hide your kids, hide your wife pt. 1

This week, it's Antoine and Kelly Dodson's sixteenth minute — Jamie interviews Antoine about the 'bed intruder' saga of 2010.

Read "The Forgotten Kelly Dodson": The Forgotten Kelly Dodson

Follow Antoine Dodson here: https://www.tiktok.com/@antoinedodson34

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media. My name is Jamie Loftus, and I
am still on the Internet. If I wasn't, I'm sure
my skin would look a lot better.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Welcome to sixteenth Minute.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
If you're listening to this, you are listening to it
currently and probably future obscure podcast. So I'm assuming that
you're on the Internet too, and probably social media. And
I know that that's supposed to be a bad thing.
But like many people who are thirty yeah boo, elderly
on the Internet, I cannot log out. And I know
that's a bad thing. And I know I'm supposed to

(01:22):
go and touch grass, but you know who tells you
to go touch grass? People on the Internet, And I
just feel like they're not telling me that From the Grass.
Sixteenth Minute is the podcast where I provide a thorough
sixteenth minute of fame to someone who became famous online
for a fleeting moment. Why Because I want to understand

(01:46):
what makes a character of the day, Because I think
that's a more complicated question than we give it credit for.
This show is about characters of the day. Because I
am not too good for social media. If I was
going to get off of social media, I would have
done it a long time ago by now, so gather
around and let's learn about the Internet. My family couldn't
afford a desktop until I was in the second grade,

(02:08):
so I have some memories before being online, the most
impactful of which was being kissed on the beach by
a kid who thankfully was not my biological cousin, but
I did call him my cousin, so I couldn't be
sure of that at the time. Anyways, here's my operating theory.
I don't believe the technology is making human beings worse.
Like a lot of headlines suggest, human behavior and instincts

(02:31):
haven't changed much, but the tools that we enact those
instincts with have cranked up our ability to react with
impact positively or negatively, way up, not to mention the
speed that we can react. Late twentieth century tabloids would
really languish in reading their subjects to filth for weeks
on end, and that's a far rarer experience today. Fifty

(02:52):
years ago, it would be uniquely painful for someone who
lives five thousand miles away from you to ruin your
day career life, but that is no longer true, and
fifty years ago you wouldn't have the instinct to do
the same to someone else. People are just not built
for it, but the people who live to tell the
tale are very much worth talking to. I want this

(03:13):
show to be a place that encourages you to see
these people, the characters of the day, as people, and
the rest I'll leave to you. Some episodes i'll be
interviewing the characters of the day themselves, some I'll be
talking to the people who made them characters of the day,
and others I'll be zooming out a little to take
a look at why the algorithm served us this person
during this cultural moment and what that might mean. I've

(03:36):
been making stuff since high school, mostly online, and if
there's anything I've learned in that time, it's that everything,
including what you're listening to right now, is a piece
of future lost media. So enjoy it or hate it
while it exists. And with that, let's get into our
first character. First, a little scene setting musical transition. Ooh,

(03:59):
nice production. Come with me if you will. To the
year twenty ten, Black Swan Shutter Island, Get Him to
the Greek a movie that fifteen years on has an
all sex criminal cast. Twilight Mania has reached a fever pitch,
but were still a year from my mom asking me

(04:19):
if I've heard of fifty shades of gray waving around
her soggy library book like a G six is playing
at every school dance, and I lose my virginity this August,
which was actually a really big deal to my friend
group at the time, Thank you so much. Twenty ten.
We didn't know what a filthy, debauched decade we'd tapped into.

(04:41):
Social media was becoming normal at this time, not just
for young people but for everyone. Twenty ten was the
year my parents got on Facebook, reconnecting with high school
sweethearts beginning strange emotional affairs. Facebook had surpassed MySpace as
the most popular social network on the planet back in
two thousand and eight and absolutely dominated, while smaller networks

(05:03):
like Twitter, YouTube, and a then brand spanking new app
named Instagram steadily grew in popularity. This character's journey, or
should I say these characters journeys, started on YouTube and Reddit,
but they wouldn't have become the cultural phenomenon that they
did without every single one of those platforms working together.

(05:23):
You can rarely attribute a person's fifteen minute ascent to
one social media platform, especially in the days of the
early Internet. If you stick in one social media corner,
that tends to be where you exist forever. July twenty eighth,
twenty ten, in the Lincoln Park Projects of Huntsville, Alabama. Elsewhere,
an air Force plane crashes in Alaska and bullfighting is

(05:45):
banned in Catalonia. In Lincoln Park, a news team from
local station WAFT forty eight goes to speak to a
woman who just reported a man breaking into her home
and attempting to rape her. The newscaster interviews her and
her brother, who was at the scene of the crime
and tried to apprehend the man, but the rapist got away.
Here's part of the clip.

Speaker 3 (06:06):
I was attagged by some idiot from out here in.

Speaker 4 (06:09):
The projects, Dodson says. An attacker used a garbage can
to climb onto the unit's ledge, open the upstairs window,
and then he got in bed with her.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
If he tried to write me, he tried to pull
my clothes off.

Speaker 4 (06:21):
Dodson struggled with her attacker, knocking over items in her bedroom.
Angeline Dodd said, heard his sister screamed and ran to help.

Speaker 5 (06:28):
Well, obviously we have a rapist in linked Park.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
Well wait, wait, let's stop the clip, because yes, this
clip sets a record for streams on waft forty eighth
video site, around two hundred thousand views at the time,
and it first started to gain traction when it got
reposted to the r slash funny page on Reddit. So
this is the age of the upvote, and ninety three
percent of Reddit users seemed to agree that the video

(06:56):
clip was funny. Later that same day, someone reposted the
news clip to YouTube. Remember this was before most local
news channels thought about having their own YouTube pages. But
it's two days later when a YouTube channel run by
the Gregory brothers read Biological Brothers and a fourth member,
Sarah who's now married to one of the brothers, whose
channel was and is called Schmoe Yoho, posted an auto

(07:19):
tuned remix of this broadcast that one of the most
infamous moments in Internet history began.

Speaker 5 (07:26):
Well, obviously, we have a rapist in Lincoln Park.

Speaker 6 (07:31):
He's climbing a windows.

Speaker 7 (07:33):
These nineteen young people a channel right from Zayani.

Speaker 4 (07:36):
Agacas, Paja wife, Hjukids, Taja wife, Aha, Kaids, the.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
Dots and siblings. Your sixteenth minute starts. Now, this was
a huge story, not just because of the clip, but
because of how deceptively complicated the subject matter of the
clip was. The discussions around bed Intruder contained issues of
gender violence, race, class, queerness, and just the general lawlessness

(08:03):
of the early Internet. It's a fucking mire and it's
one I was really interested in. And while I think
the Internet elected the main character of this story as
Antoine Dodson, the brother, it's important to note that this
story was always about more than one person, first and
foremost Kelly Dodson, who was assaulted, and then her brother
Antoine Dodson, who came to her aid. Internet history doesn't

(08:26):
really regard it that way, and I'm going to take
a look at why in a bit. But it's hard
to overstate what a gigantic deal this was. In the
summer of twenty ten. At the time of this recording,
the Gregory Brothers clip, which is called bed Intruder's Song
All Caps, three exclamation points, mind You, has one hundred
and fifty five million views on YouTube, and the news clip,
which was re uploaded two years later, clocks in at

(08:48):
over eighty four million views. As I record this in
twenty twenty four, it's very possible to become an Internet
character of the day without being cross pollinated into every
corner of the Internet. There are stories that are thoroughly
relegated to one platform, Some TikTok scandals never cross over
into where the old folks are hanging out, and earth
shattering conflicts from these still active Facebook users in the

(09:11):
boomer contingency are unlikely to migrate anywhere else. Things weren't
like this in twenty ten, and the why is a
little complicated. The BBC predicted that there would be two
billion people using the Internet by the end of twenty ten.
In twenty twenty four, that number has ballooned to nearly
five and a half billion current Internet users. The tools

(09:32):
for viral success are wildly different. Facebook and Tumblr were
dominant back then, where TikTok creates today's Internet titans with
a million fallen social media networks in between, and the
way that stories, clips, and people go viral also works
very differently now, as we're going to explore in the
show time and time again. The front half of the
twenty tens were, for better or worse, driven by organic

(09:56):
engagement between people, and in the last ten years we've
seen the world online increasingly shaped by algorithms that show
us what they think they can profit from sales sure, engagement, yes,
and your attention and emotional response from what the algorithm
serves up. I know you don't need me to tell
you this. We've all watched that Corty Netflix documentary. It's

(10:18):
an attention economy. Let's keep moving. I say it because
in twenty ten, a lot of this stuff was still
pretty uncharted, particularly with how fast these media cycles tend
to go. The Gregory Brothers had been posting to YouTube
for about a year when they first saw Antoine Dodson
after the WAFT forty eight clip was re uploaded from

(10:38):
the news station's website to YouTube. The brothers claim to
fame at the time were viral news clips expertly remixed
into songs. The series was originally called Auto Tune the
News and was later changed to Songify This, and they
still do it today. The most recent Gregory Brothers video
is a songified clip from the recent Amazon Prime moved

(11:00):
Ricky Staniki about Dix.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
I didn't finish it.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
At this time. The Gregory Brothers had had one previous
significant success on YouTube, another remix of a famous viral
video of the day. You might remember this one. It
was of a very enthusiastic man named Paul Yosemite Bear
Vasquez reacting to a double rainbow. The Gregory Brothers remix
sounded like this, Wow, that's.

