Shadowing Practice: She Lied To Put Her Boyfriend in Prison - Learn English Speaking with Video
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So this 62 -year -old grandmother just spent five years in prison.
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And here's the crazy part.
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She put herself in there.
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Now the grandmother's name is Laverne, and Laverne is 57 years old, living in Westland, Oregon.
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And Laverne has quite a problem.
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She's in a terrible relationship.
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She's dating this much younger man.
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His name's John.
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John is 39, so he's 18 years younger than her.
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And he is terrible to her.
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He's a really bad alcoholic.
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He's drunk all the time.
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He has a ton of DUIs.
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But worst of all, when he gets drunk, he gets abusive with her.
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And one day in 1990, Laverne has decided that she's had enough.
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She wants him out of her life.
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However, for some reason, she can't bring herself to leave him.
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I don't know.
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Maybe she's afraid that he'll hurt her if she does.
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I don't know.
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So instead, she decides she's gonna frame him for a murder he didn't commit.
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Alright, let's pause Laverne's story for a second, and let's talk about this creep, Keith.
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Keith is about 34 during this time, living in Washington State, and Keith, he's a weird dude.
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He has a lot of mental health issues, and he appears to have terrible fantasies about killing women.
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And one day that same year 1990 he's at a bar in Portland, Oregon And there he meets this woman Tonja and he
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and Tonja they start hanging out and chatting
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and later on They go back to Keith's place to hook up
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and there he beats her and strangles her and she unfortunately doesn't survive
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Then, he drives her body quite a ways away, and he throws it down a wooden embankment.
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Now, this murder ends up making the news in the area, because it's unsolved.
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Well, around this time, Laverne is either reading or watching the news, and she learns about this case.
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And she starts thinking, oh, I'll tell the police that John did this.
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Then, he'll go to prison, and I'll be rid of him.
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So she calls the police, anonymously, and she tells them she thinks John was involved in Tonja's murder.
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And so the police, they start investigating John, and they come interview his girlfriend to see if she knows anything.
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His girlfriend just happens to be Laverne.
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And Laverne admits to them that, yeah, she was the one who called them.
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And she says that one time, she overheard John bragging about killing a girl and dumping her body.
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Then she leads the police to the trunk of her car,
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and she shows them a purse with a cut -up piece of blue jeans in there,
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because she had once read that Tonja's jeans were cut and that her purse was missing.
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So now the police think that they not only have a suspect, but that they have physical evidence that links John to the murder.
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And so they send the purse and the piece of jeans to their crime lab for testing.
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At the same time, they bring John in and they question him.
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And he denies being involved in any murder.
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Then they have him undergo a polygraph test, twice.
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And as I always tell you, polygraph tests are total pseudoscience.
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And John must have been nervous that day or something because he failed both times.
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Even though he's not guilty of this.
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And so John's weird ass ends up telling police a strange story that he just kind of made up,
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and he blames a bunch of this stuff on a friend of his.
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And so to the police, this guy is being really sketchy, and he looks increasingly more and more guilty.
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But then the crime lab finally examines the piece of jeans that Laverne showed them,
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and they can see that they are not the same type of denim that the victim wore,
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which shows that Laverne is a liar and that this evidence had been planted.
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And so police, they go back to Laverne again, and they accuse her of lying and planting the evidence.
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And now Laverne knows that she's screwed because if she doesn't come up with something fast,
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John won't go to prison and she might get in trouble.
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So she feeds the police an even bigger lie.
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She tells them that, yes, she did plant the evidence, but that she only did it because John threatened to kill her and her family.
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And she also says that she wasn't actually lying about John killing Tanja.
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She claims that she knows that he killed her because she was there.
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She was a part of it.
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And then she offers to show them exactly where the killing took place.
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And she gets in the car with the police, and they all drive out to the wooden embankment area,
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and she shows them right where the murder took place
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and she knows where the murder took place because she had researched that case beforehand and she knows a lot about it.
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And so now I guess police believe her because bam, they go and they arrest John.
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Here's his mugshot.
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Now, for whatever dumbass reason,
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Laverne also tells police that she was actually holding the rope that strangled Tonja, which makes her not just a witness to the murder,
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but one of the actual murderers.
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And so bam, they arrest her too.
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Here's her mugshot.
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And ultimately, both John and Laverne are charged with Tanja's murder.
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Now, to avoid the death penalty, John pleads no contest, and he gets sentenced to life in prison, while Laverne goes to trial,
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and she's found guilty, and she also gets life in prison for a crime that neither of them actually committed,
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which means that the real killer, Keith, is still out there, still a free man.
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And this whole time, he has continued to kill more women.
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In fact, over the next four years, he murders seven more women across five different states.
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And he's a truck driver, so he'll just pick up different women hitchhiking or pick up sex workers or whatever, and he'll just kill them.
