ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Eric Kay entered the room in his khaki prison uniform, its color roughly matching the beige and barren walls. Half of the windows were blurred out so visitors couldn’t see into the prison’s main area; to enter Kay had to be stripped and searched.
It was visiting hours at the Englewood Federal Correctional Institution earlier this month, a surreal extension of Kay’s old life where he worked for the Los Angeles Angels for 24 years and rose to communications director, coordinating media coverage for the likes of Tim Salmon, Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani.
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Now, Kay has agreed to answer questions for the first time since his conviction relating to the 2019 drug overdose that killed 27-year-old Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs. Next week marks the fifth anniversary of his death.
In an exclusive interview with The Athletic, Kay said he believes his 22-year sentence to be unjust. He also addressed his incarceration and his relationship with Skaggs, criticized the performance of his attorneys at his trial, and lamented how his conviction shattered his family and led to estrangement.
Kay said his responsibility lies in not aiding in Skaggs’ sobriety. But he does not believe he’s responsible for his death.
“I feel horrible that I didn’t stop contributing to his addiction. He had so much more to live for than me,” Kay said. “I don’t mean that to sound trite. He did. He was just married, now he’s making millions of dollars. He’s basically a front-line starter.
“‘What are you doing?’ I should have said that. ‘Tyler, what are you doing, dude?’”
Kay’s sit-down took place in a colorless void of a room where notebooks and recorders were not allowed. Quotes for this story were taken from several subsequent phone interviews over two weeks. Kay recognized his staggering fall, from orchestrating coverage of the 2002 World Series to being prohibited from being near a microphone.
“I was somebody out in the world,” he said. “I was doing something on a big level. I was making a difference.”
All of that changed on July 1, 2019, the night Skaggs snorted a pill that contained a lethal dose of fentanyl. The left-hander overdosed, choking on his own vomit, and was discovered by hotel employees and team officials the next morning.
“I think about Tyler all the time,” his widow, Carli, said recently in a separate interview. “I think about the family that we’d have. How many kids we’d have. Just what our life would be like right now. All the time, I think about it.”
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Less than three years after the tragedy, a jury in Tarrant County, Texas, found Kay guilty of distribution of a controlled substance resulting in death and conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute controlled substances.
Kay — who has been at Englewood for almost 18 months — will be nearly 70 years old when he is scheduled for release on Jan. 8, 2041.
In the interview this month, he showed flashes of personal reflection, though just as often he was defiant.
“I’m going to fight this,” Kay said. “And I’m continuing to fight until I can’t fight anymore. And once the fight’s gone, that’s what scares me.”
Having lost his initial appeal, Kay is preparing for his habeas corpus appeal, a legal long shot that requires the defendant to prove that a legal error led to the loss of their protected rights.
“I can’t do this time,” he said. “I’m not built for this. If I were to feel like, ‘You know what, I deserve this. This time is fair.’ That’s a different story. But it’s not. I was convicted on conjecture. I was convicted on falsehoods.”
Carli Skaggs and Tyler’s mother, Debbie Skaggs, both testified for the prosecution in Kay’s trial. Following his conviction, they said it was the “right verdict.” In a recent interview with The Athletic, however, Debbie acknowledged, “No one wins in this situation.” Carli added, “His family also loses a loved one.”
Before Kay went to trial, he said the government offered him a plea deal. He’d have to serve a maximum of 10 years. It likely would have been at a more comfortable federal prison camp. And there would have been mechanisms in place to shorten his stay.
Going to trial and losing on both counts, as he did, meant a mandatory 20-year bid in a harsher facility.
In the fall of 2021, weeks before his trial was initially scheduled, Kay was strongly considering accepting the plea. On the deadline day for his decision, he met with his attorneys.
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Michael Molfetta, his lead lawyer, spent some of the meeting berating and belittling Kay, calling him a “bitch” numerous times, and telling him, “I know what door I’m walking out of” — contrasting his client’s precarious spot with his own as a way to encourage him to make a decision.
The interaction was recorded by Sandy Kay, Eric’s mother, and provided to The Athletic.
“If you decide to plead to this horses–t deal, I will not go to Texas, I will not be party to it,” Molfetta said on the recording. “And when it’s all over, and you’re sentenced, I will get in front of the media, and I will rail against it. Because I think you’re being f—ed.”
