The Obsessive Janie Lynn Ridd

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.

0:51 Unspeakable as intended for mature audiences. If you are easily offended, then I'm not your girl. Listening discretion is advised. Hey, y'all, it's kJ back for another episode of Unspeakable, and I'm coming to you. Looking at myself, I'll y'all, I look like a damn troll from under a bridge. I went to the doctor today. No I didn't. That's a damn lie. I went to the doctor two days ago and I got a skin cancer on my forehead and they had to do some work on it. So, my god, thank god I have a voice for radio, because the face is struggling today. But I have an excellent episode for you. So that's a good thing, cause I'm not quitting little skin cancer and getting in my way. But before I do that, let's do some shout outs, and my ignorant self is about to probably tear up some names here, but I'm gonna try my best. Krista Cook from Amarilla, Texas, How are you doing, Krista? We are some George Straight fans over here, so Amarillo by mourning?

1:47 How's that singing for you? How are things doing over there? I'm so glad to have you join? And then is this Shriver Louisiana. I ought to know that Shriver Louisiana. I've never heard of that. But again, y'all, you can't trust me for anything. But Natalie Bartel, Natalie Bartel is over there, So hey, Natalie, how are you doing over there? Thank you so much for joining. I'm thrilled to have you, as well as miss Christy Tacker from Flora, Mississippi. Look, the whole South is being represented here. And then we'll wrap it up with Jennifer Buller in Thomasville, Alabama. I'll forgive you. I hope you're not an Alabama fan, but I'll forgive you if you are. Okay, I'm just playing with you. How are you doing over there, Jennifer? I hope things are going really really well. Thank y'all so much, for joining my Patreon genuinely means so much. It means everything.

2:34 Thankful to have you. I do have more shout outs come in your way, but I'm gonna jump into this episode. But I do want to tell Christa and Natalie and Christy and Jennifer, y'all are the bomb. Thank you so much for supporting the show. I can't wait to speak with you online and share things with you. And you get to check all of that out on the Patreon site, So go ahead and do that. And if you're watching me right now, I'm so sorry I look like a troll, but I'm doing my best. Hang in here and give you all a good show. But this one today, this one has really talking about friendship. Okay, Arguably one of the greatest things that man can have is true friendship. And I mean that a true friend is about being there whenever, not just when things are easy, but even when things are not. And I found that that's, you know, the most just it's the biggest gift when people choose to be your friend when you're not your best, when you don't look your best, and when you don't act your best, but they just choose to stick with you and that means so much to me for my friends that that have been like that for me, and I try to be such a good friend back to them.

3:35 And that type of relationship is exactly what a chance meeting between two women turned. Into in this episode. So come with me to Salt Lake City, Utah, where Rachel is twenty two years old and she's just getting started in her single adulthood life. So she was born to a big family. She was the sixth of seven total children, and her parents gave her a great upbringing. She had no complaints there. She was a successful teen and she was now in her early twenties and she was really living it up. She was described as fun, outgoing, and absolute extrovert and people were just drawn to her.

4:16 She was one of those people that that magnetic attitude just drew people in. She was interesting and she just had lots of things to say. People adored her and they loved her. So Rachel was a beautiful woman by current traditional standard. She has long, chest length blonde hair that she curls. She really takes care of herself. She's got these pretty almond eyes, a very thin frame, and look, I'll just to be clear, she's built like a brick shitouse. Okay, she's beautiful and she works out and takes care of herself, and health really. Means a whole lot to her. Makeup and lipstick are a must, and she just likes being dulled up and loves taking pictures and she's feeling good about herself, and she does attract a whole lot of men.

5:01 But even though that was that came easily. For her, she had chosen to get married and to settle down pretty young, and the marriage soured very, very quickly, mainly because she felt like her husband was incredibly critical and very opinionated, but that opinionated miss about him was geared towards her to wear was kind of like he felt she acted a certain way that he didn't care for, and he wanted her to kind of change her image in front of people and maintain this I guess trophy wife, but I don't know this image that he created in his head, but it just it wasn't her, and she felt like she couldn't be herself whenever she was around the man she was married to, and so that love just fizzled. He just kind of sucked the life out of her, and so they would end up just divorcing.

5:51 It didn't work out, and so Rachel was going to start her single life over again. But now that she was starting over, it was like she had lost some of that life that people were used to her putting out there, and she had kind of withdrawn a little bit and wasn't quite as outgoing and just youthful and excited about people like she once was. And other people, including her parents, said that she had kind of lost confidence in herself after that marriage, but she was working really hard to build herself back up and to just be the old her as far as personality and excitement went. So it was now nineteen ninety five and by chance, Rachel would meet a woman named Janie during an outing.

6:33 They seemed to just click instantly, even though they were polar opposites in a whole lot of ways. And I know they say opposites attract, and this probably is one of those instances because there was Rachel who was beautiful and outgoing and lively, but Janie that she met, was kind of a bit on the planer side and introverted. She didn't have that spark and that tenacity in front of other people. Rachel was a blonde. Janie was a brunette. Rachel attracted a ton of male attention, and she had main character energy, as the kids would say, that's what the teens are all saying, they have main character energy, while Jane was more comfortable as a background person, and it just it just was like this balance that worked.

7:16 Jane was four years older than Rachel, and she was shy and introverted but sweet, and it was something that Rachel just she liked about her. Janie was thin, she had long brown hair, and she comes across as like I don't know if you know what I mean by this, but I used I used the term crunchy to describe people. She seemed crunchy, like like some people might say that she seemed like a granola mom. She's not a mom, but she just seems like kind of like she goes hiking and wears sandals and that kind of vibe, if you know what I mean. So they were very accepting and loving of one another, even though they had these differences about them, and because Janie was so supportive and so kind and accepting, it really helped to boost Rachel's confidence as their friendship grew, and their friendship then became more.

8:09 Like a sisterhood. They would refer to each other as sisters, so they spent a lot of time together. They had been friends just for a couple months though, when Janie started complaining about her apartment, of her apartment complex that she lived in and that it kept getting broken into and it just really unnerved her. She lived alone and it was just very disturbing, which her friend Rachel obviously agreed. That's not good when people are breaking in. Rachel was now living with her parents since her divorce, and she too was ready to kind of branch out and be on her own, and so it just made sense. Both women were wanting a change, and they said, well, hell, why don't we move in together and be roommates. Were best friends, what could go wrong. So Rachel had always lived with someone basically throughout her entire life. She grew up with her family, she went to college and had roommates, and then she lived with her husband. So the idea of having someone with her living in the house was something that she was used to but and it made her comfortable not to just be by herself, and now Janie was moving in. It made them both feel really safe and neither one felt alone, so they moved into this cute, little, small brick house. It was kind of that older style, solid brick house that had a red tone to it.

9:23 It had white trim on the windows, a glass storm door on the outside with a nice little wooden door on the inside, and it had those little concrete steps that you see on these houses with these tiny, tiny front porches and little iron railings that led up to the front door. Charming and quaint would be great descriptors of this house when you're looking at it from the outside. And their opposites not only complimented each other in relationship but also in living together, because Rachel again more of a wildflower, more of an outgoing personality, and Janey was more meticulars and liked planning and things to be just not you know, by the seat of your pants. Jane was really good at finances and Rachel wasn't, so she really liked that aspect that Janie was able to help her make decisions on spending her money and being strategic with her income. And it just seemed to her like this was a big sister, little sister relationship, and Janie took the more adultier road you know, in there in the duo. So Rachel, because of her outgoing nature during this time, was really able to pull Janie out of her shell with her fun loving ways and her ability to walk in a room or if they would go out dancing, that she could just help Janie, you know, loosen up and get out there and talk to people.

10:46 So they would go to bars and they would go dancing. They played around a lot, and if you wanted to be honest, they probably were a bit immature together, but all in good fun. And I have a friend like this. Her name's care and something. We are two forty year old women, but you put us in a room together and we turn into complete teenagers and we are obnoxious and we love every second of it. And I just get so tickled by her. And people probably get annoyed with us, but I don't care. We love each other's guts and she gets me and I get her. Well, that was them. One thing they both found really funny too, was they would go out together and Rachel, in an effort to help Janie, Rachel would pretend like she didn't speak English, and so Janie would have to be her interpreter, and that helped Janie also get out of her shell a little bit more because.

11:36 She would have to talk to people. But it was like she had to be forced to talk to them, but it's because she was translating, and they they just got to kick out of it because it helped them both and it was funny. So needless to say, you can tell this relationship was a great one. They looked out for one another, and I kind of got that vibe of Romey and Michelle if you remember that that show. They were the Romey and Michelle of friendships at this time. So the two young women would then go on to remain roommates throughout many many years. Like this wasn't a short term thing for a long time, and just like real sisters would be. Of course, things weren't perfect. They would fight. They would fight like sisters.

