Ghost Adventures Star Discovers Wife’s Murder Plot While Filming

Aaron Goodwin’s paranormal investigation took a horrifying turn when reality proved deadlier than any ghost.

Aaron Goodwin has spent nearly two decades walking through pitch-black rooms in abandoned hospitals, provoking spirits in haunted prisons, and documenting what he believes are encounters with the dead. For years, he’s been the guy on Ghost Adventures who gets left alone in the darkest corners, the one they call “bait” for whatever might be lurking in these places. He’s investigated hundreds of locations. He’s felt things he can’t explain, seen shadows move when they shouldn’t, experienced what the show describes as paranormal activity that defies rational explanation.
Then in March 2025, his phone lit up during a filming session, and Aaron discovered that real-world evil doesn’t need darkness or abandoned buildings. Sometimes it shares your bed, plans your future with you, and quietly arranges for your death while you sleep.

The Call That Changed Everything

The Hollydale Mental Hospital in Downey, California isn’t operational anymore. It’s just another abandoned building now, the kind of place Aaron Goodwin and his Ghost Adventures crew visit regularly. They were doing a lockdown investigation there in March 2025, moving through empty corridors with their equipment, filming in conditions so dark that Aaron was explaining to his co-star Jay Wasley how he manages to capture photographs when there’s barely any light to work with.
This was routine work for them. Aaron’s been doing this since 2008 when Ghost Adventures first premiered on television, and even before that when the show was just a documentary project. He knows these investigations. He knows how to work in the dark, how to set up his shots, how to document what they’re looking for. This was supposed to be just another night of paranormal investigation.
Then his phone lit up with a message.
Aaron stopped talking mid-sentence. The shift in his voice was immediate. “Hold on one second,” he said, and anyone watching the footage can hear that something’s already wrong.
Jay Wasley picked up on it right away. “You alright, you ok?”
Aaron was already moving toward the exit, his attention completely pulled away from whatever they were investigating. “Bro, the police are at my house. I gotta go outside.”
Jay followed him. He told the cameras he wasn’t staying in that dark building by himself. Outside, Aaron took the call that would change everything. The Ghost Adventures production team made a choice in that moment. They stopped filming. They decided not to document what came next, out of respect for what Aaron was about to hear.
The episode that eventually aired months later includes only those brief moments: Aaron checking his phone, his face changing, the quick exchange with Jay, and then the walk outside. After that, viewers hear a narrator’s voice explaining what happened in those unfilmed minutes on March 6, 2025. Police had arrested Aaron’s wife, Victoria Goodwin. She’d been charged with solicitation to commit murder and conspiracy to commit murder. According to law enforcement, Victoria had hired someone to kill her husband.
Aaron Goodwin had spent years confronting what he believed were spirits, entities, and forces that most people never encounter. He’d deliberately put himself in situations designed to provoke the paranormal. He’d walked into hundreds of locations where terrible things had happened, where people had died violent deaths, where darkness seemed to have its own presence. None of that prepared him for this phone call. The woman he’d married at Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion in 2022, the person he thought was his best friend and partner, had allegedly been planning his murder while he was out filming his show.

