The Devil You Know: The Shocking Story of the Oklahoma Sleepover Massacre
Saturday, April 29, 2023, was a whirlwind of activity for thirty-five-year-old Holly Guess (McFadden) and her teenage children Rylee Allen, Michael Mayo, and Tiffany Guess. After spending most of the day running from one athletic practice to another, they hosted a sleepover that was attended by two of Tiffany’s best friends, Ivy Webster and Brittany Brewster.
On Sunday afternoon, after their daughters failed to return home as scheduled, Ivy and Brittany’s parents tried to reach them by phone with no success. Later that evening, they contacted the sheriff and reported them missing. An AMBER alert was soon issued in the hopes of finding the girls unharmed. Sadly, it was not to be.
On Monday morning, Holly’s husband of less than a year, Jesse McFadden, was due in court to stand trial for possession of child pornography and soliciting sexual contact with a minor. The charges stemmed from a series of incidents that took place in 2017 while he was serving a twenty-year sentence for the first-degree rape of a teenage girl.
When he didn’t show up for his nine o’clock hearing, a bench warrant was issued for his arrest. In order to collect the fugitive, peace officers were dispatched to the home he shared with his wife and stepchildren on the outskirts of the rural community of Henryetta. When no one answered the door, deputies fanned out in the hopes of finding McFadden hunkering down somewhere on the property. What they discovered instead was something far worse than anyone had imagined.
Lying some four hundred yards from the main residence were the bodies of three young girls, later identified as Ivy Webster, Brittany Brewer and Riley Allen. Each had been shot execution-style in the head. Their lifeless forms lay a hundred feet apart and had been posed in suggestive positions by their killer, evidently to add to the shock value.
As the search continued, the bodies of Holly, Michael and Tiffany were discovered in a wooded area near the home. They too had died from gunshot wounds to the head. A stone’s throw away, officers found the man whose failure to appear in court had brought them to the residence that morning. It was clear to them that thirty-nine-year-old Jesse McFadden — convicted sex offender turned mass murderer — had committed suicide rather than answer for his heinous deeds.
Autopsies would reveal that Ivy and Brittany had been sexually assaulted prior to their murders. A monster in every sense of the word, the state of their remains indicated that McFadden had made his victims’ last moments on Earth as torturous as possible.
The tool used to commit the murders, a 9mm semi-automatic pistol, was found to have been registered in Holly’s name. According to her parents, she had purchased it in 2022, shortly after marrying McFadden, the man who would turn the weapon on her and her children within a matter of months.
A week after the bodies were discovered, a search of the property conducted by Ivy’s family and their attorneys had turned up a disturbing array of evidence, including various sex toys, lubricants, restraints attached to the bed frames, torture implements, books on the practice of witchcraft and drug residue. They also found the victims’ cellphones secreted away on shelves, alongside other electronic devices they believed should have been taken into evidence during the initial investigation.
Believing that they had stumbled upon a significant amount of evidence, the Websters had phoned the local sheriff’s department and requested that they send someone out to collect the items their investigators had previously overlooked. Having learned after the fact that McFadden had been accused of manufacturing child pornography, Ivy’s parents feared that he may have shared images of their daughter’s sexual assault with likeminded deviants online.
Holly Guess’s parents were devastated by the loss of their daughter and grandchildren. Though McFadden had only been in their lives for a relatively short time, they had known early on that something about him wasn’t right.
After Holly married McFadden in May of 2022, her parents had done a little online sleuthing to learn more about their new son-in-law. When they discovered that he was a registered sex offender, they knew that their instincts had been alarmingly on point.
When they confronted their daughter about her husband’s past, she had brushed their concerns aside. To their dismay, she explained that she was aware that he had served time, but that it had all been a terrible misunderstanding. Charmed by McFadden, she had fallen for his lies, hook, line and sinker.
When news of the mass killings reached the public, the girl at the center of the 2017 accusations against McFadden came forward with a staggering revelation. The now twenty-three-year-old victim revealed that she had received a series of text messages from him on Sunday night, presumably after he had committed numerous acts of rape and murder.
The communications were as vile as one would expect from someone of McFadden’s caliber. His hostility jumping off the screen, he had chastised the young woman for ruining his life. Steadfastly refusing to take responsibility for his actions — past or present — he blamed her for the murders. The way he saw it, if she had kept her mouth shut, he wouldn’t have been facing the threat of being sent back to prison.
Rather than seeing the situation for what it was, he had created a scenario in which he was the injured party. When he was finished venting, he had informed her that, “This is on you.” True to form, his final words before removing himself from life’s equation had been petty and filled with spite.
The incident he was referring to had occurred years earlier when McFadden used an illegally obtained cellphone to initiate a relationship with the then sixteen-year-old. Over the course of several weeks, the two had exchanged nude selfies, always at his urging. Young and impressionable, the girl hadn’t realized that she had fallen into the trap of a master manipulator who knew exactly what to say in order to get what he wanted from the opposite sex, no matter their level of maturity.
McFadden’s efforts at grooming the teenager went south when the girl’s grandfather caught sight of one of their messages. Horrified at the explicit nature of the conversation, he had immediately reported the prisoner to the proper authorities.
In a shocking display of bureaucracy gone awry, McFadden was paroled in October of 2020. The fact that a court date was pending on the 2017 child pornography offenses, had not figured into the decision. Apparently, until he was tried and convicted, the accusations were only that and therefore had no bearing on his eligibility for early release for — of all things — good behavior.
In a thoughtless, and possibly deliberate oversight, the families of the girls who had slept over on Saturday night and paid for it with their lives, had never been informed by Holly, or anyone else, of her husband’s status as a registered sex offender who was known to target teenagers. They insisted that, had there been any prior knowledge of his sick proclivities, their daughters wouldn’t have been at the sleepover in the first place.