Speaker 6 (11:25):
A fool rainfall all the way double rainfall. Oh my god,
Dobo rainfall.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
So at the time bede Intruder dropped, the group's success
wasn't unprecedented. Bet Intruder was their second big success in
less than a year, and unlike a lot of social
media stars, the Gregory Brothers had the talent and consistency
to remain successful and adapt into today. They were also
behind a very successful remix of a main character from
twenty twenty two, one of my favorites, Corn Kid, who

(11:55):
originally appeared on the online series Recess Therapy. Just talking
about corn for me Iman like.

Speaker 8 (12:04):
Code, what do you like about corn?

Speaker 1 (12:14):
I too love corn Kid. So the Gregory Brothers have
remained very attuned to who makes a viable internet character,
But bed Intruder made the Brothers and Antoine Dodson very
very famous. The first bet Intruder remix video did huge numbers.
It actually ended up being the most streamed YouTube video
of twenty ten, closely followed by a Kesha parody and

(12:36):
an annoying orange video just to remind you of the
arrow we're in. After that, the Gregory Brothers released a
full three and a half minute version of the song
that was for sale on iTunes. This was when iTunes,
Apple's pay per song platform, was still a pretty viable
business model, still far less lucrative than physical media, which
remained a major discussion at this time. But hey, musicians

(12:58):
are doing even worse with Spotify residuals today, and if
music distribution online hadn't become this popular, bed Intruder couldn't
have broken into the mainstream in the way it did.
The full song was hugely popular on iTunes and even
broke into the Billboard Hot one hundred, reaching number three
on the iTunes R at B charts, number fifteen on
the Pop charts, and number twenty five overall. So the

(13:20):
Gregory Brothers are talented composers and they're making videos about
videos using the original subject's likeness and voice before there
were any common practices online about that. So my knee
jerk fear was that Antoine Dotson, who spoke to the
media for free about fending off a man who attempted
to rape his sister. Kelly never saw a dime for

(13:41):
the huge viral success that was Bed Intruder. But that's
not true, the Gregory brothers said in an interview was
Wired at the time, and Antoine Dotson confirmed to me
that the iTunes revenue was split between the brothers and
Antoine fifty to fifty. Michael Gregory explains their reasoning to
Wired all the way back in twenty ten.

Speaker 8 (14:01):
We're really breaking unintentional singing ground. So we're trying to
set precedents by making it so that Antoine or whoever
that artist might be in the future, has a stake
not only as an artist, but as a co author
of the song. It's like you said, he wrote the lyrics.
He's the one who put it out there. What we
are doing on iTunes and on any other sales, we're

(14:24):
splitting the revenue after kis through Apple down the middle,
and that also applies if we ever licensed the song
for TV or a movie, whatever happens to the song,
he has a fifty percent writing credit. And we have
the same agreement with Paul Vasquez, co writer of the
Double Rainbow song.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
According to Dodson. The Gregory brothers tend to have such
a good relationship with their viral subjects because of this
financial arrangement, and that was a subject of discussion online
at the time. The most recent scandal about an internet
viral figure never seeing a dime from a heavily monetized
YouTube upload was the singer Susan Boyle, and this prompted
tech writers in their early twenty tens to ask creators

(15:01):
if the people they were pulling from actually got any
financial kickback. This is a conversation that continues today, particularly
in an algorithmically fueled ecosystem that still pushes white creators
to fame over anyone else. And the Gregory brothers are talented,
but given that their white people in Brooklyn were remixing
a news broadcast about an attempted rape on a black

(15:21):
woman in a poor area of Georgia and monetizing it,
that was a question that needed to be looked at
more closely. And that's not to say there wasn't any
criticism of the way that blackness, poverty, and sexual assault
were all being trivialized by turning it into a song.
Michael Gregory defended this to Billboard in twenty ten, saying.

Speaker 8 (15:38):
It's taking a terrible situation and making at least something
positive out of it.

Speaker 1 (15:43):
But the way the Dotsons were presented to the public
by the media upset others because of the lack of
control they had on how they were portrayed until they
were already famous. The news broadcast was through a white
lens and the parody was through a white lens, and
some critics call that out veritun Dee Thurston of The
Onion talk to NPR about how it sat poorly with
him on All Tech Considered at the time, saying as

(16:05):
the remix took off, I became increasingly uncomfortable with its
separation from the underlying situation. A woman was sexually assaulted
and her brother was rightfully upset. People online seemed to
be laughing at him and not with him, because he
wasn't laughing as Dodson fulfilled multiple stereotypes in one short
news segment, but Thurston notes Antoine Dodson seemed to have

(16:28):
a vested interest in bending the media narrative to his
and his family's favor, and not just letting the Internet
mill roll over him. Thurston continued the creativity unleashed has
been amazing, and what mitigates my fears of people minimizing
the gravity of the situation is how Antoine himself has
responded and taken charge of his own meme. This is
where I will ask, for the first and not the

(16:50):
last time, where's Kelly. Kelly Dodson is all but absent
in the Bed Intruder remix. Both the newscast and the
song give major pressidence to her brother Antoine. But we'll
get back to that point. What you need to know
is that once Bed Intruder was posted, it was fucking over.
Marching bands were covering this song. Hailey Williams from Paramore

(17:23):
and guys from punk bands I've never heard of were
covering this song.

Speaker 7 (17:27):
Well, obviously we have a rapist in Lincoln pot.

Speaker 5 (17:35):
It's running in.

Speaker 4 (17:36):
Your windows, touching your people up gener again, hid Hi Kid.

Speaker 6 (17:44):
And Outs.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
And Yes mocked the Dodson's vocal delivery. It went on
and on. This story kept going and kept mutating. The
Gregory Brothers were on the Oscars that year, songifying the
Big teen Movies of twenty ten. Also, this was the
year that Anne Hathaway and James Franco hosted the Oscars
together for some reason. I kind of memory hold that,
so sorry if I reminded you that happened. It was weird.

(18:11):
But Antoine Dodson seizes on this sudden burst of fame
as well. He made a number of appearances during this
stretch of time, but the most viral were ones where
he leaned directly into the meme, notably performing the auto
tune version at the BET Hip Hop Awards in twenty ten,
right alongside Michael Gregory. Here's a clip justin A crime.

Speaker 9 (18:33):
Was committed on a five hundred block of Webster Drive.

Speaker 6 (18:38):
We have an eyewitness on the scene.

Speaker 7 (18:39):
Now, well, he's climbing a young windows.

Speaker 10 (18:49):
He's sent to your people love trying to write the
soy y'all needs a hi to dance.

Speaker 7 (18:54):
Antoine Dotson and Michael Gregory real talk for real. I
know that was messed up.

Speaker 6 (19:00):
They was able to buy in Mama House and get
him out the project with that song right there.

Speaker 7 (19:07):
I don't know how long.

Speaker 6 (19:08):
They gonna live there, but.

