People always say if your husband or, probably worse, if your ex-husband purchases life insurance for you, that's usually an indicator of something nefarious, aka he's probably going to try to kill you.
I don't think that there is a single sign that is more blatant, more obvious than that.
Well, according to angie solomon, there is, according to angie, October 6 2020, so this is a few months after her beloved son, Grant Solomon's death.
Aaron, her ex-husband, who is also the dad of Grant Solomon.
He goes to purchase three more grave plots right next to Grant Solomon.
One for Gracie Solomon, their daughter, one for Angela Solomon, the mom, and a third for himself, Aaron Solomon.
Why would Angie's ex-husband purchase three grave plots right next to their deceased 18-year-old son?
First of all, Angie and Aaron, they hate each other.
They've had a very contentious divorce since 2013.
They spent the past almost decade hating each other, and nothing indicates that any event took place which made them reconcile.
Would they really want to spend the afterlife together, laying side by side for the rest of eternity, just letting the soil decompose them?
And their daughter, Gracie Solomon, I mean, at that point, she was 14 years old, 13 years old.
Most likely she's going to grow up, get married, start a family of her own and want to be laid to rest with them as an old, aging grandmother right.
Unless Aaron Solomon has other plans.
The Freedom for Gracie Instagram posts about the grave plots that Aaron purchased.
And it reads in short, Why?
Why?
Why?
He and Angie have been divorced for years, all the while he is slandering her to their community.
Quote.
And why in the world would a father think his daughter would need a grave plot at 13 years old?
Wouldn't Gracie want to grow up, get married and have her own future and family and be buried next to her husband someday?
He never talked about it with Angie.
She could understand if he bought them for himself and shoved that in her face to keep her from being buried next to her son.
But for Aaron to put her and Gracie's name on it sent chills up Angie's spine.
Aaron has a motive with most everything he does.
Their friends and Angie's thought was, quote, murder, murder, self-exit.
Maybe that's dramatic, but a life with Aaron is a life with fight or flight.
Every fiber of their being believed Aaron had something to do with Grant's death.
And now Angie and Gracie believe that they are next.
What was Aaron Solomon's plan with the grave plots?
Did he kill his own son, Grant Solomon?
And is he trying to take down the rest of the family next?
If that's the case, why is Angie Solomon the one in jail for trying to kill Aaron?
This is the case of the Solomon family.
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A few content disclaimers.
There's allegations of dv childhood essay and incestuous abuse, so please be careful.
Today's case is very complicated.
It's a situation where i do think I think everyone on the internet they've got their own opinion about this case and there's no way that you're gonna change their mind.
It doesn't matter what you say.
It doesn't matter what other pieces of evidence arise from the opposing side.
Nothing matters.
They're sticking to it.
There have been a lot of accusations that have not been legally proven in court.
Complicated because legally we want to protect our team and we want to protect ourselves from any sort of lawsuits.
But you have to remember that just because something is not legally proven in court doesn't mean that it isn't true, it doesn't mean that it hasn't happened, but because of that it just gets messier.
There was also a defamation lawsuit against many different parties.
There were cease and desist being sent out.
So just for the purpose of that, we're going to be pretty careful with our wording.
We're going to do our absolute best just to compile and aggregate the allegations made online, the netizen opinions and even conspiracy theories online so that you can come to your own personal opinion about this case.
Any alternate theories opinions, accusations are put forth by either parties involved or by netizens.
I found online their comments and people that have made everything public, like everything is publicly available.
These are not representative of our own opinions regarding this case.
And a small disclaimer here if we show any sort of documents, if there's any annotations highlights, question marks next to those, those have been done by whoever originally uploaded the document.
So that was not done by the Rotten Mango team.
Additionally, one other quick thing there are lengthy, lengthy social media posts, lengthy podcasts, lengthy interviews and an even lengthier defamation lawsuit that was filed in civil court.
If there is a statement that I'm reading by quote again, these are all publicly available information, but some of them have been condensed for brevity without losing the original purpose of the exact statement.
So with that being said, let's get into the recap.
There's really no effective way to recap what happened in part one, so please go watch that video or those podcasts first.
But I'm going to give you just a timeline refresher.
In 2013, Angie and Aaron Solomon go through an exhausting divorce.
Angie accuses Aaron of trying to kill her.
Aaron accuses Angie of spreading lies and trying to self-exit and then blame it on him and trying to defame him as well as brainwash the kids to turn them against him their own dad.
Angie's own father testifies against her, and that becomes a huge point of contention in the the whole divorce proceedings.
It is an exhaustive legal battle.
Angie and Aaron continue to fight over custody after 2013, with Angie claiming and alleging, along with their daughter, Gracie Solomon, that their father Aaron, has been abusing Gracie ever since she was a little girl, primarily essaying her during bath times.
That is the primary allegation.
There has been multiple open child services investigations against these allegations and they have been closed without any significant findings.
Does that mean that the abuse never happened?
That's not what I'm saying.
A lot of the time CPS or DFACS or DCS will close investigations just because they're overworked understaffed, or sometimes you just get a social worker who just doesn't care.
And that's all you get.
That's it.
So it doesn't mean that these things didn't happen, but there are multiple open and shut investigations that have found, I guess, no damning evidence against Aaron Solomon.
