed equipment into Nevada's abandoned mining towns and historic hotels to see what their cameras might record. The documentary that emerged filmed at locations including the old Washoe Club in the Goldfield Hotel, earned a grand jury prize at an independent film festival. It eventually aired on the sci-fi channel in 2007. A year later, the travel channel picked it up as a series. Ghost Adventures premiered on October 17, 2008, and Aaron, the man who had technically slipped into a university lecture a decade earlier, became one of its three original investigators. On screen, Aaron became known as the reluctant one. Zack would send him alone into places everyone felt uneasy about entering, sometimes because the crew believed his fear encouraged things to happen on camera. Aaron protested panicked and went inside anyway. He kept doing its season after season, long after Nick Groff left the show following its tenth season. By the middle of the 2020s, Aaron was one of the last direct connections to the original three-man documentary crew. Away from the cameras, he built other projects as well. Aaron Goodwin Collections was a nightmare-inspired line of artwork and merchandise, drawing directly on his dreams and turning them into prints and clothing. His lifestyle brand, Big Stepan, organized charitable holiday toy drives for children. He also hosted a podcast, speaking openly about his life, his weight loss journey, his diet, and his relationships. Aaron was never a celebrity whose public presence was tightly controlled. He communicated with fans personally and casually, often with the same unfiltered honesty that made him such a compelling presence on television. Meanwhile, in a life that had not yet intersected with his, a woman named Victoria was growing up largely outside public view. Little about her early childhood has been verified. What is known is that she played competitive college golf and had serious ambitions of becoming a professional. Those plans were disrupted by acoolagia, a rare condition that makes it difficult for the esophagus to move food into the stomach. Victoria later described spending roughly two years dealing with unexplained symptoms, incorrect diagnoses, and what she called medical gaslighting before finally getting answers. She became an advocate for others living with chronic illnesses, posting photographs of her surgical scars and discussing candidly how the condition had affected her body and her golfing career. In later court proceedings, she also described living with complex post-traumatic stress disorder and taking medication to manage it. Before any of this became a criminal matter, Victoria's online identity revolved around two things. Her struggle with acoolagia and her devotion to animals. She and Aaron shared their home with a cat, a dog, and two rats. She consistently portrayed herself as someone who loved every one of them deeply. Aaron and Victoria's paths crossed around 2018. By 2019, he was publicly describing her as the person who made him laugh, held his hand, and helped him feel safe when he was feeling low. That same year, he proposed outside the castle at Disneyland. Court records placed their legal marriage on May 4, 2020. The pandemic repeatedly postponed their actual celebration, and they finally held their public wedding ceremony in August 2022. They selected a suitably theatrical setting for a paranormal investigator. Disneyland's haunted mansion. Everything visible about the relationship suggested devotion. They shared a love of Disney, animals, and miniature golf, along with a home full of pets. In August 2024, Aaron marked their wedding anniversary online by calling Victoria his best friend. What Aaron did not know was that four months earlier, in April 2024, a streaming platform had released a true crime documentary series called "Control Plus All Plus Desire." It told the story of a Florida man named Grant Amato. Born on May 20, 1989, Amato had trained as a nurse. He developed an obsessive online attachment to a webcam performer and drained approximately $200,000 from his family while trying to keep her interested in him. When his parents cut off their support, Amato responded in January 2019 by shooting and killing his mother, father, and older brother. He staged the scene in an effort to make his brother appear responsible. Amato was convicted of three counts of first degree murder and sentenced to three consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole. According to the account Victoria later gave investigators, she learned about Amato through that documentary and began corresponding with him in May 2024. She characterized it initially as a penpal relationship. Her marriage, she said, was going through a difficult period and she felt lonely. What started as correspondence with a convicted triple murderer developed into a romance, investigators later learned that Victoria and Amato referred to themselves as spiritually married. In their private vocabulary, Victoria reduced Aaron to merely her first husband. She reportedly concealed Amato's true identity from Aaron for months, referring to him by an entirely different name, Vincent. In September 2024 that secrecy began to break down, at least in part, Aaron discovered that Victoria had been unfaithful with several men, including the one she called Vincent. He still did not know that Vincent was a convicted family murderer serving life without parole. Even then, Aaron offered Victoria a choice that would take on enormous significance months later, and the marriage through divorce, or try to repair it. she told him she was. he did not want to lose him. Aaron decided to stay. He had no idea that behind that decision, a far darker conversation was already taking place. By the fall of 2024, Victoria and Amato's messages had moved beyond infidelity and into planning. Investigators say they discussed permanently removing Aaron from the picture, instead of Victoria simply divorcing him. Amato brought the idea to an outside contact, an individual whose identity has not been publicly disclosed