Aaron Goodwin

Aaron Goodwin is best known for his role as a cameraman/ghost hunter on the popular show Ghost Adventures. In 2024, Goodwin’s wife, Victoria, began plotting to kill her husband with Florida inmate Grant Amato, who was sentenced to life in prison for killing his family. Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss the plot to murder Aaron Goodwin. We covered Grant Amato, a nasty individual, on a previous episode of True Crime All The Time. Aaron and Victoria married in 2022. Friends and followers saw them as a happy, private couple, though investigators later said their marriage became strained during 2024. Victoria became interested in Grant Amato's case after watching the documentary Ctrl+Alt+Desire and began to communicate with him. Together, they hatched a plot to have Aaron killed. You can help support the show at patreon.com/truecrimeallthetime Visit the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.com for contact, merchandise, and donation information An Emash Digital production See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:05Speaker 00

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• 1:31Speaker 00

  Give me, how are you?

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Man, I'm good. 505, that's like my IQ score.

• 1:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, divided by seven?

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Two.

• 1:38Speaker 00

  Divided by seven? I think you're in the ballpark somewhere. So you and I are back from Crime Con.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  We are.

• 1:46Speaker 00

  We had a good time and, you know, we're done with the Long Island Serial Killer and we're on to...

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Other things.

• 1:54Speaker 00

  Other things. And so are you ready to get into this episode of True Crime All The Time?

• 1:58Speaker 01

  I am ready.

• 2:00Speaker 00

  Aaron Goodwin is best known for his role as cameraman slash ghost hunter on the popular show Ghost Adventures. You ever watched that?

• 2:09Speaker 01

  Think I have.

• 2:10Speaker 00

  I'm assuming it's probably the same format as most of them, which is, did you hear that? Did you feel the coldness sweep over me? You know, in the Bigfoot ones, it's always like, did you hear that?

• 2:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:24Speaker 00

  I didn't hear anything, but hey, you know, I'm not there. So.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Did you see that move really quick over there?

• 2:31Speaker 00

  It always makes me think of, you know, I've talked about it, but I love the Conjuring series.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:37Speaker 00

  And actually just started watching them again.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:40Speaker 00

  I just, I just rewatch the same stuff over and over, but I like it. Now I did try to watch some of those ghost shows back in the day because they had a bunch of them on.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  They sure did.

• 2:51Speaker 00

  There for a while. Just couldn't get into them because you're not showing me anything that is tangible.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. You're, you're a non believer.

• 3:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. But in 2024, Goodwin's wife, Victoria, began plotting to kill her husband with Florida inmate Grant Amato, who was sentenced to life in prison for killing his family. And this is kind of why this case jumped out at me. Number one, you got to, you know, murder for hire plot, but it also involves someone who we have previously profiled on True Crime All The Time, and that's Grant Amato.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I remember that.

• 3:30Speaker 00

  Aaron Goodwin has been a core part of the show Ghost Adventures since 2008. Although he has an unusual career, traveling around the country to allegedly haunted locations in search of ghosts, Aaron seemed to have a pretty normal life, right outside of work. On social media, he shared bits of his personal life in Las Vegas with his wife, Victoria. They got married in 2018. So we just got back from Las Vegas. Not my scene, as I kind of said on Patreon, but. I know a lot of people love it. I'm just not a big gambler.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:08Speaker 00

  Not a big drinker either, so.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  I mean, there's definitely ghosts out there because I'm telling you, I don't know what happened, but so I would take my money. And I would put it into the machine.

• 4:19Speaker 00

  And the ghost would just steal it.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it just disappeared, man. I'm like, what, what the, where did it go?

• 4:24Speaker 00

  Very quickly.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:25Speaker 00

  I gambled $5.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Did you?

• 4:28Speaker 00

  And I did it at the airport.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  Just to say that I did.

• 4:33Speaker 00

  Didn't win anything, but hey.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Was that like one button?

• 4:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Boom, done.

• 4:37Speaker 00

  One button and I just went back to my seat and I was fulfilled.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  You're like, yep, yep, I did. That's what I thought would happen. I'm glad I only spent $5 to find that out.

• 4:45Speaker 00

  Yep. According to people, Victoria was a collegiate golfer. She said in a December 2024 podcast interview that she dreamed of going pro. But that was put on hold when she was diagnosed with Akleza. I, I hope I'm saying that right, but it's a very rare condition that makes it difficult to swallow.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 5:10Speaker 00

  I never heard of it before. I do, I do know people who have difficulty swallowing things like pills and.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:19Speaker 00

  You know, they're a little more susceptible to that, but you think about having trouble swallowing. Okay, that is going to change your life dramatically.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know somebody that had some issues with that and they had to buy this. It's like a chemical that you mix into everything that you drink. Because it, it thickens it up.

