Kyle Overmyer: The Sheriff Who Became the Inmate

Miss Understood with Rachel Uchitel

Kyle Overmyer, once one of Ohio's youngest sheriffs and a decorated narcotics officer, shares his harrowing journey from law enforcement hero to

Key takeaways

• Addiction can affect anyone, even those in positions of authority and moral responsibility.
• The stigma around addiction often prevents individuals from seeking help until it's too late.

Main topics

• Opioid addiction among public servants
• The duality of life as a law enforcement officer and drug user

Notable quotes

"They erased all my problems. Financial, marital, dealing with this lawsuit, the totality of everything. That was the magic wand waving my brain to say, I'm okay. I'm okay."

Conclusion

Kyle Overmyer's story is a powerful testament to the fragility of identity and the importance of

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Before we get started, I wanted to let you in on a little secret. What you're about to hear is only part of the conversation. Every Speaker 1 (0:06) week, we keep talking over on Patreon, where you'll find Speaker 2 (0:09) exclusive bonus episodes, behind-the-scenes footage, after-show conversations with my guests, and personal stories from my life that I don't share anywhere else. If you love Misunderstood, Patreon is where you'll get the full experience. Just head on over to patreon.com slash misunderstood with Rachel. You could tell. or click the link in the show notes. I'd love to have you join us. Speaker 1 (0:35) Some breaking news out of Sandusky County tonight. Sheriff Kyle Overmeyer has been indicted on close to four dozen criminal charges. They Speaker 3 (0:44) were all waiting for him. They knew I was coming. He brings me himself, pulls out some pills, and he's like, first one's on me, next one's on you. I said, there ain't going to be a first one or a next one. I'm done. Speaker 2 (0:55) Before Kyle Overmeyer ever wore an inmate uniform, he wore a badge. He worked narcotics, bought kilos of cocaine undercover. put drug dealers behind bars. By 34, he had become one of the youngest sheriffs in Ohio. Then a legitimate prescription for painkillers became something else. Kyle wasn't using pills just for physical pain anymore. He says they made everything disappear. Speaker 3 (1:18) They erased all my problems. Financial, marital, dealing with this lawsuit, the totality of everything. That was the magic wand waving my brain to say, I'm okay. I'm okay. Speaker 2 (1:31) But the sheriff tasked with fighting drugs was now desperately searching for them himself. He doctor shopped, he stole Percocet from his own father, and then he began going through prescription drugs, surrendered to law enforcement. Speaker 3 (1:44) I'd come in my own office at the sheriff's office, and I would barricade that door, put it all on the floor, and I would sift through it and find what I needed. Speaker 2 (1:52) For years, Kyle believed he could keep the two lives separate until one phone call ended everything. He said, Speaker 3 (1:58) Kyle, you got to turn yourself in. I said, what's up? He's like, you got a 43 count indictment, looking at 15 years in prison. And Speaker 2 (2:04) today Speaker 1 (2:05) the Speaker 2 (2:05) county sheriff was arraigned in court. The man who had spent his career booking criminals was now being booked himself. They booked Speaker 3 (2:12) me at my own jail too. Speaker 2 (2:14) And somehow, Kyle still believed he could beat it. Speaker 3 (2:16) Dylan looks at me and he says, got a question, dad. I said, what? Am I going to see you for dinner tonight? I Speaker 2 (2:23) said, Speaker 3 (2:23) my famous last words, Rachel, I got this. It got me. Speaker 2 (2:29) By sentencing, the denial was gone. Standing in front of his community, Kyle finally said the words he had spent years avoiding. Speaker 3 (2:36) I said, I'm an addict. I'm sorry. I take responsibility for everything. She says, no problem. I'll give you the best treatment, the best in the state of Ohio. I'm sentencing you to four years in prison. Speaker 2 (2:48) He was the sheriff, then he became the inmate. This is Kyle Overmeyer's story. Kyle, thank you so much for joining me today on Misunderstood. Where are you? Speaker 3 (3:05) I'm just outside of Columbus, Ohio. Speaker 2 (3:08) Oh, amazing. Okay, well, how is it doing there? How's your summer going? Speaker 3 (3:13) It's