There are other big allegations placed upon Aaron Solomon, such as SA against Gracie, physical abuse against Angie, as well as potentially a human trafficking sex trafficking ring that involves megachurch leaders, the governor of Tennessee, a senator of Tennessee, as well as Gracie being a victim of that ring herself.
So this is all happening after the divorce.
Then in 2020, a few weeks after Grant Solomon turns 18, he passes away.
At this point, Gracie is 13, so Gracie is their only remaining child left.
And now, one version of the story of Grant's death is that, now that he was 18, he wanted to get custody of Gracie and expose his dad for everything that he's done.
The other version is that the truck rolled down the hill, rolling him over before landing in the ditch and killing him.
A year after that, in 2021 Gracie, the 14-year-old remaining Solomon child, posts a YouTube video exposing her dad Aaron, and claiming that her dad has killed her older brother.
Then, in 2025, this year, Angie Solomon is arrested for trying to hire a hitman to take down Aaron Solomon, her ex-husband.
And it gets complicated because Aaron Solomon does have a potentially in the seven-figure range, at least a million-dollar trust fund that would go to Gracie.
If he's dead.
If he's dead.
But we don't know the exact amount.
Yeah, we don't know the exact amount.
There's an incentive for both parties to either play it up or play it down.
So even that's up for debate.
Angie Solomon likes to insinuate that there's millions of dollars on the table.
Aaron Solomon states that he only really received like a million dollars and most of it was already used.
Hmm.
I think the reason that it gets confusing is, once his aunt passed away, this is his aunt's inheritance.
She passes away.
He gets a trust fund.
And I think half of it was in land.
Land that he stated at least a few years ago that was not sold.
So he's saying, I never sold the land.
So I never realized any profits from the land.
It's just there.
It's a sitting asset.
I'm not liquid for that land.
And then the other portion of it, he received in payments of $100,000 a month.
So that makes it seem like he's receiving 100000 a month every month for an undetermined amount of time, but it could have been two, three months.
It could have been five months, right?
It's up for debate.
So with that recap, let's get started.
Divorces are the one thing where people consistently spend a lot of money to spend a lot more money.
There is no rationality behind a divorce.
It's, hello lawyer, I would like to pay you $150,000 so that I don't have to pay my partner $50,000.
Or hello lawyer, I'm going to secretly try and commit tax fraud, amongst other federal crimes, just so I don't have to give money to my partner, because being with my partner feels like I'm being in prison.
Yes, I understand doing all of this could put me in real prison.
That's completely besides the point.
That's not even what I'm talking to you about.
One divorce attorney says the craziest request I ever got was the client was asking me to get her half the shampoo bottles she left behind in the family home.
She was kicked out of the house.
I asked her under the sink, like, where are the shampoo bottles?
And she said, no, the shampoo bottles in the shower.
There's two to three bottles in there.
There's about half the bottles are full.
I want half of each remaining half.
And she's trying to be petty about it, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
So two to three bottles in the shower.
They're half empty already.
And then she wants half of each half.
I ended up telling her that she paid me $50 just to read, receive, and respond to this email.
And I will waive the $50 if she just takes that $50 to CVS and gets some goddamn shampoo herself.
Another says, doorknobs.
It was a regular house.
No sentimental.
They were not special bronze doorknobs, brass doorknobs.
It was a regular builder grade home.
Regular doorknobs.
Yeah, they fought over it.
I offered to buy them new doorknobs if they would just settle.
It was bad.
Obviously, some people say it's not about the shampoo.
It's not about the doorknobs.
It's about pure spite and winning.
One post online reads, a divorce lawyer told the story of...
A rather well-to-do couple.
They spent months and months and tens of thousands of dollars fighting over absolutely everything, all the way down to a single ceramic ashtray.
I can't remember the significance of it, but I think it came from the husband's family's side.
I don't know, but even after everything that had been decided, they spent many more months, and I think they totally spent 100000 fighting over a singular ashtray.
Then after a court hearing, the wife finally won the ashtray.
She promptly strode out to the white courthouse steps and smashed the ceramic ashtray, left the pieces all over for the husband on his way out to see all of it.
That is crazy.
Yeah.
Wow.
But it doesn't just stop there. because it's not about an ashtray, right?
Another husband, he left his wife's prized koi fish on their doorstep of their house to die.
She was so distraught, she couldn't come to court.
He killed six of her fish.
There's never a dull or a happy day in family court, because everything has a deeper emotional reasoning.
Obviously, it's not just about an ashtray.
It's not just revenge.
It's not just about fish.
It's about being an abusive animal killer, but you get it.
Nobody really gets divorced over what they say.
They're getting divorced over like a bathtub or Tim McGraw, the country singer.
One Reddit post reads, I went to school with this girl.
She married this really rich guy in Ohio.
Moves in with him in Ohio.
They seem to be getting along.
Six months later, out of the blue, she files for divorce.
Up until that point, all I heard from her was how well it was going.
Anyways, turns out, you know, our little buddy had a fetish for getting off on pee.
He asked her to on him in the tub.
At first she agreed to it because she thought it was a one-time thing.
But he kept asking for it more and more and she tried to decline it respectfully by saying you know the bathtub's too small.
It's too cramped.
So next day she comes home to two dozen construction workers and heavy equipment tearing the bathroom walls in for a new bathtub.
A week or so later, they finish up the giant bathtub.