The Inmate Connection

Victoria Goodwin, who was 32 years old when she was arrested, found Grant Amato through a documentary streaming on Paramount+. The three-part series, titled “Ctrl+Alt+Desire,” examined a family murder case in Florida that had gotten significant attention. Amato was the subject of that documentary, and not because he was a victim.
Grant Amato is serving life in prison without the possibility of parole at the Okeechobee Correctional Institute in Florida. He was convicted in 2019 of murdering his mother, father, and brother on January 24, 2019, in their family home in Chuluota. The prosecution presented evidence that Amato shot all three of them execution-style in the head. His mother Margaret was found slumped over her desk in the home office. His father Chad was lying face-up in the kitchen. His brother Cody, who was supposed to go to work that day at Orlando Regional Medical Center, was found in the doorway between the home gym and garage, still dressed in his nursing scrubs.
The motive behind those murders tied back to Amato’s obsession with a Bulgarian webcam model named Silviya Ventsislavova, who went by “Silvie” online. Amato had stolen approximately $200,000 from his family to spend on her virtual company, buying tokens to watch her performances and sending her gifts. He’d created an online persona for himself, presenting as a wealthy, successful gamer when his real life was falling apart. His family had tried to get him help, even sent him to rehabilitation, but after they discovered the extent of his theft and his continuing contact with the cam model, they kicked him out of the house. That’s when the murders happened.
During his trial, Amato maintained his innocence for years, even through his appeals process. Then, after losing his appeal, he finally admitted to filmmaker Colin Archdeacon that he had committed the crimes. He confessed that his father’s last words had been his mother’s name, repeated over and over. When asked about his motive, Amato gave a disturbingly mundane explanation. He said it wasn’t an act of passion. He was just tired of the same conversations with his parents about his behavior, tired of being disconnected from his brother Cody, who had been his “literal lifeline” his whole life.
Jared Shapiro, who served as Amato’s defense attorney during the murder trial, later described his former client as someone who appeared normal until he committed those homicides. Shapiro said Amato had a calm demeanor, that nothing really fazed him, not even being in jail. He described Amato as someone who believes he’s always the smartest person in the room, someone who comes across as “arrogantly intelligent.” Shapiro also noted that Amato enjoyed the spotlight and had been talking with the Paramount+ producers about the documentary while he was incarcerated for the murders.
This was the man Victoria Goodwin chose to reach out to as a pen pal. She watched “Ctrl+Alt+Desire” and decided to write to Amato in prison. She later told investigators that she and Aaron had been having marital problems at the time, and she’d begun connecting with Amato through their correspondence.
The messages between Victoria and Amato started in October 2024. According to police reports that would later be made public, their communication wasn’t innocent. Victoria was openly discussing the idea of killing her husband. One message read: “Am I a bad person? Because I chose to end his existence. Not divorce.”
That wasn’t just venting or dark humor. Victoria was asking because she was seriously considering it as an option, and she was asking a man who had already murdered three members of his own family.
The relationship between Victoria and the convicted killer went deeper than either of them initially admitted. During Victoria’s sentencing hearing in June 2025, Aaron revealed details that painted a more complete picture of what had been happening. Victoria hadn’t just been corresponding with Amato. She’d been sleeping with multiple men during their marriage. She and Amato had developed what they called a “spiritual marriage.” They’d been communicating constantly, right up until Victoria’s arrest. In their messages, Aaron had been demoted from “husband” to “first husband,” as if his role in Victoria’s life was already being redefined to make room for someone else.
What makes this particularly unsettling is that Shapiro, Amato’s former attorney, told media outlets he wasn’t surprised Amato had gotten involved in another murder plot. He said Amato likes attention and wants to feel useful. Even locked in a Florida prison serving a life sentence for killing his family, Amato had found a way to participate in planning another person’s death.

