S1 Episode 1: Two Sides to Every Story

Kiah (00:00:00) - Welcome to Stand Our Ground. I'm your host, Kiah, and I'm so grateful that you've decided to join me as I investigate the murder of my cousin, Deanna Stevison.

This podcast does discuss domestic violence and includes events and descriptions that some listeners may find triggering. So please listen with caution. If you need to talk with someone about the content of this podcast or something that it brings up for you, please call 988 in the United States to reach the mental health crisis line or text HOME to 741741. As a reminder, all individuals discussed in this podcast are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Today on Stand Our Ground, I'm going to give you an overview of the individuals involved in this case and the two stories surrounding it. The first is the narrative told by Meghan Wojdyla and Amy and Ollie Jane Plunkett, which I've obtained through their interviews with the police taken just hours after the murder occurred. For now, I'm just going to tell it to you exactly as it was told. No opinions, no editorializing.

Kiah (00:01:19) - After that, I'll give you the story that many of Deanna's friends and family members believe as recorded in a Change.org petition from September 8th, 2017, attempting to get the case investigated by the State Attorney's office. Although I'll be adding some information not from the petition to give you a fuller picture, I'll be giving it to you exactly as I understand it, without any of my own thoughts or opinions on it.

So we're going to start by talking about the five main figures in this case. The first, of course, is my cousin Deanna Stevison, whose life was ended on June 8th, 2017. Deanna was 31 years old and worked at Blackwater Correctional Institute in Milton, Florida. She was also known as Doof by her family and friends. She lived with her teenage son in the home that she had bought with her former fiancée, Meghan. The two had been together for six and a half years and were supposed to be married in December of 2016, but the relationship broke up sometime before then, likely due to Meghan's infidelity according to Facebook posts from January and February of 2017 by Deanna.

Kiah (00:02:25) - Next, we have Meghan Wojdyla, Deanna's ex-fiancée. She was 24 years old and working as a bank teller. She was engaged to Amy Plunkett, with whom she'd been with for 13 months. On January 20th, 2017, Meghan filed a restraining order against Deanna, alleging domestic violence and requesting sole occupancy of their home. This restraining order was dismissed in court on February 1st, 2017 due to insufficient evidence. After that, Meghan moved in with Amy and Amy's mom.

Amy Plunkett, Meghan's new fiancée, with whom she'd been together for 13 months, was 35 years old at the time and a former deputy with the Escambia County Sheriff's Office. She resigned from her position with Escambia County in November 2012, and she did apply to remain as part of the reserves, but her request was denied.

Ollie Jane Plunkett, known to most people as Jane, is Amy's mother. She was 66 years old and worked as a food service assistant manager. Now, according to police reports, she was the one who shot Deanna.

Kiah (00:03:42) - But as we're going to discuss throughout this podcast, not everybody believes that narrative. Finally, we have the lead investigator of the case, investigator Jimmy Tatum of Escambia County Sheriff's Office. He was a former co-worker of Amy's and the lead investigator. Now, he no longer works with Escambia County Sheriff's Office because sometime between 2019 and 2020, he faced disciplinary action for petty theft and making a false statement. We're going to discuss Jimmy Tatum more at a later time, because I have a lot of concerns about him and his involvement in the case, but for now, we're just going to leave it at that.

So now that you know the main figures in this case, let's go ahead and get to the stories, the first of which is the one told by Meghan and Amy and Ollie Jane Plunkett. Meghan and Deanna had been together for six and a half years, of which Deanna had been abusive for at least six years. Meghan tried to get a restraining order against Deanna, but it was dismissed by the judge and she lost faith in the system.