She comes home to a sign left on the fridge with a note to drink up.
She's got some watering to do.
I don't know what she put down as the official reason for the divorce, but it's definitely the bathtub.
Some would argue it's not the bathtub.
It's what he wanted to do in the bathtub.
It's not for the bathtub.
Just like how Angie Solomon and Aaron Solomon don't get divorced over Tim McGraw, the country singer.
If the whole point is to make Angie look crazy in court, it is working.
Whether it is True or not, it's up for debate.
But Angie's dad testifies against her, but so does her longtime friend.
She gives a declaration to the judge and she details a very specific situation that she's had with Angie.
Do you know Tim McGraw?
He's a country singer, and he happens to be married to another huge country singer, Faith Hill.
Is this divorce hearing or is this for what is?
This is later, okay.
So angie is trying to appeal a lot of the judge's prior decisions of custody being placed 77 percent in aaron and aaron is fighting it back.
And a lot of people are siding with aaron, such as this alleged former friend of angie who writes a declaration to the judge and it's like i need to tell you about angie.
She's not who you think she is.
So this is between 2013 and uh, 2020 or 2025 oh okay, okay.
And then he also uses this declaration in a defamation lawsuit later in 2023.
I see the friends.
Yes.
Well, the friend said you know that Angie told her Tim McGraw was going to leave his wife, Faith Hill, to be with Angie.
Angie's friend writes a declaration and says Angie claimed that Tim McGraw was singing to her at the concert, specifically obviously staring into her eyes and quote, hitting on her.
She was furious at Aaron because he didn't confront Tim McGraw about this.
She also told me that Tim McGraw and Faith Hill were getting a divorce because he was so interested in her.
Of course, the McGraws did not get a divorce and I believe Angie made the whole thing up.
Angie is potentially having a your name moment at a Tim McGraw concert.
Maybe she was kidding, maybe this never happened, but In the court system it's not looking good for Angie.
She's not getting a good look from this former friend's declaration.
Nor is it a good look that her dad more or less tells the judge that he would not be comfortable if Angie was inside of his house and he was falling asleep.
He says he would not be comfortable if his daughter was there while he's asleep.
I mean, nobody asked for that kind of example, but damn, he's giving them.
He's telling the judge, I'm going to tell you about her condition because I love my daughter.
However, she's a compulsive liar.
I cannot have a conversation with my daughter.
I never look forward to my daughter calling me, although I love to hear her voice.
And I love when she tells me about the actions of the kids.
I can never expect to have a conversation with her, unless there's some untruth that's going to be told.
Unless something is going to be stretched.
He tells the judge that Angie can never not tell a lie.
She has never been able to tell the truth which again, this is the same dad that she filed an order of protection against, so we don't know how accurate or how trustworthy his observations are.
Meanwhile, most of Angie's doctors all state that she's perfectly capable of being a good and fit mother.
They do not see her ever being a danger to her kids or living in a false reality.
At least that's what's been reported thus far.
Side note even in 2021, a Nashville EMT comes forward and states that he responded to a call to the Solomon family house years ago.
He says he remembers when he got there, Nashville Police Department were already at the scene.
They had gone into the house.
So the EMTs were mainly standby outside.
He was familiar with Aaron Solomon.
He had seen them around the neighborhood, probably on the news.
He was always cordial.
And it was the same energy that night.
Aaron Solomon comes out very cordial, very polite with the EMTs.
He's telling them, perhaps even apologizing for his wife's actions, stating that his wife is clearly mentally ill and causing all this trouble.
What are they there for exactly?
A domestic dispute.
Oh.
Now, Angie, Solomon, and the two children exit the house and Aaron's demeanor quickly changes.
According to this EMT, he became red in the face and his facial expression showed that he was very angry, very agitated, and it was very obvious that Aaron was filled with rage.
He stated that he recalled that Aaron made a few steps towards Angie but was stopped by the Nashville Police Department.
Furthermore, the EMT allegedly states that it was pretty clear to him and to all of his colleagues who the instigator of this incident was, and they're all thinking that it was Aaron.
So...
Angie's friend and father is pointing finger at Angie.
But this EMT and their colleagues are saying Aaron is the problem during those fights.
But I mean, you know, a lot of people have been disputing this EMT's version of events because he only came forward a year after Grant Solomon's death.
And a lot of the coverage after and during Grant Solomon's passing in 2020 was very anti-Aaron.
So some people are wondering if, because this allegedly happened years ago, could he really have such a strong memory of this random couple.
And is it accurate?
And they're calling to the fact that a lot of eyewitness testimonies are never really accurate, not because people are trying to be deceitful.
It's just humans are not that smart.
We're not as smart as we think we are.
Hmm.
But others are arguing.
No, like I've been an EMT not me, but like others are arguing, I've been an EMT.
And trust me, like you remember certain people and they're just like singed into your brain for whatever reason.
I mean, sometimes it's not even like the biggest, craziest call that you get.
Sometimes it's just like, I know that guy from church.
And so this is going to be singed into my memory, whether I like it or not.
But more importantly, a lot of Angie's doctors are stating that she's perfectly well and healthy.
So why doesn't the judge believe her?
According to Angie, a former court-appointed guardian for the kids say Who is this core appointed guardian?
Okay, so this is like someone who would become the kid's guardian very temporarily, while custody is getting resolved.