The Plot Unfolds

Victoria wasn’t sitting at home daydreaming about a different life. The evidence police gathered showed she was actively working to end her marriage through murder rather than divorce. She’d set aside $11,515 specifically to pay for having Aaron killed. That wasn’t a random number or an idle threat. According to the documentation that came out during the investigation, Victoria had provided Amato with detailed information about Aaron’s whereabouts and his filming schedule.
Aaron was in California working on Ghost Adventures in October 2024. Victoria knew his location. She knew his schedule. She knew when he’d be vulnerable. The plan, as it was communicated through the messages police recovered, was to have the hit carried out while Aaron was asleep in his hotel room during that California filming trip.
The urgency in the messages is what makes them particularly disturbing to read. Amato was messaging someone he claimed was the hitman, checking on the status of the job. “He’s asleep right now in the hotel room. I need to know what’s going on. Can I get an update. Was it done?”
That message exists. It’s in the police reports. Someone was actively checking to see if Aaron Goodwin had been killed yet.
Police determined that Victoria had already made a down payment of $2,500. Whether there was ever an actual hitman on the other end of those messages remains unclear. It’s possible Amato was scamming Victoria, taking her money without any intention or ability to follow through. It’s possible the “hitman” was entirely fictional. What’s not in question is that Victoria was sending money and information with the intent of having her husband murdered. She’d committed to the plan financially and logistically.
The plot only came to light because of a routine action that had nothing to do with the murder plan itself. Corrections officers at the Florida prison were doing their jobs when they discovered and confiscated Amato’s phone. He wasn’t supposed to have it. It was contraband. They seized it as part of standard prison security procedures.
When they examined the phone, they found Victoria’s messages. They found the murder plot. They found evidence that someone in Nevada was trying to hire someone to kill her husband, and that the person coordinating it was an inmate serving life for killing his own family. That’s how detectives learned about the plot. That’s what led to Victoria’s arrest in March 2025.
Without that phone seizure, detectives might not have uncovered any of this until Aaron was actually dead. The timing of that discovery might have saved his life.

The Double Life

Aaron Goodwin and Victoria got married at Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion in August 2022. For someone who investigates paranormal activity for a living, the location made sense. It was romantic in its own way, personal to who Aaron is and what he does. They posted about their relationship on social media. They seemed happy. They’d built a home together with their pets: a cat named Dodger, a dog named Moose, and two rats they’d named Pascal and Rapunzel after the Disney characters. To their friends, to Aaron’s co-workers on Ghost Adventures, to everyone who knew them, they appeared to be a solid couple building a life together.
Aaron’s court statement during Victoria’s sentencing hearing in June 2025 reveals how he saw their relationship. He addressed Victoria directly, speaking to her in the courtroom about what he’d believed they had. He described seven years together. Seven years of what he thought was a loving relationship with his best friend. Seven years with someone he trusted completely. He’d laugh with her every day. He was loyal to her. He did everything he could think of to make her happy. He thought they had something special, and he wasn’t the only one who thought so. Everyone around them saw it too, or at least they saw what Aaron saw.
Then came everything he learned after the arrest. Victoria had been unfaithful, and not just with Amato. She’d been involved with multiple men. At some point, she’d gotten caught up with blackmailers. Aaron revealed in court that Victoria had spent nearly all of their savings paying these blackmailers to keep quiet about something. He didn’t specify what they were blackmailing her about, but the money was real, and it was gone.
She’d fallen in love with Grant Amato, a man serving life in prison for murdering his family. They’d developed their “spiritual marriage” while Aaron was still her legal husband. In their communications, they’d already reorganized Aaron’s role in Victoria’s life. He was “the first husband” now, a designation that implied he was temporary, that his place was being taken by someone else.
Victoria hadn’t planned this once and then abandoned the idea. According to Aaron’s statement, she’d tried to have him killed more than once. Multiple attempts. Multiple plans. The October 2024 plot that police discovered wasn’t her first idea.
The most painful part of Aaron’s statement came when he talked about how he’d tried to save their marriage even after learning about some of the affairs. Victoria had come to him, made him feel special, apologized profusely. She’d seemed genuinely sorry for what she’d done, or at least that’s what she told him. That’s what Aaron believed. He felt a sense of commitment to their marriage, to the vows they’d taken at the Haunted Mansion. He was willing to work through the infidelity because he loved her and believed in their relationship.
What he didn’t know during those attempts at reconciliation was that Victoria was simultaneously coordinating with Amato about how to end Aaron’s life. She was apologizing to his face while planning his murder behind his back. She was accepting his forgiveness, his willingness to try again, his love and loyalty, all while actively working to have him killed.
Aaron told the court he’d been completely in the dark about the murder plot and the blackmail until detectives explained everything to him after Victoria’s arrest. Everything he learned about what she’d actually been doing came from law enforcement, not from his wife. She’d hidden all of it successfully until the contraband phone was seized in Florida.

