try and kill another neighbour. a row over a small car accident has collated. yan arslan told police he would kill them and he did. on 28 september last year, he lay in wait for matthew to return home from work and stabbed him 37 times. this is arslan confessing to what he has done when arrested. not only did he kill matthew, but he attacked sarah, his wife, with the knife. he attacked the residents that tried to intervene. since then he has shown no remorse, continues to make to people in prison, and i think the sentence should hopefully reflect that. sarah says she won t speak her husband s killer s name, simply referring to him as the monster next door . matthew s murder is subject to two reviews, one by the police watchdog
he thought was heroin. it was a very high level of fentanyl, as well. within the heroin. it doesn t take any of it to hardly kill ya. reporter: fentanyl and s synthetic opioids representing over 60% of the deadly overdoses from april 2020 to april 2021. did the pandemic kill matthew? no. it just intensified, i think. he was more emotionally fragile during that time. reporter: what did the pandemic do for addiction in places like kentucky? yeah, there was a clear and obvious increase in use, in overdose, in any metric you want to use. reporter: alex elswick, former opioid addict, now dedicates his life to studying, understanding, and working with the addicted and recovering at lexington s voices of hope. he says the pandemic and the isolation that came with it
100,000-plus deadly drug overdoses from april 2020 to april 2021. did the pandemic kill matthew? no. it just intensified. i think he was more emotionally fragile. what did the pan emdid for places like kentucky? there was a clear and obvious use in use in, overdose in, my metric that you want to use. reporter: alex, a former opioid addict, now dedicates his life to studying, understanding and working with the addicted and recovering at lexington s voices of hope. he says the pandemic and the isolation that came with it devastated the addiction community. what addiction is in your brain is down regulation of dopamine and what it does is up level dopamine. reporter: cheap and
worked to serve of their son matthew. send them our fixer. it doesn t work like that. why don t they just stop. why don t they just stop? don t they know they can stop. you would think they would know what they are doing to their children. but drugs take over the brain. reporter: matthew s brother glen says there s no easy way to recover and money alone won t solve the problem of addiction. addiction isn t something that you can just turn off. for a lot of these people it s not a choice. they are addicted to these drugs, and i think the only way they can get off is through support and love. this is his wallet. he didn t have much. reporter: karen butcher now clings to the few physical reminders of her son matthew. her favorite, a quilt made from all of his favorite shirts. sometimes i would think, okay, i ve got matthew s arms wrapped around me. it includes the last photo