The Podcast

Chapter 15

Saturday

The man sitting in front of Lucas and Melanie is one of Hollywood's most deranged and successful celebrity stalkers. He has managed to get into the homes of nine different celebrities over the past five years, with his most recent home invasion of True Love Island winner Kelly Mulantis' Orange County bungalow landing him back in prison. But to Lucas, the five-foot-seven, twenty-six-year-old man with pockmarked skin and wiry eyebrows, who talks animatedly and passionately about his crimes, seems like nothing more than an overzealous kid. Nicholas Chen is a romantic, not for sex but for companionship. He still doesn't know why no one understands that. Why no one can grasp that he breaks into their homes and tries on their clothes and pets their dogs in his lap out of love. Haven't people done much worse for far less?

PERSON INTERVIEWED: NICHOLAS CHEN

DATE OF INTERVIEW: FEBRUARY 19, 2022

TIME OF INTERVIEW: 11:00 AM

LOCATION OF INTERVIEW: METRO DETENTION CENTER - 455 ALAMEDA ST. 90012

INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY: DETECTIVE L. SABA & DETECTIVE M. LOPEZ

[SELECTED EXCERPTS]

LS: Clearly you've made a sort of career out of this celebrity stalking...but I'm curious to know how you choose your targets? Why Sumner West?

NC: Oh, well, I mean I wouldn't think of them as targets because that has a sort of negative connotation. I'd never want to hurt any of these stars. I just want them to know how much I care about them and ideally become their friend. That's the goal.

ML: Their friend?

NC: Yeah! With Sumner, I mean, just look at what she's done! She's such a breakout, you know? The first really big podcaster, a young self-made female no less, to garner those kinds of numbers! We're talking over ten million listeners per podcast episode. But there was just something about her, you know? The whole controversy of her time in college, so many people painting her in a bad light...it just made me feel like she'd really done all of this, created the West Coast Killers empire, to find a friend. Someone willing to listen to her side of the story. And that maybe I could, you know, be that friend.

LS: What did you say about Sumner's time in college?

NC: Oh, you don't know?

LS: We're asking the questions. You answer them.

NC: It's just...such an epic part of her personal story. I mean, you can't really have Sumner West without the murder of her college roommate?

LS: Excuse me?

NC: Is he always like this? You two got a good cop, bad cop thing going on?

ML: Please focus, Nicholas. Tell us more about Sumner's backstory if you would.

NC: Okay so, Sumner's best friend growing up, Chloe, was her college roommate freshman year. Allegedly the two had been attached at the hip since they were like eight years old. They both went to UC Santa Barbara. One night, Sumner returned to their dorm and Chloe was murdered. Like, really gruesome stuff. Stabbed over ten times or something. And that's what started Sumner's empire. I mean, at first it was just a blog. Sumner chronicling the investigation herself since police were useless—sorry, no offense.

LS: Continue.

NC: Anyway, her blog went pretty viral among the true crime community online. But there were a lot of different theories about what happened to Chloe, you know? And then there was the bombshell about Sumner's father, Bo. [Pause] Are you sure you don't already know about this?