been super hot. I know you're a Florida person, so hot humidity, has a few showers, but... Been in the 90s lately. So I love it. It's beautiful. Speaker 2 (3:23) Okay, good. I'm happy to hear that. So let's get right into this. I was just talking to you about this. I finally got your book, Prison Prodigy, Power Prison and a Purpose Reborn. I'm in the middle of reading it, loving it. Everyone should get it. We'll talk at the end about how people can order it from you directly and get a signed copy, which I think is amazing. But I want to start at the beginning. What first drew you into law enforcement in general? Speaker 3 (3:49) Well, but my father, my father. Speaker 3 (3:52) He had 38 plus years in law enforcement. As we'll find out, he was actually a captain at the Sandusky County Sheriff's Office, where then I ended up being the elected sheriff. So I was always drawn to it. But my love was actually for art. I actually went and studied at the Toledo Museum of Art for two years. Oh, no way. But I think, yeah, I was going to be a starving artist. So I dropped out. Speaker 2 (4:17) Wow. What did you like? Like what what about art did you like? Speaker 3 (4:21) Well, I did it a lot in high school. I painted. I draw. I still paint today. I like acrylic. I like oil, pencil drawing. I love it all. I'm an avid art guy. I'm not going to lie. Do you Speaker 2 (4:36) do abstract or you like to do portraits? I Speaker 3 (4:39) do both abstract and portraits. And usually my abstract then has a name, which then is tied into a true meaning behind it all. Oh, I'm a pretty deep guy. Speaker 2 (4:49) Oh, I love that. Okay. So what, at what point did you decide, okay, I need to take a different path and start getting good at something to make some money? Speaker 3 (4:58) Yeah. I just, I felt lost after two years at the University of Toledo. And I was like, I'm kind of wasting money. wasting time. So I went back and I just, I actually, I worked at a couple of factories. I was always in into bodybuilding. I competed in bodybuilding. So I even got a part-time job at a gym. So my gym membership was free. I got to work out for free. I had the both the best world. So yeah. And I, and then I tried to. eventually figure it out. So I went to my dad and I said, you know what, dad, I think I want to go into law enforcement. You know, you've done a lot of good things in the community, you know, provided for the family. And you know what he said? Forget about it. Don't do it. Speaker 2 (5:39) Why? Speaker 3 (5:41) Because he's too many headaches and look at it today. Yeah. You know, law enforcement, you know, it's really hard to, you know, be a first responder. And it seems like, you know, they put a lot of heavy burden on themselves, you know, for the problems in society and they don't get. you know, compensated very well for it. Speaker 2 (5:57) Right. Right. Of course. So what's interesting is that you end up going on this path and I'm curious about your relationships with kids in the neighborhood, getting in trouble, like did you drugs? Like what was your relationship with all of that before you went on this path? Speaker 3 (6:14) So, um, growing up, my parents sent me to a private Catholic school. It kept me out of trouble off the streets. I played. um sports in high school i was a football player i was a wrestler and i was intercity boxer too so and there were some of the guys you know on the streets that you know were into boxing and doing other things you know on the streets too as well that would cross over but growing up i i mean i experimented with alcohol no drugs never didn't touch any you know when i went when i went to college i started you know Speaker 2 (6:46) i Speaker 3 (6:46) smoked some marijuana but that was the extent of it all Speaker 2 (6:48) right so and as a uh child of a father that's in law enforcement, I would have, I would assume that was hard for you to get in trouble. Like you needed to walk the straight and narrow a little bit. Speaker 3 (7:00) Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, I, I, I feared him because I didn't, I didn't want to feel the wrath and I respected what he did. And how bad would that look if I was out causing trouble and my father's in law enforcement? Right. Speaker 2 (7:11) You Speaker 3 (7:12) know? Speaker 2 (7:12) Okay. So then you start, you get the training. What is the training by the way? It's