Kiah (00:04:48) - After that, she moved in with Amy, her new fiancée. The two of them were living with Amy's mom, Ollie Jane, on the morning of June 8th, 2017. The night before, Deanna had called Meghan to see if she would go to the house and feed the dog. Meghan refused, but she and Amy went to Deanna's mom's house and dropped off the house key in the mailbox so that she could go and do it. And then later that night, they went back to pick up the key. At around 5 a.m. on June 8th, Ollie Jane was awoken from where she was sleeping on the couch to the sound of the doorbell ringing and banging on her door. She wasn't tall enough to see through the peephole, so she looked out the window and she didn't recognize who was there because it was so dark. So she went to the bedroom that Amy and Megan were sharing and woke them up. Now Amy was already getting up for work at this time. Um, but when her mom came and got her, she armed herself with her gun before she left the room.

Kiah (00:05:48) - At that point, Amy went to the door and saw that it was Deanna still wearing her corrections uniform. She placed her gun on a table next to the TV by the front door, open the door, and told Deanna to leave and that she was not welcome. At the apartment, Amy reports that Deanna smelled like booze and seemed to be drunk. Now she says that Deanna kept yelling and asking where Meghan was, and Amy said that Meghan would not be coming out. At that point, Meghan came out of the bedroom and when Deanna saw her, she tried to push through Amy to get to Meghan. Lunging through the door, she asked Meghan to take her home, but Amy said that Meghan would not be going anywhere with her. It's at this point that Deanna is supposed to have jumped on Amy and began beating her. Um, and then Meghan tried to get between them and Deanna began beating her as well. Um, at that point, Ollie Jane tried to pull Deanna off and was also beaten and trapped in a corner on the porch where Deanna pulled her glasses off.

Kiah (00:06:50) - Um, I'm not exactly sure when it happened, but according to Ollie Jane, at some point she tried to call 911, but Deanna grabbed her phone and threw it against a wall and it smashed. Um, again, not sure exactly when this happens in the narrative, but at some point Deanna got her arms around Amy and began choking her. Um, Ollie Jane hit Deanna upside the head with an orchid plant, which caused both Deanna and Amy to go down. Amy says that around this point, she was beginning to blackout and she couldn't breathe. Meghan and Allie Jane were both screaming and at some point, Ollie Jane was able to get inside where she grabbed Amy's gun and shot a warning shot towards the door. She says that she doesn't remember what happened next. The general consensus between the three of them seems to be that Deanna went down with Amy, her arm still around her neck, but the Amy was able to get a breath in and get free because of the gunshot.

Kiah (00:07:47) - At that point, when she got free, she noticed that Deanna was not responsive and she began to render aid. So she had Meghan go get a towel so that she could apply pressure to the two gunshot wounds that she saw. Now, according to Ollie Jane, Meghan was screaming for somebody to call an ambulance. According to Meghan, Meghan called 911. Ollie Jane put the gun down and she wandered into the kitchen to make herself some coffee while Amy put Deanna in the recovery position. And it's at this point that various neighbors began coming outside to see what was happening, what all the commotion was about.

Shortly after that, the Escambia County Sheriff's Office arrived and they took Ollie Jane to the station. And then a little bit after that, they took Meghan and Amy to the station as witnesses. Sometime between when Ollie Jane was taken into custody and Meghan and Amy were taken to the station to give their reports, EMTs came on scene and pronounced Deanna as dead. So with that said, let's go into the family story again.

Kiah (00:08:53) - Most of this comes from a Change.org petition that was written on September 8th, 2017, and at the time it was written, um, the State Attorney's office was investigating, but no new information had been provided since June. So people were really starting to feel like, are they really investigating? There were 4228 supporters at the time that the petition closed. Now, I'll let you know when I'm going to do this, but at some points I am going to give you information that's not from the petition that I know, either from Facebook posts of family and friends or from personal communication with them. Uh, so according to the Change.org petition, the story goes like this:

Deanna and Meghan were estranged but owned a house together, which Deanna and her son had been living in since the end of the relationship. Meghan was dating a former police officer. Meghan wanted the house back. Now, days before June 8th, 2017, Deanna began telling people that something bad was going to happen and that she was scared.