Speaker 7 (19:11):
So go run and tell that homeboy.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
That's host Mike Epps at the end, referencing the fact
that just three months after bet Intruder went viral, the
Dodsons were able to move out of the projects with
the money not just from the song, but merch that
Antoine sold, featuring his image with slogans from the clip
we can find you, We've got your T shirt, etc.
And this goal of monetizing this moment came into focus

(19:35):
for Antoine within days of the bed Intruder song's release.
Antoine Dodson was going to school for business and was
very shrewd about controlling the narrative to his family's benefit.
From very early on. Less than a week later, he'd
set up a website called Antoine's World, where he posted
updates about the Gregory Brothers songs, his merch, and the
appearances and fundraisers he was holding. He told fans directly

(19:57):
that money from these endeavors would be going to his
family and to a juvenile diabetes charity. Unlike a lot
of the viral stars will be covering on this show,
Antoine Dodson had staying power, partially because he had an
interest in staying in the spotlight. He would continue to
appear in media and TV and film for years after this,
including a lot of speculation about his sexuality that went

(20:20):
through a number of unnecessary press cycles between twenty ten
and twenty eighteen. Here's something. In twenty fourteen and get
ready for a wild one, there was a pay per
view celebrity boxing match between Antoine and quote unquote The Intruder.
It gets weirder. This match was hosted by Kato Kaelin,

(20:41):
who is like the famous witness who testified at the
OJ Simpson trial in the nineties. It's a fucking madlib
of an event. The man who called himself the Intruder,
a man named Rashad Cooper, gave an interview to al
dot Com implying that Kelly Dodson had been lying and
made the entire rape attempt up. Here's that quote. She

(21:02):
tried to do something I wasn't down for yet, all
of a sudden she got mad and bipolar and started
throwing stuff, trying to fight me. So I won't lie.
I did hop out of that window. A mad woman.
You don't play with them. Antoine won the boxing match,
and his son was born two days later. Kelly Dodson
made no comment on the fight and did not confirm
that that was, in fact the man who had attempted

(21:23):
to rape her four years earlier. The last time the
siblings appeared together in public was in twenty twenty one
on Judge Jerry Springer, one of those fake court shows
before Jerry Springer died, where Antoine was suing Kelly for
seven hundred and fifty dollars over a personal loan. From
what I could find, this was the first time Kelly
had made in appearance publicly in years. Here's a clip.

Speaker 6 (21:45):
You're reasonably well known. Yeah, tell me your story, Antwine.

Speaker 10 (21:50):
Well, obviously I need everybody to hat they kids, had
they wife and had they husbands too, because I was
showing everybody who owe me some money? Just playing and
simple from Antwine does it? And I did the hag
your kids back in twenty ten.

Speaker 6 (22:01):
I made you famous. That's why he's well known.

Speaker 1 (22:04):
Oh, my god, him famous?

Speaker 6 (22:05):
Yea, No, she did not make me fair, Joan.

Speaker 10 (22:09):
I am so sick a tide of my family saying that.
They say that all the time every time we get
into an argument when it's about money or finances.

Speaker 6 (22:16):
Is Oh, I made you famous. It was me.

Speaker 10 (22:19):
I'm the victim, and I'm just so tired of carrying
his victim title.

Speaker 6 (22:23):
I am the victim the whole rah.

Speaker 4 (22:24):
No, I'm the reason you're a famous Do we need
to play it anywhere else?

Speaker 3 (22:27):
Ya?

Speaker 1 (22:30):
So as the years passed, most of the public seem
to forget what Kelly is talking about here in twenty
twenty one, the traumatic incident that prompted everything all the
way back in twenty ten, So a decade on Kelly's
trauma is remembered less and less, and the fixation on
Antoine Dotson's clip on WAFT forty eight is what's stuck

(22:50):
in the collective memory. And while the Gregory Brothers would
continue to have other successes off of auto Tune in
the news, they would often return to the well of
Antoine when they would get work out side of YouTube.
And there's no better example of that than in early
twenty fifteen when the band composed the theme song to
The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt for Netflix, with not just the
same cadence of the Bead Intruder song, but basically the

(23:12):
same setup. So the clip is of a neighbor of
the series protagonist, Kimmy, who is a survivor of an
abusive underground cult run by John Hammett, but the theme
itself is an auto tune. The news clip this neighbor
is a black man named Walter Bankston who lives in
a trailer unknowingly beside this underground bunker, and this character
tells a local newscaster the following, mister Bankston.

Speaker 5 (23:35):
Oh yeah, what had happened was I was out of.

Speaker 6 (23:40):
Grandson.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
So this moment in internet history continued to be really lucrative,
all while the real story was slowly erased, and that
erasure is not the fault of either Dodson's sibling. The real,
detailed story of what happened that day in twenty ten
was always available. Antoine Dodson spoke in both his sister
Kelly and his community's defense extensively around the same time

(24:09):
period that the be et Hip Hop Awards and Tosh
point zero were happening. So if I already use my
big old brain to take a guess here, these interviews
were quickly forgotten because they don't lean into the image
of the Dodsons that forty eight projected in that video,
and including details about the attempted rape of Kelly Dodson
would likely have made the gleeful enjoyment of this song

(24:31):
seem pretty dismissive. But the interviews were always there. Here's
Antoine on NPR the week the video went viral.

Speaker 9 (24:38):
What do we need to do as people to keep
our community safe?

Speaker 6 (24:44):
You know what I'm saying, Like, because nobody's talking about
in that.

Speaker 9 (24:47):
I mean, the world knows, but here locally in Huntsville
is like, Okay, it's a joke. Everybody taking it to
be a joke. It's funny to them. You know what
I'm saying, I'm making their city look bad. I'm making
their community look bad.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
And when we come back, I got to speak with
Kevin Antoine Dodson. Welcome back to sixteenth minute. I am
a white woman with brown hair. So when I reached
out to Antoine Dotson, I was not sure what to expect,

(25:23):
And honestly, I most wanted to speak to Kelly Dodson,
who had never been centered in a story about her
reporting and attempted assault. But Kelly has historically resisted the limelight,
which is an active agency in itself. There's no way
to contact her online at present. Antoine, however, did reply,
and we caught up not just about his history as
an internet celebrity, but about his whole life. So just

(25:46):
so you're aware, this interview was over two hours long,
so it's been edited for length and clarity, and I'll
do my best to fill you in on what Antoine
and I discussed between clips. On that note, I'm also
going to place a trigger warning here for child sex
abuse as well. Here are some of our talks.

Speaker 6 (26:03):
Hey, I'm a Twyna Dawson.

Speaker 5 (26:05):
I became famous from the local integod that I did
here in Huntsville where my sister was attacked and the
tutor came into her home.

Speaker 6 (26:12):
Yeah, and that's how the fans know me.

Speaker 1 (26:15):
What is life like for you right now? You're you're
back in Huntsville for now?

Speaker 5 (26:21):
Up here, it's pretty you know this the South is
pretty laid back. You know, they got the country by
the soul cooking. You know what I'm saying. It's no
paparazza see here. It's not a lot of work for
entertainment here, so it's pretty laid back.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
There is most of your family still in Huntsville as well?

Speaker 6 (26:41):
No, most of my family is still in Chicago.

Speaker 5 (26:43):
I'm originally from Chicago, and I moved to Huntsville in
two thousand and four, and most of my family stayed back.
And I'm the oldest of nine kids. Five of them
and myself. We moved here in Huntsville with our moms.

Speaker 6 (26:58):
As far as back I can remember, I was probably
about five or six around that age.

Speaker 5 (27:02):
Well, my mother's mother, she was getting sick and she
had diabetes, which like gave her gang green.

Speaker 6 (27:10):
So she had to get her legs amputated.

Speaker 5 (27:12):
So of course with that she had to go into
a nursing home, and so my mama was left out
there to fend for herself with two kids. So when
my grandmother went to the nursing home, I remember my
mama putting packing me and my sister a bag, and
I remember putting us on the CTA of public transportation
in Chicago, and she sat down with us and have

(27:33):
this long like when you get to this house, don't
touch nothing, don't say nothing. You stay close to me,
don't break nothing, don't ask for nothing. You know how
parents do before they they tell you, because this is
where we're going to be staying, so you don't want
to you just don't want to do a lot.

Speaker 6 (27:49):
So she gave us this whole list of things of
not to do.

Speaker 5 (27:53):
And so when I got to the house, but you
know how you get this eerie feeling about something. Yeah,
Like I always called it the candy Cane House because
it was red and white, and it was our big
Mama and another part of our family, and.

Speaker 6 (28:09):
I just remember it being real eerie, and.

Speaker 5 (28:13):
I walked into the backyard where all the family was
that outside it was drinking and smoking, loud, a whole
bunch of folks out there, clowning and stuff.

Speaker 6 (28:21):
So, you know, we being I think I was five,
but me, oh, you're little, Okay, I was little because
this is the beginning of all that trauma.