like a school. I Speaker 3 (7:17) went through the police Academy back then. It was like, Six, eight months. It was very short term. I graduated. Then I got I got out and I went and got a job at Sandusky County Sheriff's Office. And my first job was working in corrections for four years. OK, Speaker 2 (7:32) wow. And what did that entail? Speaker 3 (7:36) Tending to the inmates, overseeing them day to day basis, you know, booking them in, you know, basically overseeing them. So there's no problem. Speaker 2 (7:47) Right. So you saw that life, though, of the of both sides being the corrections officer and then seeing the inmate and the difference between the two of you, obviously. Speaker 3 (7:57) I did. And but it was interesting because a lot of my childhood friends ended up in there. You know, because they were in there for drug trafficking or theft or some, you know, criminal activity. And I found myself sitting down and, you know, conversing with some of these individuals and starting to understand what was going on in the streets and, you know, what was going on with them, you know? Speaker 2 (8:19) Yeah. And Speaker 3 (8:20) I think it was good education for me in my future path of law enforcement. Speaker 2 (8:24) Right. For sure. I read that you did a lot of undercover work, running dozens of informants under aliases. What was that like as a young officer? Speaker 3 (8:33) So, yeah, so I moved up quickly. I was I was married my first wife, Melanie, during that time and had two young kids. I eventually I went back to college and obtained two college degrees, criminal justice and business administration degree as well, because I wanted to further myself from actually the local level. We'll talk about that. But with the undercover stuff, I started doing small time, you know, corner street deals. And then eventually I moved my way up being deputized by DEA and working undercover and actually purchasing from the cartel, purchasing up to 17 to 20 kilos of cocaine directly from the cartel. Speaker 2 (9:15) So how does that work going undercover? Cause I'm going to tell you something. I worked, um, not worked. I, when I lived in New York city, I had grand jury duty, Speaker 1 (9:22) which by the Speaker 2 (9:23) way, was the most fun thing in the world. Everyone's like trying to get off of jury duty, grand jury duty. I learned so much stuff. I was so in it. I was like somebody from 12 angry men. I was like trying to, you know, like persuade these other people to vote a certain way or whatever. And, um, a lot of it was about. the undercover world, which I never understood. So these guys would come in who were the undercover cops who look like complete drug addicts. And I was like, how do these people work as cops? How do they go home and have a normal life when they look like this? And when they're so embedded into a lot of it was this drug world, which was around 42nd street. And it was the, you know, the, the sex workers and the, you know, they had all these code words for heroin. And I, I thought, You know, maybe as an undercover cop, you get a pass and you're allowed to do drugs with people. How does it work being undercover? Speaker 3 (10:21) You can if you get forced to. Luckily, I never did. There was a point where somebody did want me to try some meth, and actually the informant stepped in and he used it instead of me, which kudos to him. I had that relationship with the informant. It was like build a friendship, so to speak. And then when I was working, buying multiple kilos of cocaine, I went by the name of Scotty Pitts. That's my, that was my, my name. Speaker 2 (10:51) Nice. A Speaker 3 (10:52) lot of people know it. And if you look in the book, there's a picture of me. They cut some of it off with me with several kilos of cocaine in front of me. Speaker 2 (11:01) Do you have, do you have like a crazy story from working undercover like that? Did you always think you were about to get found out or killed or like, I mean, what was that like? Speaker 3 (11:12) No, you know, I hate to say it. I'm a pretty good actor. You know, I'm not acting today. I'm telling the truth, Rachel. So no disrespect. But no, you know, it was interesting. Everybody always asked me that. Speaker 3 (11:26) I was good at what I did. And even the agents used to laugh at me because, you know, we would order up that cocaine. It would go coming from Colombia, then