12:17 They would get aggravating with each other, they would need space, they would get on each other's nerves, but then they would make up and they would get over it and they'd go have drinks and eat lunch and do what sisters do. Disagreements here and there, absolutely but nothing insane. There was no police calls to the house, just typical frustrations that women will experience with one another from time to time. One thing that seemed to grow over time, though, was that Janie built up this like resentment of Rachel for the very thing that originally attracted her to Rachel, which was that big personality. But it seemed like as the years went on, Jane almost started to resent her for that quality that was a good thing in the beginning, and Jane would be jealous if Rachel made any new friends and look, I've had a friend like that before.

13:10 It's aggravating. It's like they only want you to be friends with them and they can't share. And it's like, look, it's a friendship, man. Just because I like someone else as a friend doesn't mean I like you any less. But Janie just liked that small group. Rachel loved having a variety of friends all over the place, and so they started to somewhat clash on you know, what does it mean? And how many friends should you have and all that kind of stuff. So the fights would get ugly, and Janie always seemed to revert to name calling whenever she would just get really mad at Rachel, and she'd be like, you're nothing but a whore, you know, you hang out with all these guys and all these girls and all this kind of stuff, and it was very immature, but that's the way that she decided to handle it when they would argue, and eventually it got so bad and Rachel got so frustrated by Janie's acting so angry about all her friends that she turned to Janie one day and just flat out asked her, do you not like me or something?

14:04 What is going on? Are we friends? Even? This is just ridiculous, And it seemed to kind of catch Jane off guard, and she was like, oh no, no, oh my god, Yes, I like you. I love you, You're my friend. And she explained to her, it's just that, you know, you're like family to me, and I don't want to lose you as my best friend and all these other people's you know, it makes me nervous sometimes that maybe you know, you don't like me like like we always have been. And so Rachel was like, no, that's not it. We're just different people. But she decided to respond by kind of withdrawing socially, or backing, not withdrawing, but backing off a little bit socially so that she wouldn't hurt Janie's feelings, because no new person she might meet was worth destroying this friendship that she had had for all of these years with her best friend. So nineteen ninety six would then roll around, and as fate would have it, Rachel met a new guy and she fell hard for this guy I'm talking about Ti to the bottom of the ocean.

15:01 She went hard. She really liked him. She was completely smitten with him, and as is common, whether good, bad or not, she began to spend a whole lot of time with this fella. And Jane wasn't a fan of him from the start. She just did not like him. They were oil and water, and she didn't. Want to like him. To be kind of honest, she was pretty clear about it with Rachel. She told Rachel, I don't like him. I think he's just using you. I don't think he's really invested in you, and he comes across as a player, and I just think it's my obligation as your friend to let you know that. And I just don't like him. I don't want to be around him. And as we all know, three's a crowd that's not gonna work out a lot of the time. And considering Jane didn't like him to begin with. She would go out of her way to inconvenience Rachel with him when they were all together in the same house, an example being that if Rachel and the guy would just be watching a movie, just very general, normal normative TV watching, Janie would first of all be snotty to him, but then it would go to the point of embarrassment really that Rachel would you know, start screaming at them that that, you know, turn the TV down it's too loud or just and would keep on and keep on and keep on, to the point that he'd be like, look, I'm gonna go this is this is too much. I don't want to deal with this. And Rachel really liked him. So she was doing her best to play middleman between her best friend and her new love interest, and it just left

16:32 her in a really tough spot because she wanted them both in her life and she wanted them to get along, but it just wasn't it wasn't working. She did her best, but it was to no avail, and Janie was almost downright mean anytime he came around, and it just became exhausting. The truth was, though Janie was actually probably right, because that relationship didn't last and Janie was just looking out for Rachel. She saw through the guy. She felt like there was red flags and it just was what it was. Frustrating, yes, but in the end, Janey was there and the guy was gone. So fourteen more years would pass a long friendship.

17:16 Fourteen years would pass, and the women would go through so many of life's experiences together through that fourteen years, the ups and the downs, but remaining supportive best friends through all of it. That was going to bring us to the year of January twenty ten. So we're kind of fast forward through all of these years kind of quickly. But it's twenty ten and Rachel is now older and she's working as a paramedic. She had gone through all of her certifications and she had been doing this job now for six years, so she was invested in what she was doing. Very devoted employee. She loved her job. She loved helping people, and she really loved helping people on their worst days. And I think that's a really awesome character thing to have a about you that you care when people are having a bad day and they're upset and they're crying or they don't feel good and they're griping at you, but you still want to help those people to get better. And being a paramedic, if you don't know, it's a lot more physically demanding than a lot of people may realize. So like lifting requirements to be a paramedic, it's going to stipulate that first responders have to be able to lift and transport patients who may not be able to walk on their own.

18:26 So there's a lot of lifting that's involved in it. Most paramedic training programs require the ability to lift at least one hundred pounds and to be able to push and pull heavy objects, because I mean, hell, you're showing up and you're gonna presumptively have to move people that are not able to help themselves. So this requires stamina and endurance to repeatedly bend and lift and kneel throughout your workshifts. So considering this, it would turn out that Rachel herniated a disk while she was on the job, and so she got hurt, but then she kind of took some rest and then when she tried to go back to work, she just kept reinjuring it. Everything she did seemed to re injure the disk, so she was in and out of the doctor's office constantly. Eventually it got to the point that she couldn't even sit for a long time, nor could she lift more than ten pounds.

19:19 She was hurt, and so due to this inability to meet the job description, she was eventually forced to just resign from the job. Because she couldn't do it. This left her not contributing as much financially to the household. I'll call it the household, but you know, the women shared money and stuff, so it had her not contributing much to this household financially as she used to in terms of the bills and who paid what. So she lost her job, and that kind of had her looking at the other things that she loved so much. It was fitness, her career, and being social. Those were her big things. Well, she lost her job now and and now she can't go lift and do the things she loves in terms of fitness, and she's injured. She's not able to go out and do all the things that she used to do. And it really left her feeling guilty and depressed by the situation that she was in.

20:15 And then, in the worst timing ever in the history of ever, Rachel found out she was pregnant. Lo of be hold, this seemed a whole lot like insult being added to absolute injury when the father decided that he wanted nothing to do. With this baby. I'd say at this point that life was pretty much kicking Rachel's ass, okay, and she was feeling the impact on a large level. So she's now injured, she's jobless, in pain constantly, which is a really bad mix, and now a soon to be single momche really couldn't help but feel that she was hitting rock bottom in everything.

21:04 She was in a very bad spot. But her baby to be was an excitement that she just couldn't help but look forward to. She was going to have a baby. Who could be upset about that? You know, she had so much to look forward to. So in twenty ten, Rachel gave birth to a baby boy and she named him Writer. I love that name, so precious. But it was pretty obvious really early on that there were some medical concerns with the baby, and after some time and some testing and things that they were able to do to try to rule out what might be going on, it was determined that he actually had autism. He was autistic, so as.

21:46 He continued to develop, Rachel would also find out that not only is the autistic, but it's a more severe form of it, and that he was completely nonverbal, literally no verbal skill at all. But as his mommy, she refused to give up on him. Rachel loved music and so she was always listening to it, always singing, and during her visits with his doctors and doing her own research, she realized that the neuroplasticity in the brain is different between singing and talking. The pathways in the brain work differently for that. So for eighteen months she sang to him constantly and this was not only going to be her way of bonding with her baby, but it was also in her mind maybe a possible method of communication. So maybe he won't be able to speak, but what if he could sing the communication. If Writer won't speak, maybe she could help him sing. And guess what she did.

22:50 It worked. Although he couldn't hold conversations and he wouldn't talk, he absolutely would sing parts of songs. After these eighteen months he really started to pick it up. Matter of fact, Writer's first words were actually singing and so he wasn't having conversations, but he would sing and listen, this is a beautiful thing. I actually have a family member, all right. She had a healthy, normal baby boy. Everything was great, and then tragedy changed his life forever. So it's not quite the same as what Rachel's son experienced, obviously, but his name is Kyle, and she had a normal pregnancy.

