Part 2 | Left for Dead: The Killing of Lauren DeWise

0:06 Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast where I tell stories of real crimes with real victims, whose cases are so shocking that many are left wondering how is this even real? I use my experiences in law enforcement corrections, and combined with my years as a criminal justice educator, dig deep into complex cases of evil acts, some so evil many feel they are unspeakable. Warning, Unspeakable as intended for mature audiences. If you are easily offended, then I'm not your girl. Listening discretion is advised. Hey y'all, kJ You're back with another episode of Unspeakable. I'm going to be finishing up the Lauren de Wise case that I started, so yes, this is going to be the part two in the final on this one. But before I get started, I've got some shout outs here and I have never heard of Coal Center, Pennsylvania. I'ma have to look this one up, but that is where my newest Crime Family member, Miss Jenna Michlos, is from, and so I want to say hello to you. Jenna. I am waving to you on the camera. How are you doing all the way and in Pennsylvania? I hope that you're having a wonderful week, and I appreciate you joining and supporting my dream, So thank you so much. And then we're going to move over to Morehead, Minnesota, where we have got miss Kayley. Now, Kaylee,

1:42 I looked up how to pronounce your last name. I hope I have this right, because I have it as Kolick Kaylee Kolick in Morehead, Minnesota. I hope I got that one right, my friend. I really did put a lot of effort into it. So again I'm waving to you right now on the camera. I appreciate you more than ever, and I hope I got that right. If I didn't, sime A said, you let me know and I will fix that one for you because that one's a little bit different. And then we're gonna go right here in my backyard. It seems like in Clinton, Mississippi, where I've got Lauren Dawson. What is going on, Lauren? How are you doing in Mississippi. I hear that y'all had a lot of rain recently, unless I've got that wrong, but it moved through y'all and then it hit us or something like that. So I hope that you're doing well over there, and I appreciate you thank you so much for supporting my show and believing in me. And then we'll go to Ponka City, Oklahoma. Ponka City, that's new too. And this is miss Terry Pamticky. Now, Terry, I think that you had joined before and then you joined again. So if I'm right, I'm glad you're back.

2:43 I really appreciate it. And though sometimes people will have to come and they have to go, and there is nothing wrong with that. I love having you around, Terry, and I'm glad that you're here, and I hope that you are just having the best summer in Oklahoma. Now, I still have more shoutouts to do, but I will catch you on the next round next week. If I didn't give you, you just hang tight. And if for some reason you think I should have given you a shout out by now and I didn't, you're more than welcome to message me and I'll see what happened. Because I'm not perfect, but I really do try. All right, So let's jump into this episode because last week we left off with Lauren de Wise, who was murdered and her roommate Ashley was clinging to life after they were both shot multiple times in the early morning hours where they slept.

3:24 So Lauren's soon to be ex husband, Paul was really the main suspect in the murder and the attempted murder, but there was limited evidence tying him to the shootings. Okay, so motive maybe absolutely, Okay, I'll give you that the motive was there, but cold hard evidence not really okay, they needed something solid, not to mention his kids verified that he was home with them all night, minus a quick trip to the gas station. But then again, the video surveillance footage verified that Paul was at the gas station just like he said he was. He ran in, grabbed some beer, and then he ran back out. But when cell phones were taking a look at Paul's cell phone had a ton of videos of him basically harassing Lauren about being a bad mom and being nasty and a bad wife, and when she would argue back with him.

4:19 Part of her argument that she was saying to him was that she was tired of him physically abusing her, which he wholeheartedly had denied to police in the initial interrogation room. You know, have y'all over hit each other? Blah blah blah, And he's like, no, I've never hit Lauren, but when she was accusing him of this in these videos that I don't believe she knew she was being recorded necessarily, he never popped back at her and called her a liar or never said that's not true, or any of the instances that were very specific that she brought up. He never popped off or challenged what she was saying, and that was weird. Even the neighbors agreed that they had heard and seen him hurting Lauren before, which I mentioned in last episode, and then that third roommate, Audie.

5:09 She also told police that just prior to Lauren's death, she had confided in Lauren that for the past ten years, Paul had allegedly been beating her. No one seemed aware of this though in Lauren's family at least, and the kids told the police that Lauren was the one who would yell and throw things, not Paul. And these kids lived with them, right, So what was going on? Why were the kids seeing one thing in Lauren saying another? So there had also been these interactions and fights between Paul and a few men from Lauren's work. All of this was after hours, which indicated that Paul had been tracking Lauren's whereabouts until she had eventually moved out of the home. But what Paul had been doing insofar as contact with Lauren after she moved out, Okay, that was something that needed to be looked at, because his last conversation or his last communication with Lauren was centered around her joining him and the kids for church on Sunday, which she did decline. So police dove into the electronic the metadata from things that were collected at Paul's home during the search warrant that would have been executed at the house that he and Lauren had previously shared together, and what they found was that even though Lauren had stopped sharing her location with Paul, like on Life three

6:41 sixty or one of those tracking apps, he was still managing to track her whereabouts. But how so if she had cut him off from seeing it, how was he able to locate her well. They knew that he was doing this because photos and videos that were pulled from his own cell phone would show that this was true. He would be driving by buildings or driving by events that Lauren was at, and even at times he would be so brazen as to go inside, and when he was inside, he wasn't being you know, a slinky, you know, hiding in the shadows type of thing. No, no, no, no no.