Speaker 1 (28:30):
Once he, his mother and Kelly moved into this pretty
large communal family situation in Chicago. Kevin That's what I'm
going to call him, because that's what he usually goes by.
Antoine is his middle name. Kevin was sexually abused by
his uncle repeatedly, and like many survivors of child sexual abuse,
he was afraid and confused and did not report what

(28:51):
was happening to his mom. He told me that this
abuse continued for years.

Speaker 5 (28:56):
But yeah, this happened from six years old all the
way up until I was fourteen when I ran away
tried to commit suicide.

Speaker 6 (29:07):
Behind it and everything.

Speaker 5 (29:08):
It was because my grandmother is the big my mother
family was mother for the state of Illinois. When she
had kids coming in and out. Kids will come in
and out of the house, different kids.

Speaker 6 (29:21):
And she didn't want them.

Speaker 5 (29:22):
She'd send them back there, send out and do set
of kids, you know, like that type of house, basically
a foster hall.

Speaker 6 (29:28):
Okay, Oh yeah, it was bad.

Speaker 5 (29:31):
It was really bad. A lot of things happened. Yeah,
I tried to commit suicide. The same thing happened to
my sister, but at the time I didn't know, So
I didn't know with kelly Ce, I didn't know that
that was happening to her until we got older. We
started drinking and conversations bring people bringing up old wounds, right,

(29:51):
and then I found out.

Speaker 1 (29:53):
Kevin told me that his childhood was marked by abuse
and attempts to run away, as well as struggling to
navigate him his own personal sexuality, and that this led
to depression and hospitalization.

Speaker 5 (30:05):
I found one of my uncle's pills. I took the
whole bottle in the bathroom. I locked the door, and
that's why I passed out at and so I woke.

Speaker 6 (30:13):
Up to them knocking up my mother knocking them like Kevin,
are you okay in there? Like because my first name
is Kevin. Yeah, So she was like, are you okay? Now?
Are you okay? In that? So I waking up and
I'm like.

Speaker 5 (30:27):
Damn, I'm I'm dizzy. My stomach hurt, my head hurt.
I'm like And so I.

Speaker 6 (30:32):
Opened the door.

Speaker 5 (30:33):
I said, mom, I took all these pills, and so.

Speaker 6 (30:36):
My mama just immediately started freaking out it. She was like,
oh my god, like, why would you do that?

Speaker 5 (30:42):
Like, no, you got to go to the hospital, and
so I can tell them I'm getting real dizzy. So
everybody was like, take him outside on the front porch,
he needs to get small, which was the worst thing
that they could have done, because soon as that air
hit me, I passed out again and I woke up
in the ambulance.

Speaker 6 (31:02):
I get to a hospital.

Speaker 5 (31:04):
Actually it was the hospital I was born in, Roseland
Community Hospital.

Speaker 6 (31:08):
So some days had went by and it was like,
mister Dodson, we're going to have to release you and
transfer you to another hospital because we've done all we
can here for you.

Speaker 5 (31:20):
So I'm like, damn, this is we're not thinking that
they're hitting me to a fucking psych ward.

Speaker 1 (31:29):
Oh okay, I mean again, you're a kid, like, what
are you how are you supposed to know?

Speaker 6 (31:34):
Right?

Speaker 5 (31:34):
So I'm thinking I'm getting ready to be released. It
too the Wonderful Land of Oz.

Speaker 6 (31:39):
But I ended up going.

Speaker 5 (31:40):
To the cycle work which was disclosed now but it's
called Michaelic's Hospital in Chicago. And so I'm there, and
so I was there for three days. I guess they
was doing like observation and watching me recover and stuff.
So like after three days they said, well, they came
in said, well, mister Dowson, you're being released. So I'm

(32:04):
thinking I'm being released to go home. And so they
were saying like we're waiting on your We notified your
mother and waiting on her to come in. So when
my mama came in, they didn't tell her that they
wanted her to sign a release to put to commit me.
And so my mama said, oh, I'm not doing that.
I'm not committing my son. And so the nurse said, man,

(32:27):
we just actually we was doing it out of courtesy,
but we really don't need your permission because just have
to go in. Really, yeah, they didn't need my consent.
I guess the fact that I tried to commit suicide
and did back then there. It's called DCFS, the Department
of Children and Family Services, Okay, and so yeah, so

(32:50):
they didn't need her permission, so they took me to admit, well,
they really feel more crazy, you know what I'm saying,
Like I told them what happened. I explained to them like, hey,
I only did this shit because I hurt somebody and
I'm being hurt in the same way and then it's
from my family. But nobody believed me, and the hospital

(33:12):
did not believe me so much so that like when
I would act out. You know how we kids are
when they when you don't believe a kid, they begin
to act out. Yeah, so I began to act down
and stuff, and they will put me a straight jacket,
shoot me in my ass next, so I couldn't move
like it was. It was a I'm telling you, this
ship is very traumatic, you know. It's just it was

(33:35):
really bad. But eventually, after being there for like two
or three months, I realized In the last month, I
told myself, now I gotta fake it until I make
it because me clown in here fighting everybody is not
going to keep me here.

Speaker 6 (33:49):
So I learned that, Okay, I'm gonna be more calm.

Speaker 5 (33:52):
As soon as I get out of here and I
get to my mama house, I'm running away.

Speaker 6 (33:56):
I had created this whole plan in my head.

Speaker 1 (34:01):
Once he was released, Kevin did soon run away from
the house, only to be returned by the police after
not being able to connect with his godmother. After this,
he says that the abuse from his uncle escalated and
that he was also trafficked to friends of his uncle
as a teenager. This was in addition to his sometimes
needing to buy his own food when the matriarch of

(34:23):
the house wouldn't let him and Kelly eat regular meals.
And it's here where Antoine comes into the mix.

Speaker 5 (34:31):
Yes, so in my mind all is going on with
my uncles. This is how I'm providing for myself to eat.
So when you're in a situation like that, you become
very creative. You started creating. For one I had to
create a hustle. I had to make sure that when
my grandmother and them said that we couldn't eat, I
had to find a way to eat. So me and

(34:53):
my cousin because they did my cousins like that, and
there it was a lot of us cousins. So what
we would do is like what we had this twenty
four hour grocery store. So we would do we would
set up shop in the basement and we'll say, hey,
we're going to send you to go and get the
snacks and the stuff, and we're gonna be on the lookout.

(35:14):
So that's how we used to do it. We all
used to take turns not to mention, like when I
wanted to. I created Antoine in my head, like when
my uncle used to get on top of me and stuff.
I would go places in my mind because my family
called me Kevin. But I knew that Kevin came with

(35:34):
a lot of pain, a lot of trauma. He was
very angry, would snap off in a heartbeat. So I
had to create a personality outside of that that brought
me hope and you know, joy and peace. Like yeah,
And so I created this this Antoine Dots character and

(35:59):
Antoine Dice and he was fun He was funny.

Speaker 6 (36:02):
He made everybody laugh. You know. I had to.

Speaker 5 (36:05):
Create this person to get out of this darkness. And
this is why people know me today as Antoine Docton.
He still lives in me and everybody say, like, oh,
Antolia's so funny and stuff like that. You have to
create this person out of pain. I didn't create this

(36:26):
person because I loved him, you know what I'm saying.
I didn't create this person to be a content creator.
I created this person.

Speaker 6 (36:33):
To escape reality. I thought Antoine was a celebrity. I
thought that, even from a kid.

Speaker 5 (36:41):
Like I would walk down the street and have my
fake bodyguards behind me. You know, I would do my
head like I do my old hair. I just really created.

Speaker 6 (36:51):
This person to be this funny, comical person.

Speaker 1 (36:54):
Right. So finally, Kevin ran away to live with his
godmother for a few years to escape this cycle of abuse,
and the first person he told that he was leaving
for good was his younger sister, Kelly.

Speaker 6 (37:07):
We just got mistreated a lot.

Speaker 5 (37:09):
They treated us so bad, and it got to the
point where I had talked to Kelly when I was fourteen,
and I said, Kelly, I can't do this no more.
I said, Kelly, I can't do this no more. I'm
tired of taking care of kids. I'm tired of going
through this shit with this house. I'm tired of having
to go still to eat. I'm so tired of I'm
just tired of everything. And I just up and left,

(37:33):
up and left and I never looked back.