23:32 You know, everything went fine. He was great, and she was in a pool at their apartment complex whenever Kyle was little. He was strapped into his stroller and a woman that was on drugs is what I remember it to be. She just happened to run up and she snatched Kyle and his stroller and she jumped in the deep end of the swimming pool. And no matter how hard my family member tried to fight at the bottom of the pool to get Kyle away from this crazy woman, she wasn't able to. So finally people jumped in and helped, and they were able to get Kyle up. But the damage had been done. He was very much brain damaged by this and his life was never gonna be what it you know, what it could have been, and he ended up. He's blind, he doesn't speak, he's wheelchair bound. You know that kind of thing, but guess what he sings. So this beauty that she felt in this moment, I totally get what she's.

24:32 Saying, because that's what Kyle does. He won't say anything. He makes noises and like he plays little I mean he's an adult now, he's in his twenties, but he plays little musical toys for infants. But we were sitting at the house one time and we were singing Old McDonald to one of the kids that were there. Oh, McDonald had. A farm, and out of nowhere, little Kyle sitting there. Said eyah yai oh, And. It just was so heartwarming because he could communicate, he knew what was going on, and he communicated with us. So I just want to share that because I understand what she means by the beauty of music and communication, and what a win for Rider and his mama to have that, and that she works so hard to get that.

25:12 So understanding that this diagnosis, in this situation would be a lifelong condition for him, Rachel wanted to ensure that Rider would have protections and resources available to care for himself in the event that anything were ever to happen to her. She was looking for the rest of his life, and she said, my god, I've got to do something to make sure that he is taken care of. And so the route she decided to take was to get a life insurance policy for herself. So when she did this, she named her best friend Janie as the beneficiary of a five hundred thousand dollars life insurance policy, and she also designated in that will that Jane would be awarded parental custody of Writer if she were to pass away or anything would disable her from being able to take care of her son. Writer was an absolute priority to her and if anything happened, she wanted to ensure that he would be taken care of. And whoever would be given caregiver role of Writer would obviously need the financial means to do that, and so that's why Jane was awarded as the beneficiary of the life insurance policy. And this really struck me as sad. You know, I'm a parent of kids that don't have this issue, and so I guess I don't understand how or I don't know I understand how difficult that can be. I just have never been through it, so I can I guess I don't know if empathy. I'm trying to empathize with that position of going, my god, you know what do I do?

26:45 And they can't speak for themselves, And so I wondered, is life insurance really is that the typical route that people would take? If you know, if parents have children that are in similar situations, is this what they is normally done? What do people do in that situation? And so I reached out to my good friend Mary to ask her, and her insight was so interesting to me that I actually have her here with me today and I'm gonna, you know, briefly have her on here to give some pointers or some insight. And I'm specifically doing this because I have a couple of listeners who've reached out to me over the last two years, not more than a couple actually, that tell me their kids have autism. I know, I have a listener whose son loved the coasters that I sent out to y'all for your cars, that he just loved it and he would play with it, and she just was so tickled that he loved it.

27:33 So I want to go ahead and introduce to you, miss Mary Ballard. How are you, Miss Mary? I'm doing great, happy to be here. I'm so glad you're here. And Christopher is here too. Now if you're not watching, Christopher wave with the camera right there. If you're watching, there's my Christopher. And Christopher has Down syndrome. And he is somebody that I just look up to so much and I just think so much of him, and he is just everything that I want to be in life. He is successful and he's done it all. Now, how old is Christopher twenty eight? Twenty eight years old? Awesome? And so I reached out to miss Mary and I said, look, I have a question about this case I'm working on and what And I know I have a lot of listeners that reach out to me that say they have kids with special needs or autism or what. However, you want to encompass that and rather than take out a life insurance policy on to make sure your kids are taken care of, you started telling me about some other things that maybe I would have never considered. So I thought, just for a brief second, we could talk about that to help people out who might not know.

28:32 Does that sound there? So one of the things was that you said life insurance. You know that's cool, I guess after the fact, But during their You know, while you're alive as the parent, there could have been some better things that she could have done. Maybe starting with you said that there was first make a family plan. How would you describe making a family plan for somebody in this situation? For us, the family plan came a little bit easier than most people because Christopher has two siblings older and one is younger, and we have a pact that if anything happens to me and my husband that they are going to step up. Now. I've also given them the ability to say, hey, when it gets too rough and they can't handle it anymore, Mom, and I gonna come back and haunt you if you have to. Put him in somewhere if you have to. But that was our contingency plan. We also have aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews. Everybody looks out for Christopher and me.

29:24 That's right. And I got you back, Christopher, And I mean there's been little old ladies at work that look out for him. It's just it's a community thing. Our church, our church is really big and looking out for him too. So that was our contingency plan family wise. And I love that you said that you will not be mad at them if if it just became where he needed more care than they are able to provide for whatever reason, that you're not mad at them, that let's put him. Make sure there's a plan to put him somewhere that they'll he'll be loved and cared for and taken care of and know that his family just adores him and they haven't forsaken him. That it's just a different phase right in life. So then after you made your family plan, the next thing you told me about was the fact that you should create a trust. Yes, okay, so how would you briefly, what is your suggestion to some of my listeners that might could use some insight on that.

30:13 If you have not done any kind of family planning for after you're gone, you need to look into getting an attorney that is well versed in estate planning, tutorship, interdiction, and partial interdiction. I know those are big terms, but we had to find a lawyer. We were able to find one in Baton Rouge. There's a lot out in the New Orleans area that will walk you through if you have property that has to be broken up between children, say in social security you can only have a certain amount of money, and Christopher can only have a certain amount of money in his name if something happens to me and my husband both if one of us dies, were still good, but if both of us are gone, he is now a three part owner of our property in our homes.

30:57 Because it's him and his two brothers, right, Okay. So now he's going to be ineligible to receive Social Security because Louisiana is a forced air state unless you left something in your will that left them out, which there was no way I was going to do that. So we went the route of a partial interdiction. It was very important to me that is high function as Christopher as I wanted him to still be able to vote, and the partial interdiction gave him choices still in the matter, but it gave us the power to say if he called a one eight hundred number, he didn't know what he was doing. We still have control over those areas. Because Christopher also went to college. By the way, y'all got a brag on him. We are looking at a college graduate, right.

31:37 We are Southeast. That is amazing. He graduated from Southeastern and what just what a dude man like you've knocked it out of the park. I'm so proud of you. That is amazing. But so you wanted him to still be able to vote, and because he's, like you said, higher functioning, right, you wanted him. To be able to have some say right now. He thought he wanted to marry Hannah Montana and that we finally got broke through with that. He now has a wonderful girlfriend and her name is Hannah. But he has somebody in the real world now, and that was a big concern for me, because he lives in this world that's not exactly the same as the one that we live in in his imagination. So I wanted him to know you have the power of choice. But ultimately, I'm gonna come back and tell you if your choices are not good.

32:19 There you go, and that hey, what better, that's what you need. That's what I do. My mama does the same for me, Chris, I mean, I make decisions. She's like, girl, I don't know if you should have done that, you know, and it's because the people who love you the most look out for you the most, and so that's good news. So you had it where it was split up, and you didn't want him to lose his social Security correct, and then also to make sure that the family plan would have them be in charge of him, but he still can make some of his own decisions correct. And then he still has an income right that can cover. Helm stays in the price range that he's supposed to stay in, but it's right out of poverty level. So he's never able to have money put up anywhere. But this trust allows him to do that. And we haven't put any money into the trust. We're waiting until you know, the house has to go in and then they can deal with that one.

33:07 I'm gone. I don't want to be here to deal with. Yeah. But there was one other thing called the Able Act that came to be in I'm not sure if it's in every state, but it allows them to put money up every month to help them with four different things. I'm pretty sure it was education, transportation, medical, and one other thing. So this past Christmas we bought him an electric bicycle for when we go camping. I was able to go in and take his money out of there to pay for that bicycle because it's transportation. Because you can't dry. Yeah, and he has had two cataract surgeries, and we were able to go in both times and take five hundred dollars out for each eye where he paid for his own medical So it's a way for him to save money that he needs without being penalized because he can't have a a certain amount.

33:50 Right. And I know I'm in the middle of a true crime podcast here, and I know we kind of took a little turn, but I think it's just so important because sometimes and you'll see as this case goes on, everybody why I bring this up, but it is so important to have a plan and not have to wait or make a plan based on just a limited knowledge, and when there's so much out there that could help people. Tell me this, you're twenty seven, right, twenty eight? Sorry, you're twenty eight. Does your mama take good care of you? Yes, ma'am. Your mama is so good to. You, and she she is. And let me ask you this, if something were to ever happen where you had to you had to go maybe live like maybe Mama got sick or something, I don't know, and you had to go live with somebody, who would you ever? Who would you want to go live with? Do you know?