• 5:42Speaker 00

  Why would you want to thicken up? Doesn't it seem like it'd be the reverse? If you have difficulty swallowing, you'd want it as liquid as possible.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  I didn't ask questions.

• 5:52Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  It is, the doctor said buy this stuff, you put it in your drinks and it's supposed to make it eat better for them to swallow, I guess.

• 5:59Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 6:00Speaker 00

  I got you.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:01Speaker 00

  So Erin and Victoria got engaged in 2019, but they had to postpone their wedding several times due to the pandemic. And we know, right? The pandemic affected everything.

• 6:16Speaker 00

  Not to, to minimize it because obviously a lot of people lost their lives, but it affected so many things, right? Trials, every time we cover a case from that period. The trial just kept getting pushed back and pushed back.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:31Speaker 00

  And I'm sure a lot of people who had weddings planned, had to push those back. Aaron wrote in a 2019 Instagram post, I'm so lucky to have her in my life. She helps me when I'm down and she always makes me laugh. I always feel safe when she's next to me, holding my hand.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  It's the way you should feel when you're with your significant other.

• 6:53Speaker 00

  Well, it's a good sentiment, especially when you're still in that kind of state of bliss, right?

• 7:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:00Speaker 00

  You're not yet married, you know.

• 7:05Speaker 00

  Do a lot of married people say this 20, 30 years in? Maybe.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 7:11Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  You just had your 30th not too long ago.

• 7:12Speaker 00

  I did, I did. And you know, my wife and I held hands, uh, walking through Vegas and the airport.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:21Speaker 00

  Mostly, I think because she didn't want to fall down the escalator, but it was still a very touching moment.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Did it bring you comfort?

• 7:29Speaker 00

  No, I think it brought her comfort because she has a, a slight fear of escalators.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Can you be honest though? The reason you held her hand in the forum where the mall was because you were dragging her out of there. So she didn't stop at any more stores.

• 7:44Speaker 00

  Dude, I don't have enough money to be buying things at all those. Those were the most expensive stores.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  They were, man.

• 7:52Speaker 00

  In the world.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  I don't know who shops there, man. That was crazy, some of those stores.

• 7:56Speaker 00

  Some people have a lot of money.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  I guess.

• 7:58Speaker 00

  In Vegas, I guess.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Spend it, spend it, I guess, if you gotta.

• 8:01Speaker 00

  Hey, YOLO. They eventually got married in August, 2022. According to a post on Aaron's Instagram account, they had their wedding ceremony at Disney's Haunted Mansion.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, it makes sense, right? Cause he's into haunted stuff and you know, it is Disney, so I'm sure it's kinda, kinda cool. Cause you're at Disney doing it.

• 8:24Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Right?

• 8:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, I guess. My wife and I had our honeymoon at Disney.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  Did you?

• 8:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, cause she loves Disney.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Oh, the honeymoon. I thought you.

• 8:33Speaker 00

  30 years ago.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  Thought you were doing the honeymoon and I'm like, isn't that weird for kids to be around?

• 8:38Speaker 00

  Not, not that part.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:40Speaker 00

  But, uh. Just in Orlando, we had our honeymoon, but we went to Disney a bunch.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:46Speaker 00

  On social media, Aaron and Victoria appeared to be an affectionate but private couple. Aaron sometimes posted photos of their travels or their home life. And again, a couple of things there, things that you and I talk about quite a bit. You know, what do people put out for others to see versus what's really going on at home?

• 9:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:12Speaker 00

  Behind closed doors, right? And I think a lot of times those can be two very different thing.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  I believe that they, there's a big percentage of that is not true to who they really are in their life.

• 9:26Speaker 00

  Yeah. You know? But maybe they want to project to everybody else that they have this kind of picture perfect life.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I think there is some that what you see is what they are, it's what you get. And I love that. I wish everybody could be like that, but I don't know if that's.

• 9:41Speaker 00

  I don't know what the percentage is.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:43Speaker 00

  I really don't. According to later investigative reports, their marriage became strained in 2024. That year, Victoria watched the true crime docu-series Control Alt Desire, which covers the case of Gran Amato. And like I said, we did cover this case. I think it was back in late 2024, maybe November, December. I forget exactly when, but Amato is serving life in prison for the 2019 murders of his parents and brother. He plotted the murders after his father kicked him out for continuing to communicate with the webcam model. He was obsessed with, and I know you remember this case.

• 10:28Speaker 00

  It was so fascinating.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  It was, it really was.

• 10:31Speaker 00

  I mean, there were reports that he was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:37Speaker 00

  And stealing some of that from his, you know, his family and stuff, hundreds of thousands of dollars because I think he really felt like this cam model was his girlfriend. She was in love with him.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  He really took the bait on that.

• 10:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:56Speaker 00

  Now, obviously she wasn't.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  No.