And this particular one has remained anonymous.
But Angie has posted a letter showing that this was written to the judge.
I don't know if it was written to the judge.
I don't know if it was submitted.
Technically, anyone could put letter ahead and write whatever they want.
I do think it's difficult because, on one hand, you can understand why someone is wanting to stay anonymous in a situation like this.
But on the other hand, it definitely doesn't add credibility.
The former at GAL says that it's all because Aaron has money millions of dollars that he has inherited from his aunt after she passed away.
Coupled with the right connections, Aaron Solomon can...
Some people believe in a ledge.
That means he can just do anything he wants.
I mean, just about.
Angie believes that Aaron is part of the Good Old Boys Club at Grace Chapel in Franklin, Tennessee.
This is a church.
Boys protecting boys type of church.
Angie says, all the most powerful people in the state attend this church and they sit right next to Aaron Solomon and it's all a boys club.
Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee attends that same very church.
Governor Lee was actually recently in the news for refusing to touch state reserves.
A $2 billion rainy day fund for the entire state of Tennessee.
He refused to touch it to help cover low-income working parents who lost SNAP during the government shutdown.
So there's that.
A lot of the influential judges, including Judge Johnson, one of the judges that ruled in favor of primary custody going towards Erin instead of Angie.
She goes to that church.
Her husband, who happens to be Senator Jack Johnson, a senator from Tennessee, also goes to that church.
Grace Chapel in Franklin, Tennessee is considered a mega church.
On a typical Sunday service.
They have about 3500 attendees at their service and, according to Angie Erin is the governor, the judge, the senator.
They're all good buddies with the main founding pastor of the church, Steve Berger.
Steve Berger is no longer a pastor at Grace Chapel.
He was the founding pastor, but there was church drama because there's always church drama.
I think religion is beautiful.
I think organized religion with infighting within the organization is very ugly.
Steve Berger is also a little bit terrifying.
He has now gone into politics, which is you know.
I think everyone can have their own opinion about what it means to be religious while also being involved in how the state is run.
But Steve Berger has publicly stated that his goal is to disciple members of Congress so that what they learn is then translated into policy.
No separation of church and state is his entire dream.
Yeah.
And it appears that there are connections with him and a congressman who wants to get rid of the second term rule for presidents, meaning a president can only serve two terms.
So there's a lot of connections there.
Probably a lot of money because it's a mega church.
A lot of money.
And they're actually sending out season desists.
So I love a good season desist from a church.
That's like one of my favorite types of season desists because something about it, I'm like...
I don't know, it just like riles me up.
Maybe it's my religious trauma.
But anyway, what does that have to do with Angie?
Angie claims that allegedly Judge Johnson ruled in favor of Aaron she and this is a huge allegation.
But this judge would have discussions about all of her cases with the church pastor, Steve Berger.
This is what Angie is alleging.
And Steve Berger is allegedly close with Aaron Solomon.
So he would tell her, you know, God is with Aaron.
So maybe you should rule against Angie.
That's kind of the allegation at hand.
I don't know if that's accurate.
I don't know.
I don't even know how the structure of a mega church works if the founding pastor even hangs out with any of the congregation.
It all feels like some bigger coordinated effort is what Angie is saying.
And it is very strange, she states that people at the church never paid her any attention, nobody cared about her.
But then suddenly, the night of Grant's memorial service, members of the Grace Chapel Church quote inserted themselves into my house.
And she's stating that they barged into her house And they're desperately trying to convince her that Grant died from having abdominal injuries to his organs and that there was hemorrhaging in his stomach.
She basically states more or less that they're trying to gaslight her into believing that Grant Solomon died naturally from this accident.
With an Instagram post reading on the Freedom for Gracie Instagram.
Why did these people from Grace Chapel keep trying so hard to gaslight Angie about what happened to her son?
Why does Grace Chapel keep appearing at Angie's door or in her text messages the week of Grant's death and weeks after?
They never wanted to help Grant, Gracie, or Angie in the years before.
Why now?
Why in this way?
Because the good old boys club.
Protect the good old boys club.
Some people argue... or it could just be a mega church.
And typically with mega churches, I used to go to church back in the day.
And like the one thing about mega churches and why people are kind of interested in going to them is there's not as much of a community built around it.
So it's not everybody knows everybody's business.
And so it could very well be that nobody really talked to Angie until they found out someone from the congregation or someone from the church.
They had this tragic accident happen to their son.
And so now they're actively reaching out because that's maybe what God would want them to do.
I don't know, right?
I don't know.
There is that argument out there floating around.
But the theory of the good old boys club changes in the degree of severity.
There's like a light, medium, dark version.
The light version, right?
Some people believe good old boys club.
There really is no good old boys club.
That insinuates there's some sort of conspiracy.
There's some sort of organized effort and there really isn't.
It's just men protecting men typically from allegations of abuse.
It's less of a coordinated effort to make sure Aaron is found not guilty, but more so internal misogynistic biases.
Our good friend Aaron from the church, he could not do such a thing.
Like not our Aaron, We've been going to church with Aaron for years.
We would have known if he was doing something like that.
No, our judgment is perfectly great still.
There's no way.
Angie, however, I always knew she was a little cuckoo.
I never really even talked to her.
She barely comes to church.
They believe it's just coming from people who are probably very powerful in the church.
