Adam Reid, Alabama, Ben Wulff, Bo Woody, documentaries, Donna Herring, James Bolton, Jordan Jacobs, Lance Reed, movies, Nathan Greeley, Rachel Holbrook, reviews, Shawna Reed, Southern Fried Lies, Stephanie Gates, Sylvester Smith, Tonja Sablatura, true crime
April 25, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Rachel Holbrook
Culture Representation: The documentary special “Southern Fried Lies” (which takes place in Alabama) features a predominantly white group of people (with a few African Americans) discussing the scandal of former real-estate agent/convicted felon Donna Herring, who masterminded a fraud where she stole inheritance money from a deceased client named Matt Jacobs, who was described as the richest person in Camden, Arkansas.
Culture Clash: Some people believe that Jacobs (whose body was found in a car wreck) died by murder, not by accident, while Herring denies she had anything to do with Jacobs’ death.
Culture Audience: “Southern Fried Lies” will appeal primarily to people interested in true crime documentaries about fraud and suburban scandals.
“Southern Fried Lies” is a true crime documentary with a tone that’s reminiscent of the first season of “Desperate Housewives.” This story about fraud in a suburban city is like a soap opera mixed with dark satire, where cheerful smiles cover up devious acts. Although people were convicted of financial crimes in this case, speculation still lingers that murder was also part of the criminal activity. At the center of the speculation is Donna Herring, who comes across as a flamboyant and friendly Southern grandmother, but other people in the documentary say that she’s a cold and calculating villain.
Directed by Rachel Hancock, “Southern Fried Lies” certainly makes the most out of Herring’s opinonated and memorable personality. She plays up to the camera with a twangy drawl and is shown making food in her kitchen, to give the impression that’s she just a regular “down home” Southern gal who is nurturing and generous. She also has plenty of sassy quips and comments, such as what she says in the beginning of this documentary: “You’ll find going through southern Arkansas that there’s a lot of DSD: dog-shit dumb. And it’s rampant in Camden.”
Camden (which has a population of a little more than 10,000 people) is the hometown of Herring and most of the people who are interviewed in “Southern Fried Lies.” For several years, Herring was the most successful realtor in Camden, according to what people say in the documentary. It’s the reason why she met former oil rigger Matthew Seth Jacobs, nicknamed Matt, sometime around 2013, because he wanted to buy a house, and he hired Herring to be his real-estate agent.
At the time, Jacobs (who was born on April 24, 1980) was the richest man in Camden because of an approximately $1.7 million settlement that he received for being an injured survivor of the notorious Deepwater Horizon disaster. The Deepwater Horizon disaster happened on April 10, 2010, when an oil rig exploded of the Gulf of Mexico and spilled more than 4.9 million barrels of oil. The oil spill lasted for 87 days and killed 11 people. Jacobs injured his hip from a fall during the Deepwater Horizon disaster. He also had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of this horrific accident, according to his family members interviewed in the documentary.
Herring gained more than a client when Jacobs entered her life. She also gained a potential son-in-law. According to Herring, Jacobs became almost immediately smitten with Herring’s daughter Jordan Alexandra Peterson, nicknamed Alex, who was Herring’s daughter from Herring’s first marriage. By all accounts, Herring obsessively doted on her daughter and spoiled her. Herring also has a reputation for being intimidating and very manipulative, according to people interviewed in the documentary.
In 2013, Jacobs and Peterson began dating each other, when he was 33 and she was 17. The couple quickly got engaged and were together for about two years. Peterson declined to participate in the documentary. Donna Herring’s husband Doug Herring also is not interviewed, although there’s a brief moment when he can be heard talking off-camera during one of Donna’s interviews. Doug owns a small business called Meek’s Pest Control, which employed Matt, even though he didn’t really need to work there.
Matt Jacobs, who was known to be a big-spending hellraiser, had been married and divorced twice and had a son named Jordan Jacobs from his first marriage. Jordan is interviewed in the documentary and says that his parents (who were in their late teens when Jordan was born) got divorced when Jordan was about 3 or 4 years old. Jordan also comments that after the divorce, he didn’t see much of Matt, but their relationship slowly improved when Jordan became a teenager.
Herring says that Matt had been deeply affected by the death of his mother a few years before she met Matt. And so, Herring became like a surrogate mother to Matt. She says in the documentary that Matt was estranged from everyone in his family before he met her. “He just wanted to be a part of a family. And we gave him that,” Herring comments. She describes Matt as someone would be come to her home every day for lunch.
Meanwhile, Matt’s older brother Lance Reed and his wife Shawna Reed have a very different description of Herring’s willingness to accept Matt into Herring’s family. And the spouses say it was all motivated by greed. Within a six-month period in 2015, Matt and another close associate of the Herring family would be dead. Their deaths have officially been ruled as accidental, but the documentary mentions that many people suspect foul play was involved in these deaths.
Matt died on January 19, 2015, in a single-car accident where his vehicle was totaled. Sylvester Smith, the coroner of Arkansas’ Ouachita County (where Camden is located), admits that he’s a close friend of Donna’s. Smith is interviewed in the documentary and says that Matt died of blunt force trauma to the chest.
And yet, the death was officially ruled an accident because Matt supposedly fell asleep or became unconscious while driving. There was no sign of the brakes being used during the crash. And most curious of all, there was no blood in the car when he was found in the car crash. It’s made people wonder if he was killed somewhere else and his body was placed in the car after he died. There are no known witnesses to the car accident.
Five months after Matt died, James “Jimmy” Davis died at the age of 62, when he was found dead at the bottom of a small bridge. Davis was Matt’s closest co-worker at Meek’s Pest Control. Davis’ niece Stephanie Gates, who is interviewed in the documentary, describes Davis as friendly, responsible and definitely not suicidal.