• 10:58Speaker 00

  She was playing a role very well, apparently, but, you know, to try to get him to spend money on her. A model, a former nurse, used up to $200,000 of his father and brother's money to pay the model and attend her webcam sessions. His family attempted to provide therapy and treatment by forcing him to go to rehab, which he left early. A motto argued with his father and was given an ultimatum. When his family discovered that he was still in contact with the model, he was ordered to leave his family's home in Chalota, Florida.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Well, I think at that point they had enough.

• 11:41Speaker 00

  Wow, $200,000, Gibbs, is a lot of money.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  It is.

• 11:46Speaker 00

  For your child to steal from you.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 11:50Speaker 00

  You know, how is this person going to pay that money back? And do they even want to? Do they even care? Obviously, they're showing you that they don't really care about you if they're willing to do that. But I remember, you know, that case and specifically the documentary. There was one time when he was either filming a video for this chat model, I think, and sending it to her. But it was basically like begging and pleading her with her to make a video for him because he just didn't have any money at that point.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:31Speaker 00

  And even if he'd already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, I don't think she was gonna do it.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  It had her principles, I guess.

• 12:39Speaker 00

  Well, it's a transaction.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 12:41Speaker 00

  It really is, but like you said, he didn't see it that way.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  No.

• 12:47Speaker 00

  You know, he had a much different take on it and didn't realize or maybe didn't want to realize that she was just, you know, performing a service for money, which is what that is. There's no emotional attachment for them.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  No.

• 13:04Speaker 00

  Right on the other side of the camera.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  It's a job, man.

• 13:08Speaker 00

  But the people paying all this money, they can form.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  And a lot of times they do.

• 13:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I think he did for sure. On January 24th, 2019, Amato shot his mother, then waited for his father and brother to return home and killed them both. He attempted to stage the crime scene as a murder-suicide committed by his brother before he fled. He was later captured and found guilty of the murders. So, you know, let's talk about this kind of staging of the crime scene.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:44Speaker 00

  This comes up in a lot of the true crime all the time episodes that we do. I just don't know what the success rate of it is. Because number one, most people are not, you know, in that forensic science or that police world. So they may not exactly know what they're doing. Okay, yeah, you can watch CSI and you can watch movies and you can get some, some tips, some ideas, but is it really going to, you know, pass the smell test when investigators start digging in?

• 14:22Speaker 01

  I think it's hard to really create it, you know, artificially wise, because it's such a natural thing that's going to happen. And either you're gonna overcompensate when you're trying to fake it, or under, right? You're gonna miss something that's critical that you didn't think that you needed to do, that you should have done.

• 14:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it could be GSR, right? It could be the gunshot residue. There's none on the victims. Okay, pretty hard to shoot yourself and others if there's no, and I'm not saying that was the case here, but that's just one of the types of things that, you know, somebody might not think about.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:00Speaker 00

  So he was captured, found guilty. Amato was incarcerated at the Okeechobee Correctional Institution in Florida. When Victoria Goodwin contacted him via Facebook in May 2004, they began communicating regularly via a contraband cellphone Amato had in prison.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  So one, I find it strange that prisoners can have a Facebook account.

• 15:29Speaker 00

  Me too.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  I just don't understand why they would have access to that.

• 15:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't either.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  So you have that. And then how did he get his hands on this contraband, contraband, branded phone?

• 15:44Speaker 00

  Branded? Well, I think it's probably branded. It is a brand.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:49Speaker 00

  I get you.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm sure it was keistered in maybe, or maybe he brought in out in the open.

• 15:54Speaker 00

  I think it's more common than we think.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:58Speaker 00

  You know, I watched some of those shows where they send in those people for like 90 days and they're kind of undercover.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:07Speaker 00

  But they're put in like jails or whatever and they're, you know, later report back to the sheriff. And you see people with cell phones. You see drugs and you just always wonder like, how do you get that in?

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Someone's paying somebody. Cause you know, if you ever watched that mayor of Kingstown,

• 16:28Speaker 01

  they got cell phones. They got drugs coming in and out.

• 16:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, well.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  They have a network.

• 16:32Speaker 00

  Well, let's face it, right? If you have a dirty guard.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:37Speaker 00

  Okay. You're going to be able to get more in probably. They're not checked probably quite as hard as inmates.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:45Speaker 00

  But the, the, the thing where let's say the wife or the girlfriend brings something in and is somehow able to slip it to their significant other during a.

• 17:00Speaker 00

  You know, like their um, visit.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:03Speaker 00

  That one always amazes me, but.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  People want something bad enough, they're find a way to get it.

• 17:08Speaker 00

  Oh, absolutely.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:10Speaker 00

  But how dangerous is a phone in prison? You think about the ability to contact someone on the outside in real time. And, and potentially set up uh, an escape, a getaway, something like that. It's a big deal.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, some of these guys run their, their whole, their uh, previous organization, right? They're still running it.

• 17:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Just from the prison.