and who was expected to carry it out. Victoria allegedly used Apple's location-sharing feature to provide Amato with Aaron's whereabouts in real time, as well as his filming schedule, photographs, and information about his vehicle. In October 2024, that information became actionable when the ghost adventure's team traveled to film in the barsto area of California. According to the arrest report, Victoria told Amato exactly where Aaron would be staying. Amato then relayed those details to the unidentified outside participant. The messages described a price of approximately $11,515 for the job, with an initial payment of $2,500 discussed as a deposit. As Aaron slept in his hotel room, unaware of what was happening, Amato reportedly messaged the outside contact to request an update. Had it been done? Victoria, meanwhile, sent messages of her own expressing anxiety and disbelief at how far things had gone. Nothing happened to Aaron that night. Why the plan never went ahead has never been publicly explained. Perhaps the unidentified contact never intended to act. Perhaps the person accepted money and did nothing. Or perhaps the arrangement simply fell apart. By November 2024, according to the defense, Victoria would later present. Her contact with Amato and his associates had dropped sharply. Her attorney would argue that she had effectively distanced herself from the conspiracy by then. Any additional money leaving her accounts afterward, he maintained was not payment for a killing. It was handed over under blackmail to people who now possessed evidence of her involvement. Under that explanation, the roughly $60,000 later mentioned at sentencing was not the cost of a murder. It was money Victoria paid to keep quiet that people who could expose what she had already done. Prosecutors were unconvinced that reduced communication amounted to a genuine withdrawal. Nothing in the public record establishes that Victoria warned Aaron, contacted law enforcement, or tried to retrieve the location information she had already supplied. For months, nothing appeared to change. Aaron continued filming ghost adventures. Victoria continued posting about their marriage. On Valentine's Day, February 14th, 2025, less than a month before everything unraveled. Aaron shared a lighthearted post about losing a miniature golf game to her. The turning point came from an entirely different direction, a contraband cell phone inside a Florida prison. Grant Amato was not legally permitted to possess a personal phone while incarcerated. When correctional officers at Okachobi correctional institution confiscated a device connected to him, investigators discovered messages describing a woman in Nevada, a proposed murder, and a named target, Aaron Goodwin. Florida's Office of Inspector General was notified around March 4th, 2025, and quickly passed the information to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Nevada detectives acted swiftly. The identified Victoria obtained a search warrant for the Goodwin home and arrived to question her in person. Aaron learned what was happening as it unfolded under extraordinarily unusual circumstances. On March 6, 2025, he was filming an investigation inside the abandoned Hollydale Mental Health Facility in Downey, California when he received a word that police were at his house in Las Vegas. The cameras were already rolling. That raw, unscripted moment as he absorbed the news later appeared in an episode of ghost adventures. Aaron has said he never watched the finished version himself. Describing it as too painful to relive. That same day, Victoria was arrested in Las Vegas and booked on suspicion of solicitation to commit murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Her bail was set at $100,000. During her police interview, Victoria did not deny knowing a motto. Instead, she downplayed what had happened. She told detectives that the connection began as a pen pal exchange by mail. That she had felt lonely in her marriage and that their talk of another life together was only daydreaming rather than an actual plan. She said she could not remember sending some of the most damaging messages. She also suggested that some of the money they discussed was intended for cell phones rather than a killing. Investigators did not accept that explanation. The messages contained a proposed payment arrangement, Aaron's exact location, and direct questions about whether the job was finished. Those details looked far more like logistics than fantasy. Six days after Victoria's arrest on March 12, 2025, Aaron filed for divorce in Clark County. He cited incompatibility that made continuing the marriage impossible and requested a division of assets with neither party receiving alimony. He later amended the filing to include civil claims involving assault, false imprisonment, and emotional distress, along with a request for punitive damages. Victoria's criminal case proceeded through the courts over the following weeks. At a March 25 hearing, her attorney, David Brown, indicated that she wanted to negotiate a guilty plea rather than go to trial. She waived her right to a speedy preliminary hearing. Those negotiations produced an agreement in April 2025. Victoria agreed to plead guilty to one felony count of conspiracy to commit murder. In exchange, prosecutors dropped the separate solicitation charge. The plea agreement left sentencing entirely to the judge within a legal range extending from probation to 10 years in custody. During the plea hearing, Victoria assured the court that neither her complex PTSD nor the medication she took prevented her from understanding what she was agreeing to. Sentencing took place on June 5, 2025, before District Judge Nadia Crom. Aaron addressed the court directly. For seven years, he told the judge, he had believed Victoria was his best friend and that their marriage was built on love. Then he discovered that she had been unfaithful with multiple men supplied his location to people discussing his murder. And in his words, tried more than once to hire a killer to