into Mexico, up through the pipeline. And what we do, we would run out of storage unit. And I was working with a guy that was direct with the cartel who's turned informant. And I partnered with he was a Hispanic gentleman. And they would roll in the truck. We put the garage door down of the storage unit and break it down. They'd usually conceal it in the tire. And then off the guy would go for and go stay in a hotel for a week. And we would end up bringing money to him and away he'd go. Speaker 2 (12:04) Wow. It was Speaker 3 (12:05) funny. I mean, there was a time where he reached out to me during the week, wanted me to hook him up with a bunch of women and stuff and come over and party at the hotel. And I kind of sidestepped that. But as Speaker 2 (12:14) you're doing this, how do you go home at night to your family and your kids and turn off that mentality of being deeply embedded in that? Speaker 3 (12:24) No, it was hard. I can remember, you know, eating dinner with my wife and children and my phones, you know, blowing up and I'm setting up drug deals while I'm eating dinner, you know, where I'm at my son's baseball games and I got to step aside and do business. You know, I can remember being at the mall one day with my family. And then I see the guy that I partnered with, the Hispanic guy with his family. Speaker 2 (12:47) Oh, wow. And Speaker 3 (12:48) he comes over, shakes hands, hugs me. And my wife's like, oh, who was that? And I said. he's just a guy, you know? Right. Speaker 2 (12:56) Right. Were you not allowed to share a lot of the information? Oh, no, I couldn't, Speaker 3 (13:00) you know? Speaker 2 (13:01) Did she know you were undercover though? Speaker 3 (13:03) Yeah. She just didn't know the extent of it, you know? And I just thought it would be better to keep her in arm's way about it. Got Speaker 2 (13:10) it. Okay. So the reason I ask about all this is because I was curious about if you had to try drugs and this is where you started. We end up coming to find out, which is in your book. Your drug use started with something as innocuous as an injury and starting with Vicodin, correct? Speaker 3 (13:26) Correct. I broke both of my ankles during childhood sports. And I was diagnosed with arthritis and they put me on 105 Vicodin a month. Speaker 2 (13:35) Wow. And what age did that start at? Speaker 3 (13:38) That was probably about 37 because I was sheriff at 34, which I was the youngest in the state of Ohio at one time. And I was young and then... Yeah, it was about 36, 37. They put me on the Vicodin. Speaker 2 (13:51) Okay. So it didn't start till after you became sheriff. All right. So let's, let's pull back for a second. So at 34, you became what you just said, the youngest sheriff in Ohio's history. What did that moment feel like? And how did you even get to that point? Speaker 3 (14:03) Well, I had become very close with the current sheriff. And there was even a conversation that I was actually going to Speaker 2 (14:10) go Speaker 3 (14:10) work for the federal government. And due to my productivity, I was known as a road patrol guy before I became detective and work in narcotics. I took a lot of drug dealers off the streets from interdiction just by mere traffic stops. Speaker 3 (14:28) And, and even the, I mean, my reputation was on the street with the drug dealers, you know, when, when Kyle's working, you better be aware because he don't play. And the sheriff called me one day and he made a proposal. He said, Hey, I hear you're going to leave me and go to the feds, you know? And he goes, I said, yeah. He said, I don't want you to go. What can we make happen here? keep Kyle Lovermeyer at the sheriff's office? I said, I don't know. So he offered me detective spot. And I said, no, he goes, I'll do better. I'll put Sergeant stripes on you right here. And you'll be a detective Sergeant. I was only like 27, 28. I was super young. And then within a year because of my productivity and it came at Christmas time, he called me down to his office and he threw me a captain's badge and said, you're a captain now after a year, which that wasn't heard of, you know? I'm one of these kind of guys. I'm not like, I'm not, I'm not like a flashlight. I'm like a laser. I get, I get zeroed in on everything. And once I get my mind, some Rachel, I go and I, I get it done. Speaker 2 (15:27) So what did you, Speaker 3 (15:28) go Speaker 