go to somebody s home, say hey, we re washing roofs today? we tell them, look, summer is coming. it s really hot. it s going to start cracking your roof if you don t get it washed with chemicals to keep it prote protected. you told these people that you had a whole plan to protect the roofs? exactly. but there were no repairs once they got on the roof. just a hosing, literally. just spraying water. and what did that do for the roof? nothing. just clean it. how many do you figure you guys scammed? we scammed probably about a good 100, 150 people. all elderly? all elderly. you re okay with that. i was strongly against it. that s because he says none of it was his idea. he blames this man, joe ridell, a career criminal who stevenson says forced him into a life of crime by beating him.
i got to tell you, gary, if i m living with a guy who s beating me, making me pull off scams, i m out of there. i was scared for my life because he s already told me after i got back with him that if i ever ran away, and if he ever caught me, he would break both my legs where i could never walk again. that s when i started looking. i was like, well, i can t do nothing, so i might as well just do it. if i don t do it there s going to be consequences. did you feel trapped? i felt trapped. i really felt trapped. i was scared for my life. why didn t you just go to the police and say hey, look, i m in this bad situation. this guy is making me commit crimes. he s threatening my life. plus he threatened my family as well. i knew if i went to the cops the first place he would go is to my grandma s house. so who is joe ridell, who allegedly controlled the scammers? chris hansen with dateline nbc . how you doing? ridell is a three time convicted felon.
have a seat. ridell is a three time convicted felon. we met him at the clarke county detention center where he was being held on another case. gary stevenson told us you were the man behind the scene, where you would send these guys out, target the elderly people, ripping them off. never. did you ever send gary or a guy named dave to punch holes in people s water lines? never. to destroy the sprinkler systems so you could get paid for repairing them? never. ridell says now that stevenson has been caught he s just making up a story to cover his tracks. you know you are under arrest, right? so why would gary stevenson say all this? because the guy is a crazy nut. he s a crazy nut? yeah. he got himself in a bunch of trouble. so he lies about everybody else. that s what. but ridell says he never beat or threatened stevenson, in fact, he says he helped him.
there were other scams, too. go to somebody s home and say we re washing roofs today. it s really hot. you told these people that you had a whole plan to protect the roofs. exactly. but there were no repairs once they got on the roof. just a hosing, literally. just spraying water. and what did that do for the roof? nothing. just clean it. how many do you figure you guys scammed? we scammed probably about a good 100, 150 people. all elderly? all elderly. you re okay with that. i was strongly against it. that s because he says none of it was his idea. he blames this man, joe ridell, a career criminal who stevenson says forced him into a life of crime by beating him.
but here s the thing. had you gone to police after the first killing, romero would likely be alive today. yeah, but i had no chance to get to the police. i had no chance to call police. he was always right there. [ speaking foreign language ]. weeks later still healing and grieves, roberta romero came to court and pointed out gregory hover as the man who pulled the trigger. [ speaking foreign language ]. hover and freeman were