Erin and Jon Corwin - Part 2

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Hi, I'm Rich and I'm Tina. And if there's one thing we've learned

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in over twenty years of marriage,
some days you'll feel like killing your husband,

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and some days you'll feel like killing
your wife. Welcome to love,

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Mary, kill, Hey, Tina, Hey Rich, Hey listeners, welcome

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back. Thank you. I don't
think I had a choice. Nope,

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you sure didn't. Did you just
get that burp that you made? Did

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you get that in the Blooper realm? Oh? You know I missed it.

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I'm so sorry, but if you
want to let out a burp,

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I'll try to get that. No. Thanks, So same day, Part

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two, Part two, it's still
rainy and thunderstormy here. Yeah, I'm

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glad our power hasn't gone out.
Yeah you said that like a Canadian.

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By the way, we have a
lot of people in Canada listening to our

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little podcast, a lot of international
listeners, a lot of people in Australia.

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I have a kind of an Australian
case coming up. I'm working hard

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on exciting. Are you going to
do the accent? I am not an

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accent person. If I try to
do an accent, it sounds like I'm

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making something up, you know,
it's not a real accent. Although someone

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said one time, you have a
cute accent. I'm like, I didn't

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know I had an accent. Everyone
has an accent to someone that's from a

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different place. Yeah, I'm from
Chicago. I'm not really from Chapelle,

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you know. I was born in
Chicago, not from Chicago. Yeah,

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more or less. So something really
embarrassing happened to me the other day.

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Yeah, I remember a few like
this was a few months ago. We

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had a giveaway for the little Birdie
personal safety devices. Yeah, and I

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think it's a great little thing to, you know, just clip on your

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purse or whatever. And I tried
to give one to our daughter and she

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didn't want it, so I was
like, I'll just put it on my

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purse. I was in the grocery
store the other day and I had my

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purse is like a crossbody, and
I think I went to like grab,

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like to put my phone back in
my purse, and I accidentally grabbed the

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Birdie alarm and in the middle of
the grocery store. It's like it's like

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a hand grenade. Pulled the pin
out, and I pulled the pin out

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in the middle of the grocery store. It's going off, and it's like,

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if you don't know what I'm talking
about, it's just like this little

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alarm. Yeah. And it has
like a strobe light too that like flashes.

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Yeah. And it's pretty loud,
like a siren type noise. And

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I'm like, it's just funny.
Because I'm so old. Yeah, and

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I've embarrassed myself for many, many
years, I just don't really get embarrassed

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anymore. I was just like,
oh, yeah, it happened. It.

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Did anyone come rushing over like they
thought you were in need of aid?

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No, But I think it was
pretty clear I wasn't really in any

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danger other than mortifying myself. Produce
guy came over and he was just like

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just kind of laughed at me,
and I was like, yeah, yeah,

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it's yeah, I'm fine, thank
you. I'm glad that you can

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get too embarrassed. But if you
have the little birdie alarm, it is

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a good idea to practice taking the
pin out of it and putting it back

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in. Yeah, because it took
me longer than I thought. Then I'm

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like, oh God, what an
idiot I am, so but yeah,

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I think that's one of the great
things about getting older. Is just like,

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you know, I'm not really embarrassed. I still feel like I get

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embarrassed, but I don't know,
Well, you don't do as many embarrassing,

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cringey things as I do. I
don't know about that. I guess

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I, well, I don't go
out in public that often, but we

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are. We're a little bit on
the shut inside. I think from after

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well, you've worked at home for
years. Yeah, yeah, but I

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do travel. You I hear one
of the most embarrassing things that has ever

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happened to me when I was traveling. Okay, go ahead, I'm sure

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I've told it, but our listeners
haven't heard it. But I was at

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a hotel, and I was at
the breakfast at the hotel. So I

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don't think this is that embarrassing.
This is a super embarrassing. So I

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had a little bottle of orange juice, you know, a little plastic bottle

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with a lid on it, and
I opened the lid and I took a

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drink of it that I thought I
closed the lid. I was reading a

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newspaper. I was probably like reading
USA Today at the time, and I

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was like not paying attention, and
I went to shake the orange juice and

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the lid wasn't on it, and
I was in a room full of like

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a bunch of people at this hotel
breakfast thing, and I went and shook

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the orange juice, and orange juice
went everywhere. It was Did you hit

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anyone with the orange juice? Thankfully, No, I didn't. That's just

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an average tuesday for me. It
was embarrassing, though. Yeah, well

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at least you had the newspaper.
You could just stop it up with a

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newspaper, right, Yeah, yeah, anyway, we all do embarrassing things.