• 17:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:39Speaker 00

  So he's got this phone. He's talking to Victoria Goodwin. Soon their messages started kind of getting into this thing that, you know, we love each other. We're in love. Victoria shared her struggles in her marriage and her fantasies of being with Amato. But she didn't think Aaron would agree to a divorce. And I've said it so many times. I don't get it. I know there are women who are attracted, for whatever reason.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:14Speaker 00

  To these bad boys in prison, but I don't understand it.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  I don't either, but you know, clearly there's a lot of them uh, that just really. Maybe it's, maybe because they think they can fix them, maybe.

• 18:29Speaker 00

  Could be that, or they know they're not going anywhere, they're not gonna be cheating.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  There's that.

• 18:35Speaker 00

  You know, now we might find out here that she's just using this guy.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:39Speaker 00

  To get what, what she wants, but uh, I mean, what, what kind of relationship can you really have? Other than talking on the phone, writing letters?

• 18:48Speaker 01

  I mean, I get it, these guys, because they, they, they have nothing else that they're doing while they're in there. They can devote a bunch of attention.

• 18:57Speaker 00

  Oh, they're super grateful.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, so they're gonna give you all this attention and if you.

• 19:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  If you don't get a lot of attention at home, now you're getting all this attention. It probably makes you feel really good.

• 19:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I could see the draw from that angle.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:12Speaker 00

  Right? Not getting. What you need at home, but this person is showering you with so much attention that it's just kind of blowing you away.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  Maybe they look good too from doing that prison workout every day in that, in that small cell.

• 19:27Speaker 00

  That could be, and maybe she watched a trial. Some people get enamored with these individuals because they're on TV. They're good looking, maybe in, in the trial setting. I don't know what it is. Prosecutors later noted that while Aaron was on the road filming, Victoria was cultivating a secret relationship with a convicted murderer and discussing ways to get rid of her husband. So double betrayal.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:55Speaker 00

  Not only are you plotting to murder me, you're doing it by kind of having this quasi affair with a convicted murderer. I'm not happy.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  That's made for TV stuff right there.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  If I'm the husband, I'm not happy.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, you shouldn't be.

• 20:11Speaker 00

  At either one of them, to be honest with you. So Victoria and Amato began discussing the possibility of hiring a hitman to kill Aaron with Amato acting as the intermediary. He told Victoria, he would be in contact with someone who will be taking care of the situation, per three news.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Well, he is in prison, probably has a pretty good network right there of, hey, anybody here know where I can get somebody in this area to knock somebody off at?

• 20:41Speaker 00

  And maybe you got some people who are being released, or they just have somebody on the outside who they know for X amount of dollars would be willing to do this. Probably a, an easier place to find that than just on the outside in the real world. I mean, you think about me in the neighborhood, I'm not going up and down the street and knocking on neighbors doors saying, hey, do you know anybody who will kill somebody? But you could probably have those conversations in prison.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  Probably. It's about, be about the only easier thing than that one episode we did with the www-hitman.com or whatever it was.

• 21:18Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, that's true. At one point, Victoria texted Amato, am I a bad person? Just think about that for a minute.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:28Speaker 00

  You are texting a convicted family killer.

• 21:32Speaker 00

  Am I a bad person?

• 21:34Speaker 01

  Probably the wrong person to ask advice from.

• 21:37Speaker 00

  When Amato asked why she felt that way, she responded, because I chose to end his existence, not divorce. She said in one text, I'm so anxious, lolol. I just can't believe it's happening. How did I get to this point? I mean, she's, on the one hand, she's wondering if she's a bad person. On the other hand, she sounds almost giddy.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:03Speaker 00

  That, that they're gonna go through with this.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  She's a little bit excited about it.

• 22:07Speaker 00

  The plan was to have the hitman kill Aaron. While he was filming in California on October 3rd, 2024, Victoria gave information about her husband's location and schedule, which Amato passed along to the hitman. Later that day, Amato contacted the alleged hitman and asked whether the murder had been completed. He wrote, he's asleep right now in the hotel room. I need to know what's going on. Can I get an update? Was it done? Now, the murder never took place, but it remains unclear as to why it didn't occur. According to NBC, that same Friday,

• 22:53Speaker 00

  corrections officers obtained Amato's contraband phone. I hope they wipe that off with a disinfectant.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  I would, yeah, I would have doubled up on the gloves and yeah.

• 23:06Speaker 00

  According to a report, the contents of the phone were searched at an unspecified date. In early 2025, Victoria and Aaron Goodwin continued sharing photos of their seemingly normal, happy life on social media. On January 22nd, she posted a photo of them kissing for their anniversary.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  Hey babe, I love you so much. I'm gonna post this picture so everybody can see how much we're in love.