The Aftermath

Aaron filed for divorce one week after Victoria’s arrest. The timeline on that speaks for itself. He didn’t take time to think it over, didn’t wait to see what would happen with the charges, didn’t hesitate. The arrest was on March 6, 2025. By March 14, he’d filed the divorce complaint in Clark County, Nevada.
The legal language in divorce filings is usually dry and formulaic, but Aaron’s complaint laid out the reality clearly enough. He stated that their views, tastes, likes, and dislikes had become so incompatible that it was impossible for them to continue living together as husband and wife. He included something else that was important: there was no possibility of reconciliation. None. That wasn’t Aaron leaving the door open, wasn’t him hedging his bets in case she was somehow found innocent. He was done. He asked the court to make sure neither party would be granted alimony, and he requested his costs, expenses, and attorney fees. He wanted his separate assets and debts confirmed. He was severing every connection he could legally sever.
Victoria’s initial response to the charges was to deny everything. When investigators first questioned her, she told them she’d just been daydreaming or fantasizing about being without her husband. Just thoughts, nothing real. She claimed she didn’t recall sending the messages about the murder-for-hire plot. Didn’t remember them at all. She insisted she didn’t want Aaron murdered.
The investigators asked her about the specific messages regarding money for the hit. Victoria told them she thought the money was for cellphones. She was sending thousands of dollars to a man in prison, a man convicted of murdering his entire family, and her explanation was that she thought she was helping him buy cellphones.
Those denials didn’t hold up, and Victoria must have known they wouldn’t. By April 2025, she accepted a plea deal. She pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit murder. In exchange for that guilty plea, prosecutors dropped the solicitation charge. This meant Victoria was admitting she’d conspired to have her husband killed. She was admitting the messages were real, that her intent was genuine, that she’d taken concrete steps to make it happen.
Her sentencing hearing took place on June 5, 2025. Victoria stood before the court and issued an apology. She told Aaron she was immensely sorry for the pain and anxiety she’d caused him. She said she genuinely prayed he would find joy and peace again. She promised to bow out of his life forever to ease that process. She also apologized to her parents, who had to sit through all of this and learn what their daughter had done. She apologized to the Florida court as well.
The judge sentenced Victoria to serve a minimum of 36 months and a maximum of 90 months in a Nevada prison. She received credit for 92 days she’d already served since her arrest in March. That minimum sentence means she’ll serve at least three years before she’s eligible for release. The maximum is seven and a half years. Her actual release date will depend on her behavior in prison and decisions made by the parole board when she becomes eligible.
Aaron was in the courtroom for that sentencing. He heard Victoria’s apology. He gave his own statement about what she’d done to him and how it had affected his life. And through all of it, he had to reconcile the person he thought he knew with the person who had actually been planning his murder.