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Okay, So you brought us like
a plethora of snacks for the last

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episode, which you know was only
like an hour and a half ago,

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and we didn't really you didn't have
anything for the second episode. But her

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daughter was just walking by and she
was like it was so fortuitous. It

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really was. She was like,
hey, do you guys want to try

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this? Yeah, and so we're
going to try this a snack. And

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so for her birthday, she likes
Asian things, so we got her this

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box of Korean snacks from Amazon.
She loves that kind of thing. It

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was she it was like, she's
still going through them. This was two

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months ago that we bought her this
thing. But I had, like,

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I don't know, fifty different packets
of Korean snacks and some of them are

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really yummy, and so anyway,
I haven't tried this one yet. So

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it's called Slim and it is a
potato biscuit cracker apparently, and you can

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get them on Amazon. Yeah,
it's super thin. It looks like you

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mentioned, it looks like a communion
not that I have a lot of experience

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with a communion wafer something look like
that. It looks like a flat pringle.

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Right, that's a pretty good analysis. And it smells like a potato

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chip. But there's a little like
a sabi or something, I don't know,

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chalapeno maybe. Why don't we take
a break and taste it. We'll

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let you know. That was delicious. That was really good. Yeah,

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like a potato chip but like a
cookie. Almo reminded me a little of

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a ritz cracker, but just thinner
and crispier. But the flavor it's like

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kind of that I don't know,
potatoy buttery flavor. Yeah, it was

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really I really I would if that
was like available at the Meyer down the

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road, I would definitely buy a
box of them. Yeah, for sure.

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Yeah, I loved it. Thank
Emma, Yeah, thanks Sma.

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We're not supposed to say her name. Hopefuitely we caught that. She said,

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you're welcome if you didn't hear.
She's adorable, she's kids, were

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very we're very lucky. We're not
ragging. There's just really good people.

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It's just so nice to be able
to say, you know what, we

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like her. There she is.
Do you want to come say high to

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the people. She's shy everyone,
No, she's not, she's not.

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But we do have great kids,
we're very we're very fortunate. Yeah,

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and our cat is still here.
Yeah. Cat likes hanging out while we

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record rifting content. All right.
You know I was stalling, I know,

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because you don't want to do the
recap. I know you're gonna ask

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me to recap, but I took
notes and everything. I have a lot

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of notes. Well I took him
in a sharpie, so it's just kind

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of like large print. Actually,
I bet you can do it. I

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bet you can do a recap here. It's really after even after like an

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hour of content. I think it's
pretty straightforward. But why don't you give

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it a go and I'll fill in
any blanks. Okay, well interrupt me.

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Aaron Corwin e ri I N.
Corwin. She's about twenty. She

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is twenty or about twenty almost twenty. She was like disappeared about two weeks

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before her twentieth birthday. Okay,
Aaron is four weeks pregnant. She's from

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Tennessee. She went missing on June
twenty eighth of twenty fourteen. She woke

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up her husband at seven thirty am
and she said, I'm gonna have a

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me day. So far, so
good. Right, it's a Saturday.

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Her husband is John Corwin, who's
twenty one. They live in on a

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military base in twenty nine Palms,
California. She was homeschooled. She came

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from a foster family that later adopted
her. Had six children, but one

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of them sadly died. Is this
right so far? Yeah? They had

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seven. Yeah, they had seven
and one died, so it's kind of

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hard to keep shack of. Aaron
sounds like just a sweetheart. Loves animals.

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She's called the animal Whisper. She
really loves horses. She did four

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h growing up. Her best friend
is Jesse. Whenever I hear the name

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Jesse, I pictured Jesse from Toy
Story. Oh, I thought you were

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gonna say the Rick Springfield song.
I mean, that's a good song,

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but I just pictured Jesse from Toy
Story. Aaron was shy but warm.

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John was a country boy. They
started dat dating when they were sixteen.