34:38 Daddy wouldn't be here either? So if you don't have mama or daddy. Where would you go? Papa? A good my good neighbor, your neighbor. You can check in with your neighbor, okay, miss indeed? Okay? And what about your brothers though? Do you think your brothers would take care of you? Do you love your brothers? I do love my brother's awesome? And does it make you happy to know that your mama has a plan for you that if anything ever went wrong, that you can trust in your brothers to take care of you and make sure that you get supper and you get to the doctor and you get to get to your job and all that. Well, I'd trust in God for the a men. Christopher, I love that.

35:20 Well. Just know you've got a bunch of people behind you too that are looking out for you, me included. And we want to make sure that nothing's ever going to happen. But in the event of we want to make sure that people know that there are steps they can take so that if their children are in similar situations, you know, look out there. There's resources out there, or any resources that you would maybe off the top suggest. That good attorney can put you in the right direction for everything you need. There you go. So we're not giving legal advice, obviously, but we're just trying to give some people. If you're listening, find somebody that is a good attorney that can help you out. Make sure that the people you put in control of those trusts or people that you can trust, you know, with your most precious give on earth, and then hopefully great things will happen. But we're gonna jump right back into the story now and I'm gonna tell you what happened when all she had in this situation was a life insurance policy in the event that something happened to her nonverbal autistic son. Okay, so there's some information for you to ponder and see that there's other avenues that you can take if you're in a similar situation. But look, Rachel went the route she knew best. She didn't have family near her or anyone that else besides Jane, and so the life insurance route seemed the best for her.

36:31 And I'm not knocking it. And that's great that she did identify someone to at least take custody of him so he wouldn't go into state, you know, custody if she died or something like that. It would turn out too, that Rachel herniated another disc while she was giving birth to ride her. So the pain here just it didn't seem to ever go away. And now she gives birth and now she's got another herniated disc, and so she tried to let that pain go for a while and just hoped it might correct itself, but it didn't, and she went to the doctor. She got some MRIs done, and the doctor said, look, either you're gonna have to have surgery or you're gonna have permanent disability, because this is not something that's going to go away. So, feeling like she had really no other choice, Rachel underwent surgery in twenty fifteen. So Janie and Rachel by this point had been friends for twenty something years, and she knew for a fact Janie would love and care for her son over everything else, and that she would be someone who would help her through all of this.

37:34 So she has the surgery, she schedules the surgery, she has it, and now, because of how serious the surgery was, Janie basically was in one hundred percent control of everything because Rachel was so injured, and this meant not only physical injury, but she also you know, financially was kind of struggling too, so everything she had she kind of just put Janie in control of it so that everything could be handled. So when Rachel got out of the hospital and she came back home, as you can imagine, she was in a ton of pain. All she could really do is take her pain medication and lay in bed a lot. She was not able to move much, and Janie felt horrible for her. It was a really bad recovery and Janie helped out tremendously during this time.

38:23 Rachel couldn't lift rid her she couldn't do much of anything for her baby boy. So Janie acted like a second mom to him, and it was welcomed. This was a wonderful thing. Rachel did have a sister, I will let you know that, but her sister lived five hours away and it just wasn't This was a long term recovery and it just wasn't conducive for the situation. So it was awesome that Janie was right there and also loved rider, had been there since the beginning and it was like, you know, a nephew to her, and so she was just jumping in and being very helpful to Rachel. Now Janie worked at this training center that helped indigenous people find and you know, get employment and really find their way in life. And it was it was a cool facility with a good outreach for that purpose. And the other good thing about it was that this left Jennie with a very flexible schedule that she could you know, wiggle room here and there in so while this was going on, Rachel was able to get on medical disability because she couldn't work. But Janie, being resourceful and being used to you know, helping others find programs and things that benefited them, Janie was able to find a program that could help pay her. The program would pay Jane to help Rachel care for a writer, and so she signed them all up for them and it was awesome.

39:48 It was like a really cool thing. And I'm pretty sure she didn't name the program that she had signed them up under, but I'm pretty sure it's similar to one that I have a family member who is not able to care for himself, and so his brother, who is able to care for him, gets paid through the state as the main caregiver for his brother. And so I think it was one of those things. So it takes so much to take care of him. That why wouldn't you just pay a family member who loves them and is going to take care of them. So it's a really neat thing. So Rachel felt really blessed for this to happen because where she hadn't been contributing much financially to the household, this new income, this new program added a lot of money. Not a lot, but they needed it and it added that money, and Janie started doing really well financially because it became a significant part of her income getting paid to help do this and take care of Writer. And so now that she was getting paid for that, it really became her.

40:48 Janie's main role was to care for Writer a lot, and Rachel understood this obviously, but Rachel would be lying if she said she didn't get her feel hurt. One day when she went on an outing to Rider's school, So Janie and Rachel went together to the school for a little event that they were having there, And while they're walking up to go to the event, it seemed like everyone at the school knew Jane really well, like really well first name basis situation, as in, everyone from the principal down to the teachers other parents, even they knew Janie, and it really hurt Rachel's feelings because she's like, I'm the mom and nobody knows me. I'm just I'm hurt right now, and it was like no one seemed to know that, no one seemed to realize that Rachel was the mom. But she's really hurt and that's why she's unable to drive and.

41:42 Do all of these things. And it almost seemed like Jane had led people to believe that she was Writer's actual mom or his parent, and it really just hurt Rachel's heart. She wasn't an absent mom mom. I think I've been pretty clear about that. It was the the situation that they were in, but it was what it was. I mean, you know, Janie was up at the school and help him do stuff. But it really did hurt her feelings. But you know, Rachel still couldn't drive, she really couldn't walk much, and so she knew it wasn't the case. It just she had taken it personally. Another frustration Rachel felt, though, was that Jamie started wanting to take Rderer to work with her whenever she would go work at at that other facility.

42:29 And the thing was. Rachel wanted to ride her home with her. But she couldn't physically stop Janie, you know, when she would wake up and then the Janie would already have left with her son, and she's like, she'd call her and say, look, I really would like him to stay home with me. I want him with me. And it got to the point that it really started bites between the two women because Rachel's like, it's my son. I want him home with me, and Jannie's like, yeah, but you can't take care of him like I can, and I'm getting paid to do it, so I'm gonna be taking care of him. And it almost felt like a custody dispute broke out between the two of them, even though Janie had no relation to this kid whatsoever. But they both loved him, is what it boiled down to, and they both wanted what was best for him. People who love you with no motives are always good character judges, you know, like kind of when your mama doesn't like a guy and it sucks for you because you're like, no, you don't understand, but mama really knows. Because mama loves you, and she knows she can see the difference well, that kind of became the situation between Rachel's sister and Janie.

43:33 Rachel's sister wasn't a big fan of Janie, and she told Rachel this, She's like, look, I think that Jannie kind of has latched onto you and is almost trying to be you in. A way, like this is sick. It's kind of gross how she's like always trying to do what you should be doing in your life type thing. But you know, Rachel kind of poo pooed that and said, no, she's helping me. It's just it's kind of weird because I do need all the help, and you know, she's my friend. It's fine. Well, there was another friend. Her name was Robin, and Robin was a medical student and a friend of Rachel's. So Robin went to the University of Utah School of Medicine, and Robin and Rachel had met whenever Rachel was still working as a paramedic, because Robin was doing rotations at an emergency room or emergency department at a hospital, and so that's how they met and became friends from seeing each other during the shifts. And Robin even said something to Janie one day and said, you know, Rachel almost like it's like Jennie almost is possessive of you, and it's weird. And she even said it's almost like Janie has romantic feelings for you, like she wants to be with you or something. And then you know, Rachel's laughing about that. She's like, gross, No, you know, that's my best friend, not my lover.

44:55 Quit saying that. But more people that was in their friendship hip group started to point that out and say, I think she's in love with you. You know, like, who acts that way. Y'all aren't in a relationship. But Rachel, it wasn't y'all, it wasn't true. Okay. Rachel's like, that's not the case. We're just really close friends. We have been for twenty over twenty years, and it just that's not the case. She's just a jealous friend and everyone has their flaws and that's just how it goes. Okay, She's that's just one of her flaws. She's jealous and she only wants me to be her best friend. Well, over the next few years, Rachel would go on to have a total of seven back surgeries because of the injuries and them trying to fix the problems that were going on, and because of those back surgeries, she was having some balance issues and she ended up falling and guess what, she herniated a disc in her neck, and the next herniation was so bad that she ended up having to have surgery for that. So there's a lot of surgery going on. And because of Janie's meticulous nature, it was a blessing in disguise because now that Janie was having to take medication and all of that, Janie was really good as a caretaker. She even kept logs on the nightstand. At anytime that Janie would would give medicine to Rachel, she would log it. And you know, Rachel was really worried about accidentally, you know, overdosing or doubling up because you know, it was really strong pain medicine at that time.