Speaker 1 (37:35):
And around his eighteenth birthday, a family member reached out
to Kevin, Kelly, their mother, and their siblings, and suggested
a move to Huntsville, Alabama, where she lived.

Speaker 5 (37:46):
Because my mother, when I was in Chicago, my mama
used to go to school for hair, and so they
didn't want to be bothered with.

Speaker 6 (37:53):
Me and my sister.

Speaker 5 (37:54):
So after school they would make me and my sister
walk to my mother's castel line. And that's how we
learned how to do hair. Yeah, So from eighteen to
twenty four in Huntsville, that's what.

Speaker 6 (38:05):
I was doing. I was doing hair. I was fried,
dying land head.

Speaker 5 (38:08):
To the side, like I was making money doing that
for everybody. And so, and I was in college for
cosmetology and this is in management at Virginia College in Huntsville.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
And then it happened. The day before the assault in
twenty ten, Kevin and Kelly had gotten into a petty
sibling argument which led to Kelly punching Kevin and him
leaving the house in annoyance. The whole family had just
bought a bunch of frozen meat that was in Kelly's freezer,
and so the story really begins when Kevin returns for

(38:40):
his meat the next day.

Speaker 5 (38:43):
And so the next day, I'm laying on my freend
couch and I'm like, damn, I forget I got them
steaks over there. So I'll way back over to Kelly house.
I walked right in the house. I didn't say shit
to nobody. I just walked in her kitchen. And you
know she had those cheap dollar store frying pans that
burn in a heartbeat.

Speaker 1 (39:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (39:06):
So I'm cooking the.

Speaker 5 (39:07):
Steaks on her stove in her kitchen and the gilly
is burning. It's smoking the house out. So I put
the window in the kitchen. I cracked the window so
it can ventilate the smoke. Now I got my hair
just like how this is.

Speaker 6 (39:24):
So I'm taking my.

Speaker 5 (39:25):
Hair down, like what the hell are you.

Speaker 6 (39:28):
Doing in my house? And say the back said girl,
I was yesterday news. I'm over that shit. You don't
gotta apologize, girl, fuck you. Let me take my hair
down and eat my damn steak.

Speaker 5 (39:37):
So I'm taking my hair down and asked her how
the red bandana came about? Because my hair I had
just took.

Speaker 6 (39:42):
My head down.

Speaker 1 (39:43):
Okay.

Speaker 6 (39:44):
So I fell asleep on Kelly Couch.

Speaker 5 (39:47):
I fell asleep on Kelly Counch and I heard I
was talking to my Auntie in Florida and we was
on Facebook. I had made some crazy ass poster. We
talking shit and she's like, you ain't no celebrity. So
I'm like, maybe you know almost in my bodyguard. They
don't play that shit about me. They're gonna come and
get you. They're gonna find you in Florida. This is
the conversation. This happened hours before the attack. I remember

(40:10):
this was like one one o'clock in the morning.

Speaker 6 (40:14):
Okay, But but as I'm.

Speaker 5 (40:16):
Laying down, I keep laying the phone on my chest,
and when the phone vibrated on my chest, I lift
it up and I text on Auntie. Well, I guess
I fell into a deep sleep and I started hearing
the screaming and Holland in.

Speaker 6 (40:28):
My sleep, and I'm like, what the hell?

Speaker 5 (40:31):
So I opened my eyes and the screams it's still continuing.
So I'm like, what the fuck. It's pitch dark. The
only thing that's going is the TV. And you know,
back in those days, we had the DVD.

Speaker 6 (40:47):
DVD players, and you know, when you don't play a
DVD after so long.

Speaker 5 (40:51):
You know how TikTok logo bounce on the screen d
I did, which gave a little.

Speaker 6 (40:57):
Light yeah in the room. Okay, So I jumped up immediately.

Speaker 5 (41:02):
I'm hearing her stream, and I'm seeing my other two
sisters and my niece and my mother in the hallway.

Speaker 6 (41:10):
They out, They freaking out so bad I'm talking about
it was I was the only mail in the house.
It was so bad. So I bust open the door
and I seen a.

Speaker 5 (41:21):
Silhouette because the street light had shined in her window
and so you could see the silhouette. I could see
her silhouette on the ground, and I could see the
silhouette of a man on top of her, looking like
he had his hands around her neck.

Speaker 6 (41:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (41:41):
At that time, I kept really long. I keep long,
thinking that were growing them now. So I just automatically
took all my nails and I dug them in his shoulder,
and I snatched them and pulled them off and swung
them into the hallway. And that's when he did this
little basketball move and went under my arm and ran
in the kitchen.

Speaker 6 (42:02):
Remind you, we're on the second floor.

Speaker 5 (42:06):
Yeah, so I'm not thinking that he is jumping out
of a window.

Speaker 6 (42:11):
I'm thinking he is gonna go get a weapon. We
all get it under the guy today. So I go
in the kitchen. I'm like, y'all, go in the room.
Go in the room, lock the boors, call the police.

Speaker 5 (42:25):
So I'm getting ready to go into the kitchen, but
I realized that my other sister has been trying to
escape out of the apartment. So I'm like, oh my god,
now she's stuck here. So I grab her and I
take her in the other room and I get on
the phone and call the police. I said, there is
somebody in his house. I'm in the house with a
whole bunch of screaming and hollering freaked out women and

(42:48):
girls and everybody freaked out.

Speaker 6 (42:50):
And they was like, well, we're on.

Speaker 5 (42:52):
The phone with your other sister right now, but we
can't be in the phone with both of y'all.

Speaker 6 (42:56):
I said, well, you can get off the phone with me,
stay on the phone and try to comfort her because
they're freaking out.

Speaker 1 (43:03):
And so at this point, everyone still thinks that he's
in the house, but he's actually jumped out the window
and no one knows it yet. Okay, that's so, I
mean it and it's the middle of.

Speaker 6 (43:14):
The night, right two o'clock in the morning, two thirty morning.

Speaker 1 (43:18):
Yeah, oh my god.

Speaker 5 (43:19):
Okay, so we see the police. The police pull up,
but they didn't pull up with no lights, no nothing.

Speaker 6 (43:26):
All they got. All you see is a bunch of flashlights. Okay,
going around. So that was my chance.

Speaker 5 (43:31):
So I opened the door. I said, Jade, and you're safe.
I said, stay here, you're safe. I'm going to go
let the offices in.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (43:38):
I have to walk past the kitchen to get to
the front door.

Speaker 6 (43:43):
So I opened the door. I said, he's in the kitchen.

Speaker 5 (43:47):
Oh okay, get there, motherfucking m.

Speaker 6 (43:54):
They go in the kitchen and come to find out
the window is wide open. I prepared myself to die
that night because I knew I.

Speaker 5 (44:04):
Had to protect my sisters, and people don't understand the
feeling that you get when you're preparing to to die.
I knew that he had with that to get a
weapon or anything like that, because it's just not registering
that this dude had jumped out the whole window. And
I blame myself for it, because remember I told you
I was cooking. I had left the stack window open.

(44:27):
He used the garden to see the garbage can to
get in the window.

Speaker 1 (44:30):
Right. How is how is how is Kelly at this?
I mean, because she also has to like protect her daughter,
she was attacked. How was she in those moments?

Speaker 6 (44:43):
Oh?

Speaker 5 (44:43):
I had mad and my sister she is She's a
true She's a street girl. She is a hooded girl.
So when I see the fear in her, and everybody
just shaped it profusely, like it was so I had

(45:04):
never seen my family that scared in my life, and
I just.

Speaker 6 (45:08):
Thaked the police.

Speaker 5 (45:09):
I was just so happy. I was like, thank y'all
for coming to say my family and stuff like that.
And they escorted us off. But you know, I'm a
I watched for Rigid Files.

Speaker 6 (45:20):
I watched first forty eight. I said, I said, I
got some skin.

Speaker 5 (45:25):
You know, I started, baby shit, I'm like, I got
skinned under, I got his skins under my nails.

Speaker 6 (45:31):
He like his.

Speaker 5 (45:32):
T shirt in the house and the T shirt was
wet from his sweat. So I'm like, I got t shirt.
Figure prison off from the window still, And so I went,
you know, back in those days, we used the Yellow Pages. Yeah,
so I'm sitting there going through the yellow Pages trying
to find an investigatorm.

Speaker 6 (45:49):
You teckt his nud I went and straight to take them.
I was up that hole.

Speaker 5 (45:55):
They escorted us off the property at about threeter four o'clock.

