Knoxville Trio – Erin McLean

rTonight we’re talking about the case of Eric McLean. This one here is a crazy love triangle that’s gonna have you saying WHAT?!

Before we begin, I wanna give a shoutout to one of our amazing fans, Cindy G. Cindy thanks for being you. We wanted to let you know that we really appreciate you.

Now, if you missed the last episode, it was something new we’re doing with season 2. At the end of every month, we are doing an episode on one missing person from every state for that month. With these episodes, we really ask that you listen – they are not long – and share share share. The January episode was the first of these and it was very heartbreaking for me. Most of the missing persons were kids, with the youngest being a 3 year old. Go back to episode #42, January Missing People, listen and share please. Let’s get these people home.

Switching gears – in our exclusive community we have the Seth Privacky interview and our January bloopers and an upcoming crazy case where a judge wanted to sentence an old man. You won’t believe the reason why! If you want to be part of this exclusive community, just go to www.patreon.com/loveandmurder and join us.

On to business.

Jason Eric McLean was born in 1975 in Knoxville, TN to Norman McLean and Tanya McLean –  one of 7 children. Eric, as everyone called him, had four brothers and 2 sisters. He was a very outgoing boy, growing into a man. Every one said he was always smiling and everyone loved being around him. As he got older, he got into drumming and decided to be a high school band director.

In 1993, at the age of 18, he met a 16 year old girl who went to his school. So basically he was a senior and she was a sophomore. Do you find anything wrong with that age difference?

Erin Myers was born in 1977 in Knoxville as well. Her parents divorced when she was young and she lived in different homes, between family and friends. To come and live with someone, She’d ended up in Knoxville. Her friends and family describe her as a free-spirited, nonconformist who was brilliant and loved literature, drama, and theater.

Eric graduated first, of course, and as soon as Erin graduated they decided that they needed to move in together. They saved enough to buy a home and started on their lives. Erin got pregnant soon after and, for whatever reason, they broke up. Their break up was brief and they got back together. 

In 1998, they had a son named Eric McLean Jr and got married soon after.

Eric stopped going to college so that Erin could go to school at the University of Tennessee to get her Bachelors in English. After graduating with her bachelor’s she won a scholarship for an English program at Indiana University for her Masters in English Literature. So they packed up the family and moved to Bloomington, IN. Wow what an amazing husband. So he worked and supported the entire family, put his dreams on hold, so his wife could fulfill her dreams. Not many people are like that any more. Now, even though they had financial issues at that time, they ended up having another child – a son  who they named Ian. 

In 2006, they moved back to Knoxville and Eric was able to return to college to work towards his dream of earning a degree towards becoming a band teacher. While he went to school, he worked a bunch of jobs to be able to afford the bills; he delivered pizzas, drove a taxi, etc. He would take his books with him and study when he had time. Then, when he got home, he would get his kids ready for school, take them to school, go back to work, get off, go get the kids from school and bring em home, then get a couple of hours of sleep before going back to work, And on and on and on every day.  Erin, at the time, didn’t like her job so she decided to quit and go back to school. Although Eric wasn’t happy with that idea, he supported her decision. So Erin started working towards her second masters and starting a student teaching internship at West High School in Knoxville.

So a normal schedule was for Eric to wake up at 6 am, do everything I previously said, get home at midnight, do school work, sleep for a couple hours, and be back up at 6am. Oh my God, if I had that schedule I would literally die. I commend whoever is doing a schedule like that; clearly you’re stronger than me in that regard.

But as far as Erin and Eric, so far, it sounds as if they have no time for each other. School, work, school, work, financial issues, school, children, work, school and more work. I hear no date nights, no romance, no nothing. That spells trouble in a marriage.

Sean Powell was born in 1988 and was raised only by his mom until he was 6. He never know his birth dad.  At 6 years old, due to drug use and prostitution, she gave him up for adoption. Sean ended up being in and out of foster homes. In foster care, he didn’t have a very good childhood. In one home, he was kept in a closet. He ate as if he were in prison; hiding his plate from everyone else so he could finish his food. After awhile, his mother’s parental rights were terminated and then he was adopted by the Powell family. There, he was raised with his adopted family, thinking that his birth mother had died. Things were good for awhile. He was described as athletic and outgoing; he loved to party and he love 4 wheeling. He was also a rugby player and pretty good at it. However, his personality turned erratic after some time and the Powells sent him off to a therapeutic boarding school. After a year and a half, the school said he was well and discharged him and he came back home. When he was 17 years old, his birth mother found him and came back into his life. She told him the reason why she gave him up and that, once she got herself together, she began the search for him.

In school, teachers and students said that Sean drank while at school, he smoked and he wasn’t shy to confront the teachers and tell them what he thought. 

In the fall of 2005, he met and bonded with his student teacher Erin McLean. They both had an interest in drama and poetry so that’s what they often talked about. Erin felt a kinship with Sean because she’d faced the same struggles when she was his age.

However, in October of 2006, Sean was expelled from the school when he was caught in the parking lot with alcohol. In December, his adopted parents then sent him off to a rehab for alcohol, and then was kicked out of his house. During this tough time, he turned to Erin for help. 