Molfetta did not respond to a request for comment for this article, though when he previously spoke with The Athletic about this meeting he adamantly disagreed with the assertion that he belittled Kay and threatened to withdraw from the case. Kay does not currently have representation.
His other attorney, Reagan Wynn, was hired by Molfetta. Shortly after the trial, Wynn had his law license suspended in Texas due to an unrelated matter. Wynn did not respond to a request for comment.
Beyond these incidents, Kay was upset by his two attorneys’ performance and conduct during the trial. He felt they didn’t adequately cross-examine former pitcher Matt Harvey, who also admitted to being a drug source for Skaggs.
On the night before Kay was set to testify, he and his legal team met to discuss whether he should take the stand. Kay said the meeting devolved into Molfetta arguing with another person present over whether or not he should testify.
Ultimately, Kay did not take the stand, a decision he regrets.
“Just to hear me as a human being, the inflection in my voice,” Kay said. “As a father, as a brother, as a son. As a person in the community who actually did his best to give his life to the Angels for 20-plus years.
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“That would have mattered. That would have resonated with (the jury) who were disconnected to our side.”
The prosecution ultimately needed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Skaggs would have survived but for the fentanyl in his system. They needed to prove that Kay provided Skaggs with the pills. And they needed to find, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Kay provided Skaggs the drugs in Texas.
Kay said this month that he did not travel with the pills — a requisite for his conviction. And he said there’s no way to prove if it was his pills that killed Skaggs. He did, however, regularly provide pills to Skaggs and eventually to five other Angels players — all of whom testified about that at trial.
Kay believes that those who made the pill should also be held accountable. Kay allegedly purchased the pills from a person using the pseudonym “Ashley Smith,” whom the prosecution said was a drug dealer who hid their identity. Kay also said his arrest made the case more high-profile because of his direct connection to the Angels and the players who testified.
“I am the linchpin to the whole thing,” he said. “To the civil suit, to the national story. It relates to the Angels. It relates to the Skaggs family. And it relates to payments. As it relates to advancing careers. I am the person. I have the sex appeal.”
Eric and his son Carter, 22, went back to their hotel as the jury deliberated his fate. They ordered hamburgers for lunch — with the ominous potential that it could be his last meal as a free man.
The expectation was that it could take a while. Molfetta had raised the hope of a potential hung jury.
Two bites into his meal, Kay got word. The jury had reached a verdict around 90 minutes after they began the process.
Kay turned to Carter and told him he was going to prison.
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“I just gave him a hug, and I said, ‘I’m so sorry, Carter,’” Kay recalled through tears. “That was one of the hardest moments of my life.”
U.S. Marshals took Kay into custody seconds after the guilty verdict was read. They took his phone and his belt and shackled him in the courtroom. He looked at his sobbing family members and told them what he now realizes was a lie.
“I got this,” he said.
He went into the back of a van that transported him to a jail a short drive from the Fort Worth, Texas, courthouse. His drivers chatted as Kay’s life flashed before him en route to the prison.
That night, he slept on an inch-thick cot and was served what he called inedible “cat food.” He got into the fetal position and sobbed, not sleeping at all the entire night.
Kay is down 90 pounds from the 300-plus-pound version of himself that appeared in court — largely because he often won’t eat prison food. He has new tattoos lining both arms. And he’s on a five-year Suboxone program in prison to help him remain clean.
He tries to communicate with his family from the inside — even though some don’t want to speak with him.
Kay made it tough on those around him as his abuse of drugs spanned decades. It started in the late 1990s, around the time he was first hired by the Angels. He’d long battled depression. But he found comfort in Vicodin — eventually taking as many as 10 a day.
His father, Rick Kay, was a former football player for the Los Angeles Rams, who died in a car accident in 1998. Kay received the news while working at Angel Stadium.
Kay, like his father, became addicted to pain medication. His dad’s death, he said, contributed to his tailspin. It started with Vicodin, then went to Norco. Then oxycodone.
On Easter Sunday of 2019, he was dancing inside his Angel Stadium office. It was not a happy celebration. Kay was high at work. He was shirtless. He was mumbling to himself. He was sweating, his face red and puffy.
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The Angels’ traveling secretary, Tom Taylor, then a close friend of Kay’s, confronted him and decided to take him home. They pulled into a CVS en route. There, Kay started doing karate chops in the aisles and acting erratically.