2 (15:29) ahead. So that's how it Speaker 3 (15:31) all started, though. That's how it all went. Speaker 2 (15:33) So so what did you think your life was going to look like at this point? Because we see a deep turn a couple of years later and we go down a completely different path. But I just want to hear like your feelings at 34. Here you are. You're now the youngest sheriff. You have a lot of power. People are respecting you. Did you love your job? I mean, are you loving life at this minute? Speaker 3 (15:56) Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. And and how I got to be sheriff. So my sheriff started grooming me and getting me involved with the political game, which it was Republican Central Committee up there. He got me on that. I was on an organized crime board and he would always talk to me and say, look, you're the next sheriff. And, you know, I said, look, it's a long time down the road. You're only 60 some years old. We even talked about it on a Wednesday. I'll never forget. He said, don't don't ever back down if something happens to me. I want you to be sheriff. That Sunday he passed away. And so, yeah, crazy. And we were talking about it. And then I had to go up against my chief deputy. Like out of Speaker 2 (16:33) nowhere, you had a heart attack? Out of nowhere, I had a heart Speaker 3 (16:35) attack. Yeah. And so then I had to go face to face against my chief deputy, who is above me, 60 years old and 30 plus experience and a well-known businessman on top of it. And then. I was selected by the Republican Central Committee unanimously to be the new sheriff. Speaker 2 (16:54) And sorry for my ignorance, but how does that work? Do you have to run on a certain platform about something? Speaker 3 (16:59) That was an emergency appointment. So I had to go against him. And it took several days. And we had to get up and speak in front of everyone. And then we were voted on. And I got it. But then I had to run for reelection every four years after that. Got Speaker 2 (17:13) it. OK. So. You have this job. I'm assuming you're doing really well at it. People are loving you. You're loving your job. You're married. You've got two kids, right? Speaker 1 (17:23) So your Speaker 2 (17:24) addiction, like you mentioned, started with a legitimate prescription for old injuries. At what point did you realize this was becoming a problem? Speaker 3 (17:32) Well, how it all started with the problem. During that time, we had a shooter, a man with a gun. We had one of those calls. I'll never forget. Like at a school or Speaker 2 (17:46) where? Speaker 3 (17:47) No, it was actually in a home and he was not going out without a fight. He was threatened to kill his family. Speaker 2 (17:54) Okay. Speaker 3 (17:54) And I got a call. I was with my family and I'll never forget getting the call. And I said, get the SWAT team out there. I'll be out there. So I had to drop my family off, but I'll never forget getting off the phone. My daughter, Michaela says, that doesn't sound good. My famous last words, I said, my famous last words, I said. I got this, Michaela. Don't worry. I've done this before. Speaker 2 (18:15) We Speaker 3 (18:15) go out and I meet with my SWAT team and we're conversing, trying to make phone calls, you know, use the blow horn, can't get his attention. And I said, guys, we're going to go in. Let's throw a flashbang, but I'm going in with you guys. And something else I didn't mention. So I graduated from the FBI Academy for SWAT too. So I was on the SWAT team as well. Speaker 1 (18:37) And I Speaker 3 (18:38) wasn't going to send my men in anywhere that I wouldn't go. So we throw the flashbang in and we go in and he points the shotgun at us. And you know the rest. We had to take his life. And the family turns against us. I take care of my guys with mental health help. Me, I don't. I'm too big for that. I'm the sheriff. I'm going to go on with business and do business. And then it got so bad that we had to go in front of the grand jury to make sure it was a good shoot. It was. The family protested twice. I'll never forget one of the family that Speaker 2 (19:16) he was threatening to kill. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Speaker 3 (19:21) And so they turned and they had there was a front page picture, somebody holding up a side. Brian's blood is on your hands over my I'll never forget. And that hit home. You