Around January, Sean got kicked out of rehab, just a few days before he would have completed his 28-day rehab stay, and began communicating with Erin again. His ex-girlfriend (who’d remained friends with him) noticed a change in him around this time.

On March 10 2006, right before 9pm Eric made a 911 call. Someone was at his home and he needed officers to come and help remove him. After awhile though, Eric said the intruder left on his own and no further assistance was needed.

7 Minute later, another 911 call came in, but this time, someone had been shot. 

Police were dispatched and, when they arrived, the intruder was found dead. 

Erin met with officers, but Eric was no where to be found.

Now, here’s where we’re gonna divate from our normal format – just because of the way this story unfolds.

Let’s figure out what happened here. 

Erin’s story: (Came courtesy of Katie Allison Granju on her “Becasue I said so” blog:)

“I desperately wanted to create the love and family that I felt I had never had. I feel that, when I became a mother at 18, I missed out on a lot of experiences and many of my friends left me.”

To read more of Erin’s story, visit this story written by Katie Allison Granju on her “Because I said so” Blog 

Which is true; when you have a kid, most of your childless friends no longer have anything in common with you and they move on. Char, you had a kid at 18? Did you lose friends?

“Eric and I had struggled through poverty and without help to try to live a life according to our values – continually sacrificing everything for his music, my study of English, and our children. People have portrayed me as some kind of party girl during my marriage, but do you really think I could have kept the grades I had, and worked, and taken care of my kids while partying all the time? No, I couldn’t have. We both were loving and involved parents and I did most of the care for the children. Actually, the first time I’d heard of anyone telling me I was a bad parent was on March 10, 2006 when Eric’s parents suddenly called child welfare authorities.”

Erin says that their marriage was a happy one, but there were serious issues in it as well. As she says, she was 100% faithful to Eric, but he cheated on her at least twice. 

“The primary thing we sacrificed during our 10-year marriage was time together. We made the mistake of trying to attend college and raise children in a hands-on way, while working full time. We managed to do all these things, but in shifts, while almost never spending time with one another. Eric was always out performing with rock bans and the UT music programs. It particularly hurts me that anyone is now claiming that Eric was the ‘primary caregiver’ for our two sons, as it is clear from all the activities in which he was engaged that he was never home.”

Erin also claims that at times Eric would just turn violently angry for no reason. According to her, in the early 90’s he was arrested in Loudon Country for trying to shoot someone with a crossbow, but no one could find a record of this because it was expunged from his record. She also claims that in Indiana she woke up one night to Eric randomly threatening her with a Bowie knife that she was able to take from him and throw in a dumpster. Then, because she was a super hero, she never reported this to the authorities. She also says that in 2001, officers were dispatched to their home because they had been arguing inside their car and Eric snapped and rammed his car into their other car that was parked in the driveway. However, there is no record of this either because she convinced police not to arrest him. Finally, she claims that Eric stalked a college professor and told Erin that he was going to kill him because he failed him in the class. 

Moving on to 2006

“In fall of 2006, I literally did not spend any time with Eric except ….

Then, she claims, that in the winter of 2006 Eric had a psychotic break. 

He began crying hysterically all day and night. I told him that he needed psychiatric help, that this wasn’t normal. …

She also claimed that 2 weeks before his interaction with the intruder, Eric had started taking Lexapro – which is an antidepressant. This is supposedly the first time he’d ever taken medication for depression. 

She says that with all this going on, she didn’t want to leave the marriage because of her own childhood experiences, she didn’t want her children to go through the same broken family she did. So she came up with an idea. The best thing that someone in a failing marriage with a supposedly abusive husband could ever come up with. Light Bulb. Let’s have an open marriage! The plan was to stay together for the sake of the kids, but they would both be romantically with other people. According to her, Eric was like sure.

Erin met Sean Powell when his file came across her desk in the Fall of 2006. She said that after learning of his background, she was impressed by the way he’d dealt with the trauma of his childhood and she identified with him. 

She took an interest in his studies and encouraged him to try harder and be better in school. She had a meeting with his parents and asked them if he could attend tutoring with her at 8am, which he did. According to her, this was the only face-to-face meetings she had with Sean outside of class. That is, until January 5th.

When Sean was expelled, Erin says she was devastated because someone should have been there to support him and, apparently, that person should have been her. 

“In tears, I asked my mentoring teacher what we could do for Sean. …'”

So she reached out to Sean’s adoptive mother to help and told her that they could hire a lawyer at the UT Legal Aid Clinic. According to her, his adoptive mother was worried that by her helping Sean it would risk her position as a student teacher. She said that she care more about a person than she did her job. How noble. Sean returned her call and in, trying to help him, somehow over the months, their conversation became intimate and sexual. When Sean went to rehab, he called her everyday. She was just really lonely AND anyway her and Eric had agreed to an open marriage, so she took his phone calls and even started calling him as well. 

I mean, I know in my 30s I was looking for a relationship with a teenager. Makes sense to me.