get rid of him. He said their savings, approximately $60,000 by his calculation, had been drained through payments connected to the scheme. He described crying every day, hiring armed security and losing his ability to trust anyone. He asked the judge to impose a prison sentence, arguing that Victoria's remorse had appeared only after she was caught. Victoria's attorney requested probation. He pointed to her lack of a criminal record, her continuing health problems, and her decision to remain in custody rather than post the $100,000 bail her family could have provided. He also argued that she had withdrawn from the scheme months before her arrest. Prosecutor Christopher Hamner, bound by the plea agreement not to recommend a specific sentence, emphasized the seriousness of what the message is revealed. A deliberate choice sustained over time, supported by actual payments in precise location data, with no concrete effort by Victoria to stop what she had helped set in motion. Victoria personally apologized to the court into Aaron. She described the case as the lowest point of her life and promised that after her release, she would leave Nevada permanently and never contact him again. Judge Crawl sentenced her to a minimum of 36 months and a maximum of 90 months in Nevada state prison, three to seven and a half years. She received credit for the 92 days she had already spent in custody. Because Victoria pleaded guilty instead of standing trial, no jury heard the complete extraction of her messages with a motto. Many of the case's central questions were resolved through the plea rather than public testimony. From a legal perspective, the entire case rested on digital evidence recovered from a phone that should never have been inside a Florida prison. Without that seizure, investigators might never have connected a Nevada homemaker to a triple murderer serving life without parole in another state. That is also why several aspects of the case remain unresolved, potentially for good. The outside individual allegedly hired to carry out the killing has never been publicly identified or charged. There has not even been public confirmation that this person had any genuine intention or ability to act. Grant a motto himself was not charged in connection with the conspiracy. The likely explanation is that he was already serving three life sentences, while assembling a case involving evidence from Florida, Nevada, and California would have introduced legal complications for little additional punishment. Victoria's guilty plea also meant the case never went to trial and the complete extraction of her correspondence with a motto was never made public and full. What is known comes from arrest reports and sentencing statements rather than evidence tested in open court. The trail of money is particularly unclear. There was a proposal. opposed contract for $11,515, an initial $2,500 payment discussed, and a much larger figure, approximately $60,000, that her attorney characterized as blackmail rather than payment for murder. How much actually financed the conspiracy and how much may have been extorted from Victoria afterward may never be fully established. There is also the question of who wrote particular messages. Some reports attributed the chilling inquiry about whether the job had been completed directly to Victoria. A closer reading of the arrest report, however, indicates that a motto sent that message to the outside party using information Victoria had provided. That distinction does not lessen her legal responsibility. She pleaded guilty to conspiracy either way, but it matters to anyone trying to establish who said what and when, within a plot constructed entirely through indirect messages traveling from a bedroom in Nevada to a Florida prison cell, and then to an unidentified third party somewhere near the California desert. Psychologically, the most disturbing feature of this case is not a single burst of anger. It is the sustained almost routine nature of the planning. Discussions of prices, schedules, and hotel locations continuing for months while Victoria carried on living as Aaron's wife. Investigators explicitly rejected her description of the messages as harmless fantasy. Their reason was specific. Fantasies do not ordinarily come with payment schedules and it targets real-time GPS coordinates. Her attraction to a motto, a man already convicted of murdering his family, remains one of the cases strangest and least explained elements. No confirmed diagnosis connects the PTSD she disclosed to the conspiracy. Caution is warranted on that point. Experiencing trauma or living with chronic illness neither explains nor excuses choosing murder over divorce. What the public record does show is a person capable of maintaining two completely contradictory lives at once. On one side was an affectionate marriage documented in photographs. On the other was a secret conspiracy growing more serious over time. For months, those two realities did not appear to collide. The private language Victoria and a motto used makes that picture even clearer. Calling themselves spiritually married while simultaneously relegating Aaron to her first husband suggests that she was doing more than simply pulling away from her marriage. She appeared to be constructing an entirely separate identity alongside her real life. It was an identity she seemed to feel no need to reconcile with the version of herself sharing anniversary messages and miniature golf jokes with the public only weeks before her arrest. As for a motto, his role here echoes patterns from his earlier crimes and intense secretive online relationship, financial exploitation, deception, and a willingness to regard people standing in the way of that fantasy as obstacles to remove rather than human beings. If a case like this makes you reconsider how well you truly know the people closest to you, that is the point. Subscribe for more true crime cases that come closer to your own life than you might expect. And tell us in the comments which part of the story shocked you most.