46:25 And this Janie took care of her. Janie made sure that didn't happen and would keep the logs and all that of the medication kept her on track and everything well. On June twentieth, twenty eighteen, Janie took Rider out with her. It was a Saturday, and she took Write out with her to go do some stuff and Rachel was feeling good enough to get up and to walk a little bit. So she walked down to their mailbox, and to her shock when she got the mail, there was a letter in there from the courts, and the courts were saying that Rider had been appointed a guardian at litem for a custody case. Now, remember, Writer's dad is nowhere in the picture, his bio, his sperm downer, whatever you wanna call him, he's not in the picture at all. So this meant that it didn't quite make sense. This meant that the courts would have appointed a specific person to look after and protect the interests of Writer because he's unable to take care of himself.

47:26 And usually, you know, when when that's appointed, it's it's typically typically a miner or someone who's you know, disabled in some way. And the person that had been appointed in the paperwork was Janie. So Rachel immediately calls Jane and says, what is going on? What is this paperwork? And there's kind of this pause over the phone, and then she just says, are you suing me for custody of my own son? And Janie, who had been acting very normal at first in the conversation. Got quiet and then sheepishly. Says, yeah, that's what I'm doing, and then hangs up on her. So freaked the hell out, and I don't blame her. Rachel calls nine one one and she says, look, my roommate took my child and won't return him. He's nonverbal.

48:16 I'm scared for him. I don't know why this would have occurred. And as she's making the report, nine one one advises her of something that blows her ever loving mind. As if this wasn't already bad enough, nine one one tells Rachel that there is a protective order against her who was the victim, her own son, her child. So she said, what the hell? How could this be? He's nonverbal, he's a child. This has got to be a mistake. There's no protective order between me and my kid. I'm his mother. I'm the only parent he's known. But it wasn't a mistake, y'all. They advised her that a protective order had been placed against her by Jane and that she should have been served with that, and Rachel is just she doesn't she's dumbfounded. She doesn't even know what to do. That morning, everything was fine, and now all of a sudden, She's got a protective order against her, and her best friend is suing her for custody of her own kid. She's literally almost incapacitated by surgical injury.

49:32 She still had stitches up the back of her neck, could barely walk, couldn't lift anything. So how in the hell did she qualify to have a protective order put out on her or against her? How? It just doesn't make sense. And on top of this, since Janie lived in the same house with Rachel and that was her place of residence, Rachel had to move out, she had to leave her own house, and she could not take her son with her. He was to stay with Janey, who had now been awarded temporary custody of him. That whoa like that? That's mind blowing. You would have expected her to have to have done something and had to have been served paperwork before this could have even happened, But that was not the case.

50:25 And it was not a joke nor a dream. This happened. So here's the you know, this is this is generalized information, okay, And what I'm saying obviously could vary by jurisdiction and by state, but generally nine one one would know in some capacity of a protective order, because after the court issues it, it's going to be input into the nine one one system because those operators need to know that in in emergent situations, nine to one obviously has access to that information because they would have to be able to give that back to the officers that are onseen because if there was a dispute or something, the officers show up and then come to find out there's a protective order between the two parties, the officers then have the authority to arrest the violator.

51:14 Of that order. And so in the nine one one system, it's basically going to show the names they pull as either a protected individual or basically an aggressor. Okay, that's how it's going to show up. It's not just gonna have two names. We're gonna get know who is kind of the victim or the protected person. Here's the thing, though, I don't know exactly how the turn of events went, but I do know that a judge gave custody temporarily to Janey. And before a judge will do that, they have to have a reason why. I mean, that's checks and balances at minimum. Now, this is scary because this looks like anyone could just take your child. You know what I've told you to this point. But like I'm always saying, if you are a longtime listener, trust and truth are hard to come by these days, you know. And this is a prime example, because this seemed to come out of nowhere. And our systems and our laws are created and they're put into place assuming that they're going to be accessed and used in truthful ways by honest people. Okay, never forget that ideally, protective order applications are filled out by a victim or a potential victim that might be hurt who needs immediate protection until a hearing can be held to determine all of the details and all of the threats that need to be considered. The reality, though, in this situation is it's that dishonest people will use

52:46 and abuse this system for their own gain. So let me explain real quick what I mean. Emergency protective orders they give immediate protection in urgent situations. And the key here is that these type of orders are issued a lot of times outside of regular court hours, and they can be issued without a formal hearing. That's different versus other types of orders, which would require a hearing first, so follow me. Emergency protective orders don't have to have the hearing initially. So these orders are usually pretty short term. You know, they're short short time frames until that more comprehensive hearing can be help can be can take place.

53:33 But the point here is that anyone who would be wanting to take away a child could And I'm telling you not to do this obviously, but I'm telling you that people do this all the time in custody disputes where there's like no court ordered custody in place, Yet people do it all the time. Ask anybody you know that works in like a clerk of court's office, call my bluff and them, but this happens all the time. They could go and fill one out and have it granted, especially if they lie or exaggerate about something. The judge is only going to be going off of the application, and again that's all they have to go off of until that formal hearing. And so people who are dishonest use it to their advantage because it can be issued immediately and no formal hearing and for ten days they get what they want, even if they're being dishonest. It sucks but like I just told you, the system is built with the belief that honest people are going to be accessing it for truthful reasons. But people don't do the right thing, and good people can suffer the consequences of that. It's not an infalluable system. So what happens in these emergency protective orders if there's a minor involved, Okay, DCFS or Child Protective Services is going to assign a risk assessment or do a risk assessment when they are notified that there might be some type of of abuse.

55:00 And so then what they do is they assign a priority of how soon do they need to send out an investigator? Well, presumptively, you know, this probably didn't get that high of a priority, like as in they needed to immediately go out. And that's why in this situation almost ten days were allowed to pass before anything would happen. But if Jane had told the courts that she was the mother or the main caregiver of writer and then maybe because again I don't know how she did it exactly, but this is kind of like an educated guess.

55:41 But what if she had told the. Courts, look, I'm the main caregiver, and then what if she just so happened to have a copy of that insurance policy that she was the beneficiary of, that showed quote unquote proof of her status as a caregiver because she's being given the child in the event the mom dies. And who knows, maybe. She went in there and did claim to be a common law wife of Rachel. I don't know what the claims were, because I don't have that paperwork. But what happens is any of those claims would give extra credibility to her situation and that she's the guardian of this child, and so this ex partey, this emergency injunction would happen or could happen, and then she would be given temporary custody of Writer over his biological mother. If you're curious how that could have happened, I'm just gonna say, I think a frickin nailed it right there.

56:37 But I don't know. That's just an educated guest, But I hope you can see how this could have been manipulated into what it is. So this is what I'm thinking. I think a dishonest Janey manipulated a system to her advantage. Because Rachel was a devoted. Mother and Writer had never been away from her full time, not even for not even as a vacation or anything. Writer was always with his mama until she had surgery and was in the hospital, and woman to woman, I'm gonna tell you now, that's probably the worst thing that could ever happen to a mama, is you take her child away. But the order claimed that Rachel was neglecting her son and was an active drug user who wasn't taking care of his basic needs. I do know that that was in there, and there were painkiller prescriptions from all the surgeries that she was having, and she could Jane could have shown those to back up.

57:36 Look look how many drugs she's taking. But until that hearing, Rachel had to leave the house and all she could do was go to a nearby hotel. She called her dad beside herself, and her dad got her a hotel. This was just unbelievable, but she was helpless to fight it in the moment because the judge had ordered it. So CPS did come out and they spoke to Janie eventually a few days later, and that's whenever Jane advised them that Rachel was a drug addict, addicted to pain medication and was not taking care of Writer. Well. Then CPS went and they spoke to Rachel, and almost immediately when they started speaking to Rachel, CPS recognized that something was very, very wrong here because Jane had left.

58:22 Out some really pertinent information. Yes, Rachel was on these drugs, but for starters, Janie never mentioned any surgeries. And that's why she had all this pain medication. It wasn't like she was doctor shopping. She literally had serious surgery. Also, Janie never mentioned to them that she was the one administering the meds and keeping logs on this. That's not a drug abuser, that the woman who had surgery. So almost immediately after that, whenever the hearing was held, Writer was returned to Rachel and there was no basis found for Janie's claims. So it did work out that she got her child back.