Speaker 6 (45:58):
Okay. So we all go to the house that I
was staying at at the time.

Speaker 1 (46:02):
Okay.

Speaker 5 (46:03):
And so I'm sitting there going through the yellow fagers,
looking for an investigator.

Speaker 6 (46:07):
Looking for an investigator.

Speaker 3 (46:08):
Finally I'm calling everybody and one man and he called
me back and he was like, hey, oh my god,
I heard your the voicemail, and I want to come
and get the You don't have to worry about no
money or nothing like that.

Speaker 5 (46:23):
I want to come and get the evidence. I said, yes,
come on, I meet you at the apartment. So later
on that day, remind you I was calling local newspeople too,
because I'm like, I just cannot rest, you know what
I'm saying, until this gets handled.

Speaker 6 (46:40):
But nobody's answering me from WFF.

Speaker 5 (46:43):
So when I get to the house the investigator who
was up now at the time of the investigator pulling up,
now the neighborhood is everybody upset. Now everybody's saying like, oh,
this ain't happening to you. Y'all got here, y'all the
trouble make y'all bringing this dropping to the neighborhood. So

(47:04):
I'm arguing back and forth with the neighbors. So as
that is all this all this is happening at the
exact same time I'm arguing with the neighbors, I got
the detective pulling up with the local news station, and
I got the church bus telling me, hey, here's a flyer,
which the paper I had.

Speaker 8 (47:23):
In my hand.

Speaker 5 (47:24):
They like, here's the fire for you to go to church.
You know, you can bring the kids and stuff like
all this is going on.

Speaker 1 (47:31):
So how how did the local news find out who? Like,
how did they find out?

Speaker 5 (47:37):
The detective was cool with Elizabeth Gentle And I guess
he said, hey, this is a story that this dude
is like he owned one, like you know, I was
you know, when I talk, I speak with my body expression,
you know what I'm saying, you know, And so I
guess he felt that and he heard my voicemail and

(47:59):
he like, oh, yeah, you might want to cover this story.
So she's coming with a white So while I'm arguing
with the neighbor and Elizabeth walking up to me, and
she's like and so do you want to say anything
about what happened last night?

Speaker 6 (48:14):
So and the lady.

Speaker 5 (48:15):
Still talking shit on the side, So I look, I said, yeah, hell,
obviously I wasn't talking to to be truthfully honest, I
was talking in response to the neighbor.

Speaker 6 (48:31):
So the camera was on.

Speaker 5 (48:33):
It was so easy for me to be like, well, obviously,
when you get through running yo mouth, y'all need to
hide your kids. How'd your wife and hid your husbins too?
Because they're greating everybody out here. Because what people don't
know is the very next day that same person tried
to break into another person's house and do the very
same thing, only.

Speaker 6 (48:54):
She had a boy there who had a gun.

Speaker 1 (48:56):
Okay, that's a question. That's a thing that I mean,
I wanted to ask you. I'd love to talk to
Kelly at some point as well, because it's like there's
so many different versions of who this person was, what
his relationship was to everybody, like in your from from
where you're coming from, like who who? Who was it?

Speaker 5 (49:17):
I'm going to say I only said this a couple
of times because I felt like it really didn't matter,
But now that I'm older, it does matter. So a
couple of days before. Remind you, my sister had just
moved in this apartment.

Speaker 6 (49:32):
She wasn't even there a month. Okay, So but a
person that we had.

Speaker 5 (49:37):
Already knew that was out there had came and knocked
on my sister door and said, you know, they've been
talking about running in your shit. They said, you you
booming too hard, like you move into hard, you push
in too much weight, and stuff like that, like they
talked about coming in here robbing y'all or whatever. So
of course nobody is paying attention to nothing like that

(49:59):
because you look at it is like, oh, this is
some hate and shit, not thinking that it's going to
actually happen, because a couple of days later after that visit,
it really did happen.

Speaker 1 (50:10):
Kevin admits he can't prove who he Kelly or anyone
suspected was the man who assaulted her, but it wasn't
a question. The public had a lot of interest in
at the time as it was, but he and his
sister's lives changed pretty immediately once the news clip aired.

Speaker 6 (50:27):
It A benefit almost destroyed us. I'm not gonna lie.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
What is that experience, like when do you start to
realize like this is a this is a thing.

Speaker 6 (50:37):
Okay.

Speaker 5 (50:37):
So after I did the view with Elizabeth Gentles because
that was in the morning time, yes, And so later
on that night it aired on local TV, and so
everybody was hitting me up on Facebook and text me
and they're like, oh, I just see your interview on
the news. Boy, that's crazy. Is it bore you crazy?

(51:00):
Didn look and I'm like, I don't find this shit.

Speaker 6 (51:02):
Funny, Like what is funny about it? You know what
I'm saying, Like.

Speaker 5 (51:06):
This is still fresh for y'all, still scared, you know,
still looking over our shoulders, not to mention the endless
nightmare that I had to go through with my family,
them having dreams about them coming in. You gotta be
blocking all the doors and the windows, and like it
changed our life. So it aired that night, so I'm like, okay, cool,

(51:30):
it's cool. And then somebody hit me up and was like, oh,
they put it on YouTube. You got three hundred and
sixteen views.

Speaker 6 (51:37):
I'm like, wait, what three hundred and sixty views. I'm like, damn,
people really watching me like that.

Speaker 5 (51:42):
So I'm on YouTube, I'm watching it, and the next
thing i know, I'm watching it.

Speaker 6 (51:46):
It's five thousand views.

Speaker 5 (51:48):
Ten thousand views, fifty thousand views, five hundred thousand views.
I said, oh my god, like, it is so many
people watching this shit, Like yeah.

Speaker 6 (51:59):
But why you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 5 (52:01):
Then all of a sudden, I started getting people and
boxing me. They were saying like, Hey, I.

Speaker 6 (52:06):
Want to bring you to my.

Speaker 5 (52:09):
Can you come up making appearance here? We'll pay you,
We'll set you up in hotels and stuff. So I'm thinking, like,
what the fuck is going on? Like I'm so confused
as like what is happening because this is all has
happened in one day. So I'm like, so I'm like,
what is going I'm like freaking out.

Speaker 6 (52:30):
And then everybody.

Speaker 5 (52:33):
I had a couple of people reaching out to me
trying to manage me and stuff like that, and so
I was like this one person had hit me up
and was like, if you cannot meet your manager, if
you can't meet a person in person and sit down
and have dinner or coffee or lunch with them, then
they shouldn't be a manager.

Speaker 6 (52:51):
Yeah, And so I was like, damn. So I ended
up meeting with.

Speaker 5 (52:56):
This one particular guy who which was Richard figure Rover,
my first manager, and we went to a coffee shop,
and he was like, look over the place in Huntsville.
And so he was like, I want to represent you.
You're everywhere, everybody talking about you. I think you need
the proper management. Not to mention that he was going

(53:16):
to the projects looking for me and stuff, trying to
find me because he felt like.

Speaker 1 (53:20):
Where did he come from? Like where was he based?

Speaker 5 (53:23):
He was already based in Huntsville. See, these are the
people who, uh, these are the people who was like
managing Naomi Campbell and stuff like that. Naomi Campbell's old
manager who was best Boat. She was born in Huntsville
and so she was a supermodel back in her day.
And so of course she the one who discovered Naomi

(53:45):
did actually Christians.

Speaker 6 (53:46):
First photos and all these people.

Speaker 5 (53:49):
So it was it was a no brainer to go
with a person who was already familiar with management.

Speaker 1 (53:56):
How soon after the clip airing does all of that?
How is it pretty instantaneous?

Speaker 6 (54:03):
It was immediately.

Speaker 5 (54:04):
It was like when I did the interview that morning
and with the investigator, by twelve o'clock that same night,
I was already being talked about. And so the next
day that's when I started getting everybody hitting me up.
And they loved the video and wanted me to come

(54:26):
and make appearances and stuff like that, and the song
had not been created yet. This is still I was, yeah,
I was already huged for the song. And so when
they did I guess the Gregory Brothers they did a.

Speaker 6 (54:40):
Clip of the song, and I was mad. I'm not
gonna lie. I was mad than the motherfucker because I
thought I thought that they were making fun, you know,
because we're still traumatized, you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 5 (54:55):
It was just all in a couple of days time.
I think the clip came out like a week later, okay.

Speaker 6 (55:02):
And they had such.

