You're Not Crazy. It Has a Name. — Coercive Control and the McKee-Tepe Case
Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski | True Crime News & Commentary
True Crime Today
3.3 • 907 Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2026
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
If you've ever felt trapped in a relationship you couldn't explain — exhausted, anxious, walking on eggshells, but unable to point to a single thing that anyone else would call abuse — you're not crazy. What you experienced has a name. And most people have never heard it.
According to witnesses, Monique Tepe allegedly endured death threats, strangulation, and forced sex during a seven-month marriage to Michael McKee. Zero police reports. Zero restraining orders. From the outside, a short marriage that didn't work out. From the inside, allegedly something entirely different.
This is the first in a 5-part series on coercive control. We define the beast — isolation, monitoring, financial control, weaponized intimacy, identity erosion — not as clinical theory but through what these mechanisms actually feel like from the inside. Why victims don't recognize it. Why the world doesn't see it. Why most of the United States still doesn't treat it as a crime.
The Tepe case anchors this series. But the audience is anyone who has ever said "at least he doesn't hit me." Anyone who recognized something in this episode that they've never had language for. Now you do.
#HiddenKillers #CoerciveControl #MoniqueTepe #MichaelMcKee #SpencerTepe #InvisibleAbuse #TepeCase #DomesticViolence #EmotionalAbuse #YoureNotCrazy
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Hidden Killers with Tony Bruske. |
| 0:03.4 | Here now, Tony Brewski. |
| 0:07.2 | There was no police report. |
| 0:10.0 | I want you to sit with that for a second. |
| 0:14.3 | According to witnesses, you spoke to investigators, |
| 0:16.5 | Monique Teppi allegedly lived through death threats during her marriage. |
| 0:21.8 | Witnesses told detectives that her ex-husband allegedly strangled her, |
| 0:25.6 | that he allegedly forced her to do that, |
| 0:31.4 | that he allegedly told her he could kill her at any time, |
| 0:35.9 | seven months of marriage, and according to the people |
| 0:37.7 | closest to her, it was allegedly seven months of terror. And there's not a single police report, |
| 0:44.4 | not one. No restraining order, no documented complaint, not a call to a hotline, nothing. If you |
| 0:50.8 | pulled her name through every law enforcement database in Ohio, you'd find a |
| 0:55.0 | woman with a clean record who got a quiet divorce in 2017 and moved on with her life. |
| 1:00.3 | That's what it looks like from the outside. From the outside, this was a short marriage that |
| 1:05.7 | didn't work out. Two people who weren't compatible. It happens every day, right? |
| 1:21.7 | But that gap between what this looked like from the outside and what it allegedly felt like on the inside is the entire point of what we're talking about today. |
| 1:28.3 | Because that gap has a name and most people have never heard of it, or if they've heard of it, |
| 1:34.3 | they don't really understand what it means. And that lack of understanding is getting people killed. |
| 1:41.3 | What are we talking about today? What is the show brought to you by? It's brought to you by two |
| 1:46.8 | words, coercive and control. Put them together. You have coercive control. This isn't really about |
| 1:54.6 | the teppy case, not today. This is about a pattern that affects millions of people who will |
... |
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