After dropping Kay off at his home, Taylor told Sandy Kay that he believed her son needed help.
“Eric is violently ill at this point. He’s throwing up, he’s sweating profusely,” Sandy said. “And he’s just defiant. ‘No, I’m just sick. I’m not on drugs.’”
It was during this tumultuous era that Kay says that he and Skaggs were in a codependent relationship as two people addicted to opioids.
The relationship started in 2015, according to Kay’s recollection during a Southlake Police Department interview conducted on Sept. 25, 2019. Notes from the interview were obtained by The Athletic. Kay told those investigators that he approached Skaggs when Kay’s other drug source fell through.
When Kay’s addiction reached its apex, he was on the social media site OfferUp, looking to purchase drugs for himself, Skaggs and, eventually, other Angels players.
“He would just berate me at times. It was constant at times,” Kay said of Skaggs. “I just wanted to shut him up, to placate him. Because he wasn’t going away.”
Soon after Kay’s CVS episode, he left the Angels to attend an outpatient rehabilitation center. During this time, he said, Skaggs kept reaching out.
After returning to the Angels a month later, the team sent Kay back on the road.
Kay’s version of events is significantly different from what the government argued at his trial. He said he provided Skaggs pills in California, not Texas — and was unaware they were laced with fentanyl.
The team flew from Long Beach Airport to Dallas on the evening of June 30. Skaggs then texted Kay upon arriving in the hotel room, asking him to come to his room. When Kay arrived, he said he saw lines of drugs. He said he was unsure if they were the drugs he provided earlier that day.
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Because Kay had just left rehab and was on Suboxone — a drug designed to repress the effects of opioids — he said he declined. Minutes later, Kay said, he left Skaggs’ room, noticing that the pitcher wasn’t interested in hanging if Kay didn’t want to party.
Kay said there was no record of him re-entering his room until the next day because he left his room key in Tyler’s room, and had the door to his own room propped open. He didn’t get a new key until the next morning. The prosecution alluded to Kay possibly being in the room as Skaggs died.
Kay lied to investigators about having any information when initially questioned — which he said this month was to protect both Skaggs’ legacy and himself.
“I don’t like saying this,’’ Kay said, “so you get it and you understand it, that (I swear this) on my children: I was not there when Tyler went south. I was in my room.”
“I’d give my right hand today to bring him back or go back to that moment when I could have seen him going into medical decline. I wasn’t there.”
The last time the world heard Kay’s voice, it was from a recorded phone call he made in prison, shortly after his conviction. It was played at his sentencing. “All they see are dollar signs,” he said on the call, referring to Skaggs’ family. “They may get more money with him dead than if he was playing, because he sucked.”
Judge Terry R. Means cited that comment in adding two years to his sentence, despite also saying the 20-year minimum was excessive.
“I’m horribly sorry for what I said in a private moment of weakness,” Kay said. “That is awful. There’s no explanation for that. I didn’t mean it. I was looking for anybody to blame and yell at. I would apologize for that. And I would let them know what a special person their son was. We were caught in this maelstrom of addiction.”
The Skaggs family is suing the Angels, arguing that the team knew or should have known about what Kay was doing. Kay said the Angels were not aware. The case is set for trial in April of 2025.
The Kay family said it’s been torn to bits over the last several years.
The day after Kay was indicted, he said his wife of more than two decades, Camela Kay, filed for divorce. She also got a court order requiring Kay to leave their home.
After getting clean, Kay moved into a neighbor’s home so he could still see his children while awaiting trial. Camela did not respond to an interview request.
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Eric’s younger brother, Brett Kay, went from being his best friend and idol to no longer speaking with him. It’s been at least a year since their last conversation.
A college baseball standout drafted in the eighth round by the Mets, Brett has since gone on to be one of the most successful high school baseball coaches in California. Brett declined comment when reached for an interview, but he has given Eric’s son Carter a job.
“It broke us. It broke us apart,” said Kelly Miller, Eric’s sister. “It’s the saddest thing that’s ever happened in my life. It broke my heart and it broke all of our hearts.”
“From the outset, we knew that we were all going to be collateral damage, that we were innocent victims in this,” Sandy said. “That we would suffer in our own way.”