7:21 When he would go inside, he was being very obvious. He wanted her to know that he was there and she would see him, and police were able to verify that to be true even further because Lauren's co workers would say that, yup, he would show up to events and then Lauren would see him and go, oh, look, there's my husband. And she seemed really like put out by this that he was at these locations and he just wasn't supposed to be there. But everything that police were seeing and following really was rising to the level of stalking. Okay, because just because you're married to somebody doesn't mean that they you know, it's just kind of odd to be tracking you at a level that he was tracking her, and now that they're estranged and she's moved out, it certainly doesn't seem appropriate. But it turned out that the reason he would know her location was because he had purchased and installed trackers on her vehicle. Now, if there's anything that I know that I've learned in my lifetime, it's that whenever you own a vehicle, okay, Let's say that you and your spouse buy a vehicle together and then y'all become estranged. You can legally track your own vehicle even if they were estranged. If you're still on the title, it's still your vehicle, then you can put a tracker on that vehicle. Now, I don't know, I want to be upfront here. I don't know if

8:53 they had both financed the vehicle together or anything like that. But although it was pop possibly legal what he had done here, considering the circumstances they were in, in the condition, and the deterioration of their marriage, it just wasn't cool. We can all agree on that, right, legal or not, that ain't cool. But it wasn't that he was only stalking Lauren, because there were photos that would show he was stalking men from Lauren's job. And as creepy as this is, Paul had a plethora of photographs on his personal cell phone of men okay, and they were like alone.

9:34 They'd be just in a parking lot, walking into like home depot or something like that, and he, he being Paul, was logging anyone basically that had contact with Lauren, and he'd be sitting in the parking lots, taking photos of people he didn't know, and those people had no clue that they were being followed and being watched by Paul either. And I don't know about you, but that's unnerving to think you're just on a Saturday by yourself, going to grocery store or going somewhere, and there's somebody out there following you, filming you, taking photos of you, and you have no clue. That's scary. He was also passing by Audie's house and any cars that were in the driveway, he was photographing them, including getting their license plates. Any vehicle that was coming and going, he was photographing all of this and it was all documented in his cell phone. Again, this is beyond normal behavior, but not proof of murder.

10:37 So Paul's laptop had been taken during the execution of the search warrant, and this also would prove a treasure trove of circumstantial evidence. Again, circumstantial evidence just means the circumstances lend themselves to be somewhat problematic, but it's not physical evidence. Okay, it's not the same as DNA or something like that. But in his search history on his laptop, he was marking Lauren's locations. He was obsessively searching Lauren's name online seeing where she would pop up social media, all of these places. But he was also looking up websites and articles on how to win my wife back.

11:18 So it seemed like he was just obsessed about that he was losing his wife and he was wanting to do anything he could to win her back. But this was beyond that. This is just creepy. But there were also other searches on there that were more devious, like he was researching the details of revenge porn laws, and you have to ask yourself, why would he care about the laws of revenge porn. Did he have video of he and his wife from earlier times that maybe he planned on sharing or trying to embarrass her, or maybe he was going to try to set her up and say that she had released the video. We don't know. Because what he's doing here so out of pocket. Anything was possible. So a huge evidentiary break would be made at the house though, because when they were searching the house, police found bullets. In the home. They found four unfired rounds and they happened to be twenty two caliber. The thing about the cartridges though, was that they bore the same brand markings as some of the cartridges that were collected at the crime scene. They also found the following day, so they did the search of the house. I think they took two days to complete the search, so it was a big one. Well, on the second day of the search, during a check of other buildings out on the property, there was a shed there. When police went in there in the backyard, they found another single round

12:51 of the same caliber on the shed floor. So in the master bedroom of the house, officers located to additional boxes of twenty two ammunition and guess what brand it was? It was that Aguala ammunition, the same brand of the secondary ammo that was used in the mixed ammo during the crime in the shooting of Lauren and Ashley. Because remember they didn't know was it mixed ammo of one shooter or was it two shooters, two guns, two different sets of ammo. Well, while they found this ammo, that's great, okay, but it was all unspent. Okay, it's brand new, But it's what they didn't locate, Okay. That was interesting because officers did not find a twenty two pistol of any kind at the Dewis's residence after the thorough search. And so it was what they located in lieu of the weapon that had police going, all right, here we go, because in one of the drawers in the master bedroom, amongst some other things, they found an instruction manual for a Ruger twenty two pistol. So anyone with common sense would ask, why would you have mixed AMMO that matches the same mixed AMO found at your wife's murder scene.

14:11 But also why would you have the manual for a gun that you don't have anywhere in your residence? And the answer, as far as police were concerned, was because he had that gun. That's why he had the manual. He got rid of it, and that was the murder weapon. But finding it would be a massive undertaking, if not flat out impossible, I mean, it could be anywhere, you know, where do you even start to look? So as all of this is happening, Paul was now no longer willing to speak with police, after he said in a recorded conversation with them, look, you took my kids, and now you've taken my home. I can't go home because you're searching it and I am being unfairly targeted as a suspect.