Living With the Fear

The episode of Ghost Adventures featuring the moment Aaron learned about his wife’s arrest aired on October 22, 2025, on Discovery+. The show gave it the title “Hollydale Asylum of Hell,” which was accurate to the location they’d been investigating but also accidentally fitting for what Aaron experienced that night. The episode included that brief footage of Aaron checking his phone, his reaction, the quick conversation with Jay, and the walk outside. Then the production team’s decision to stop rolling cameras out of respect for Aaron’s privacy.
Aaron posted on Instagram on October 21, the day before the episode was scheduled to air. He wanted people to know he wouldn’t be watching it. He explained that the episode showed the moment he received the FaceTime call from the police, the moment they told him his wife had been arrested and what she’d done. He wrote that he wouldn’t be watching because he didn’t want to relive that night again. He didn’t want to see whatever had happened during the investigation before the call came through.
He described the lockdown at Hollydale as insane and disturbing on its own, separate from the personal catastrophe that interrupted it. Whatever they’d experienced during that paranormal investigation, whatever activity or phenomena they’d been documenting, was overshadowed entirely by the phone call. And Aaron didn’t want to go back to any of it.
Aaron also addressed the press through another Instagram post around this time. Multiple media outlets had been reaching out to him, asking for interviews, wanting statements, looking for his perspective on everything that had happened. Aaron’s response was honest in a way that public statements often aren’t. He said he could tell people he was doing okay, but he’d rather be honest instead. He wasn’t doing good at all. Every day was getting worse with everything he continued to learn about what Victoria had actually been doing.
He said this had been the worst year of his life. He told the press that he probably couldn’t make it through an interview without crying, and he wasn’t ready for that yet. He just wanted his divorce to be finalized so he could try to move on with his life.
Fans responded to Aaron’s posts with overwhelming support. The comments on his Instagram were filled with messages telling him he didn’t owe anyone anything, that he should take care of himself, that they understood why he couldn’t watch the episode. People called him brave for allowing the moment to be shown at all. They thanked him for his honesty about his mental and emotional state. The Ghost Adventures fanbase, which has been following Aaron for nearly two decades, rallied around him through something intensely traumatic.
During Victoria’s sentencing hearing, Aaron said something to the court that became part of the permanent record. After explaining what he’d been through, after describing the betrayal and the fear and the discovery that his wife had been planning his murder, he told the judge: “I’ll never feel safe again.”
Aaron Goodwin, who has spent his adult life deliberately walking into places where people claim terrible things happened, where violence and death left some kind of mark, where something dangerous might be lurking in the shadows, this man who chose that as his career, has stated that he’ll never feel safe again.
Not because of ghosts. Not because of any paranormal entity he’s encountered in abandoned hospitals or prisons or asylums. Because the person sleeping next to him every night had been planning to end his life, and he never saw it coming.