Miller and Sandy Kay have dedicated their lives to supporting Kay. They’ve come out to visit him. They deal with the lawyers. They were at every minute of his trial. They’re fighting for mandatory minimum sentence reform.
Miller has helped liaise with people wanting to talk with Kay. She organized a GoFundMe account for his legal bills, as Kay said his life savings were decimated from payments to previous attorneys.
Others support Kay. Members of the Twins PR department visited him, saying Kay is their good friend, and people from all across the sport have reached out to him. Longtime MLB pitcher LaTroy Hawkins made a $300 donation to Kay’s commissary account. He said he plans to keep donating for as long as Kay is incarcerated.
“I know a lot of good people that do drugs, and he always treated me unbelievably,” Hawkins said. “Just a cool human. I’ve got family members in prison, going to prison, getting out of prison. So I understand. I really do. And I know he has a family.”
One of Kay’s closest friends and former Angels colleagues, Aaron Tom, said he supports him, talks to him, and feels for him. But he still thinks Kay’s actions were wrong.
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Kay has a complicated relationship with his three sons — Hudson, 13, as well as Carter and Tanner, who are in their mid-20s. Tanner, who lived in Colorado for an internship, visited him a couple times. But since being convicted Kay hasn’t seen Hudson or Carter.
Communicating, Kay said, is difficult. Prison calls are 15 minutes long, often interrupted by an automated voice that says, “This call is from a federal prison,” and accompanied by chaotic background noise. After Kay has made a call, he must wait at least 30 minutes before getting back in line to make another.
He’s still trying to reconcile with one of his sons who hung up on him following an argument a couple months back. Kay was defending their grandmother. And his son, whom Kay asked not to identify, was defending his mother, Kay’s ex-wife.
Kay can’t leave an apology voicemail. His son can’t call him either.
“We still love our father. We’re still there for him,” said his son Carter. “We just want him to take a step back for a second and just realize that we are going through it too. We’re at the front of it. It’s not just you in prison. We’ve had to deal with all the blowback.”
Kay’s time in the public eye has also hurt his family in other ways. Tanner, his oldest son, also wants to be in public relations. He’s still looking for full-time employment.
Carter said the potential to play baseball after high school ended since “a lot of the colleges didn’t want to have anything to do with me.” And Kay’s youngest son, Hudson, is growing up without his father.
“They want to get their conviction rate and trash a life, many lives,” Kay said. “That’s what prison is. It takes everybody away. This is the furtherance of justice? Nah, man. Not even f—ing close.”
Englewood FCI is in a residential neighborhood. Across the street from the barbed-wired facility are regular homes. The windows of the prison’s chapel give the closest look out onto that street. Last winter, Kay stood there following a Christmas Eve service and watched as carolers walked down that public road.
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“I just lost it. I cried like an infant. It just reminded me that life is going on without me,” Kay said. “People are celebrating. Families are together. And I’m not anywhere near that. I’m in prison for Christmas. And Christmas is just another day in prison.”
Kay works every day in a prison factory making latex gloves. The day starts at the crack of dawn, where he and other inmates line up outside the factory awaiting the gate to open, then are searched as they’re brought in.
It pays $50 a month.
“It’s something to pass the day. It carves into the day,” Kay said. “I’m thankful for it. I’m really thankful to have a purpose, to get up and do something. Because, for a while, I wasn’t. I was just stewing in my cell.”
In that cell, Kay has several photos. Pictures of all his children, as well as a photo of him with Angels outfielder Mike Trout.
It’s a picture where they’re smiling together, back when Trout was an up-and-coming superstar, and Kay was the man guiding him through the explosion of media interest.
Now, the photo seems like it’s from a different universe. Kay is scared of what life will be like when the world forgets about this case and the friends and family he has on the outside move on from him. He is worried his mother, his greatest champion, will have died by the time he’s free.
“When that f—ing cell door closes, it is some kind of reality that you don’t ever want to experience,” Kay said. “And every single day, I have a cell door shut.”
Monday marks the anniversary of Skaggs’ death. Angels teammates commemorated his passing in 2019 by throwing a combined no-hitter while wearing his jersey. His family continues to mourn, recalling Tyler as a loving and selfless son and husband.
For them, this loss was permanent and irreparable. Skaggs’ life ended that night, five years ago. And those who loved him most know there’s no end date to their pain.
(Top photo of Eric Kay: Keith Birmingham / Getty Images)