Speaker 5 (55:03):
A good response to it, like a heavy response. They
came to they said, hey, we want to create a
whole song.

Speaker 6 (55:14):
You know what I'm saying. We want to make should
you get compensated.

Speaker 5 (55:17):
We want to split the split everything fifty to fifty.
And we went into contract and they did the whole song.
And once that song came out, better to to became
a life of its own.

Speaker 1 (55:30):
We were going to take a quick break and be
back with Kevin Antoine Dodson after this. Welcome back to
sixteenth minute. Here is part two of my interview with
Kevin Antoine Dodson. It's not like there's really anyone to

(55:54):
turn to to be like, well, this is how it's done,
Like you kind of have to improvise as you go, right,
Like there's no.

Speaker 5 (56:00):
Right and that's what And that's the hard time that
I have because I just did a video just recently
that went viral, and they still talking about they said
that virul, that video go virul every other day. But
they were saying like, oh, he didn't take his lemons
and make lemonade. But what people don't understand that I
was the first viral person to.

Speaker 6 (56:22):
Go viral like that. So they didn't know how to
market me. They and I had so many networks. They
would tell me like, we don't know what to do
with you. This has like never happened before. We don't
know how to market you. We don't know where to
place you.

Speaker 5 (56:38):
All I know is that everybody wants you, but we
don't know what to do with you. And after hearing that, hell,
I didn't even know what to do with myself at
the time, right, But they swear people sweat up and
down like they act like I had the guide.

Speaker 6 (56:54):
To thing and I didn't. We did not know what
to do.

Speaker 5 (57:00):
So when it all boils down, it was like we
can no longer go to Kelly's house because like fans
would pull up, they would be out there waiting for
hours like we had because we were still cool with
the neighbors, and the neighbors. They was getting upset. They're like, man,
it's chaos out here, like all these people pulling up
and droves. You had people flying from flying from other

(57:21):
cities and states. You had people driving in coming to
that apartment I'm talking about. It was like a museum
to them. So I sat with myself and I said,
you know what, I can make something out of it.
If these people are asking me to come here and
there for some money, I can move us out of
this situation. So I'm telling my family this year, and

(57:44):
they're like, no, I don't think you should do it.
I think this is dangerous and stuff like that. I'm like, y'all,
I don't care what y'all say.

Speaker 6 (57:51):
I'm finna do it. I'm finna take these trips.

Speaker 5 (57:52):
I'm finna sign this contract with this manager because I
feel like they can help me and put this into perspective.

Speaker 6 (57:59):
They can help.

Speaker 5 (58:00):
Organize I don't know what I'm doing right, so and
that's how that happened. So I just went on and
start doing my thing.

Speaker 1 (58:08):
How did Kelly feel about that at the time?

Speaker 6 (58:11):
How?

Speaker 1 (58:11):
Yeah, how are you? Because it's like you guys have
to navigate this together as things keep going. How is
she dealing with it? How does she feel like? Did
she have different instincts from you? Or Yeah?

Speaker 5 (58:24):
If you pay attention to the beginning of all that,
me and Kelly was traveling together, we had did toss
point oh together, We was doing videos together.

Speaker 6 (58:33):
We were doing all types of stuff together.

Speaker 5 (58:36):
But her boyfriend at the time convinced her, like, they're
making fun of y'all.

Speaker 6 (58:41):
They're not laughing with y'all. They laughing at y'all.

Speaker 5 (58:44):
And and at the time he had a little money,
you know what I'm saying, So it was easy for
her to.

Speaker 6 (58:50):
Say, Yeah, I'm a ride with this dude. And she
rode with this dude.

Speaker 5 (58:53):
And I started traveling by myself and she went on
with her dude and Mama, I mean them, they didn't
really have nowhere to go. My other siblings and stuff
didn't have nowhere to go. So I would not stay
and work. And when I made my first check, I
put them in the house.

Speaker 1 (59:11):
Okay, yeah, because I was seeing that coverage from like
August of that year where I think you posted that.
You know that there's like you have this huge hit
on Itune, but you still live in the projects and
there's this like dissonance to what's going on. So from
your perspective, it's like, capitalize on the moment and improve

(59:31):
the families.

Speaker 6 (59:33):
Right right, And that's what I did.

Speaker 1 (59:35):
Okay, I mean that makes total sense. So okay, so
now you are making I mean, does Bene Intruder kind
of become your full time living at that point?

Speaker 6 (59:48):
Ah? Yeah, Oh my god. I couldn't go nowhere. I
couldn't do nothing, Like.

Speaker 5 (59:55):
It just became everything was about being into every conversation
I had, everything that was going on, was making deals,
was getting on the airplane.

Speaker 6 (01:00:05):
Was living in hotels.

Speaker 5 (01:00:06):
See, I didn't get me a place to stay right away,
because now at this time, I'm traveling a lot. Yeah,
I'm not in the I'm not staying in it. I mean,
Huntsville no longer did two days, so it's easy for
me to either go stay at my manager's house or
go lay on my mama's couch. And then I'm back
on the plane.

Speaker 6 (01:00:25):
You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 5 (01:00:26):
So yeah, n In truly became my whole life for
two years. See what people failed to realize with me
and Kelly when I knew the trauma.

Speaker 6 (01:00:37):
Trauma happened.

Speaker 5 (01:00:38):
Like I explained, trauma has happened all our lives, so
we know how to go through some shit, get back up,
thus ourselves again, off and try again.

Speaker 6 (01:00:50):
So it was never the It was never getting over
the trauma.

Speaker 5 (01:00:55):
It was the fact of, you know, having a nightmares
here at seeing screaming out of her sleep, seeing her
daughter scream out of her sleep, her mama, screaming out
of my mama, screaming out of her sleep, my sister.

Speaker 6 (01:01:07):
It was going through that and how.

Speaker 5 (01:01:09):
To balance that all out because we're not used to
they say that.

Speaker 6 (01:01:14):
Everybody kept saying like, y'all need some serious counseling. You
know what I'm saying. In my mind at the time, it's.

Speaker 5 (01:01:19):
Like, how could you talk to somebody who don't know you?
You know what I'm saying, How could you you know
which right now?

Speaker 6 (01:01:27):
Man? You talking? Which is very therapeutic for me.

Speaker 5 (01:01:31):
Like I feel like I'm getting all this out because
I rarely talk about the life from Chicago because everybody
is so focused on twenty ten on up and now
since so much time has passed by and now everybody
is asking, like who is Antoine Dosson? We want to
know more about Antoine Dowson and I have been in

(01:01:52):
conversations with Netflix Lifetime because and I don't want to
give too many details about my life because I would
hate to wake up one day and see somebody that
did a movie or or.

Speaker 1 (01:02:08):
Right without your consent.

Speaker 5 (01:02:10):
Yeah, yeah, about a story because even though it's trauma,
it's trauma.

Speaker 6 (01:02:15):
My life story is good as hell. Kelly life story
is good as hell.

Speaker 5 (01:02:19):
And I'm telling you it's going to make somebody a
lot of money if they get it right right, because
the narrative was, I don't know if you remember, but
the narrative was, this was a setup for the same
we did this to become famous, Like they really thought
that we that this was like some type of skit

(01:02:39):
and that was another thing that we had to fight,
and that shit pissed Kelly off.

Speaker 1 (01:02:44):
Yeah, well yeah, because it's like that's just again discounting
this traumatic, violent incident, like that's oh, that makes me
so mad. I do remember that being presented, and I
don't know. I went back yesterday and today and like,
watch the original clip, and there's so much that I
think a lot of it is because it didn't end
up in the song, but like the more upsetting parts

(01:03:05):
of the clip, like the scene of the crime. Like
there's so much included in that report and it's just
boiled down to these couple of quotes.

Speaker 5 (01:03:14):
Right, And see, nobody knew that I talked that, We
talked to WAFL.

Speaker 6 (01:03:19):
We was out there for.

Speaker 5 (01:03:20):
Ours talking back and forth, arguing with everybody, like this
went on for hours with.

Speaker 6 (01:03:27):
Investigators and everything.

Speaker 5 (01:03:28):
But they, you know how we do in the industry,
they shortened all the clips and that's what she got.

Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
How did the investigation? Did the investigation ever resolve?

Speaker 6 (01:03:40):
As a time?

Speaker 5 (01:03:42):
As the time went on and then I began to
work and stuff like that, I can honestly say I
did kind of drop the ball with the investigation because
now I'm trying to make this money.