In the aftermath of the slayings, their insurmountable grief was tempered with outrage when they learned that McFadden was an ex-con who had been freed from custody, even after his criminal behavior in prison had been brought to the attention of authorities. They argued, and rightly so, that Ivy and Brittany would still be alive if prison officials had listened to prosecutors who had vehemently opposed his release.
The original charge that had put McFadden behind bars dated back to 2003 when he savagely raped sixteen-year-old Krystle Strong in her family’s home.
After the murders came to light, Krystle went public with her story. She recounted that she had met McFadden when he began dating a friend of hers. Even though he seemed nice enough, she had never warmed up to him, despite his tireless efforts to win her over.
On the night of the attack, he had offered to take her home after a party she had attended with a group of friends. Since she was admittedly a bit tipsy and in no condition to leave on her own, she had accepted the ride. She recalled that he had dropped her off, safe and sound before driving away. Although she thought that was the end of their interaction, as it turned out, he had other plans.
At around three o’clock in the morning, McFadden returned to the residence. As the occupants slept soundly in their beds, he had broken in and looked around until he located Krystle’s room. Once he had the terrified teenager in his clutches, he had gagged her and dragged her into the living room, where he proceeded to tie her to the couch.
In the harrowing moments that followed, McFadden had stripped away Krystle’s nightclothes and raped her at knifepoint. Knowing that her life depended on winning the trust of her attacker, she had pleaded with him to let her go, promising that she wouldn’t breathe a word of what happened to anyone. She had also reminded him over and over again that they were friends.
After giving the matter some thought, McFadden had ordered her to take a shower and destroy her clothing. When she got up, ostensibly to do as he said, instead of going to the bathroom, she had sprinted out the door. Completely naked and scared out of her wits, she had run to the house next door and banged on the door. Awakened by the commotion, the residents had let her inside while they called police.
McFadden was found later that night hiding in the woods. Having sliced his wrists in a half-hearted suicide attempt, he was taken to the hospital for treatment before being hauled off to jail. He was subsequently tried and convicted of first-degree rape and remanded to the custody of the state for a term of twenty years. The model prisoner who was anything but, would be allowed to walk free seventeen years later, resulting in the loss of six lives.
Holly’s mother Janette Mayo described McFadden as a controlling figure who had an obsessive need to know where his wife was at all times and who she was with. Likewise, he monitored his stepchildren’s cellphone activity, as well as their social media postings.
Even as he practiced the art of deceit on a daily basis, he had held his family to impossible moral standards. Mayo noted that, for reasons only McFadden would know, Holly had sustained an excessive number of bullet wounds, indicating that he had continued shooting his wife after she was dead.
While public sentiment towards Holly was not exactly favorable in the wake of the murders, those close to her were adamant that she was a doting mother who would never have knowingly put her children in harm’s way. Though it may be true that she had merely fallen for a ruse perpetrated by a wily conman who was adept at convincing people that lies were the truth and vice versa, her willingness to turn a blind eye to his depravity is troubling.
With that said, there’s no denying that Holly had taken her responsibilities as a parent seriously. To that end, she had taken a position working from home as an insurance agent in order to spend as much time as possible with her family. Determined to be there for them, she had made a point of being front and center at their sporting events to offer her support.
Even though her choice of partners may have been questionable, there’s no evidence to show that she suspected that her husband was capable of murder. Looking at the bigger picture, if the parole board, who were supposedly trained to weed out the bad apples, hadn’t been able to see through McFadden’s ‘heart of gold’ veneer, what hope did Holly and her children have?
Fifteen-year-old Michael James Mayo was a gifted athlete who excelled at everything sports related. The middle child in the family, as well as the only boy, he had been protective of his mother and sisters. Sadly, he couldn’t have foreseen the dangers that lurked inside his own home.
Tiffany Dore Guess was a middle school track star who was nearly as athletically inclined as her brother. An affectionate child who endeared herself to everyone she met, the thirteen-year-old hadn’t been aware that true evil existed in the world until it was too late.
The oldest sibling, seventeen-year-old Rylee Elizabeth Allen, was the artist of the family. A talented painter, she could turn a blank canvas into a thing of beauty with the stroke of a brush. Sensitive to the suffering of others, she aspired to be a physician one day. Had it not been for a twist of fate that came in the form of one Jesse McFadden, she would have made her dream a reality.
Sixteen-year-old Brittany Brewer was a beauty pageant winner who had her sights set on becoming a veterinarian. A soft-hearted young woman, she had a passion for animal welfare and wanted to devote her life to caring for helpless creatures in need.
Ivy Webster was an outgoing, spirited girl who had lived her brief life to the fullest. A friend to everyone, people and animals alike, she never met a stranger. Her abrupt end at the tender age of fourteen left a hole in the hearts of her loved ones that will never be filled.
Ultimately, this sad state of affairs was orchestrated and carried out by a cunning narcissist who could smell vulnerability from a mile away. Once he zeroed in on a target — whether it be a naive teenager or a lonely woman in search of love — he had used his well-honed charm, which was a tool of the trade and not a natural attribute, to manipulate and deceive them.
The fact that six people died at his hands, including five teenagers with their whole lives ahead of them, is a tragedy beyond measure. Perhaps if McFadden had been man enough to own up to his misdeeds, things would have turned out differently. Instead, he had selfishly robbed them of their lives before taking his own. In the end, he had died just as he had lived — remorseless and devoid of humanity.
Resources:
·nbcnews.com
·fox4news.com
·independent.co.uk
·apnews.com
·cnn.com
·nypost.com
·wiki.com
·ktul.com
·kfor.com
·the — sun.com
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