My Neighbor Ate My Son | Michael Woodmansee | True Crime Documentary
The year is 1975. For the Foreman family, life was moving along perfectly; they had two wonderful kids, they were young and deeply in love, and everything was looking up. But on Mrs. Foreman’s 25th birthday, tragedy would strike. As her 5-year-old son, Jason, was playing outside in the woods near their home, he disappeared.
The family and nearby neighbors searched for the boy for hours, days, weeks, and eventually years. They found no clues or evidence that would explain his sudden disappearance. The missing boy wouldn’t be found until more than 7 years later when investigators met with a neighbor who made a truly disgusting confession to a crime of devastating proportions.
[intro] The Foreman Family had been living in South Kingstown, Rhode Island for a number of years. One of the great things about South Kingstown, and one of the things that keeps people coming back, is the beautiful beaches. The town is home to more than 10 miles of undisturbed beaches, as well as several large parks and recreation areas for small families like the Foremans.
If this weren’t enough, crime also isn’t a particularly big deal in South Kingstown, and it never really has been. Sure, there are a few areas where things can get a bit shady, but that’s true for just about every city in America. Overall, South Kingstown is just a wonderful place to be, a city rich in history and filled with things to keep young minds occupied while parents go on about their daily lives.
For the Foreman family, it doesn’t appear like they could have been happier living in their own little slice of heaven. The family lived in the Peace Dale area on High Street. A quick look on Google Maps street view shows that this street is, still to this day, just stunning.
The Foremans lived on top of a hill, right next to the local fire station. From what I can tell, their home used to back up to a patch of dense woods, but it appears as though most of these wooded areas have since been cut down to make way for new housing, but I can’t tell for certain, as we don’t know what their specific address was. The family consisted of Joyce Foreman, John Foreman and their three kids, Raven, Jason, and Jason’s older brother, who’s name I wasn’t able to determine.
The family members all got along well with one another, and there were several other kids who lived nearby in the local area, making it the perfect place to raise a growing family. Jason and his older brother would often hang out with some of these other kids, and this was the case on May 18th, 1975. May 18th was Joyce’s 25th birthday.
She’d been hanging out at home that day, with Jason and his brother heading out to play for the afternoon. Joyce says that she could hear the kids playing behind the home in the woods all throughout the afternoon, and she last remembers hearing the boys laughing and playing sometime around 3:30pm. But soon after that, things got quiet. Joyce didn’t think anything of this at the time, but when Jason’s brother returned home later that afternoon, Jason was nowhere to be found. His mother went out back to try to round him up, but he was gone.
The family all worked together to try to find Jason and bring him home, but it was as though he had vanished into thin air. His mother knew he couldn’t have gone very far, and all of the neighbors in the area soon joined in to help search for him, but still, there was no sign of him. We don’t know where Jason’s older brother may have been during the time that Jason disappeared, but it seems safe to assume he had likely just wandered off with the other children to play elsewhere. Jason’s brother hadn’t seen him since earlier that afternoon, and with no
signs of him by nightfall, the family decided it was time to call in the help of the police. The Crime We don’t know too much about the search efforts that were conducted for Jason officially, at least not the ones that involved the local police. We know that officers took witness statements and searched far and wide for young Jason, but most of the specifics of this search have been lost to time, or they were never mentioned publicly in the first place. When searching newspapers from that time period, I wasn’t able to find a single
mention of Jason until 1982, and that’s when things began to take a pretty disturbing turn. By this point, the Foreman’s had been tirelessly searching for their missing son for more than 7 years, but in all this time, not a single shred of evidence was ever found by investigators. But all of that changed on April 15th.
PART2
The Foremans had several neighbors who lived in close proximity to them. Their houses were all very close to one another, as is the case with many suburban homes. This meant that whatever happened at your neighbors house, you probably knew about it. This was true when news began to spread about a disturbance involving a 14-year-old paperboy named Dale Sherman.
Dale had been delivering papers one day when Michael Woodmansee (wood MEN see) noticed the boy and asked him to come inside for a bit. Michael lived directly across the street from the Foreman’s, but at the time, it doesn’t appear as though anyone witnessed Michael talking with the teen. Before their conversation was over, Michael had lured the boy into his home with the promise of giving him alcohol.
Dale spoke with the New York Times in March of 2011 and recalled the day that he had been taken into Michael’s home, saying that Michael made good on his promise to give him alcohol, but that wasn’t all he gave him. Dale recalls that, soon after drinking the alcohol, he began to get incredibly tired, so much so that he could barely keep his eyes open.