14:56 You know, he asked, do you have any other suspects? Are you only looking at me? Because it feels like you're only looking at me? My wife is gone. Everything I own or that I love has been taken from me, and at this point, I don't want to talk to you anymore. I want to speak with a lawyer. Okay, great, that is your constitutional right. But they made sure that he knew we will continue to investigate this with or without your help. So Audie, the roommate, she had had more interaction with Paul than was first realized, which, when you know, more questions were asked, would give a little more insight to just how out of pocket Paul had been acting. The very first day after Lauren had moved into Audie's house, the first day, she had been upset by something that scared her. Okay, So, Lauren's car had been parked in the garage the first night that she stayed there, And when Audie got up the next morning and she went to leave the house as she opened the garage, which tells you the garage was closed. Right to open it, it had been closed, she was startled to find a completely different vehicle parked in her garage. It was a truck that was not what Lauren drove. So she's like, what is going on here with the hell?

16:14 Whose car is this? Right? So she goes and speaking with Lauren, Lauren was taken by surprise, what do you mean? What are you talking about? So the two women go outside and sure enough, that was not Lauren's car in their garage. So when Lauren checked her phone, that's when she found that Paul had sent her thirty seven messages through the night and had even shown up at the house banging on the door at some point. One message that was sent was even demanding open the door. Obviously, we're all smart here, right, You're not gonna say open the door unless you're out of place where they are, So he must have been at the house, but Lauren had never responded, and so Paul somehow, as far as the women were concerned, and it makes sense, Paul had somehow gotten into the garage, taken Lauren's car and switched the vehicle and left a truck there. So strange at minimum to find this out, but clearly a show of power is what this seems to be. In my humble opinion.

17:20 Oh you don't want to answer the door, all right, well watch your car disappear. Look I can get into your garage. That's exactly how I feel that was meant to be taken. So Audie was very alarmed by this, and she's like, look, Lauren, you just moved in. You know you need to talk to the police. You need to get a restraining order because this is crazy. But Lauren did not want to call the police. She did not want to get them involved. And Paul's true nature was really starting to show. And what it was doing doing was blowing his whole sad spouse. You know, my wife has left me. I'm so sad. It's kind of blowing that whole facade to Helen back. Okay, but not everybody knew what was going on, and Lauren was remaining rather private about it. Incredibly okay, while police are undercovering all of this. Back at the hospital, remember, Ashley was fighting for her life. Catastrophic injuries she had endured. Well, she was not only stabilized, but even though her chances of survival had been remarkably low, very very very low, she had somehow managed to not only survive, but she was pulling through. I hope you can remember that this woman was shot in the head, you know, in the shoulder.

18:43 I mean, she's paralyzed from one of the bullets. I mean, she was catastrophically injured. This was so improbable. Her injuries were horrific, but they were so bad they would prove that they were going to be life altering because she had suffered multi strokes and she was confirmed to be paralyzed on her left side. But guys, all I can say is God is good because she was alive and she was talking. This gives me. If you're watching me right now, podcast, I mean, I have got goosebumps. I know the story I'm telling to you right now, and I still get goosebumps because what in the world, What in the world she was able to share with police an incident that had worried her previously. Ashley was clear she had never met Paul before. Okay, definitely never met him before late December. Okay, which was about a month or so after Lauren had moved in. But it was late December and someone had been pounding on their front door.

19:47 And this was around midnight, in the middle of the night. Someone is just beating down their front door. It was so loud and so aggressive that the knocking woke her up upstairs in the house. The knocking persisted, and it went on and continued, and it got louder and louder and louder, until finally was like what in the hell and throws her covers back. She gets up and she goes walking down the stairs to see who it was. But when she got to the bottom, she was taken by surprise to find Lauren not only awake, but standing there very still and very quiet in the dark. So as Lauren got to the bottom of the stairs and she noticed that Ashley was standing there, Ashley signaled to Lauren and was signaling to her like like, don't say anything.

20:35 Be quiet, be quiet, And it was very clear she was like, don't say anything, and she wanted them to act like nobody was home. So the house was dark and both Ashley and Lauren were able to kind of stay unseen because the house was dark, and the two women then snuck quietly back up the stairs while the knocking continued and continued and continued. So when they got back upstairs, Ashley said, look, maybe we need to call the cops. Lauren, like, what is going on here? But again Lauren was adamant they did not need to do that. Now, looking back at this, was it because Lauren was really fearful about what Paul may do after the police came, Because it really sure seemed that way now that you know.

21:26 It wasn't that she had anything to hide, but that she maybe wasn't wanting to set Paul off even more because he was acting so crazy. I think that's a reasonable assumption. So Paul's teen children, all right, let's talk about them for a minute now. Because they are now parentless, it seems okay, at least locally okay, because while I say parentless, Lauren's dead. Paul is not allowed to be in contact with them. But that did not mean that they had no parents because they're the older two teen's biological mother, who lived in Florida, was happy to take custody of her children and have them move back with her.

22:07 So she would make her way into town and she would accompany Joe the son for another interview with police. Now, both Joe and Natalie that the kids had already been extensively interviewed, but police wanted to get anything that they may have missed by talking to the kids again. So as they walked into the interrogation room together, the camera was rolling as we always know that's filmed, and it captured a moment between Joe and his biological mama just minutes before the detective walked in, and Joe's mama was hugging on her son, and at one point she's looking him in the eye. She's kind of a shorter lady, and she grabs Joe's hands in hers and she's holding them close to her chest, and she is looking dead in his eyes. And it's a whisper, but it's almost like a plea, and she looks at him and says, just whatever you do, tell the truth, son, tell the truth.