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They got engaged when Aaron was seventeen
and a senior in high school. He

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asked her parents for permission. They
were hesitant, but they were like,

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well, there's nothing we could do
to stop you. John his had always

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wanted to be a marine, so
after he was done with high school,

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he entered the Marines. He meant
to Japan for a spell. He was

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a sniper. Yep. Aaron worked
at the tractor supply company, but currently

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hadn't been working because they lived kind
of like forty five minutes was the nearest

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tractor supply company, so they were
in debt. She owed owned a blue

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Toyota Corolla. They had two dogs
and a cat. She was homesick for

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Tennessee, but her mom was coming
to visit very soon. They were really

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good friends with two other couples that
lived in the same military housing unit that

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they did, Chris and Nicole,
who were a little older, maybe like

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five years older than Aaron and John. They had a daughter named Liberty,

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who was like or five and six. In the time, there was another

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couple, Ashley and co I alway
should say Chris liked weapons. He'd been

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in Afghanistan. He was kind of
struggling with some anxiety and depression upon his

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return. Chris really liked to go
into the desert and shoot things and blew

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things up. What else do we
have? So in January twenty fourteen,

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Aaron had a miscarriage. I already
said this, but they had a lot

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of debt. February twenty fourteen,
a little affair started between Aaron and Chris,

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and it was kind of like these
couples were super tight. They did

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everything together. They had cookouts during
the weekend, they got together and had

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a lot of movie nights. So
this affair, of course, wasn't good

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for their friendships. Do you want
to elaborate on that anymore? No?

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I mean, it just it blew
up eventually, right people found out and

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it got very awkward. John knew
about the affair, and so did Nicole.

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The other the opposite spouses knew about
the fair, but both couples had

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decided to work on their marriage.
On June twenty second of twenty fourteen,

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Chris went into the desert and he
found a mine shaft, which I took

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note of. I think that's about
all I have other than you know,

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she went missing on the twenty eighth, and that's it. Good recap,

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John, John, No, Chris. He had gone out to the desert

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and Connor was going to meet him
up in the desert, but he put

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his phone on airplane airplane mode.
Yeah, and that was the same day

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that Aaron si today and Connor couldn't
find Chris in the desert and he drove

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around looking for him for like three
hours. Yeah. So really Chris was

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out in the desert by himself apparently, and Aaron was out by herself apparently.

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And yeah, either nobody could verify
any of that, and Aaron didn't

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come back. That was a very
good recap. Yeah, that was I

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look forward to listening to this episode
where I can just focus on your handsome

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face and not have to take notes. All right, Well, let let

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us continue the story. So where
we left off is that John had called

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the police on Sunday morning to report
her missing. So the two officers and

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that was twenty four hours later,
not quite twenty it was twenty four hours

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after she left. Yes. Yes. The two officers that showed up to

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take the report, they noted that
John seemed very composed. They treated the

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reports seriously. About a dozen people
die in the Mojave Desert every year from

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the hydration or exposure, and given
that Aaron was pregnant, it was a

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super high priority right out of the
gate. After taking the initial report from

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John, the officers knocked on a
few of the neighbors doors. Chris answered

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when they knocked on his and Nicole's
door. He said he didn't really know

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Aaron very well and that he hadn't
really talked to her in two months.

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They just kind of would wave to
each other in the hallway, and that

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was about the extent of his relationship
with Aaron. Next, they talked to

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Ashling, and when they told her
that Aaron was missing, Ashling got an

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awful feeling in the pit of her
stomach. She knew that Connor, her

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husband, had gone to meet Chris
in the desert that day and had never

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found him, and so she immediately
thought that maybe Chris was involved in this,

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and she knew the whole background.
We talked about it last episode.

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But Ashling was like in the middle
of this whole thing, Like she was

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the first one that found out that
Aaron and Chris were having an affair.

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She just ended up being in the
middle of a lot of these conversations.