59:03 But for those days, absolute misery and fear. You know you've lost your baby. Rachel's mother had already passed away, and her dad had moved to South Carolina, Carolina, and her sister was five hours away, so she had nowhere to go, and she realized, I got to get away from Janie. This is crazy, So she had to move out but she's limited physically, and she really had nowhere to go because there was no family there. So while it was horrible, Rachel decided to swallow her pride and she moved herself and ride her into a family shelter. That's all she could do in the moment. But the issue became that writer's autism. It was not a good fit.

59:46 He was not doing well. He even began to regress in all that he had grown to at that point. So she's at the shelter though for two months, and it's not going well. It's very difficult. And two months go by when Janie calls her out of the blue and says, look, I just want to see Rider, please. And the reality of it was that Rider wanted to go home back to their house and he was missing Janie too. And I know right now you're fume and you're like, how in the hell? But Rachel didn't want Ryder to suffer, and so she said, all right, we can meet up and you can see him, but it's going to be at a park.

1:00:26 I'm not going to the house. So they met up at a local park and once they got there, Jane apologized profusely. She said, look, I was in a dark spot. I thought that you were going to move out. I thought I was going to lose you and Rider, and I'm sorry. It was really the bad decision. It was wrong. I shouldn't have done it, but it was just really, really bad. They had a huge heart to heart. They kind of talked about a lot of things, and it seemed like the old Janie there. She was kind of shining back through. Ryder was thrilled to see her, and so Janie said, would you just consider coming back to the house and limited on choices, and she also had another surgery that was upcoming that she had to have to complete the issues that they were trying to fix.

1:01:14 She was hesitant, but she agreed, Okay, I'll come back because she just needed the help and she was in a bad spot. Friends and family were like, bad idea. But Rachel's a grown adult and that's really kind of the decision she had to make. In that moment, Ryder immediately perked back up. He started doing really well being back in the house that he knew, and so that really helped Rachel to make that decision. And Rachel didn't jump into her surgery. She actually waited a bit before she went and had it because she wanted to make sure everything was going to be okay, and it was. It was going great, it was going smoothly. Janie was back helping with Ryder and it was smooth sailing. So April of twenty nineteen, she has another surgery.

1:01:57 It went great. Rachel even offered again to help with any medical assistance that she needed while she was getting better. It was welcomed because the surgical site was all the way down the back of her neck and the incisions were really hard for her to get to. She had to have wound dressing and this ointment had to be applied. So Janie graciously agreed and would nurse her, would come in and. Take care of her. But a few weeks after that surgery, Rachel began feeling a lot of pain in that incision and she was like, maybe I have an infection. I don't know. Janie was religious about changing these dressings and rubbing these ointments on it, so that should not have been the case. And so, like I said, that incision was vertical down her neck. It was really long, and then it had these stary strips on either side of it going horizontally down her neck, and so she even asked Janie, can you look at it? Is there anything going on back there that looks alarming? And Jenny's like, no, it looks fine.

1:02:53 You know that maybe it's a little red, but this is part of the healing process, you know. It just doesn't look that bad. Well, then the incision a few days later started getting really bad, like to the point that Rachel was afraid something was really wrong. This is not normal. It got so bad that it seemed like she was having trouble breathing, like like it seemed it was pushing into her trachea from behind that it was so swollen. So finally she went to a dock in the box that, by the way, that's what I call like a like a quick urgent care type. Place that you go to. I'll call him dock in the box. Anyway, I shouldn't said that, But she goes to a dock in the box to have it evaluated.

1:03:34 The doctor pulls or calls her back. She sits down. When the doctor takes the bandage off, he literally like jumps back and is like, whoa, what's going on? What happened? She's like, what do you mean? Not only was it infected, but it was a massive infection. When he removed those stairy strips, blue cheese looking like materials started pouring out of her neck. It was bad, infected, so serious that the doctor at the dock in the box called an ambulance and said, you have to go directly to the er right now, without question. You cannot go home. This could be a deadly You've got to go now. So the ambulance picks her up and they take her to the hospital. Well, she arrives there and they had to reopen this wound that had been healing, and they had to clean it out, and when they cultured it, it came back positive for MRSA. Now, MRSA is a bacteria resistant to antibiotics, and that's why it's so deadly, or it can be so deadly.

1:04:37 It's like a serious staff. Infection, and you can get it in hospitals and it's problematic. So they started her on vankomyasin. But when they started her on it, it began to attack her white blood cells, and it attacked so bad that she started to die. It was really bad. She was already compromised medically, and and this had the real potential now of leading to a blood infection and sepsis and just killing her. A matter of fact, my husband's grandmother died of sepsis within twenty four hours of the first moment she felt. Sick, so I do know for a fact it's bad news. But then Rachel, after it got cleaned out and was stayed in the hospital, she did end up turning a corner and amazingly it got better, and then she was eventually released to go back home. Janie and Ryder were obviously thrilled to see her and that she had made it through this really tough time. Well, on June ninth of twenty nineteen, Janie helped Rachel get in the bed, lay down, she took her medicine, and Rachel fell asleep. Well, when Rachel woke back up, she was in the hospital.

1:05:44 She wasn't at her house, and she's confused, why am I here? What happened? And they told her that her blood glucose had dropped to the number thirteen. If you're a nurse or you're diabetic, right now, you're stroking that I just told you that number. Okay, she wasn't diabetic. Your average blood sugar should be between like eighty and one, ten, one twenty round there. This was horribly abnormal. Was this was deadly okay, and poor Rachel was suffering one thing after another, and now the blood sugar that was low was making it miserable. I mean, I can imagine. I can't imagine, but I know what low blood sugar feels like, and it makes you sick. And so she stayed in the hospital for forty eight hours until her levels leveled back out and she was able to maintain it, and then she was released to go home. And so the hospital said, you know, maybe this was a fluke.

1:06:38 They did test, she wasn't diabetic, you know, they weren't sure what happened, but it had to have just been a fluke of some sort. So she went home on a Sunday, and Tuesday she woke back up in the hospital for the exact same reason. They kept her eight days this time, and Rachel even posted on Facebook that she was saying that she was scared. Jane had found her unresponsive, called an ambulance. The ambulance came and got her, and now they were worried that maybe cancer of some sort could have been causing this. I didn't understand that, but whatever she said, she was worried that cancer might be causing this dramatic drop in the blood sugar, and doctors were so perplexed, as were her friends. Remember her friend was a doctor, the one that did rotations at the hospital. They they started to wonder if Rachel was doing this to herself, like was this some kind of strange attention grab that she was doing because this was not happening naturally. This was not something that it doesn't work like that, and it's not going to drop like that.

1:07:38 It wasn't a naturally possible event in the doctor's opinion, that these numbers got that low. So Rachel was adamant, though, I'm not doing anything to myself. I swear I'm not. I haven't done anything, I'm not taking anything. And it freaked Rachel out so bad that when she finally was released back home, she started eating spoonfuls of sugar, just sugar before she would go to bed at night, to hopefully spike her sugar so that she wouldn't die in her sleep. I mean, it was just this emotional medical roller coaster, one thing after the other, and the emotional toll of all of it really started to restrain that relationship between Janie and Rachel, and again they just started to grow apart. The relationship deteriorated to the point that Rachel decided, after over twenty years of friendship, that she was just ready to move out. It wasn't gonna work and she had to do go live life on her own and on her own terms. In doing so, Rachel wasn't sneaky about it. She told Janie, look, I'm moving out, and I'm also going to just remove you as the beneficiary of my will, and I'm gonna go ahead and put my dad as the recipient of writer since you know, I'm going to be moving out and we won't be together.

1:08:53 Every day or anything. And she understood, You know, I understand that that makes sense. You know your dad needs to take care of him. So Rachel then shortly thereafter to her safe to retrieve her will from it. But her will wasn't in the safe, and she couldn't remember what happened, like why it in the safe that's where I normally keep it. So she just kept an eye out looking forward to see where it was so that she could make the change. So Janey, again, like I told you, she understood it. Is what it is. She felt the strain to but she said, look, it's almost Christmas, it's the holidays. Let's just at least enjoy our holiday together, me, you and Ryder. We can at least have Christmas. We at least stay until like the twenty fifth of December, and we can have Christmas together before you leave. And Rachel said, yeah, that's no problem.