While all of this was going on, Michael suddenly stood up and grabbed a nearby bandana, wrapping it around Dale’s neck, attempting to take his life. Somehow, in the chaos of all this, Dale managed to fight Michael off and escape his grasp. Dale high-tailed it out of there and immediately ran home to tell his father.
His father did not take this report lightly, and rather than call the police, he approached Michael one-on-one. Dale’s father walked over to Michael’s home, knocked on the door, then promptly punched him in the face. As Dale’s father was heading back home, he saw police at a nearby residence, and he flagged them down and reported what had happened to his son.
Police spoke with the two briefly, then asked that everyone come down to the police station so they could take an official statement and try to get to the bottom of things. This is where the case took another, much darker turn. When police were speaking with Michael, they began to suspect that he may have had a few more secrets than he was leading them to believe.
Unfortunately, we don’t know exactly what happened when they questioned him about his assault against Dale. But that’s because they began to suspect that Michael may have been holding onto a secret much more disturbing than the one they’d actually been interrogating him about. During their conversations with Michael, at least one of the officers began to wonder if Michael may have had some information about Jason Foreman, the boy who, at this point, had vanished more than 7 years ago. They didn’t want to ask Michael outright,
for fear that he would clam up and conceal the truth. So they gradually began to steer their interrogation in a different direction, tossing in questions about Jason Foreman here and there. But in a shocking twist, Michael actually opened up about what he knew regarding Jason Foreman’s disappearance.
Before long, he spilled everything he’d known about the boy, and he even told officers that he knew exactly what happened to Jason, and where he was today. The Investigation We don’t know what specifically led to Michael’s confession, but while being interrogated about his involvement in the crimes against Dale, Michael came clean and admitted that he’d seen Jason on the day he’d vanished back in May of 1975.
Not only this, but he’d been in direct contact with the boy just minutes before he disappeared. The details of how this all played out have never been revealed publicly. Even all these years later, police have kept certain aspects of the crime private in order to save the family from any more heartache.
All we know for sure is that, much like in the case of Dale, Michael had spoken with Jason and managed to lure him into his house. We don’t how Michael convinced Jason to follow him home, but whatever lies he made up, the boy believed them. This is probably a good time to explain that Michael Woodmansee (wood MEN see) was just 16-years-old at the time that this all unfolded – he was still a kid himself.
But Michael wasn’t your typical teen by any means. Michael had seemingly been battling dark fantasies for a long time, but on May 18th, 1975, these fantasies would finally be unleashed. Once Michael had taken Jason to his home, he unleashed on the young boy. The only aspect of the crime that we know for certain is that, at some point in the afternoon, Michael grabbed a knife from his kitchen and ambushed young Jason. Why he did this remains a mystery.
But in the end, Jason lost his life. We don’t know what he may have done or said to Jason before the crime took place, but we have a pretty hefty suspicion about what took place afterward. See, there’s a reason that police never located the remains of Jason. Usually when a person goes missing, if they’re not found alive, their remains are found after a while. But that wasn’t true in Jason’s case. He’d simply vanished entirely, never to be seen again.
But as police were speaking with Michael about the crime during his interrogation, he made a pretty bizarre statement. After confessing to the crime, he immediately got nervous and mentioned a journal, or a diary, or some sort of notebook that he kept in his room. He explained to officers that, if they searched his home, they’d find the book.
But he wanted to assure them that whatever was inside this journal was purely fiction… but, as far as we can tell, it wasn’t. When officers found the book, their jaws hit the floor This journal didn’t just include the ramblings of a teen or young adult. It included detailed accounts of what had happened to Jason all those years ago.
Now, naturally, the exact contents of this book have never been made public. In fact, police haven’t released a single word from this journal after all this time. The only reason we know what was inside is because Jason’s sister spoke with officers about the journal, and they shared many of the contents with her, and she openly revealed exactly what Michael had done to her brother all those years ago, and I promise, it’s nothing you would have ever expected.
The Journal Jason’s sister, Raven, is now obviously an adult and she’s spoken with various news outlets in recent years about the contents of Michael’s home and what investigators found during their investigation. Raven says that, while police didn’t reveal anything about this journal publicly, they did share several key details with her and explained the contents of the journal, though they seem to have refused to show it to her directly.
Raven spoke about the contents of the journal and explained that the journal didn’t just contain a detailed account of what had happened to her brother… but it had become… well, a recipe book, of sorts. She says that the journal described in detail what Michael had done to Jason after claiming his life; and to keep it simple and very clear… Michael ate Jason.