Anyway she said that Eric was completely aware of her’s and Sean’s relationship and he was trying to be ok with it. 

In an email, which Erin says Eric sent to an Open Marriage Expert online (which there is actual evidence about something for once) on December 28, 2006:

“Subject: Open Marriage?

Question

“I have been married for 10 years. My wife has lost interest in me sexually and she wants to have an open marriage. I want her to be happy, but I’m probably going to have major jealousy issues. I’m not interested in any other woman, but I believe she is interested in a specific young man (late teens) – I’m 31 and my wife is 29.

Now that we have discussed the possibility of having an open marriage, I keep getting mental pictures of other men with my wife, so much so that I get sick to my stomach and irritated.

Again, I want her to be happy. I know that she doesn’t desire me anymore, which means I can’t satisfy her needs, but I don’t know if this will work. Also, she’s very attractive, so she won’t have trouble getting any number of suitors in the future. And men are probably more open to the idea of having sex with another man’s wife than women are to having sexual relationships with a married man. I’d imagine that a woman would probably demand I break off my relationship with my wife, that is if I became interested in another woman.

Do I sound like a bad candidate for an open marriage?”

And the expert said that yes he sounded like a terrible candidate for an open marriage and suggested instead, counseling or divorce. 

Sounds like she was talking to me. I’d be a terrible candidate for an open marriage.

She said when Sean was kicked out, he called her and it was Eric who called him back – at her urging. 

She pushed Eric to go and pick up Sean from rehab, which he did, and took him some spinach pitas that Erin had made. He then dropped Sean off somewhere he could stay for the night. 

The next morning her, Eric, the kids, and Eric’s mom went to pick Sean up and took him to church with them. They asked him why he wasn’t at home and Sean said his mom wouldn’t allow him to come home so, after a week, they found him a place to stay in an unsold home of Eric’s father (who was a realtor). 

Soon after Sean was kicked out of rehab AND IN HER FATHER-IN-LAW’S HOUSE rent freaking free, she started having sex with him. According to her, Eric knew all about this.  

According to her, there was even a point in time where Eric tried to initiate a 3-some between them but Sean said no and went off to sleep with Erin by himself – while Eric just went and sulked elsewhere in the house. 

So basically what she wants us to believe is that dude wanted a threesome. The teenager was like no man, I’m just gonna do your wife by myself. Can you get out so we can continue? And Eric was like – alright, I’ll just be in the living room till yall are done.  

Really?  

On the night of March 9th, according to Erin, the children went to spend the night at Eric’s family’s house and stayed there through to the night of March 10th – which she alleges was not normal for them. They’d never stayed away from home for more than one night. But, according to her, Eric was insistent that they stay at his parent’s house over the course of two nights. 

On March 9th her and Sean went to see a play at the college and when they got back to the McLean house, Sean and Eric chilled a bit and listened to music together. Then Eric and her went to bed while Sean slept on the couch. When they got to the room, Eric said he wanted to tell her something, but instead of talking he just stood there and the way he was standing frightened her. 

On the day of March 10, Sean woke up and started teasing Eric about his (Sean’s) and Erin’s relationship. Erin told him to leave and he did. 

As the day wore on, Eric told her that her best friend had sent him a text telling him to come and spend the night with her. Eric told Erin that he was seriously considering doing this. 

Even though Erin knew they had an open marriage, she thought friends and family should be off limits so she became angry and they started arguing. She had Eric call her friend and ask her if she wanted to sleep with him. She said yes and this pissed Erin off. 

At some point Sean called and told Erin that he would come and pick her up.  

According to her, Eric said that if she left with him, just don’t come back. Erin said OK and Sean showed up in about 15 minutes. Again, according to her, she said Eric just look weird that night and was acting strange. He supposedly had a “wild look in his eye” 

Now, this is where it gets fuzzy for Erin. She can’t really remember the events of the night, but she knows that Sean was trying to provoke Eric.  

All of a sudden, Eric called the cops and called Sean an intruder who had been stalking his wife and saying he was in their home and to come and get them. 

Confused, and while Eric was on the phone, she asked him “why are  you referring to someone who is welcomed in our house on a frequent basis an intruder?” 

That’s when Sean left. Erin followed him outside where they sat and talked. At this point she told Sean to leave and that she’d never planned on leaving Eric – getting divorced.  

At this point, Eric threatened to lock her out of the house and get a restraining order against her so “you’ll never see your children again.” 

At that point, Erin had had enough and decided to leave with Sean. He then got his car from the front of the house and Erin went into the house to get her cell and her purse. Then she heard a loud noise and ran outside. That’s when she found Eric with a gun in his hand standing next to Sean’s car. She said he was “eerily calm.” She saw that Sean’s head had been blown off and she started screaming. That’s when she said that Eric calmly turned to her and said “Congratulations.” 

And that’s it for part 1 of the Knoxville Love Triangle. Next week, we will continue with the conclusion which will be Eric’s story and how the case unfolded. 

Normally, I would ask what yall thought about this episode, but hold on to your thoughts until you hear the insane conclusion to this case. 

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