23:07 It is a very pure moment. It's a very genuine moment. And then Joe wraps his arms around his mama tightly and he says, I promise, I promise, I will tell the whole truth. She says okay. So the detective comes in and the interview begins, and again not much changed. Joe was adamant his father was with them the whole time they had watched movies together. You already know that whole story. I'm not gonna re reiterate it. But as the questioning continued, the detective in the room got a text from another detective to pause the interview. I need you to come back out. So he says, hey, guys, hold on just a second. I'll be right back, and he exits the room. Well, when the investigation had first began, let's go back to the very beginning. Remember, there were unknown tracks out in the snow, and upon initial investigation, they were believed to be size ten to eleven boot tracks. However, it was told to the detective in that moment right then that the sizing of one of the pairs of shoes in the snow was wrong. One print was a size eleven, but the other print was actually more like a size six. And this stood out because the detective noticed that while watching, you know, two of them are watching the interviews of Joe. One is in the room

24:38 and there's other ones outside watching the monitor. Well, that detective is looking at Joe's feet and he's like, wait a second, those match that other size. Joe was a small teen guy, you know, he's not this huge kid, y'all. So on a hunch, the detective got to thinking about how Paul had brought Joe to stalk Lauren in previous incidences, remember whenever they were at the Chilies, I believe, And he brought Joe basically to watch as his mother was in the car with another man. So the detective goes back in and he asks Joe what size shoe do you wear? And Joe looked at the detective and said, I wear a size six regular. And in that moment, the detective knew that this interview was about to go somewhere he dreaded, but he pushed in on Joe. Joe maintained his recollection of that night over and over and over and over again, y'all. And that's when the detective leaned in and said to Joe, look, man, we have pictures of you working at that house, you know, where Lauren lived. He was doing like some I guess woodwork or something for Lauren. And he said, looks on, we have photos of you at that house, and you're wearing shoes that match the prints that were in the snow.

26:08 And Joe told the detective, no, that is me in the photo. Absolutely yes, and those were my shoes, but I don't have those anymore. They had gotten worn out, and so I got new shoes. And the detective leaned in closer and said, Joe, those boots that you are wearing in the picture, the tread matches the impressions in the snow, the second set of tracks in the snow. Now I know right now, you're like, hang on, Kelly, time out. How would they know that? Well, detectives know we're doing their due diligence behind the scenes. And they had gone to a local walmart and they actually found the same boots from the pictures and they looked at them and they, you know, the crime lab assessed them and it was the same tread pattern. They had it, and they really believed that Joe wore those boots. So Joe is sitting there again, he's a teenager, and he's seeing and he's hearing, and he's processing everything in that moment, and I'm going to tell you he looks almost dazed and sick, almost swooning a little bit. You know, his head's kind of going back and forth. And that's the moment he finally broke. He now spoke in a near whisper, and he began crying as he was talking. The way that he spoke the following words would be best described

27:40 as a tortured soul who couldn't shoulder the weight of his father versus the police any longer. That is a defeated like wounded bird. Is how Joe came across. And that's when Joe slowly, very quietly admitted he was there the night of Lauren's murder. He was there. Joe's mom at this point that Joe says, this becomes unglued emotionally, as you can imagine. She never, I think, thought that that was what was going to come out of his mouth.

28:26 And Joe said that he knew what happened that night. He and his dad as well as the other kids were at home and they were watching TV the night of the murder. They were watching specifically Netflix, and there were four episodes true crime type stories and it was about murderous affairs. Now. It was a very detailed set of episodes. They watched really bloody of course, and around ten PM, daughter Natalie and youngest daughter Baby, they decided to go up to Natalie's room to fall asleep. Phone records would show that Paul and Lauren were texting right about that time. The text from Paul to Lauren, are we still meeting tomorrow? And then the next one, are we going to church together tomorrow? Lauren replied around ten forty five pm, no, thank you. About that time, Joe said, Paul got up and he started gathering items from around the house before he went up to Joe and he said, come with me now. And when Joe said where are we going, his dad told him, you don't need to worry about that. Get in the car. He also made Joe leave his phone at the house, and this was

29:56 why Joe's phone records showed that he was home entire night. When Joe got in the car, he didn't know what was going on. Paul started driving, but when Joe realized that they were headed to Audie and Lauren's house, he became extremely nervous. He had never given the address to Paul, but Paul knew how to get there. What it turns out is that, you know, Lauren may not have given Paul the address to where she lived, but Lauren had texted her new address to Joe the Sun in weeks prior, and that is how Paul could have gotten her location. Okay, now, initially that's how he could have gotten or it could have been by all the stalking that he was doing.