The Show Must Go On

Ghost Adventures didn’t start as a television series. It began as a documentary film that aired on the Sci-Fi Channel (now Syfy) back in 2007. Zak Bagans had moved to Nevada from Illinois in 2005 to pursue filmmaking. Aaron Goodwin had moved to Nevada from Oregon around the same time with similar goals. Aaron had experience working as a camera operator for the Ultimate Fighting Championship and various Las Vegas entertainment productions. He knew how to work a camera, how to capture footage in challenging conditions, how to handle the technical side of production.
Bagans was conducting a paranormal investigation and needed someone with camera experience to help film it. He hired Goodwin for the job. At the time, Aaron was a skeptic about paranormal activity. He figured there were logical explanations for most things people interpreted as ghosts or spirits. But he took the job because he needed the work and he had the skills Bagans needed.
That documentary led to the television series, which premiered on Travel Channel in 2008. Aaron has been with Ghost Adventures from the very beginning, through every iteration of the show. He’s been the camera guy, the equipment technician, the investigator who gets left alone in the “hotspots” to see what might happen. The show even developed a running bit about Aaron being “bait” for spirits, putting him in the darkest, most allegedly active locations to provoke paranormal activity. Over the years, Aaron has been scratched by things he couldn’t see, experienced what the show describes as possessions or spiritual influences, documented phenomena that he can’t explain through conventional means.
Nearly two decades of this work, hundreds of investigations across multiple countries, countless hours spent in darkness waiting for something to manifest or communicate or reveal itself. Aaron had been through all of that by March 2025. He’d faced whatever fears come with putting yourself in those situations night after night, year after year.
None of it prepared him for the phone call at Hollydale.
When the arrest happened, Zak Bagans spoke to media outlets about how Aaron was handling it. Bagans described it as an emotional time for his co-star and friend. He said he was trying to give Aaron love and support through a betrayal this fundamental. Bagans and Goodwin have been friends since 2005. They’ve worked together through the entire run of Ghost Adventures. They’ve built careers together, faced dangers together, investigated places that most people would refuse to enter. That kind of working relationship over twenty years creates a bond, and Bagans was trying to be there for his friend through something that had nothing to do with ghosts or paranormal activity and everything to do with the horror of real human betrayal.
The Ghost Adventures fanbase responded to Aaron’s situation with compassion. When the episode aired showing the moment of the phone call, viewers flooded his social media with supportive messages. They told him they understood why he couldn’t watch it. They praised what they called his bravery for allowing the footage to be shown at all. They acknowledged that he didn’t owe them or anyone else his pain, that he should focus on healing. The relationship between Aaron and the show’s audience has always been strong, but this took it to a different level. These weren’t just fans of a TV show. They were people who cared about Aaron as a person going through trauma.
Aaron continues working on Ghost Adventures. The show streams on Discovery+ and Hulu. Filming continues at various locations. He’s still investigating the paranormal, still doing the work he’s been doing for nearly twenty years. The difference now is that he’s doing it while trying to heal from the discovery that his wife had been plotting his murder, while waiting for his divorce to be finalized, while dealing with the aftermath of learning that seven years of his life with Victoria weren’t what he thought they were.
The investigation into his own life revealed something darker and more disturbing than any ghost story they’ve filmed. The person sharing his home, the woman he’d married at the Haunted Mansion, the one he’d trusted completely and thought he’d grow old with, had been actively working to end his life. She’d been coordinating with a convicted triple murderer in Florida, sending money, providing information about Aaron’s location and schedule, checking on the status of the hit.
Aaron’s still processing it. He said every day gets worse with what he continues to learn. That suggests there are still details coming out, still revelations about what Victoria was doing and for how long. The full scope of her deception might still be unfolding.
Victoria Goodwin is currently incarcerated in a Nevada prison, serving her sentence for conspiracy to commit murder. She’ll be there for at least three years, possibly as long as seven and a half depending on parole decisions. Grant Amato remains at the Okeechobee Correctional Institute in Florida, serving his life sentence without the possibility of parole for murdering his mother, father, and brother. The two of them can’t communicate anymore. Victoria’s connection to the outside world is limited now, and Amato’s contraband phone is long gone, confiscated by the same corrections officers whose routine work accidentally saved Aaron Goodwin’s life.
Aaron is trying to heal. He’s trying to feel safe again, though he’s stated he doesn’t think he ever will completely. He’s trying to understand how the relationship he thought he had for seven years was actually something entirely different. He’s trying to process the fact that Victoria apologized to his face while planning his death, that she accepted his forgiveness for her affairs while simultaneously coordinating with her lover in prison about how to end his life.
The divorce proceedings are moving forward. Aaron wants them finished so he can move on. That’s all he’s asking for now: the legal severing of a marriage that was already destroyed by Victoria’s actions, and the freedom to try rebuilding some kind of life without the constant weight of these proceedings hanging over him.
Ghost Adventures continues filming. Aaron continues working. The show that captured the moment his life changed is now part of the permanent record, part of the Ghost Adventures archive that fans can stream whenever they want. Aaron won’t watch it. He doesn’t want to go back to that moment, doesn’t want to relive the seconds before the phone call when he was still investigating a haunted hospital and didn’t yet know his real life was about to become more terrifying than any paranormal encounter.
Some investigations don’t end with clear answers. Some situations defy resolution. Aaron spent years trying to prove the existence of ghosts, trying to document the paranormal, trying to capture evidence of something beyond our normal understanding of reality. He found something darker and more mundane: human betrayal, the kind where someone you love looks at you every day and smiles and plans your death. That’s not supernatural. That’s what some people are capable of doing to each other.
The haunting here isn’t metaphorical. Aaron has to live with this now, has to carry the knowledge of what Victoria did and how close it came to working. He has to reconcile the person he thought loved him with the person who was coordinating his murder. He has to continue his work investigating paranormal activity while knowing that the most dangerous thing he ever faced was sleeping in his bed.

References

NOTE: Some of this content may have been created with assistance from AI tools, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is NOT an AI voice.