• 23:37Speaker 00

  On the 14th of February, she posted a selfie with Aaron at a mini golf course. Aaron commented, I love you even though you crushed me in mini golf. And, and this is so. Surreal to me. Obviously, Erin has no idea, but she does. And she is going through the motions of, you know, posting all these things to make it look like they're doing great, all the while, working with a serial killer to have her husband killed.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, she's crushing his mini golf game, also crushing his heart because she's betraying him. And then she's trying to, you know, crush him to death.

• 24:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. Eventually, officials reviewed the contents of Gran Amato's phone and found messages with a woman in Nevada whom they identified as Victoria Goodwin, dating back to October 2024. On March 4th of 2025, Florida officials contacted authorities in Las Vegas. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department decided to arrest and charge Victoria because her messages referenced hiring a hitman as well as payment plans, location, anticipation, and her not doing anything to stop the plan. Once it was in motion.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  Guilty, guilty, guilty.

• 25:06Speaker 00

  Well, and that's the thing about kind of the murder for hire plot. You know, you can't wait until it occurs to then go and arrest the person.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:18Speaker 00

  Right. You got to spring into action.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:22Speaker 00

  Once you have enough evidence, but before the murder actually occurs.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  Probably like a really tight line right there.

• 25:29Speaker 00

  I think it can be, and I'm sure it doesn't always happen that way.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:34Speaker 00

  They find out afterwards or, you know, whatever. Victoria planned to set aside $11,515 to hire the hitman with 2,500 paid up front.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  So one, it's a strange, odd number.

• 25:52Speaker 00

  And very specific, right?

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Not 11, 11, 5, 11, 515. And then, oh, who only takes 2,500 up front? I mean, like.

• 26:03Speaker 00

  Half now.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Twenty five hundred now, half on the day I do it, you know, another twenty five hundred on the day I do it. And then the rest of it afterward.

• 26:11Speaker 00

  I thought it was half now, half on completion.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Be the minimal that I would do something for.

• 26:17Speaker 00

  And, you know, maybe it was again, kind of a horrible, horrible bosses thing where they spend a little bit of money on the briefcase. Remember that?

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:27Speaker 00

  He said, well, I spend some on the briefcase. And we mentioned it, right? She discussed her husband's location and the details of his vehicle.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:36Speaker 00

  On March 6, 2025, the Las Vegas police served a search warrant at the Goodwin's home and arrested Victoria. She told investigators she became aware of Gran Amato through a documentary and then began, uh, became pen pals with him from May to November 2024. Around that time, she and Aaron were having marital problems and she began, quote, connecting with Amato. Okay, vague. You can take it a bunch of different ways. According to the arrest report, she described herself as, uh, sometimes daydreaming of being in a different situation.

• 27:20Speaker 00

  Victoria expressed her feelings of wanting to be without Aaron and with Amato to Amato, which she described as fantasy or daydream.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  That's because he's giving her nothing but all his attention because he's not working. He doesn't have anything to do all day besides look at your Facebook account, see things that interest you and then tell you, oh, I like this and this. Do you like this? Oh, you do? Look, we're so similar.

• 27:52Speaker 00

  But the whole part about, yeah, you know, it was just fantasy. It was just daydream. I mean, what else are you going to say when police kind of confront you with this evidence that you're working with this convicted killer to, you know, try to kill your husband? She denied wanting her husband dead and claimed that she couldn't recall sending certain messages about hiring a hitman. She believed the money she was sending Amato was for his cell phone.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  Oh, twenty five hundred dollars for a cell phone?

• 28:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, or eleven thousand or whatever it's going to be. But here's the thing, you know, we, we, we all send a lot of text messages, emails, call, we make calls, whatever it is. Most of that stuff, you're not gonna remember.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:43Speaker 00

  Cause it's benign. It doesn't really mean anything in the, the grand scheme of, of things. But talking about hiring a hitman to kill your husband, I feel like that's a, a line of text that would kind of stay with you.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  You're not gonna forget that.

• 29:00Speaker 00

  No, no way. And again, I know I'm cynical, but I just don't believe what many people say after they're caught.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I mean, they're all lies.

• 29:15Speaker 00

  Well, they have a vested interest.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 29:17Speaker 00

  Right? In lying, they're trying to protect themselves. Prosecutors would argue that the volume and nature of the text showed clear intent. Erin Goodwin was away from home filming an episode of Ghost Adventures when he received a call from police informing him he was the target of a murder-for-hire plot orchestrated by his wife.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  Man, how hard would that hit?

• 29:45Speaker 00

  Well, my, my thought is you can get a lot of strange phone calls.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:49Speaker 00

  You can get phone calls that, you know, a loved one has passed, or someone you love was in an accident, they're hurt, but they're at the hospital. Those are all gonna be really tough.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:02Speaker 00

  Phone calls to handle. I don't know what the phone call would be like if the police, you know, get a hold of you and say, hey, you might want to sit down for this one. Uh, your wife is trying to hire a hitman to kill you.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  I mean, if you got a call from the police saying, hey, Gibby is trying to kill you, or, or you get the one that says, hey, your wife was trying to kill you, one would hit harder than the other.