Kiah (00:09:58) - She thought that Meghan would do anything to get the house back, including using her girlfriend's legal knowledge in order to get Deanna out of the house. Deanna had never been to Ollie Jane's house before, and she wouldn't have gone if no one had asked her to. Now, not from the petition, a lot of the suspicion behind this is that, theoretically, Megan told Deanna that she had a letter for her that she wanted to give her, and that that's why Deanna went to the apartment that morning. Um, so the thought process, which we'll look into this throughout the podcast, but the thought process is that this letter was used to lure Deanna to the house. Deanna left her car running with the door open, so she was clearly not planning to stay for very long. When the police came to respond to the shooting, Ollie Jane already knew to say stand your ground and she was never charged with a crime. Police told the family that they needed to just let the past stay in the past, as this was a domestic situation that had gone wrong, and this happened even after witnesses brought text messages to the police to try and show a full picture of the situation.

Kiah (00:11:09) - Deanna's family and friends truly feel that this case was never taken seriously from the start, and that part of that has to do with Amy being a former employee of the Escambia County Sheriff's Office. Now, Meghan lives in the house that Deanna bought with Amy and again, not from the petition, in order to get some of the things that they wanted to keep from Deanna or that Deanna's son needed, like his clothing or his medication or his insurance information, they had to play nice with Meghan in order to get it. So we're going to transition now to some of the comments that were left on the petition, because I think it helps give you an idea of, um, how people view this case. Um, so the first quote someone says, "I knew D and her son and she would do anything for him, not risk her life and rep for some petty stuff." Another person says, "as a resident of Santa Rosa, I don't want someone walking around thinking they can kill someone just because they know the laws and how to elude the system. It's wrong. Everyone knows it's wrong. It needs to be fixed."

Kiah (00:12:13) - Another person says "this is being ignored due to a police officer being involved in the murder. It is wrong in so many ways and should not be swept under the rug." Another one says "it's time to take cases like this seriously and stop abusing Stand Your Ground." Another says "four shots is not self-defense. That's intention to kill." Another says "this death is so sad. It does sound planned," and there are over a dozen comments saying in various different ways that the murder sounds premeditated. Finally, the last quote from this petition, the last comment from this petition I want to leave you with, um, says "I don't know anyone involved, but I cannot imagine being told that my loved one was shot to death and it will not be investigated. Everyone deserves justice and it cannot be found where it is not pursued."

Now in the story told by Meghan, Amy and Ollie Jane, we did hear about this restraining order. We're not going to talk about it a lot, but I did want to go ahead and address it so that, you know, you're a little bit familiar with it.

Kiah (00:13:27) - Um, in this petition, Meghan alleges that Deanna has been verbally abusive. Um, she states that she's made former police reports about the domestic violence, which were not included in the case file. I suppose that they could be there elsewhere, but I did ask for anything pertinent to the case, and I didn't receive any files relating to the domestic violence. Um, the allegations are very unclear to me, and I'm going to explain to you what I mean in just a minute with some quotes, but, um, they're very nonspecific. Um, which leaves me with a lot of questions. Um, so, for example, she says that at one time Deanna called and texted her phone all night, "threatening to do things." At one point, she says that she had to call the police on her because she had put her stuff in garbage bags and threw it out on the lawn. And when the cops arrived, "the cops talked to her and she was still being a bully and saying things to me."

Kiah (00:14:23) - She does allege that she was physically restrained from leaving the home or calling law enforcement, which relates back to the story we hear from Ollie Jane. But in the details provided, there's no evidence to support that. The only thing that maybe relates to that is, she says, that Deanna stands in the door and blocks her from leaving. Um. Another example, another quote is Meghan says that she came home. She asked Deanna if she was done watching TV and "she blew up. She blew up and said, yes, I am." Um, so we've got a lot of stuff like this. Again, we have one where she says that Deanna "refused and kept calling me names and harassing me." But there's like no specification of what names are you being called, or like, how are you being harassed? Um, she does say that she had to sleep with a door locked, "scared to death of what she may do while I'm trying to sleep."

