Justin Voel-Pel: Catfish “Schizophrenic & Suicidal” YouTube Video: What’s Wrong With Him?
The most recent episode of Catfish: The TV Show, “Artis and Jess (Justin)”, was probably the creepiest hour of television ever. As in, not “television scary,” like Walter White’s “I am the one who knocks” speech reading words from script writers. Legitimately terrifying because one of the people involved appears to be mentally ill, aggressive, and possibly dangerous.
In short, for those who missed the episode, it was about a guy, Artis Richardson, who desired to meet a girl, “Jess,” and asked the Catfish guys Nev Schulman and Max Joseph to help him begin a new relationship while still in another, strained relationship with his baby mother. The Catfish guys were understandably cynical and refused to help Artis unless he came clean to his girlfriend. Artis agreed, claimed to have told the girlfriend about his intentions to move on with another woman–although the baby mother never appeared onscreen–and the guys set about investigating whether “Jess” was who she said she was.
Again, in short, no. “Jess” was a single, cropped picture of adult entertainer “Amor Hilton” from an adult website, which was easily discovered by doing a reverse image search on Google. The guys arranged a meeting and Artis eagerly awaited his love… here are some clips for context.
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However, since Jess didn’t exist, another random person showed up…
Meet Justin. Whose full name has been revealed as Justin Voel-Pel, son of the late Ted H Voel-Pel III who passed March 8 2010.
Justin Voel-Pel angrily stormed toward Artis, saying lots of creepy and threatening things and getting uncomfortably close to Artis and Nev, who tried and failed to break the tension. Fearing for his safety, Artis retreated to the guys’ car and waited. It basically fell apart from there, and Justin later admitted to setting up an amateur sting operation in which he would lure guys with girlfriends in order to intimidate and publicly shame them. However, there was more to it than that. Justin demonstrated a callous disregard for people’s feelings, lacked empathy, and displayed little emotion other than anger. He was incapable of holding a normal conversation, and to call Justin mercurial and irascible is an understatement. He seemed unhinged, which we don’t say lightly.
It’s been a few days and the Internet detectives have done some digging and found video from a year ago in which someone identifying themselves as “Justin Voel-Pel” who appears to be the guy from the show–he’s pretty… distinctive looking, acting, and sounding–claims to be “suicidal and schizophrenic.”
Here’s the description from the video dated June 14, 2012 (it’s also the only video from that account):
“In case you haven’t seen my first video, my name is Justin Voel-Pel and I wrote a book. It’s a damn good book because it’s about me. It’s the me I haven’t told my friends or family about. The me I always wanted to be. In this video, I openly admit to being bulimic, homeless, suicidal, schizophrenic, and associated with some bad people..The good news…I used to be a model and I love my girlfriend. If you want to find out how all this happened, you have to read my book. I need to get a damn agent already! I’m a first time writer so I need all the help I can get.”