• 30:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. The Gibby one, I'd be like, what else is new?

• 30:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean.

• 30:33Speaker 00

  He's been trying to kill me since, uh, 1989.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  Again?

• 30:39Speaker 00

  He's just so bad at it. He hasn't been able to pull it off.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Just fine them. Give them, they can pay 500 bucks, you know?

• 30:47Speaker 00

  That's the worst that can you can do to Gibby. Don't put him in jail. Just make him pay a big ass fine.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  Ouch.

• 30:54Speaker 00

  Cause he hates giving up his money.

• 30:57Speaker 00

  Now we joke about it, but obviously it's a very serious thing. But at the same time, I find some of these things humorous in a way. Especially when they don't come to fruition, right? The person is not killed. Well, then you can laugh about it a little bit more. But just the, the brazenness or the thought that some of these people really think they're gonna get away with it. And, and some of my favorite Gibbs are the videos where, you know, they're speaking to an undercover agent. And they got the undercover agent who's got all the tattoos and the beard and he looks, you know, rough and tumble. But yet he's, he's still an agent.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:40Speaker 00

  Of something. And, you know, they're just talking as though they would to a friend about what they did yesterday or the day before. Laughing about wanting to have their significant other killed. It's shocking to me to watch the, the video ones especially.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  I just don't know.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  What people are thinking.

• 32:05Speaker 00

  I think a lot of times they're not. Or if they are thinking, they're only thinking about one thing and that is what they want. Now you're not thinking about, well, what's this gonna do to my in-laws? Children, if, if there are children in the picture. I think that is what people fail to think about because they're just so wrapped up in whatever it is greed or wanting to be with someone else that they're not really thinking about much else.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:38Speaker 00

  You know, they're, they're narcissistic. They're very selfish people. And a lot of us have a, a hard time, you know, kind of. Figuring out how that could be because we don't operate like that.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:52Speaker 00

  Now, we can be, everybody can be selfish.

• 32:54Speaker 01

  Oh, of course.

• 32:55Speaker 00

  But to that degree where you don't care if a person lives or dies because you want what you want, that's, that's ultimate selfishness right there.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  I just think, you know, and we would never know, right? Most of the time, we always say, you know, people say, the grass is not greener on the other side. So I wonder how many of these people that actually have pulled off successful hits on their spouses.

• 33:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  To be with somebody else, only to be like, well, that was stupid for me to do this. Cause this is no better or it's worse.

• 33:29Speaker 00

  But did they get a bunch of money too? I mean, it's, you know, who knows?

• 33:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:34Speaker 00

  And again, I don't think some of these people have the same, you know, thoughts, kind of looking back on things and, and that the rest of us would.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:46Speaker 00

  And, and thinking about it as a bad decision.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  And how would you feel if knowing that, uh, somebody that you had somebody killed for, to be with them, I mean, wouldn't that person be like, I don't know, he killed to be with me? If I don't make him happy, is he gonna kill me? You know, that's, that's a lot of expectations to meet, you know, through that relationship.

• 34:12Speaker 00

  Yeah. Now this is a different situation, right? He's in jail. He's never getting out. So I don't know what the relationship's gonna be anyway.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:20Speaker 00

  But, I mean, needless to say, right? Aaron Goodwin, I'm sure was shocked. And when they told him, his reaction was actually captured on camera. He told his crew, the police are at my house before walking outside the filming location. Aaron was told that his wife had been arrested and charged with solicitation and conspiracy to commit murder. A week after Victoria was arrested, Aaron filed for divorce citing irreconcilable differences.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  I would say so.

• 34:54Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. If, if there, if there ever were irreconcilable. Insalable differences. It's when one person tries to hire a hitman to kill the other.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  I want to stay alive. She does not want me to stay alive.

• 35:06Speaker 00

  We, we do not agree. Uh, we differ on that.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:10Speaker 00

  In court appearances, prosecutors laid out the evidence collected from Gran Amato's phone. On April 8th, 2025, facing a lengthy prison sentence, Victoria agreed to a plea deal. Prosecutors agreed to drop the solicitation to commit murder charges. And Victoria agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit murder. But she still faced up to 10 years in prison.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  You know, it's a serious charge.

• 35:41Speaker 00

  It is. Now, would she have faced a lot more years?

• 35:47Speaker 00

  With the other charge? Yeah, probably so. But we talk about it all the time, right? Plea deals are made for a number of reasons. You know, how strong is the evidence? Is it possible that a juror, just one juror could see it a little differently or whatever? And then the other thing is you just, it's kind of all wrapped up with a bow. You don't have to go through or worry about all the different appeals that are, you know, could come down, down the line. And it could also be the family, right? Sometimes the family is all in on a plea deal because they don't have to listen to this person talk in court or listen to this person's defense team kind of

• 36:32Speaker 00

  try to maybe defame their loved one and say a bunch of bad things about them. So Victoria made her plea in court on April 22nd, 2025. On June 5th, she was sentenced to a minimum of 36 months and a maximum of 90 months in prison.