Speaker 6 (01:03:53):
I'm trying to get us out of the situation.

Speaker 5 (01:03:55):
I'm trying to because none of us, you know, we
never really had shit in life, so I was trying
to get something for them.

Speaker 6 (01:04:01):
Even if he never got caught.

Speaker 5 (01:04:02):
I wanted to make sure that I had something for
us when all this bore down, And yeah, I dropped,
We dropped the ball with that.

Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
I mean, did it ever feel like during those early
years that like you were, I mean that there was
like inherent like racism, inherent homophobia to the way that
you were being treated by the media.

Speaker 6 (01:04:26):
Yeah, oh my god, I'm sold.

Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
Let's talk about that.

Speaker 6 (01:04:29):
Yeah, let's talk.

Speaker 5 (01:04:30):
About that, because you know, I was I've always been
known for hair and shoes.

Speaker 6 (01:04:36):
You know, I used to get my.

Speaker 5 (01:04:37):
Hair pressed out and where wigs and we back then,
that was not popular.

Speaker 6 (01:04:44):
They did not want that.

Speaker 5 (01:04:47):
I had one person who wanted me to be trans,
like they wanted to put me on the trans side
of things, and I was like, no, I'm not trans.
I'm just a limited, flamboyant boy who liked law mail,
long hare. I like to be a pretty boy. But
I know that I am a man.

Speaker 6 (01:05:06):
So they when I did get out here and work
and stuff, they did not want the long hair. They
did not want the long nails, they didn't want the
flamboyant antoine.

Speaker 5 (01:05:16):
They were not rocking. Fast forward today, you see all
these men on the Internet and wigs making a hell
of a lot of money, and it is approved everybody.

Speaker 6 (01:05:28):
Uh, what's the word that I'm looking for. It's accepted.

Speaker 5 (01:05:33):
Everybody is accepting it, and I feel like I'm the
blueprint of that.

Speaker 1 (01:05:38):
To this day. Kevin has a good relationship with the
Gregory Brothers. You mentioned that when his mother passed away
several years ago, the brothers helped him pay for the funeral.
But what I found was interesting were Kevin's reflections on
how things have changed online since he became prominent in
twenty ten, particularly as it pertains to perception and compensation.

Speaker 5 (01:06:01):
Well, I see that now do you remember the me
too movement and stuff like that? See, now it had
became open because if in twenty ten, will you tell
somebody that you got raped or sexually started.

Speaker 6 (01:06:14):
Like, don't tell that. Oh no, my god, don't don't
don't say that. Don't do that.

Speaker 5 (01:06:18):
Now you got Diddy being exposed, You got all these
different celebrities being exposed and stuff talking about it and
stuff like that. So I like to believe that Benitudor
and that interview and stuff kind of led to what's
happening now.

Speaker 6 (01:06:34):
It starts.

Speaker 5 (01:06:35):
I believe that Benitudor is starting to bring brought awareness
to a lot of things that a lot of things
that was happening.

Speaker 1 (01:06:42):
So are you still in touch with the Gregory Brothers? Now?

Speaker 5 (01:06:48):
See when I did it, just did that INNYW just
did that video that when viral. People had it in
their mind that I wasn't getting paid for the song
and me and the Gregory Brothers we have a good bit.
See they thought when I did that interview, I was
not talking about the song because most people use the clip,

(01:07:10):
the news clip, which is owned by WAFF, and they
use my likeness not necessarily the song.

Speaker 6 (01:07:19):
And that's what.

Speaker 5 (01:07:20):
I was telling them, Like, look y'all made so much
money off of that interview.

Speaker 6 (01:07:25):
You know what I'm saying. The only money that I
made off of that interview alone.

Speaker 5 (01:07:29):
I made sixty thousand dollars off of that interview in
fourteen years because WFF owns it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:36):
So where did that number come from?

Speaker 5 (01:07:41):
That's the money that I made overall from the interview alone. Like,
that's not the better the song because with the interview
with the people don't understand that interview has been in movies,
it has been in TV shows, it has been in commercials.
It has been in people's commercials for their businesses, and

(01:08:04):
I never seen a diamond back. And I know that
it generated a lot of money. Yes, And I don't
know if WFF is getting paid because somebody brought something
to my attention. They were saying, like, you know, the
WFF got paid for your video on YouTube when they

(01:08:24):
put it on YouTube and got all the millions of things.

Speaker 6 (01:08:27):
They got to check for that. Yes, I didn't. I
didn't go viral on my page. I've never went viral
on my page. I have.

Speaker 5 (01:08:36):
What people don't understand is I have been going viral
every other month for the last fourteen years on other
people's pages.

Speaker 6 (01:08:46):
And I have watched people make bread. I have watched people,
and I know that these apps make money. Yea.

Speaker 5 (01:08:53):
And when you see Antoine Dotson, if you see a
video of somebody doing Antoine dots and using my likeness
in that video and you got ten and fifteen million views,
I know that you're making money from I'm not dumb,
of course, I know that.

Speaker 6 (01:09:07):
You're making money from that.

Speaker 5 (01:09:09):
And nobody stay well, here asy, he's cut, here's a cut,
here's five dollars. You know what I'm saying, I appreciate
you doing benitudo or whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:09:20):
But the Gregory brothers have been have always been.

Speaker 6 (01:09:24):
Well, they have always been good to me. I'm still
living off of.

Speaker 5 (01:09:27):
Banituda song money, okay, and I have a good relationship
with them. We travel together when we want to perform.

Speaker 6 (01:09:35):
I got to tell you this story real quick. It's
so funny. It's quick. So we was.

Speaker 5 (01:09:40):
At BT Awards, No, not BT Awards, were at one
or sixter part and so you know the Gregory brothers,
all of them are brothers and sisters, and yeah, they
got a wife that's a part who's sings.

Speaker 6 (01:09:52):
Yeah, So we were in a dressing room. She walked
in the dressing rooms.

Speaker 5 (01:09:55):
She was like, oh my god, this is such a
dream come true to see Bettu And they climbing in
your window at BT.

Speaker 6 (01:10:05):
Every calling because you know they're white.

Speaker 5 (01:10:08):
So it's so funny, like we all all every time
we get together.

Speaker 6 (01:10:13):
Is like a It was so funny. It was so funny.

Speaker 1 (01:10:18):
And in spite of it all, Kevin is still online today,
making regular content for TikTok, either commenting on the news
or reflecting on his career as an influencer. And if
you happen to be a prospective or recovering character of
the day. Here's his advice to be.

Speaker 5 (01:10:37):
Successful in Internet because I noticed with a lot of
internet stars after me, nobody really They burn out very fast,
two to three months and they're done. So he's been
fourteen years for me because I never shot away from.

Speaker 6 (01:10:58):
Who I truly was. You know who I truly am.

Speaker 5 (01:11:02):
I always try to stay as close as to who
I am as possible because when you start doing all
this crazy shit for clicks, you burn out, and then
if you don't have to do videos every day all day,
you burn out like that.

Speaker 6 (01:11:21):
There's a balance to this Internet stuff.

Speaker 5 (01:11:23):
Well one, you have to be authentic, and I noticed
that everybody is biting off to each other.

Speaker 6 (01:11:28):
Everybody is doing the exact same thing, and they're burning out.
My advice is be authentic. Be as authentic as.

Speaker 5 (01:11:38):
You can possibly be, because that is going to take
you far.

Speaker 1 (01:11:43):
So talking with Antoine or Kevin as he goes by
in his personal life was completely surreal. It wasn't expecting
to be starstruck in the way that I was. But
he is someone who has lived in my mind for
a decade and a half and it's a very particular
kind of celebrity encounter. I want to thank him for
his willingness to be with me about his childhood as
well as his experience becoming Internet famous. And you can

(01:12:05):
check out what he's up to now at the links
in the description. Understanding Kevin's life better really helped pull
this story into focus for me, But there's still that
element that never quite sat well. That the further this
story got away from the public, the less we heard
about Kelly Dodson. What the fuck is that about? We're
going to talk about that in part two, Next Time

(01:12:25):
on sixteenth Minute. Sixteenth Minute is a production of Cool
Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It is written, posted, and produced
by me Jamie Loftus. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman
and Robert Evans. He Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising
producer and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad

(01:12:45):
thirteen and Pet. Shoutouts to our dog producer Anderson, my
Kat's Flee and Casper and my pet Rockbird, who will
outlive us all. Bye.