His motive for doing this has never been clear, but after Jason had been dealt with accordingly, Michael couldn’t just ditch Jason’s bones in a landfill or toss them in a creek somewhere. No, that would be too weird and twisted. So what better way to hide a body from the police than to clean each of the bones, then encase them in shellac and display them on your dresser? You’ve probably heard the phrase “the truth is stranger than fiction”.
Well, that’s certainly true here. While Michael insisted that the contents of this journal were fiction, Raven says that police have an overwhelming amount of evidence that proves that the accounts written inside this journal were entirely real. Now, some reports claim that Jason’s bones were displayed on Michael’s dresser as if they were trophies, though other reports claim the bones had been shallaced and kept inside of a box – I don’t know which of these reports is more accurate. But needless to say,
investigators had all the evidence they needed to secure a conviction. But this is where the case takes yet another turn, and again, it’s not a good one. See, when investigators were pursuing the case, they were running all the details by the Foreman family. While officers wanted to secure a conviction of first degree murder, they were concerned about the impact of the trial on the Foreman family.
Needless to say, the Foreman family had already been to hell and back, and making them sit through a trial and hear each of the gruesome details of their son’s final moments may have just pushed them over the edge. To get past this, police offered Jason’s father a way to sidestep this process. Rather than pursue a conviction of first degree murder, they would pursue second degree murder.
This would still secure Michael Woodmansee a 40-year-conviction, but it would keep the family from having to hear any of the details inside the journal, and also keep them from having to see their son’s remains on display when they were used as evidence in the trial. Jason’s father agreed to this plea deal, and Michael was sent to prison for 40 years, instead of getting a life sentence.
But once again, the case takes yet another turn, and this may be the darkest twist yet. Releasing a Killer The backlash from this case was serious. The entire community of South Kingstown was enraged by what Michael had done, and to say he had a target on his back would be an understatement. When Michael was sent to prison, he had to be sent to an out of state facility in Massachusetts for his own protection.
But considering he was prosecuted under Rhode Island law, that meant that all of Rhode Island’s rules and regulations regarding prisoners were still applicable in Michael’s case – one of these being the so-called “Good Time Law”. This law allows prisoners of various convictions to receive lighter sentences for good behavior. In general, the law will allow a prisoner to have 10 days removed from his sentence for every 30 days of good behavior, essentially lessening some sentences by up to 33%.
Now there are definitely some ‘ifs, ands and buts’ regarding this law, but this is, very generally speaking, what the law provides for these prisoners. As you might expect, Michael exploited this law to the best of his ability and was only required to serve 28 years of a 40 year sentence.
When news of this came out publicly, and locals found out that Michael would be heading back to Rhode Island in 2011, they were furious – so much so that several locals admitted to purchasing weapons in anticipation of Michael’s return. But these weren’t to be used for protection. Many locals spoke out against Michael and directly confessed that, if he ever stepped foot back in their community, they’d kill him. And they meant it.
One of these people was Jason’s own father, who has sworn on multiple occasions that he has every intention of killing Michael Woodmansee if he is ever able to find him. Jason’s father feels a certain amount of guilt from accepting the plea bargain that was offered by investigators all those years ago.
He says that, had he known about the Good Time Law, he would have never agreed to the deal. Now, he fears that if Michael is released into society again, he may claim the life of someone else’s child, and Jason’s father says he feels solely responsible for this possibility. Thankfully, Michael wasn’t released – at least, not fully. While Michael was released from prison, he agreed to be sent to a mental health facility for the remainder of his life.
Michael is in his 60s now, as far as I can tell, and he knew how dangerous it would be if he went back to Rhode Island. There were riots and protests all throughout the state, filled with people who wanted to see Michael 6 feet under. When he learned of this news, he knew he didn’t stand a chance at having a proper life ever again, and he is now residing at the Eleanor Slater Hospital in Cranston, Rhode Island, where he will likely remain for the rest of his days.
Jason’s father, John, says that he will search high and low to find Michael and ensure that he doesn’t hurt anyone ever again, and John’s family say that they have every reason to believe that he will follow up on this promise. We don’t know if John is satisfied with Michael being released into a mental health facility, or if he still plans on following up on these claims.
But one thing is for sure, however things may play out, Michael Woodansee will never be a free man ever again… at least, not for long, so long as John Foreman is around. — Thank you guys for tuning into another episode of True Crime Stories. If you want to see more true crime documentaries like this, be sure to hit the like button and subscribe. If you’d like the help support the channel, the best way you can do that is simply by leaving a comment below – any comment at all. It helps out the channel more than you may realize.
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