• 36:54Speaker 00

  Little bit of leeway there.

• 36:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, kind of light if she gets out early.

• 37:00Speaker 00

  Three years would be a real slap in the face, I think.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  This is where I think like when they people get out, they should have like a little QR code on their, on their wrist that are on their maybe top of their hand that you can take a picture of opening up the, it tells them like, hey, I was in prison for this, that, because I think, you know, her next soulmate.

• 37:25Speaker 00

  Might want to know.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:27Speaker 00

  You know? Or maybe you just have to get a tattoo on your forehead that says murder for hire.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Something like that.

• 37:35Speaker 00

  Something like that.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd still get that one that says, no regrets.

• 37:40Speaker 00

  And spell, you have no regrets, not a single regret.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  Awesome movie, man.

• 37:48Speaker 00

  That was a good movie too. During her hearing, she apologized to Aaron, her parents and the court, saying per Fox five, I want to apologize to the court. I recognize my stupidity, the terrible crime against Aaron. This is my rock bottom and I couldn't forgive myself. She told Aaron she would always hold love for him and promised he would never be in danger of her again. So first of all, okay, stupidity is, is kind of a, you're making light of it, I think.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:22Speaker 00

  With that, but I will always hold love for you and I'll never hurt you. You'll, you'll never be in danger for me. Yes, I did try to have someone kill you.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, and somebody else trying to put you in danger.

• 38:36Speaker 00

  But that's, that's in the past.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I learned my lesson.

• 38:41Speaker 00

  I, I just don't know what victims or victims, families.

• 38:46Speaker 00

  Really take from some of these kind of, you know, courtroom speeches by defendants.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:55Speaker 00

  I, I don't know how much of it is heartfelt dictated by their attorneys. I just don't put much into it.

• 39:01Speaker 01

  I mean, she said, she says she hits rock bottom, but, and she apologizes, but if she didn't get caught, I don't think she would have thought that she was just caught up in a stupid moment and she hit rock bottom. She'd be like, all right, got the insurance money.

• 39:17Speaker 00

  Worked out exactly the way I.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  Got a man in prison that can't bug me. Can only write me when I want to talk to him. Yeah.

• 39:25Speaker 00

  In his victim impact statement, Aaron described the ordeal as devastating and said he no longer felt safe. Knowing how close the plot had come to being carried out, the betrayal left him struggling to trust again.

• 39:39Speaker 01

  I believe that would be very difficult.

• 39:42Speaker 00

  It's gonna make it tough.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:44Speaker 00

  Aaron described the pain of discovering Victoria was unfaithful. He said, he offered to reconcile with her until he learned the affair continued. And she plotted to have him killed. He will always wonder why she did it.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, that's tough, man. You know, here's a guy that just poured his heart out into, to her and.

• 40:06Speaker 00

  And the relationship.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  And the relationship and she betrayed him. Not once, but twice, right? She betrayed him with, you know, having an affair with another person. But then she betrayed.

• 40:18Speaker 00

  Convicted killer.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  And then she betrayed, you know, the ultimate trust that she tried to have him killed.

• 40:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah.

• 40:26Speaker 00

  So are you going to go out to a bar and meet someone and feel real comfortable about starting a new relationship?

• 40:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:33Speaker 00

  I don't think so.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  No, it's gonna be, it's gonna be a tough go.

• 40:36Speaker 00

  According to people, Aaron continued in his statement for seven years. I thought I was in the most loving relationship of marriage with my best friend. Someone I trusted with my whole heart and laughed with every day. Someone who made me feel like I was, like I was her one and only. Now discovering she put a hit out to kill me more than once, got blackmailed and spent almost all of our savings to keep it quiet. This has led me to fear for my life. I've hired armed security for weeks, not knowing whether it was over or not.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I mean, if there's, you know, she's made several attempts over the years to have him removed, you know, is that message out there to whoever she has talked to in the past? Like, you know, has it all been shut down? Is somebody like getting seen an old article somewhere, a classified, oh, hit, oh, I think I'll go ahead and do this one, you know, it's only $1,500. I can do it.

• 41:41Speaker 00

  I understand why he would be struggling. Sure. He said, since he found out about the plot, he's been looking over his shoulder and going to therapy to understand what has happened. He described the feeling as a heartbreak. No one should have to go through in life. The fact that this person did all this to me with no worry, no care or love in her heart for me, I will never feel the same.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that hurts, man. The fact is, she didn't care at all.