1:09:36 You know, they don't hate each other. It's just wasn't good anymore. So December twelfth of twenty nineteen, a man by the name of Steve kat Is is how I believe you say, or kate is cat Is. He was working at the Salt Lake City FBI branch and he was focusing on a case that was happening on the dark web. And y'all, the dark web is crazy. You can buy everything on the dark web, from porn to fentanyl. I mean you can get anything, child porn, anything horrific that you don't need to have, you can find it on the dark web, promise you. And he was investigating someone who was trying to purchase a potential weapon of mass destruction through the dark web, and so many people wonder what exactly the dark web is. So Look, I know this isn't something podcasters normally do, but Mom's about to just teach you about the dark web. Okay, so let me give you a little bit of insight. The way I want you to think about the dark web, or think about the Internet. Okay, The way I want you to think about the Internet, for starters, is like the ocean. Okay, you've got the clear the deep in the dark. The ocean got the clear of the deep in the dark. Well, the web is, or the Internet is very much the same thing. So when you are searching on Google or Being or any search engine that you're using, you're using the clear web. The way I teach in my classroom to students is clear consciences. Use the clear web. You know, how do I get to my doctor's office? How much dog food should I feed a puppy? All the stuff that you just randomly google.

1:11:07 How much does a hippo way? You know, whatever you're normally googling and your weird you know, events at home when you're bored and you're checking stuff out. That's the clear web. You're just researching stuff. Then we have what's called the deep web. Now, the deep web's part of the Internet, that you can't find it in a basic search engine on the Internet. It's not evil or anything, so I don't think that it's It's just a very secure type of Internet, and if you hacked this, you would get in a whole lot of trouble. It holds things like medical records, private financial information, secure communications. The best example I can give you is if like you check your medical records online, if you log into things like my chart or whatever it is that you use something similar, you have to use a log in and that's protected. There's a lot of security features in place.

1:11:56 And the deep web is massive. That may up about ninety percent of the Internet. So think of it like the deep web. Hacking the deep web would get you in deep trouble. That's the way I teach it in class. So the deep web is very protected. And then you've got the dark web, and the dark web is a hidden part of the Internet. Dark thoughts go to the dark web. It only makes up about six percent of the Internet. To really put it in to quantify it for you, it's really small, but it's really bad. So basically, people who want anonymity to do bad things do it through the dark web because what happens is it uses a network of different servers to hide your identity and your locations when you're doing the searching. So real quick disclaimer, don't do this. What I'm about to tell you, do not do it. If you are accessing the dark Web.

1:12:59 Your first of all not very bright, and you get whatever the hell you deserve. But to really hammer it home for you, the Supreme Court has even ruled in favor of helping the FBI on this one, because you have a right to a reasonable expectation of privacy like when you're researching, but you don't have a right to complete privacy, So you don't have the right to try and hide illegal activities online food for thought. Everything I am about to tell you, by the way, you could find it online. It's not top secret or anything. But I want to make sure you're crystal clear before I tell you. We have a thing called Rule forty one. It falls under search and seizure laws, and a judge can sign off for a warrant for this kind of behavior. So do not do it. As Woody Overton would.

1:13:42 Say, he'd my warning. Okay, but here's the deal. Unlike the regular Internet, the dark Web does not use standard URLs or search engines. Instead, it uses these really complex addresses, they'll call them like onion addresses. It makes them really difficult to find unless you have the exact URL to look it up. So everything from data theft to selling illegal things to human trafficking, it's all there. This is what people do. Number one, They get what's called a VPN. A VPN basically hides your Internet activity.

1:14:27 Then they're going to install a browser that is not a regular search engine like Google or Being These browsers are usually referred to as Tor browsers. Unlike regular browsers that directly connect to websites using your ISP address on your computer, Tour routes your searches through several different relays before it ends up reaching the destination that you're trying to get to. And by using Tor in combination with a VPN, it basically encrypts your Internet signal and it's making it's making it invisible to your ISP. It knows you're trying to that you're accessing Tour, but it can't see past that, and so it's basically a multi layered redirection while you're searching, and it leaves no trace from where this search originated.

1:15:22 So I wasn't trying to get like overly technical, I guess. But if you're not computer brained, it's kind of like this non criminal example sort of kind of Let's say you wanted to buy a Christmas present, but you didn't want your spouse to know about it, so you can't use your bank account because then that purchase could be seen on your statement, So you're trying to hide it from your spouse. So you go pay cash for a gift card that you then use to purchase that gift you want online. But then you have that. Gift delivered to your work, to just a generalized department, and then a clerk puts it in a delivery room where you go and you pick it up, and no one ever knew the contents of it, and it's not tracked back to you. If that made sense to you, that's the best example I can give you in a non I guess computer.

1:16:10 Type of way. But in this case, what he was, what this FBI agent was looking at, was someone was attempting to buy versa online. I know I talked about MRSA earlier, but this is versa. Versa again is a bacteria a staph infection that is resistant to antibiotics and it's stronger than MRSA. Okay, specifically, this. Person was wanting Vanka Miyason resistant VERSA, which is a rare, rare number of cases that take place, and that's per the CDC because I did look it up, but it does happen. So biological agents that are being brought into the US via the mail, those are considered weapons of mass destruction because they can grow, they can populate. To think about like COVID, how it can spread, spread, spread, spread, So this was obviously a red flag and an investigation was launched. Who was buying it and what the hell are they buying it for. They didn't know if it was going to be grown and introduced to a community to spread and try to take out the US. It's a very dangerous situation for people, and so the FBI decided to set up a sting operation to determine who the purchaser was. So the FBI then posed as the seller of the versa and the purchaser then came back and requested expedited overnight shipping, which the FBI, pretending to be the bad guy selling the versa, agreed to. The

1:17:40 purchaser then paid extra service to have it sent quickly, and so then the FBI sent fake Versa to the post office, but they added a tracking receipt to it so that the buyer would be alerted whenever their package arrived. So on December fifteenth of twenty nineteen, the package was sent to UPS. The FBI was outside of the building, watching from an unmarked vehicle for someone to come and collect that package, and eventually a person did show up, went in and then came back out with the package. They saw it, they made the visual and they knew that that was their fake Versa that had been picked up.

1:18:21 So they followed this person back to their place of business and followed the person inside. Once they got inside, they approached the woman and they asked to speak with her. So she says, sure, you know, how can I help you? And they said did you go to UPS earlier today? And she flat out told him no, didn't happen. So they continued to question her and she eventually said, oh, yeah, I did go. I picked up some coffee that I ordered, but I haven't opened it yet. Is there should I be concerned? Is there a problem with that? Like, I don't understand, and so the FBI agent that's questioning this woman stopped and looked at her and goes, look, we know what's going on here. You may want to rethink and try again before you give us any more answers.

1:19:08 And that's when the woman finally, after some more talking, broke down and admitted, yes, I did go online and I did order the biologic because I wanted to make beer with it. So the FBI agent says, you want to make beer with it? Yes, okay, well where are all the other supplies for the beer that you're trying to make with this biologic? Do? Where is it? Do you have it yet? And she's like, oh no, I didn't buy it yet. I've never made it before. And so Christmas Eve is in a few days, New Year's Eve is in a few days, so I was gonna make it for that purpose, but I've never done it before, so I don't have the rest of the stuff yet. Well, the FBI is like super unimpressed with that answer, and they say, look, last chance, just be honest. Did you buy the versa or did you not buy it? Just tell us what's going on, because we already know what's going on? And she then says, fine, look, I ordered it because I'm a biology teacher and I wanted to do some research on it because my friend has been really, really sick. Okay, well, who is your friend? And that's when she says her name is Rachel, and that's when Jane was identified and arrested for attempting to purchase a weapon of mass destruction.

1:20:22 She freaks out and it's like, I'm not a terrorist. I don't know what this is about. You don't understand. My friend has been very sick. She's been in and out of the hospital. No one's been able to give her answers, and so I wanted to do some testing on this because I want to find an answer for her. You don't understand how sick she's been. Well. The next day was a Tuesday, after all of that went down, and Rachel was laying in bed sick whenever she heard the knock at the door, and when she opened the door there were three FBI agents there with a search warrant to search her house. So asking for an explanation of what is going on. Mind you, she's had a pretty weird year so far. Would we all agree with that so or a few years.

1:21:05 So she's wanting an explanation, and that's when they let her know that her roommate Janie had been arrested for purchasing bacteria on the dark Web because she was going to do testing in her biology class on it. Well, Rachel kind of screwed her face up and said, wait what, super confused by this and said, Janie is not a biology teacher, And so the FBI is now, you know, going, she's not She's not a biology teacher. No, And they're like, okay, well, what about does she make? Does she homebrew beer or anything here at home? And she's like, no, there's got to be a mistake here. Something's not right. And so then the FBI agents kind of started wondering if maybe Rachel had sent the package to herself and maybe was trying to set up Jane. So they sit Rachel down and they start questioning her. So Rachel obviously starts panicking and wondered if something had happened and now she was in some type of trouble for something she didn't know what was going on. And I mean, y'all gotta agree anything's possible. At this point, it's been pretty strange. So they explain or they're talking about the situation with Janie.

