Chances are you’ve spent much of the past week consumed by a TikTok thread known widely as “Who TF Did I Marry,” in which a woman posting under the name Reesa Teesa details her journey through the seven circles of hell — i.e., her alleged marriage to a pathological liar. Teesa, who lives in Georgia, tried to avoid identifying the story’s characters — she famously gave her ex-husband the pseudonym Legion — but it seems she did not change everyone’s names, and given the seismic cultural impact of her story, internet sleuths have wasted little time attempting to track down the real-life main players. The result is shaping up to be a sequel of sorts to Teesa’s saga — or, to put it in terms her fans would understand, Parts 51 through 60.
The most pressing hunt? Legion. TikTokers who somehow had more time on their hands after finishing Teesa’s ten-hour-plus thread managed to track down a man named Jerome McCoy, whose photos — which include one of an extensive collection of WWE belts — appear to match up with the details Teesa shared about her ex-husband. Clayton County’s legal records for McCoy also seem to support a few of Teesa’s claims: One filing shows a Tareasa Michele McCoy filing for divorce from a Jerome McCoy in June 2021; those records also show that Jerome McCoy filed for divorce from a woman named LaToya Averett in 2017. (Teesa mentioned digging up evidence of a first wife named LaToya, and a woman claiming to be LaToya has been posting videos suggesting she had a similar experience.) The county’s criminal cases show a handful of arrests for a man named Jerome McCoy who was born in 1978: once in 2015 for impersonating a police officer, and then in 2016 for criminal trespassing.
And now, the man, the myth, the devil himself seems to be speaking out on TikTok. In the days following Teesa’s thread, clips of a TikToker posting under the name “Jerome JC Rome McCoy” circulated online, where he seems to be responding to Teesa’s yarn. In recordings of what appears to be a private TikTok story, this man says, “My message to her is please stop lying to these people, and you can tell them the real reason I left you: You cheated. I caught you in the house with Bradley. We went through marriage counseling, it didn’t work, and we broke up.”
On Tuesday, TMZ claimed to have gotten in touch with McCoy, who told the tabloid he wants to take some sort of legal action against his ex-wife. He claims they had a lot of “trust issues” (TMZ’s words) and that after they split up, she tried to get back together and threatened to “expose” him if he said no. He also told the tabloid he does PR for a hospital, and his company is considering filing charges for the damage caused by her posts. I wonder how many people believe him?
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