30:46 But Lauren did not share where she was living. But she was tied to those children. She loved Joe, she loved Natalie, and she didn't just like sever ties with the kids and stopped talking to them. When Paul's car arrived on Laurence Street, Joe said that Paul parked a few houses down and then turned off the car. The lights shut off, and since it was very late at night, it was quiet and it was dark. That's when Paul looked at Joe and he said, very directly, as long as you do exactly what I say, you'll be fine. That's when Paul reached back and he grabbed the bag of items that he collected from the house, and he pulled out two masks, and he pulled out two sets of gloves. Now, Joe said his heart was beating out of his chest. His nerves were shot. He knew better than to ask any questions though in this moment or to push back. He could tell by the look in his dad's eyes that this was not a moment to push back in any way. He then said that he was looking in his dad's eyes and it was like nothing he had ever seen before, and it basically scared the shit out of him. And that's when Paul directed Joe put on the gloves and put on the mask, which he hardly did, and Paul opened the door and said, follow me. So realizing that this was real. It was beyond anything that he could handle, Joe got out of

32:16 the car. But he told his dad, no, no, I can't do this. I can't and Paul looked at him and said now and pushed him forward to start walking. Now, Paul was holding a pistol in his hand, and so Joe was just in absolute fear. He didn't know what to do. And remember, this is a teen boy watching his father armed and acting absolutely crazy, forcing him to walk towards his stepmother's house in the middle of the night with a mask on and wearing gloves. You can say a million things about what you would have done, but this is a teenage boy who's looking at the man who's supposed to be the leader of his family and he scared shitless. So I'm my heart for this boy hurts right now because he didn't know what to do.

33:06 Joe was very hesitant. His feet were kind of dragging and Paul was pushing him and forcing him to lead the way up to the house. When they approached it, remember it's dark. They went around the side of the house. They went through the side gate, and when they made their way up onto the back porch, there was the back sliding glass door, and that's where Paul steadied himself before he kicked in that back door and the casing around the door went flying in. Paul then pushed Joe inside of the house first. So Joe's standing there with gloves on, in a mask. He's looking around wide eyed. He's terrified. He's never done anything like this before in his life, and he's staring as his dad is going through the lower level of the home, opening doors and searching the rooms with the pistol for people. But no one was there. And that's when Paul went up to the stairs. But Joe was literally frozen in fear. His feet felt a thousand pounds. He was like, oh my god, and all he could do was watch as Paul then made his way up to the second floor. So Joe was standing there terrified, just listening in the house while Paul is up there on the landing. Audie, if you remember, had told police she had left her door or her bedroom door shut that night like she always did, but it was open whenever she went in the house, and she found it in that position, proof that when Paul went upstairs, he opened and looked into her room to

34:39 shoot her. But she happened to be gone that night, or Audie would have been dead. Paul admitted to other people that he hated Audrea. He even told the police that he did not like her. And that is why I believe for a fact she would have been dead if she would have been in that bedroom. But her room was empty that night. And as Joe again is just standing downstairs, just waiting for God knows what to happen, he suddenly heard his stepmother Laura and scream and then gunshots rang out. So Joe cowered down right. He just threw his hands up above his head, the knots in his stomach. I mean, he's just like, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. And there was nothing he could do to stop it. He was there, but he was just of no use and didn't know what to do. He couldn't do anything. She screamed, then the bullet started flying, and then silence for a very short break in all the explosion that seemed to be going on in the house, A short break, and then there was another barrage of bullets shortly thereafter bo bow, and the next thing you knew, Paul came running down the stairs where they both at that point just tore off, running out of the house. And as they're running back to the car, Joe yelled out, what the hell is wrong with you? What are you doing? What did you do?

35:57 But Paul never checked up, ran straight to the car. They're now both breathless. They jump back inside, the car takes off, and Joe is sitting there looking at his dad, knowing that he is a stone cold killer. As far as he knew. Joe was in pure panic slash survival state, shock, literally almost overtaking his body. He cannot believe that this is real life. And that's when Paul just pulled right up to the gas station, got out, went inside, bought that beer where he was seen on surveillance video not minutes after he'd just tried to execute to people. He nonchalanty walked into that gas station and got the beer.

36:41 Joe remained in the car the whole time, his mind racing and not knowing what to do. And when they got home, he got Joe out of the car, brought him inside. He said, give me your boots, take off all of your clothes, and he said go get in the shower. Now. Joe did exactly as he was told, so as he's showering, Paul put the clothes in a washing machine and then he took the boots to an unknown place. When Paul got back to the house, he went up to Joe he said, come here, and Joe is just standing there looking up at his dad, and he said, you better not incriminate me, because that is not something you will ever want to find out the consequences for. Do you understand, And Joe shook his head yes.

37:29 So clearly Joe was there, but he didn't willingly participate in any of this, y'all. He was a kid. When Paul disposed of the shoes and came back and threatened Joe, that's when he made him go up to the girl's room where they were sleeping. He threw the door open and he flipped on the light and it jarred the girls awake. So Natalie sat up and was like, what's going on? She's sleepyd she's squinting, and there's this commotion and she sees her dad, and Paul walked right up to her and matter of factly told her in the same room where baby, who's four years old, is, that he had killed Lauren. Lauren was dead. He then went on to tell Natalie what she was going to do as a result of that, and what she was going to say, and that she was going to follow his instructions.

38:28 Natalie would later admit finally to the police that she had lied to them, but out of complete and utter fear of her father. She was following his instructions to a t because she felt if she didn't, something might happen to her or happened to baby or Joe. Among the things that the children were coached to lie about, number one, they were coached to tell the police that Lauren was the one who yelled and threw things and hit It was not true. They were coached and told that Lauren was a horrible mother, that she had abandoned them just out of the blue because she was a selfish slut, basically, and they were told that under no circumstances were they ever to say anything other than the fact that their dad only went on a quick fifteen minute trip to the gas station, and that they had been with him the entire night that night, and if they didn't say this, they would face the wrath of their father. Natalie's own words were that she was beyond terrified of her father and that he had complete control over what she did and what she said. So while the kids were left scared, I would say, scarred, sad, and their minds reeling with emotion all over the place.