• 42:15Speaker 00

  He said, I'll never feel safe or be the same because of what she did, especially when she gets out one day, whether she gets the minimum or maximum time, I still won't feel safe whenever she's released. I feel like this deserves prison time.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  I agree with him. I, I, I think the fact that it didn't happen is a blessing for him, but she wanted to happen. She didn't like stop it herself.

• 42:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, to me, the minimum, if she were out in three years, I would consider that a slap in the face. I really would. As to what she wanted to happen, what she put in motion in October 2025, Ghost Adventures aired the episode that shows Aaron receiving news of his wife's arrest. At the time, the crew was filming at Hollydale Asylum in Downey, California.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  It's Ricky.

• 43:12Speaker 00

  It does, but I'm assuming if you're on a show called Ghost Adventures, you're taping in some very weird spots.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you're kind of used to that stuff.

• 43:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, you can't be afraid of the creepiness factor. Aaron addressed the premiere in an Instagram post, writing, "The police were in my house and told me what she did and she was arrested. I won't be watching this episode because I don't want to relive that night again and what happened before the call." He also made an Instagram post specifically addressed to the press, writing that he was still struggling and he just wasn't ready to talk yet. He said, "Just know I'm not doing good at all and every day is worse with all I'm learning all the time. They say in time, everything gets better,

• 44:03Speaker 00

  but I just want the divorce to be over so I can move on with my life. Honestly, I probably couldn't make it through an interview without being in tears and I'm just not ready yet. This has been the worst year of my life."

• 44:17Speaker 01

  Well, he's being honest and I appreciate that because it has to be rough. It has to be.

• 44:22Speaker 00

  Now, you can't blame media outlets for wanting to get an interview.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  No.

• 44:28Speaker 00

  But I think at the same time, if somebody says, "No, I need my space." Well, okay, you need to honor that.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, respect that.

• 44:36Speaker 00

  Not saying that they always do. Ultimately, prosecutors didn't identify any additional co-conspirators by name. The identity of the hitman remains unknown to the public and the investigation into Victoria's communications with Gran Amado is formally closed. So you talk about, you know, him being scared. They don't even know who the hitman was, was to be.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 45:04Speaker 00

  So to your point, now, I don't know what reason he would have to finish the job. I don't think he would be getting paid at this point, but still,

• 45:14Speaker 00

  you're not going to be able to lay your head down on the pillow every night and just have absolute serenity.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, because maybe this guy is like, I never finished that job and I always finish my jobs.

• 45:26Speaker 00

  Maybe he's like Ben Affleck in The Accountants. He literally has to finish the job.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:32Speaker 00

  Or it would just, you know, eat away at him. I don't know. As he said in his victim impact statement, Aaron Goodwin was betrayed by the person he thought he could trust more than anyone else. Victoria initially claimed she didn't remember trying to hire a hitman, but her incriminating messages showed that at one point, she was seriously planning to have her husband killed because she wanted out of the marriage. And you and I, as we wrap this one up, we talk about this all the time. Reasons for one spouse to want the other one dead. Money, greed, right?

• 46:16Speaker 00

  Lust, wanting to be with somebody else, but just wanting to be out of the marriage. Okay, I, I get it. People don't want to go through divorce. It's not pleasant.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  No.

• 46:28Speaker 00

  It's not great to have to split up assets and do all that. But that versus taking someone's life. I mean, it's just, I, I can't even fathom how people can come up with that as being the best course of action. I really can't.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  You want out, get out.

• 46:49Speaker 00

  Just get out, but do it the right way.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:52Speaker 00

  Right? Do it the way that millions and millions of people have done it.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, person up and make it happen.

• 46:58Speaker 00

  I like that, person up.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 47:00Speaker 00

  You've grown a lot. But that's it for our episode on Aaron Goodwin. Yeah, it's a scary one. I think murder for hire is scary.

• 47:12Speaker 00

  Thinking that you have this great life while your wife is plotting to have you killed. It's that's very scary.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  Scary. There this is more scary than any episode that Aaron probably did, you know, with his show.

• 47:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Again, I don't want to get too into the weeds on that. People will get mad at me, but the did you hear that? Did you see that? Did you smell that? I mean, we I could play that game here, right here in the studio.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  Think late tonight, you will be haunted by something.

• 47:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, that that stuff doesn't scare me.

• 47:48Speaker 01

  I know.

• 47:48Speaker 00

  Now, if you caught on camera an actual ghost, okay.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:53Speaker 00

  I might need to change my underwear because I would be very, very scared.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  Shite yourself?

• 47:58Speaker 00

  Might.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. Sometimes you do that just out of the blue anyway.

• 48:02Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, I'm getting older, man. It happens.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  Depends on what food you have for dinner.

• 48:07Speaker 00

  All right, that is it for another episode of True Crime All the Time. So for Mike.

• 48:11Speaker 01

  And Gibby.

• 48:11Speaker 00

  Stay safe and keep your own time ticking.