And a lot of them, in netizen opinion, are not good people.
However, are they really going to help Aaron?
Aaron in particular, it's probably just this internal bias that they have.
A lot of these netizens that believe in this theory think Aaron's not even of the elite.
I mean, it's unclear how much aaron solomon is worth according to a few transcripts, probably one to two million dollars, which is a substantial amount, but it's not i'm going to dc and swaying congressman amount.
It's not lobbying and taking a private jet to the tech industry to lobby something you know.
It's just it's okay to these people, so would they really protect him?
No, it's probably just a matter of.
I know that guy from church.
No, he's a nice guy.
And Angie, she seems a little crazy.
I'm like, where's the evidence?
I don't see any evidence.
So we're going to rule in favor of him."
The next level up, like the medium conspiracy, is that Aaron knows something about these very powerful people and they are working together to make sure that he's happy, so he doesn't tell anyone what he knows.
Why would Aaron know anything?
Well, he goes to the church.
Maybe he's got eyes and ears.
Maybe he just happened to be at the right place at the right time.
Or he previously worked as a news anchor.
Perhaps he came across information on Tennessee's finest and greatest people that would make it harder for them to get reelected.
Make it harder for them to make a bigger step in Now.
A few things about this particular theory I will note is Aaron Solomon was not a big name in the news world.
You know, he was mainly a sports anchor, not a super well-known one at that.
He was not on ESPN covering the Super Bowl.
He was just a local sports anchor and then a local morning news host for the local TV.
It's very rare that these anchors are privy to such sensitive information about the elite, especially when you're not at the top, like i would think, like the nation's handful of top anchors maybe know a little too much, and that might be it.
Yeah, i mean, these are incredible positions, incredible opportunities.
I'm not discounting anything about his career trajectory, but i'm just saying i don't think that that would naturally put him in a position to gain any blackmail material or any sort of high level information on these people.
However, he could have just been at the right place at the right time, whether it be at work or whether it be at the church.
Then we have the dark theory, the most intense theory, the severity of the allegations of this one being incredibly high if true.
At one point, Angie claims that these guys all run a sex trafficking ring in Tennessee, that they're all involved, stating that Aaron trafficked his own daughter Gracie, to these people.
On the Freedom for Gracie website.
On the Angie's About Me page it reads over the next decade, Angie would go on to battle not only her ex-husband but a corrupt court system, a cult-like private school and a church with connections to the highest offices in the country.
I don't know if any of these allegations are true.
And also two things could be true and three things could be true at once.
So I don't know how connected all of these different facts are, but here's where it does get weird.
According to Grant's girlfriend at the time Hannah, and a lot of his other friends, Grant had set up a meeting with the founding pastor, Steve Berger, the main pastor, to talk about how his dad Aaron, had been abusive towards him.
Really?
Really.
Yes.
So this is pretty confirmed by like their parties.
Yeah.
I understand some people's skepticism against Angie.
I understand some people's skepticism, not against Gracie, because I think that ultimately, whichever way you spin it, whichever way, if Aaron is bad or if Angie is bad or both of them that are bad, ultimately Grant and Gracie are the victims in this story.
Regardless, right?
Some people do have skepticism towards what Angie is also alleging with Gracie, because some people are saying that she could be manipulating Gracie or brainwashing Gracie or making Gracie say these things.
Some people point to Gracie's YouTube video saying that she doesn't look comfortable.
Some people say these don't sound like words that a 14 year old uses.
The fact that she's reading off of a paper, her body language, she's glancing off camera at times.
People are all using that to try and say that Angie is brainwashing Gracie into saying these things.
So regardless, I think, when it comes from a third party who really has nothing to gain from saying anything,
It's interesting.
Now Grant's girlfriend at the time, Hannah.
She has cooperated that Grant never really talked much about his dad.
But when he did, he just never really seemed to want to go to his dad's place.
She remembered there was one time he was crying in the car because he just didn't like the idea of going to his dad's house.
So he didn't.
And he was always oddly, very protective of Hannah around his own dad, which he thought was interesting.
But she states that Grant had an appointment with Steve Berger and was gonna tell him about the abuse that his dad was inflicting.
Steve Berger says no such thing ever happened.
Indeed, Grant did set up a meeting with him, but it was just to talk about how he can get closer to God.
Steve Berger apparently states in a video, a sermon video you just never get a ninth grader making an appointment with you to talk about Jesus as a crusty old, gray-haired preacher.
But Grant did, and he sat in my office for well over an hour.
He just wanted to know how he could draw closer to Christ.
And it stands out to me.
This was after his passing?
Yeah.
I mean clearly, even Steve thought it was weird that this ninth grader was like.
I just want to talk to you about how to get closer to God.
So a lot of netizens are saying, yeah, maybe it's weird because that's never what happened.
Steve thought it was weird.
Netizens think it's weird.
They all think it's part of some bigger cover-up.
Because Gracie in her video claims that she told the school, she told the church.
Nobody did anything about it.
Also, the church and the school gonna be very careful with my wording here they're not legally affiliated.
There are two different legal entities.
And what school they're?
The school she goes to yeah, so grant and gracie go to a christian private school, grace christian academy, and the church is called grace chapel church or grace chapel right, they're legally two different entities.
They have two separate governing bodies for both organizations.
It's like if what's the connection though, besides the name, are they run by?