Kiah (00:15:22) - At one point, she says that Deanna came up behind her to read the text message that she was writing, and that she was afraid that the phone would be snatched out of her hands, but doesn't say whether or not it was. Um. The biggest thing that I would say does fit in the category of, you know, potentially substantiating a claim of domestic violence is saying "in the past, she would hit and shove me and always tell me I'm fat and never going anywhere." Again, we don't have a specific date. We don't have a specific timeline. Um, and so when it combines with the other details in these allegations, in order to try and get that order of protection, the evidence starts to feel a little bit weak. And it's not just me who thought that the evidence was weak. The restraining order was dismissed. About, what, 21 days later on February 12th, for having insufficient evidence? That's at a hearing that was held with both Deanna and Meghan present.

Kiah (00:16:24) - Now, I do want to quickly note that in between the petition for the protection order and the hearing about the protection order, in a move that I totally agree with, you know, you protect people who come forward and say "I'm being abused," and you ask the questions later. That's the right thing to do to protect people, I feel. So, you know, they gave that temporary order. They said, you know, Deanna cannot be near Meghan. They did give Meghan sole possession of the home, which meant Deanna and her teenage son had to find somewhere else to live. Deanna wasn't allowed to have any personal firearms, although she was allowed to use them at work. And as far as I could see, based on court documents, Deanna never violated this. Something I did find interesting was, first of all, that Meghan requested sole possession of the house because as we're going to see later, the house becomes very important in this case.

Kiah (00:17:15) - But also in the government form, it specifically says, you know, if you're requesting possession of the house, why can you not get to another place to live? And Meghan wrote, "This is her home." So it says petitioner cannot get to another safe place to live because this is her home. And then it asks if the respondent, that's Deanna, has the means to live somewhere else, the money, maybe has another house, anything like that. And Meghan wrote "can stay with friends and or family." Personally, I find this really interesting considering right after this order is dismissed, Meghan goes and lives with Amy and her mom, Ollie Jane. So just, I guess something to think on. I'm still thinking on it as well. Yeah, like I said, it was dismissed February 1st, 2017. So, just to recap what we did today, we met the different key players in this case,

Kiah (00:18:19) - we talked about the two different stories of what might have happened on the morning of June 8th, 2017, the one that Meghan and Amy and Ollie Jane tell and the one that Deanna's family and friends tell. Now, I've really, truly tried my best to give you these stories and the details from the restraining order exactly as I understand them, without necessarily reading them to you word for word for word. Um, and if it isn't supported by evidence, I've still included it because we're going to go over that later. So right now I've just tried to give you the stories the way that I understand them. And later during this series, we're going to delve into whether or not things are or are not supported by evidence. Um, if there's any contradictions in the stories, anything like that. I did want to remind you that for the people who have lived this case and who are related to this case, every detail is highly charged. Every conversation is up for interpretation. Everything is very, very emotional.

Kiah (00:19:14) - And that's what makes this case so difficult and so sticky. Um, I do want to just reiterate that everyone discussed in this podcast is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. And I'm going to ask that if you have any information about this case, whether you were at Fairfield Village Apartments on June 8th, 2017, and heard something or heard something after, whether you knew Meghan or Amy or Ollie Jane or Deanna, and you have text messages or a story that someone told you, anything that could be helpful, please contact me at Stand Our Ground podcast at gmail dot com. Please make sure to follow us on Spotify so that you get notified whenever any new episodes come out. The plan is to release one every Sunday. I'm gonna have a little outro message that'll play for you at the end of every podcast, and at the beginning of it, you're going to hear Deanna, uh, from a video that was on Facebook, and she's giving the toast that she always gave whenever the family got together or her friends got together for a drink.

Kiah (00:20:18) - Um, so here's Deanna, and thanks for listening.

Deanna (00:20:22) - Here's to you. Here's to me. Friends and family we shall ever be. If we ever disagree, fuck you, and here's to me. (Hey hey!)

Kiah (00:20:29) - Stand Our Ground is written and produced by Kiah Penfield. Our theme music is Lifelike by Alexi Action Background Music. You can find us on social media by going to at Stand Our Ground on TikTok or searching Stand Our Ground podcast on Facebook. You can also email us at Stand Our Ground podcast at gmail dot com.