Lance Reed and Shawna Reed say that Donna completely controlled Matt’s funeral. Shawna breaks down and cries when she describes how she remembers having to tell her nephew Jordan that Matt was dead. Shawna also remembers an odd comment that Donna made to her soon after Matt’s death. At a time when Matt’s family was grieving and still in shock, Donna told them that Matt’s possessions needed to be protected immediately.
The family soon found out that Donna claimed to have Matt’s last will and testament, which named Peterson as his sole beneficiary. Peterson then went on spending sprees with the money she got from Matt’s estate. The will also stated that Jordan would get $50,000 for a college education and Matt wished to be cremated.
Matt’s family immediately became suspicious about the validity of the will because Matt had always said he wanted to be buried next to his mother. Matt was ultimately not cremated, and he was buried at a cemetery in Camden. Matt also knew that Jordan didn’t want to go to college. Furthermore, Matt’s family couldn’t believe that Matt would make Peterson the sole beneficiary of the will because the relationship between Peterson and Matt had been on the rocks for months before his death.
Jeff Davis (no relation to Jimmy Davis), a friend of Matt’s, is interviewed in the documentary and says that shortly before Matt died, Matt told him that Matt wanted to break up with Peterson. According to Jeff Davis, Matt was scared to go through with an official breakup because Donna had threatened to report Matt to authorities for statutory rape because Matt had started dating Peterson when she was 17.
In the documentary, Donna gets dramatic when an unidentified female documentary producer asks Donna if this is true. “That never happened,” Donna says adamantly. “Girl, get me a Bible!” As if her over-the-top comments and gestures weren’t enough, the documentary’s editing, music and a few re-enactments all play up the “small Southern town rocked by a big scandal” aspects of this story.
One of the heroes of this story is tax attorney Adam Reid, who was hired by Matt’s family to investigate the validity of the will. Reid (who is interviewed in the documentary) found out that the will was a fraud, and Donna spun a web of lies about it. This review won’t go into all the details about the fraud, but the documentary gives a very good summary.
It’s enough to say that because Donna forged a will by using a website headquartered in another state, it became interstate wire fraud, which is a federal crime. Donna, her daughter Alex Peterson, Donna’s sister Diane Kinley, and Diane’s husband John Kinley all got arrested and charged when they were exposed as being part of a conspiracy for this fraud. The arrests resulted in guilty pleas and criminal convictions.
In 2016, Donna was arrested and charged with wire fraud, money laundering and aggravated identity theft. She pled guilty to wire fraud. All the other charges were dropped. In 2019, she was sentenced to 41 months in prison and ordered to pay $132,000 in restitution. She served 13 months of her prison sentence before being released in 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic causing early releases for many prisoners.
Donna Kinley pled guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. John Kinley pled guilty to wire fraud and was sentenced to 12 months on prison. Peterson pled guilty to making a false statement to authorities. (She lied about not having Matt’s cell phone after he died, when she really did have the phone and gave it to a boyfriend.) Peterson was sentenced to six months of house arrest and three years of probation.
Other people interviewed in the documentary are law enforcement officials who were involved in the case in some way: Tonja Sablatura, an agent in the FBI’s office in Little Rock, Arkansas; Ben Wulff, assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas; Bo Woody, former police chief of the Camden Police Department; Nathan Greeley former detective at the Ouachita County Sherrif’s Department; and Nathan Greeley, former lieutenant at the Ouachita County Sherrif’s Department. Sablatura and Wulff have insightful comments and give very good accounts how the evidence was gathered against these convicted fraudsters.
Throughout the documentary, there are vignettes of unidentified Camden residents talking about the case and how it affected Camden. These scenes show two men in a pawn shop and a few female customers getting their hair done in a salon. It’s supposed to evoke the small town gossipy nature that Donna says she despises. At times, Donna rants in the documentary about how certain people won’t stop talking about the scandal. And yet, she has no self-awareness that by participating in this documentary, she’s perpetuating attention to the scandal.
Before the fraudsters pled guilty, the prosecution team was gearing up for a trial. One of the key witnesses for the prosecution was Lorrie Skeens, who was having a semi-secret relationship with Matt. On the day Matt died, he reportedly made plans to see Skeens. However, on December 30, 2017, Skeens was found dead in her home with a gunshot wound to her chest. Skeens’ death was officially ruled a suicide.
Donna vehemently denies that she had anything to do with any of the deaths connected to this case. However, Matt’s family members interviewed in the documentary aren’t convinced and they say they suspect that Matt was murdered. Jordan says that he hopes the documentary will encourage anyone who might have additional information to come forward.
As for Donna, she wants to give the impression that she’s paid her debt to society by serving time in prison, and she’s moving on with her life. She doesn’t seem particularly remorseful about the harm she caused. She seems more bothered that she’s still the subject of a lot of gossip. A scene that probably won’t sit well with Matt’s family is when Donna goes to his grave, smugly says she knew that the grave would be unkempt, and she starts using her hands to clean off the grave.
But there’s a crack in her confident façade in another part of the documentary when an unidentified producer asks Donna to confirm that Donna’s daughter no longer wants to see her. Tears well up in Donna’s eyes and she uses a paper fan to vigorously fan herself. Donna gets a little choked up and abruptly says she doesn’t want to talk about it. It’s mentioned in the documentary that this mother/daughter rift is probably a worse punishment for Donna than prison time. And whatever your definition of justice is in this case, it’s a punishment that has lasted much longer than Donna’s prison sentence.
Oxygen will premiere “Southern Fried Lies” on April 27, 2025.