Oh, it seems like they're connected.
It seems like if nike were to come up with a drinks brand and call it nike coffee, but they created a new llc, a new corporation for nike coffee and they've got a different board of directors for nike coffee.
But i mean, legally speaking, i guess they're two different entities.
But like technically yeah okay, the affiliation is very strong.
Right right right yeah, the right, okay.
So Gracie is saying that the church and the school, they never did anything about it.
Grant's girlfriend at the time is saying that Grant probably told Steve about it and Steve didn't do anything.
So what's going on?
What are they hiding?
Why would the church not just go to the police?
Why would they not investigate?
Why would they not do anything?
Because it's a church.
Aren't they supposed to stand against stuff like this?
Yeah.
But also the police?
Hello?
Yeah.
Now Grace Chapel Church eventually releases their own statement against these allegations.
That reads in part Recently, a 14-year-old girl posted a video on social media platforms about alleged abuse that she had experienced in her family.
We just can't imagine how difficult it must be for that young woman to be caught in the middle of a custody battle with her parents, while also dealing with the tragic death of her brother.
Since the original video, a variety of websites blogs, articles and social media posts have spread information maligning Grace Chapel, Grace Christian Academy and our founding pastor, Steve Berger.
The church notes to clarify the three parties the church, the academy and Steve Berger's ministry are quote are all separate legal organizations with separate oversight and missions.
Which again, if you have to word it like that, it just means that there must be some level of entanglement, perhaps even just socially, because the wording is very precise, that there are three separate legal organizations with separate oversight.
But the church continues with their clarification by stating considering the number of false accusations being made, we felt it would be important to clarify a few things so that our church family could understand Grace Chapel's involvement and how to pray for this situation.
There were never any allegations by anyone that any abuse took place at Grace Chapel or that involved any Grace Chapel volunteers or employees.
The allegations of abuse in 2018 was between a divorced couple regarding their own child and had nothing to do with Grace Chapel.
There has been false reporting that Steve Berger, when he was serving as Grace Chapel's senior pastor, had been informed about the abuse during a meeting that took place on May 7th 2018 and did not report it to the proper authorities following that meeting.
The claim that somehow Steve Berger knew of the abuse and didn't report it is categorically false.
In fact, the alleged abuse had already been reported to the sheriff's office on May 4th 2018, three days before the meeting with Stephen even took place.
Grace Chapel has and will continue to make sure that any allegations of abuse are reported to the proper authorities.
All of our staff and volunteers go through child safety training as well as background checks.
Please join us in continuing to pray for this family.
And if you have any questions, please reach out to us, Grace Chapel.
Not really doing themselves any favors.
The church also goes on to clarify something very weird, stating In a recent article there was also an issue that one of the family members who attends Grace Chapel is not a member of the church.
It's important to note that Grace Chapel has a specific process for membership, and this individual, Aaron Solomon, has not gone through the process and is therefore not a member.
But the church does go on to clarify that member or not, everyone is welcome.
Membership is not a requirement for participation and fellowship within their church community.
I will say that's a very strange thing to make distinctively clear for everybody, considering there's pretty strong connections that Aaron at least attended the church with a high frequency on most Sundays, even taking pictures of himself at the church and then sending them to Gracie.
Two Sundays in a row he texts pictures of himself of himself at the church, writing to her at church thinking of you, love you, miss you heart.
Then the next Sunday, a picture of the church and an accompanying message.
Pastor Steve mentioned Grant for the third Sunday in a row and preached about heaven today.
Hope you can watch it.
Because, you know, it's a mega church.
They like to upload their sermons onto YouTube and stuff.
I don't know if the church is involved.
I don't know if the church is not involved.
I also think that I have way too much religious trauma to even come to a an appropriate conclusion without being tainted by my own anecdotal evidence and personal opinions right.
But I do think that the responses are just a little weird.
I've met a lot of religious people.
I've met a lot of people of faith.
And regardless of the fact that of anything really, I don't think any of them would respond to such a sensitive topic and allegation in this manner.
It was just weird.
It was just weird.
And I think it just makes everything feel unsettling.
Yeah.
It feels a little heartless.
Even the way that they write about Gracie feels a little bit heartless.
The way that they write about the family, even if they are not involved, even if they're being dragged online.
I think that there are better ways to go about it.
I would imagine more of a business entity, a corporation, to respond in this apathetic cold, legalese type of way.
But anyway, that's just an opinion that has no indication of guilt or innocence.
Yeah.
Now, on top of that, the church has also been sending out cease and desist letters to creators.
I don't think that I'll be on the receiving end of one.
However, it would not be the first time.
It actually just like gets me more riled up.
So they've been sending it to YouTubers.
Yeah, they've been sending a lot of cease and desist.
Really?
Yeah.
But it's just weird.
Again, overexcited legal action is not a sign of guilt.
I just personally think it's weird behavior.
Also, while we're at it though, I also think the school is weird.
The school that both Grant and Gracie went to, Grace Christian Academy.
They are again, I think, closely affiliated, even though they have separate legal and governing structures between the church regardless.
Gracie said at that age in her life when she was just figuring out what had happened to her and the abuse she had nobody to talk to about the abuse.
So she's talking to her friends at school, telling them what's happened to her.
And the school tells her to stop.