39:57 Paul then got on his cell phone and he began Lauren, knowing aw full well she was dead already because he had killed her, and he's texting her things, please give us another chance, Please, please come home. I miss you. I love you so much. All of this after she was dead, and I'm going to tell you something too. I've got photographs I'll put on Patreon. When Lauren was found dead, I told you all that she was shot multiple times and bleeding from her head in her face. But one of the most heartbreaking things was that still in her hand, clutched tightly, was her phone cord, like she had grabbed the only thing she could in that moment to get to communication, but she was never able to do anything. It was still tightly clutched in her hand.

40:45 Joe's biological mother was still in the room during all of this heartbreaking confession, and overwhelmed by what she had just heard, that poor woman dropped down to her knees and she covered her face with her hands and she started sobbing, and she's cried out loud. She said, what kind of father is he? She's realizing what her son has been through, what her children have been through. You know, my God, the man who had custody of the kids was doing this to them the whole time. But everything that Joe admitted just started the chain of events where all of the truth would finally come out. And I think it very brave of that boy, very brave to tell the truth. And it took a hug from his mother to let him know he was safe enough to do that. In five days after Lauren and Ashley were shot, Paul Dewise was arrested and charged with the murder of his estranged wife Lauren and the attempted murder of their roommate Ashley. So what tipped Paul over the edge? Well?

41:58 Obviously losing control of the woman that he had been beating for years played a large part in this, but mid November, when Lauren moved in with Audie after just having enough of the abuse in her marriage, which is now verified to have been years and years of abuse, chokings, beatings, harassment, constant degradation, and just you know, verbally just just hitting her with every insult there is. She knew in her gut, she knew that things were escalating, escalating to a point that Lauren needed to get out of there. She knew it.

42:42 And right now, I know some people may say, well, if she was that scared, she sure as hell left her children with him. Well, I want to say something real quick about that. Number One, I have never seen any indication that Lauren had adopted the older two children. So while she may have loved them and you know, adored them and taken care of them, she would have had no right, first of all, to take those children. And they were still in contact with their bio mom obviously, so that wouldn't have worked. And it is my educated guess that she knew that if she were to take baby right at that moment, things might be dangerous for both her and baby. She needed to get out, and she didn't want to completely set off Paul. I think it was probably one of the most heartbreaking yet selfless decisions that Lauren ever made to leave baby, but I think it was just for now. I have nothing to base this off of other than my understanding of what I think Lauren was going through and what she could do and try to do based on a history of other abuse situations that I have, you know, investigated. I think that she left baby for now, but she didn't cut contact like Paul made it seem. She still was texting and talking with the teen children, Baby was still

44:13 going over and staying the night with her at Audie's house from time to time. But I fully believe it was her full intention of going for full custody of baby once she was able to, but she was trying to stay safe and keep things copasetic in the moment. But the very next day after she moved out, that's when Paul started showing up, banging on the doors and acting like a damn fool. And Lauren's human y'all. She was embarrassed, she was embarrassed of what was going on, and she just wanted him to go away, which she did tell him eventually through a text message and said, do not come back to this house. So Paul was then starting to send these video messages of crying and saying please come back and I'm so sorry and I love you, and doing all the love bombing that abusers do, because that's their game, right, remember the good times, knowing all full well what she's been dealing with for ten fucking years behind closed doors. She'd had enough, y'all, and she didn't deserve it. He would say things like I'm sorry, I was so angry. We have a family, But then ten minutes later he'd send her videos of him filming the kids and him saying things to them like, Mommy doesn't love you anymore. She doesn't want to be here.

45:27 She chose freedom and other men over you, using those children, saying those horrific things to those kids with zero care about how it was affecting them, but also making them believe that their mother had abandoned them and she did not. She was trying to survive period. Lauren did go back to the house with Paul for Christmas shortly before her death, and the gift opening with the children was just supposed to be a fun thing for the kids. However, daughter Natalie now told police it was not fun. The whole Christmas experience was uncomfortable. Nobody was having a good time the entire time. Paul was nagging and filming Lauren the entire time about up and leaving the family and needing to come back home, which they did find the videos of the kids are trying to open their gifts. Lauren is sitting on the couch and Paul's got a phone in her face. You need to come back home. Look at your family. You've abandoned all of these people. And Lauren's just like, oh my god, can we not just let the kids open the gifts and have a nice Christmas for the kids. Then January fourth, just two days before the murder, it was baby's birthday, and according to all of the kids, Lauren made it clear that day she had had enough, she was not coming back, and that their parents would be getting a divorce. Lauren, and this is now newly uncovered, had already set up a meeting with a divorce lawyer, and she had notified Paul