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And he ultimately becomes known as the Happy Face Killer.
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Now, during all of this, Keith learns through the media that two other random people,
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John and Laverne, have been convicted of the first murder he committed, of Tonja.
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And he gets super pissed off.
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Like, how dare someone get credit for the killing that he did?
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He wants the murder to be credited to the happy face killer, him.
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So he writes anonymous letters and he sends them to news outlets and to the police trying to correct this information.
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But there's not really much that they can do in this particular situation.
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So it looks like he might just have to continue on being a serial killer, not getting credit for his first kill.
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Until.
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Until one day in 1995,
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Keith and his girlfriend, they're in his truck and they get into an argument and he gets super mad.
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And he murders her too.
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And eventually, police question him over this, but they don't have enough to charge him with anything or hold him.
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So they let him go.
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And then, about a week later, Keith calls the police from a truck stop in Arizona, and he's like, Yeah, well,
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I actually did kill my girlfriend.
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And he admits to what he did.
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And so, bam, he gets arrested.
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Here's his mugshot.
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Now, while police are investigating him, they get a hold of this letter that he wrote to his brother,
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confessing to eight murders, including the murder of Tonja in Oregon.
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And so Keith, he finally confesses to the police, yes, I am in fact the happy face killer, the one who murdered Tonja.
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But see, police, they aren't so sure.
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I mean, they're thinking he might just be some crazy guy who's making wild claims.
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Plus, they've already arrested and prosecuted two people who they believe killed Tanja.
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And so Keith offers to prove to them that he's telling the truth.
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And he leads them to the place out where he discarded the contents of Tanja's purse after he dumped her body.
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And there, police find Tanja's ID card along with some other things from her purse.
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So now they know that Keith really isn't making this up, and that he is, in fact, the real killer.
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And I guess this weird ass is happy now that he's finally getting credit, I guess.
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Anyway, ultimately, Keith pleads guilty to his girlfriend's murder and to Tonja's, and he gets sentenced to life in prison,
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while Laverne and John are finally exonerated
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and released from prison after spending four years there for a crime they didn't even commit.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “She Lied To Put Her Boyfriend in Prison”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: Laverne, murder, Keith, prison, Tonja. This video has 115 sentences and 1455 words to shadow. The speech runs for 9:06. The speaker talks at a natural 160 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 86% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| killer noun | /ˈkɪlɚ/ | One who or that which kills. |
| purse noun | /pɚs/ | A small bag for carrying money. |
| commit verb | /kəˈmɪt/ | To give in trust; to put into charge or keeping; to entrust; to consign; used with to or formerly unto. |
| jeans noun | /d͡ʒiːnz/ | A pair of trousers made from denim cotton. |
| wooden adjective | /ˈwʊdn̩/ | Made of wood. |
| investigate verb | /ɪnˈvɛs.tə.ɡeɪt/ | To inquire into or study in order to ascertain facts or information. |
| dump verb | /dʌmp/ | To release, especially in large quantities and chaotic manner. |
| confess verb | /kənˈfɛs/ | To admit to the truth, particularly in the context of sins or crimes committed. |
| plead verb | /pliːd/ | To present (an argument or a plea), especially in a legal case. |
| penalty noun | /ˈpɛn.əl.ti/ | A legal sentence. |
| worker noun | /ˈwɝ.kɚ/ | One who works: a person who performs labor for a living; traditionally, especially, manual labor. |
| increasingly adverb | Increasing in amount or intensity. | |
| hook noun | /hʊk/ | A rod bent into a curved shape, typically with one end free and the other end secured to a rope or other attachment. |
| deny verb | /dəˈnaɪ/ | To disallow or reject. |
| dare verb | /dɛ(ə)ɹ/ | To have enough courage (to do something). |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. | |
| go back to verb | To stem from; to originate in. | |
| pick up verb | To lift; to grasp and raise. | |
| come up with verb | To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it. | |
| cut up verb | To cut upward. | |
| hook up verb | To assemble the parts of a mechanism, especially by connecting wires. | |
| make up verb | /ˌmeɪk ˈʌp/ | To constitute, to compose. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | was involved · were cut · being involved |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has decided · has continued · have been convicted |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | one who called · Tonja, which makes · one who murdered |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 22 contractions and reduced forms, such as he'll, don't, didn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: grandmother /ˈɡɹæn(d)ˌmʌðɚ/, threaten /ˈθɹɛt.n̩/
- Long words — get the stress right: investigate /ɪnˈvɛs.tə.ɡeɪt/, anonymous /əˈnɒn.ə.məs/, alcoholic /ˌæl.kəˈhɔ.lɪk/, anonymously /əˈnɒnəməsli/, exonerate /ɪɡˈzɑnəˌɹeɪt/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like killer, purse, commit.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.