There's a video recording that has been posted on Freedom for Gracie where it's school staff telling Gracie and Angie that a lot of the kids have been impacted by Gracie talking about what happened to her.
Like a secret recorded audio?
Which, side note, Gracie says, again, nobody would listen to her.
The police won't listen to her.
Child services won't listen to her.
The church won't listen to her.
So, like, who is she supposed to talk to about it?
And she has so much trauma, so she's talking to her friends about it.
I mean, who else?
And the school administrators are heard saying, even if she's dealing with adult things.
I've had three parents over the weekend, and they're telling Angie.
Call.
And said, my child came to me and asked...
What is sexual abuse?
So where is this coming from?
So a lot of the kids are being affected by what she's going through and what she's telling people.
I get it.
I think it could be startling for some parents, but also it could be a great time to teach your 13, 14 year old kid about abuse and what to do if you witness abuse or if your friend tells you about abuse or if you become a victim of abuse or I don't know.
Teach your kids not to abuse.
The school though, the tone they use makes it seem more like it's upsetting the parents.
It's upsetting the kids.
They're not ready to have this conversation.
So let's not talk about it.
The school administration then goes on to worry out loud about this becoming the talk of the school, saying for her sake, it isn't just about sixth grade for her.
This is, you know what I mean?
These are her peers all the way up.
So I don't want something that's going to be detrimental to her.
That's going to, um, She's not thinking about the future.
She's thinking of right now.
But I'm thinking about the future and how this is going to follow her and her peers.
And then I also have to think about what other students who are now having to deal with this.
And not just from a school perspective, but as a mom who's raised daughters.
I'm looking at Gracie's next six years, not just right now.
And the things that are said and the opinions that are formed in all of this is going to affect her freshman year, her junior year.
So they're all just worried about her.
So they heard.
At this point, the school, all these adults and all these you know people heard what happened to grace, because that's what she's telling everyone.
And their concern is that's going to affect her future.
That's going to affect everybody else's school life.
Yes.
So I was able to dig really deep into some local like forums.
I think it's confusing and conflicting.
Interestingly enough, we, More people on a local scale in Tennessee seem to be more on Aaron's side.
Hmm.
Okay.
Tell me more.
Now, Angie states that he waged a local campaign against her spreading lies about her.
Okay.
And so that's why she had to take it public on social media to get the truth out there.
But then other people locally are arguing that The teacher probably said it like this, because the teacher doesn't believe the abuse happened and the teacher believes that Angie is brainwashing the daughter.
So this is the teacher's way of saying you're brainwashing your daughter and now you don't even understand the implications.
Like this is her life now.
It's not just like a conversation she's having.
Like this is going to impact her.
I don't.
I guess.
Yes.
Yeah.
I guess the feeling is like I feel very conflicted because I feel like we don't know the full picture.
Right.
What truly happened.
We obviously don't want to spread lies or whatever, but how?
What make them believe that Angie is lying?
I guess it's just so frustrating because the police are not investigating.
But how do you know if this did it a hundred percent sure that this didn't happen?
Do we know this?
We don't know this, right?
We don't know this.
So, I don't know.
I also think maybe being a police officer in this case, being a social worker, being the judge in this case is trickier.
These are trickier things where there are massive implications to whether you close an investigation or how you rule in the court system, because there are lifelong things like custody being held by one person or one person having supervised visitation.
There are lots of implications.
I think it's weird that a lot of these third parties, like the school, are being the judge, the judge and the jury.
If it were me, I don't think that that would be how I handle it.
It's just, okay, well, this is what's happening.
And maybe it is a good time to talk to everybody about what to do if your friend is talking to you about abuse, or how to speak up after you feel like you have been a victim of abuse, how to not abuse people, like how to see the signs of abuse.
I feel like that would be a great time to try.
Focusing on the wrong thing.
Like, what do you mean?
Like, like they're freaking out.
Like yeah, shit happens, like there's bad things happen all day, like you need to teach anyways.
So i think it's you know.
I think there are heavier implications for specific roles and they need to try and give some sort of verdict.
Like the police, they need to have some sort of verdict in terms of closing a case or not.
Same with social workers, same with a judge.
But when you're just out of school, i don't know why you have to decide that maybe angie is lying, so maybe i should handle it this way.
Furthering Angie's point, there are videos of Aaron coming to school to pick up Gracie from school.
And she Gracie, has clearly told the administrators that her dad is abusing her, that she is terrified to go with her dad.
And the tricky part is the judge has stated that she is to be placed in her dad's custody.
So her dad's picking her up from school and the headmaster is just telling Gracie that these allegations are old news and she's got to get in the car with her dad.
It just gets so bad that the headmaster of the school puts out a video statement saying please come to us so that we can give you the truth.
I always say that we're not going to believe everything that your kids tell us about you.
So please don't believe everything that your kids say about us.
What is going on.
That seems to be kind of the way that they do things.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I guess it's just weird.
Again, there's no implication of guilt here through my wording.
I'm just saying that i, in my personal opinion, it's just a very weird situation.
But When it comes to allegations that Angie has brought against Aaron, there isn't as much concrete, detailed evidence to the allegations as maybe a judge would want.
It doesn't mean that these things didn't happen, but just the nature of a lot of assaults, the nature of being essayed by someone, allegedly by someone that is your guardian.
The whole point is to not leave evidence.