47:00 of doing so. He understood that day that they were getting a divorce. They were scheduled to meet with the divorce lawyer the very morning she was murdered, so that would never happen. Paul was not letting her divorce him no matter what. And they know that this is the case. And it makes sense now because the last two text messages before her death. You remember he was texting about are we still meeting tomorrow morning? That wasn't about church, because he sent another message follow up that said do you want to go to church tomorrow? That was about the divorce meeting. He knew that they were going to go do the paperwork. When he realized that Lauren was done for real, that's when he put a plan into action that he was going to murder her. And you know the rest. I've told it all to you. Paul after his arrest would plead not guilty, and he would say that he was being wrongfully accused and that the police had only narrowed in on him and basically they didn't even look at another suspect, which was proof enough that he was being set up. But then if this was not enough on this family and these children, then he did something so out of the box that, y'all it is actually really hard to believe. Okay, you know that jail calls are recorded, right every more on across America knows that you're recorded when you call from jail. Hell,

48:32 it does a recording when you call from jail, and says, this is a call from a penal institution. All calls are monitored. Blah blah blah blah blah. So that's your clue, even if you don't know. Well, Paul made a call from the jail to his daughter Natalie, who, by the way, he was barred from speaking to after his arrest. You are not allowed to be in contact with them, but he did it anyway. On February seventh, this is twenty eighteen, about six point forty in the morning, he placed a call to Natalie and she answered, and he even started the call with I know I'm not allowed to talk to you. And then this is what that son of a bitch said. Listen to what this father is saying to a daughter that he has already scared the life out of. He says, your brother is telling the police that I took him with me and that I am responsible for what happened. So what that's telling me, Natalie, since I didn't do it, is that your brother must have done it. And then he goes on to tell Natalie, you need to get your brother Joe to turn himself in, and you need to get him to confess to the shootings.

49:46 And to sweeten the pot, Paul tells her, Look, tell Joe. He's really young, so he's only gonna be in jail for a little while and then they're gonna let him out. Okay, he's gonna get out really soon. They're not gonna keep him here, and then he can just go back to normal life. And he also impressed upon Natalie to tell his teenage son, who is not even eighteen years old, this young teen boy. He says, it's very important that Joe admitted because if he will, then I can get the fuck out of here. Do you understand that is a quote? And then he adds, look, I know he's only fifteen years old and he's scared. I understand, but he needs to know something. And I'm quoting right now, Guys, I am not ad libbing. The jails here, they're safe, they're nice. Tell Joe. Look, the food's good. They don't have the rape problem. It's against the law to even have sex here, so he doesn't have to worry about any of that shit. Can if I had not heard this, y'all with my own ears. If I had not listened to that phone call with my own ears, I would have thought that maybe this was in bellished or something like that. But that selfish son of a bitch was trying to revictimize Joe again and then use his daughter's fear of him to make that happen. On what fucking planet does a man do that? Well, the police were

51:23 obviously swift to find out about this and to handle that, and so in response to it, they went ahead and slapped Paul with an additional witness tampering charge, as they rightfully should have. That is classic witness tampering. You have got to be the most selfish loser I've ever heard of in my life to try to blame your own kid and then sweeten the pot by telling him you don't have to worry about rape. It's nice here and the food's good. My god. But there's even more to the story. There's an obvious problem if you're you know, law minded here for the prosecution, and that is going to be that they don't have a murder weapon. Okay, it doesn't mean that it can't be done, and that he can't be prosecuted, but that murder weapon would bring such reasonable doubt into the minds of the jury, or possibly could because I mean, what if he does blame Joe and say it wasn't me, it was Joe, Joe admits he was there, you know, blah blah blah blah blah.

52:23 What they did have more recordings that they had uncovered, and these are chilling at minimum. Guys, Okay, I want you to listen to this one that Paul recorded himself. Paul is recording it in an instance that he is talking to Lauren in one of his many harassment sessions. But I'm gonna tell you you have to listen very very closely. It's poor quality because it's on a cell phone and you know, he's moving back and forth while he is recording this. So listen very closely to what this man is saying to his wife and mother. That's just gonna happen. I'm too, not just because now if you couldn't really make out what he's saying, hopefully the tone and the whisper in it kind of gives you a vibe about what was going on. But basically, he said, I'm going to kill you. I'm gonna do it, and I'm going to end your ass. He said he was too old to start over. And anyone that's with her,

53:55 they're gonna die too. These recordings we're going to be really, really hard to explain away, don't you think, considering what happened, Because she did die and other people that were with her, they were almost killed two. So sometimes the police get put into a position where they have to decide what is worth sharing with the public in an ongoing investigation, even if they have the arrest okay, they have to weigh what should we share with the public versus the possible benefits that we might get from it, because again, when they ask for something that lets the defense know what they don't have or what angle possibly that they're going to go at in the prosecution. In this case, the police wanted that murder weapon, but they knew they knew Paul had gotten rid of it, so they did something kind of I guess maybe unexpected, but they just wanted to see if maybe something would come of it.

54:54 They went to Facebook, all right, and on January seventeenth of twenty eighteen, they pasted that they were looking for certain items that if anyone the public anyone in the public happened to randomly find them. Notified the police immediately, and it was kind of a shot in the dark. But I mean, hell, y'all, even a broken clock is right twice a day, right. So they said that they were looking for tan boots, two pair of black gloves, a pistol, and a Garmin GPS system. Okay, it was a much longer post than that, but that's the essence of it. Well, it just so happened that in the past few days a woman and her husband were ice fishing in the area when they came upon a pistol sitting in the snow. Now, they didn't think much of it when they found it. They it was I believe it was unloaded, but it still had a bullet. Not unloaded, but it didn't have I think it just had one bullet in the chamber, but the bullets in the magazine were spent. So they picked it up. They looked at it like, what the hell is this, and then they just put it in like their fishing luggage with them, and then they just went about fishing. They figured someone had dropped it or lost it or whatever, and they were gonna go turn it in or whatever later, but they kind of forgot about it whenever they got back home.