1:22:14 She immediately starts defending Janie. I've known her for twenty five years. She would never do anything illegal. She didn't even you know, she didn't even think about herself being a suspect. She was just defending Janie. This has got to be a complete and total misunderstanding. She doesn't even know how to do what the dark like what? None of that makes sense. It's not even in her wheelhouse. And so the FBI further explained to her, look, Janie ordered Versa through the mail. It's worse than MRSA. They also revealed that they knew some information that they thought Mike could explain playing a role in this, and so they said, look back in twenty ten, wasn't there a custody dispute between you two? There was, wasn't there? Because we think that she may have purchased this to try to her you and Rachel busts out laughing, are you kidding me? No, no, no, no, no, no, You've got this dead wrong. And then they said, well, I mean you keep saying stuff. It's you know, she wouldn't even know how to do this, but that's not the first time that she's bought something on the dark web before.

1:23:20 I mean she's bought other medical things before on the dark web. And that's when a light bulb went off in Rachel's mind and she said she was thinking to herself. She didn't say this, she was thinking to herself. After that horrible infection that she had and she was in the hospital for everything got cleaned up. She returned back home from the hospital and because again she couldn't do much, Jamie and she would watch a lot of TV together because Rachel couldn't do much else, and their favorite thing to watch was true crime on TV.

1:24:00 Well, during one of the shows that they. Were watching, a nurse murdered her husband using sexcental coline and Rachel scoffed at the idea while they were watching it, and she's like, look, I mean I expect a nurse to know better. Succential coline will show up in an autopsy. And Jady said, what do you mean it'll show up in an autopsy? Like you, what's your point? And Rachel said, look, it would be a suspicious death if you use sexciental coline. You would have to use something natural like insulin and be smarter because you know, insulin's naturally occurring in the body and it's less likely to be tested for a nurse of all people should know that. And that's thoughts going through her head. And Rachel looked up and pointedly asked that FBI agent did she might ever buy insulin?

1:24:43 And the FBI agents almost choked on their own spit. Okay, they never mentioned anything about insulin. They were very kind of general about what they were saying. But guess what we're in Jennie's purchases that only the FBI agent knew there were sedatives ketamine xanax and insulin injector pins. All of those times that Rachel went to the hospital sick and on the verge of dying, She's like, was my best friend? The cause of that is? That? Is that what you're trying to tell me for real? But the reality of the situation, y'all, was much worse than that. Janie didn't just inject her with insulin on two occasions. She had tried to kill Rachel five times over the last year. Jane had begun to secretly inject Rachel with different substances. Shortly after that, in March twenty nineteen, next surgery, the infection that she originally got in her neck.

1:25:53 The doctors tested it whenever they reopened it at the hospital and it had that MRSA. But the tests also showed it. Contained E coli, which is usually found in the gastro intestinal track, and notes from the doctor in her medical chart said, there's no explanation for this to have been here, and they believe that it had somehow been injected from an external source. Per their own notes, that infection was in fact caused by Jane infecting or injecting E. Coli into the wound when she was pretending to care for it. Rachel even thought back about the time she would scream and like writhe in pain while Janie was pretending that it was inadvertent pain, while she was putting creams and stuff in it. She was putting needles in the back of her neck and injecting her with something to try and kill her. But when those attempt or that attempt didn't kill her, Rachel by chance had mentioned insulin being a naturally occurring thing in the body when they watched that show, and so Jane went in purchased those really strong painkillers and that ketamine online on the dark web.

1:27:05 So when she was given Rachel her pain meds for surgery, she was giving her this other stuff too. She'd give enough to like knock her out, and then she would inject her with the insulin. And during the investigation, when this is what their belief was, it was solidified because police. Found hidden used insulin injection. Needles in Janie's office at work, and then they sent those needles to the lab and lo and behold, Rachel's DNA was inside of those needles that she absolutely had been injected with insulin. The doctors were right, this was being done to her. Her insulin would never have dropped that low. I mean, hell yeah. For these doctors, man, they're doing amazing. And when that didn't kill her after a couple attempts, remember she went back and forth to the hospital with the low blood sugar. That's when she ordered the versa and she paid for with three hundred dollars in bitcoin, which by the way, is common on the dark web to pay with that type of cryptocurrency.

1:28:07 About that time that she bought that versa is when Rachel told her that she was going to be moving out and changing her beneficiary and custody for Rider. And that was the day that Jane then contacted the seller on the dark web and asked to expedite the delivery because she realized she only had a few days left to kill Rachel while she was in the house, and since Rachel was already immunocompromised, that versa would have been beyond deadly if she would have had the chance to inject her with it. And again, also during the search, guess what investigators found in Janie's glovebox. Rachel's will that was missing was in Janie's glovebox. But why why did she want Rachel dead? Well, I know right now you're going obviously for the light insurance.

1:29:01 Hold up for a second. Basically, what happened was Janie held Rachel captive and experimented on her that entire time because she wanted to take Rider. It was all about Rider. It wasn't the money. The money would have been great, but she wanted Rider and she did everything she could, and when the courts didn't give him to her, that's when she started to kill her, to try to kill her. If Rachel would have died, Janie wouldn't would have gotten away with it. Rachel would have been so sick that her death wouldn't have wouldn't have even been looked at as suspicious because she had had all of these medical problems and it was already documented that means probably wouldn't have required an autopsy. Janie not only would have gotten the five hundred thousand dollars in life insurance payout, but she also would have gotten Rider, who it's believed she was obsessed with, and he was the target, make no question about that. And then the icing on the cake would have been that everyone would have praised Janie for her amazing heart and for taking on her best friend's special needs child in raising him as her own. That is how that would have gone down.

1:30:12 Thank God for good doctors, good medicine, and the FBI. What a weird combo, but what a great, what a great you know, Thank God for these people that do their job and they do it well. Jane was arrested and she was charged in December of twenty nineteen with a multitude of charges, including aggravated abuse of a vulnerable adult, attempted aggravated abuse of a vulnerable adult, and attempted acquisition of a biological weapon. But here's the kicker, and you know there is always a kicker. As part of a plea deal, Janie Ridd pled guilty to buying bacteria on the dark web to use it against Rachel.

1:30:52 And because she. Agreed to plead guilty to that, the prosecutors dropped the charge of aggravated abuse of a disabled person. And that, my friends, that would have been a third degree felony. But because they dropped it, it took away that felony that would have had this mandatory long term time that she would have spent. So based on the plea agreement, the judge in the case ordered her to serve from one to twenty years. Kudos to the judge one to twenty but incredibly, she only served are you ready for this?

1:31:39 Twenty five months. She was granted parole in January of twenty twenty two, the thought process being that she wasn't a danger to society just Rachel at that time. So I guess what the parole board must have forgotten to listen to were the phone calls that Jane continued to make in jail. Because even after her conviction, after she tried to kill and do all of these things. Even after she was locked up, she continued to profess her desire to take Rider from Rachel, and she said it to everyone she spoke to, even after she had been convicted.

1:32:29 Her exact words, quote unquote, he needs to come back to me. Now. Does that sound like a woman that's learned her lesson? It doesn't to me. Her release after such a short sentence is ridiculous when our job is to protect the innocent and those who cannot speak for themselves, and instead they release a woman who came within an inch of killing someone repeatedly. I've never learned her lesson, per her own recorded conversations, She's dangerous and now all Rachel can do is just keep watch and stay vigilant because they let her out. It's cases like these, and I hope people are listening to me.

1:33:16 It's cases like these that show just how much the good of. Us are up against. Twenty five months for almost stripping a vulnerable child of his mother for the rest of his life, not to. Mention Rachel's life. I bet if Ryder were the grandson of a parole board member, she'd have been spending that twenty I bet it would have been different. The plea bargain dropped that serious felony. Yet I hang on to the fact that the judge ordered one to twenty years, because that judge had this belief that the parole board would use common fucking sense. Yet here we are, here we are Shame on that parole board. Shame on you, for if you are the ones who released that woman. I would have protected that child with the same veracity that I would have protected my own writer is a little boy and he needs protection. Janie ridd was fifty one years old when she was sentenced, and if I would have had my say, she would have spent that twenty Those doors would have slammed so fast and for so long behind her ass that she would have been more likely to have a meeting with the coroner than the parole board.