The whole point is to not get caught.
So we don't really have much concrete evidence, but we do have heavily disputed pictures.
Remember we talked about the bruising on Gracie's upper thigh?
Angie claims that it was from abuse.
Erin claims it was from a swimsuit.
It's not clear.
There's also another picture that Angie shows as evidence of Gracie's eyes.
Her eye bags are super swollen.
She has dark circles.
Angie claims that this is after Gracie was with her dad for an extended period of time.
She would come back and this was clearly a sign of abuse.
Now, it looks like she's having some sort of... I feel like my eyes have looked like this before.
It's like some sort of really bad allergic reaction.
She did have eye surgery previously.
I'm not sure what it was for, but there are mentions in a court transcript of Gracie having eye surgery and then moving into the primary bedroom with her parents for a while.
So I don't know if this is from the eye surgery.
I don't know if she's always had issues with her eyes.
So there's just been all of these heavily disputed pictures.
So it's not even… Everything is disputed, is what I'm trying to say.
So it's very hard to definitively say anything.
But one thing that seems less disputed is Grant Solomon's death.
Most netizens think it's very suspicious.
One netizen writes, I mean, this makes no sense.
Whoever is covering up this murder is an idiot.
Everyone sees it, yet the justice system has done nothing.
Aaron Solomon should be rotting in a jail cell for first degree murder.
Another comment reads Angie was railroaded in her case and she had to jump through all these hoops to even just be able to see her children.
The courts made her out to be a mad woman, completely crazy and unfit.
Which is maybe why Angie felt compelled to take matters into her own hands by trying to hire a hitman who happened to be an undercover agent.
5.30 p.m.
Friday night, Aaron gets a phone call.
It's not a number he recognizes, but he picks it up.
Hello?
It's the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
Are you home?
No?
Well, I've got a man at your door right now.
Aaron says he already knows it's probably to do with Angie.
He's explaining to the investigator that he's actually out of town ironically, for a wedding, a celebration of love.
Aaron, says the investigators pretty bluntly, just tell him well, since you're out of town, I'm just gonna go ahead and tell you we arrested your ex-wife.
She tried to hire someone to kill you and she's being booked right now.
Aaron says in that moment, he just quote, I was in disbelief.
I was in shock.
I was like, You gotta be kidding me.
This is not real.
This is not happening to me.
And since the divorce, Grant's death and the subsequent social media discourse, Erin has decided briefly to sue Angie and her friends.
Angie's friends?
Who are they?
Yes, who are also helping her allegedly run social media accounts.
That are, you know, Freedom for Grace Eve's website, her Instagram.
Some of them are posting on their personal pages, right? but for defamation.
Erin's attorney argues in this defamation lawsuit that the defendants, Angie and her friends, are only concerned with destroying plaintiff and generating outrage on social media in an effort to raise money and sell products.
While they have tried to paint themselves as noble defenders of free speech, in reality this is a campaign of malicious bullying cyber-stalking, generating clicks and spreading lies.
So there are three camps of people.
One, who believed that Aaron is an abusive killer.
And he found a way to make Angie seem crazy so that no one in the justice system believes her.
And he's getting away with not even just essaying his own daughter, but for killing his son who was trying to save his sister.
I'm sorry.
What happened to the defamation lawsuit?
So he decided that he was not going to go through with it.
He withdrew his defamation lawsuit.
And I think the main reason is this was like a...
I forget how many pages that lawsuit was.
It was a lot of pages and there was so many exhibits.
It was hundreds of pages.
The whole point of a defamation lawsuit is to argue that you have lost a lot of money.
There was no way to prove that he lost money.
And also the fact that he hired an attorney to put together this very heavy documentation piece.
That's going to cost a lot of money.
Defamation lawyers.
They don't do anything pro bono typically and they don't just like write a whole lawsuit and file it for free.
So I think it just would not have, it would have just burned money.
So again, or he could have known that he's lying about being defamed, right?
I don't know, right?
You could spin it either way, but just let's say, benefit of the doubt, it could be, just the money wasn't making sense.
It could be also the fact that he knows that Angie maybe doesn't have money.
So it's like, okay, you're spending all of this money.
Angie doesn't have money to give, even if you win.
And if she's got nothing to lose, she could just make another account and keep posting about you.
And then you got to go through another, you know, it's... I see, I see.
That makes sense.
Or it could be the fact that he knows allegedly some things Angie claims could be true.
Could be the allegation right.
You know, everyone wants to see it a specific way.
So you could see it all the ways.
Now you have the first camp of people who believe that Erin is evil.
Then you have the second camp of people that believe that Erin isn't particularly a great person, but Angie also seems to be very problematic.
They believe that she's coming up with stories.
Whether she believes it or not is unclear, but she's convincing her kids of these stories and turning them against their dad.
Then you have the third camp of people.
They believe, Both of them suck and both of them are abusive, probably in their own ways.
They think that Erin is suspicious, especially in connection with Grant's passing.
But they also believe that Angie is strange in the way that she's going about everything.
So the three are, to put it simply, Erin is bad, Angie is bad, and both of them are bad.
This is part three of the Solomon family series.
Stay tuned for the final part, part four, because we do get a few more answers and we get a few more updates on the timeline of how things are progressing.
But stay tuned.
Let me know your thoughts and I'll see you in the next one.