56:10 But that same woman happened to read the very article posted by the police when the pistol was detailed and they said they were looking for a twenty two long rifle, and her eyes got wide because she was like, oh shit, this cannot be a coincidence. She calls her husband, she's like, you remember that gun we found. We got to get that gun out because I just read an article and it says this, this and this, and I think that's the same gun. So she calls the police and they fly straight to our house and they take the weapon from her. Well, guess what, it's not hard to track the registration of a of a gun that's been registered, And so police run and they run the vent on it or the serial number, and it comes back to none other than Paul Dewise. Then, when it was tested ballistic, it was also found to be a physical match to the weapon that fired the bullets killing Lauren and also severely injuring Ashley.

57:12 That meant the same gun, single gun shot all of the mixed ammo that killed and then injured the women that night, there was a single shooter, just like Joe had said, he had told the truth, just like he promised his mama he would. At the trial, the kids testified against their dad, and they really opened up about the abuse that Lauren had been subjected to, as well as their own suffering. They brought up the fact that there was constant coaching by their father of what to do, what to say, how to act, and that it was somewhat of a relief that he was not able to be around them anymore. As sad as that was to admit about a parent, you know, you feel you're connected to your parents. You feel an obligation to want to protect your parents. But at what cost, you know, at what cost of kids need to carry such tragedy and trauma.

58:15 Imagine carrying the weight of something so horrific, and every word you say better fall perfectly in line with the lies and the manipulation that your father has hammered into you, or your own life might be at stake. There were just kids, y'all. It's terrifying enough to think about living through that as an adult, let alone being kids. Of course, Paul, being the narcissist and the sociopath that he was, he took the stand and he testified to explain away everything, but it was a total waste of his time. The jury did not believe a word that he said, and he was found guilty of all charges and when he was sentenced, he was sent to Montana State Prison on a two hundred and twenty year sentence with no eligibility for parole. So you may ask yourself, why did Lauren finally confide in Audi, who she had number one, just met basically and after she'd been taking this for ten years. Well, I found out something interesting after the fact that I wanted to share with you. I don't believe in coincidences, you know, I say that all the time, but I also believe in the perfect timing of God. Audi was not only a personal trainer, like I told you in episode one, but she had also previously volunteered for an organization called Haven. Haven was the local domestic violence nonprofit.

59:50 She was also friends with the director of that nonprofit. His name was Eric, and Audie arranged for Lauren to have lunch with Eric that she could hear about options that were available for her so that she could get out safely. Because Audie knew that Lauren was afraid of the repercussions if she ever tried to leave de Wise and let this case serve as a warning that the most dangerous time for a woman that's in a domestic violent situation is when she leaves. This is proof again that that is a fact. Lauren didn't know how to leave Paul, and so Audie was helping. Audie also during testimony would say that Paul had started contacting her through Facebook Messenger. Audi. Paul was contacting Audi through Facebook Messenger, which is really weird because she had only met Dewise once.

1:00:47 And then the call, the messages that he was sending would just go back and forth between being angry and aggressive and controlling and then back to apologetic, the same thing that he was doing to Lauren. But Audie never answered the messages ever, not one time. And you know, it just was this ongoing cycle. And if you're not even in a relationship with him, and it's causing this much stress, and I can't imagine what Lauren was going through. And then eventually Paul had gone on a very public forum, some social media forum and posted this long, multi paragraph rant about Lauren and basically putting her out there to look like this horrible cheating wife blah blah blah, and people who knew Lauren saw it. It was humiliating. My heart aches for Lauren. She loved her kids, she loved her step kids. You cannot convince me otherwise. She was put in an impossible situation with a psychotic, controlling, abusive manipulator, and when she left, which is so unfortunate, she ends up getting killed. For It's a tragedy. If you want to have one silver lining in this tragedy, I can tell you that As for Ashley, she has recovered to an exceptional degree. She had to go through years of rehabilitation and therapy and learning to walk and talk and eat and you know, brush her own hair. I mean, a very very long road to recovery. While her life

1:02:20 has been altered forever and her ability to do as she used to and be an athlete has obviously been very much changed, she is thriving as far as living goes today, even able to get back on the slopes on a snowboard with the assistance of her family and her brother helping her. She's a champion. She's a fighter, and I'm proud of her. She's a hero of her own story. She was a random, innocent victim caught up in someone else's domestic violence hell, and that I'll tell you just how far somebody will go. Paul really thought that he could control everything, and in an instant, he lost it all. Because there's one thing I can absolutely say about cowards, and that's that they hide behind the people who love them the most. And Paul Dewise hid behind his own children. This is alone, in and of itself, inexcusable and the very antithesis of what a father is supposed to be and what he is supposed to stand for.

1:03:34 Paul Dewise didn't just earn a guilty verdict. He earned the kind of legacy that even his prison sentence won't outlast. He is a man who will be forever remembered, not as the protector he portrayed himself to be, but the very reason his own family needed one to begin with.