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So she just right away thought that
Chris might have had something to do with

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this. So she told the officers
about Aaron's affair with Chris, so they

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knew right away that he had lied
to them just a minute earlier when they

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had been up talking to him.
They went back upstairs to talk to him,

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but no one answered the door this
time, so he had probably gone

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out. Ashling called Nicole and told
her that Aaron was missing. Ashley was

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taken aback by Nicole's reply. According
to her, Nicole snapped at her and

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said, I don't care what happens
to that little bitch. Mind your own

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business. Yeah, not quite the
reaction you would expect when you know one

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00:14:11.320 --> 00:14:16.159
of your neighbors has gone missing in
the desert. In her defense, though,

205
00:14:16.679 --> 00:14:18.960
yeah, you know, she'd been
through a lot and true true,

206
00:14:20.000 --> 00:14:26.679
I'm sure her later reaction was kinder. Maybe we'll see. Nicole also had

207
00:14:26.720 --> 00:14:30.720
some really unkind things about Aaron to
say. When she was at the horse

208
00:14:30.799 --> 00:14:35.759
Ranch with Isabel, she said some
things about Aaron that were really Isabel is

209
00:14:35.799 --> 00:14:41.519
the owner of this horse ranch that
was out near the marine base. And

210
00:14:41.720 --> 00:14:45.960
yeah, both Aaron and Nicole would
spend time at the horse ranch, so

211
00:14:46.039 --> 00:14:48.679
Isabel knew them, She knew Chris, she knew a lot of the people

212
00:14:48.759 --> 00:14:54.240
pretty well. Here here's a really
short clip of Isabel and what she said

213
00:14:54.279 --> 00:14:58.759
that Nicole said to her. Nicole
was telling me that Aaron is probably hiding

214
00:14:58.759 --> 00:15:05.440
out somewhere to make Chris's life miserable, that she setting us up, She's

215
00:15:05.480 --> 00:15:09.080
trying to hurt our family. She's
Aaron's doing this just to get even,

216
00:15:11.120 --> 00:15:15.679
She's trying to get sympathy. So
that was yeah. So again that was

217
00:15:15.759 --> 00:15:18.039
Isabel who owned the horse Ranch,
And basically, you know, after Aaron

218
00:15:18.080 --> 00:15:22.080
disappeared, Nicole's first reaction was she's
out to get us, right, She's

219
00:15:22.120 --> 00:15:26.120
trying to make Chris look bad.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. John

220
00:15:26.240 --> 00:15:30.879
spent Sunday morning calling Aaron's friends to
see if anyone had heard from her.

221
00:15:31.399 --> 00:15:35.639
He called Jesse, who told John
that she had talked to Aaron Saturday morning

222
00:15:35.639 --> 00:15:37.720
before she left for Joshua Tree,
but she hadn't heard from her since.

223
00:15:39.799 --> 00:15:43.320
In the afternoon, John rounded up
about thirty Marines who drove around Joshua Tree

224
00:15:43.399 --> 00:15:48.320
all afternoon searching, but with no
luck. The police hung out waiting for

225
00:15:48.399 --> 00:15:52.080
Chris to come home, which he
did around noon on Sunday. They knew

226
00:15:52.080 --> 00:15:54.840
that he had lied, but they
also knew it could have been innocent,

227
00:15:54.960 --> 00:15:58.879
like maybe he just didn't want to
admit that he and Aaron had had an

228
00:15:58.840 --> 00:16:03.000
affair because he was worried that it
would look bad. When they talked to

229
00:16:03.039 --> 00:16:06.480
him a second time, he admitted
the affair, but he said that after

230
00:16:06.600 --> 00:16:11.320
Nicole found out that he really hadn't
spoken to Aaron much after that. He

231
00:16:11.399 --> 00:16:14.559
said that after they broke it off, he realized that Aaron had lied to

232
00:16:14.639 --> 00:16:18.159
him. He told the police that
Aaron had said that John had abused her,

233
00:16:18.200 --> 00:16:23.000
but now he no longer believed that. The police asked if he knew

234
00:16:23.000 --> 00:16:26.960
that Aaron was pregnant, and he
said no. He also said that they

235
00:16:26.960 --> 00:16:30.799
had never had sex and so the
baby couldn't be his. He said that

236
00:16:30.840 --> 00:16:36.159
he had been at Joshua Tree that
day coyote hunting by himself, but only

237
00:16:36.200 --> 00:16:41.919
because his two buddies had bailed out
on him. Coyote hunting people hunt coyotes.

238
00:16:42.080 --> 00:16:45.159
Yeah, he liked to go out
hunting coyotes and rattlesnakes. That was

239
00:16:45.200 --> 00:16:48.000
his that was his thing. It
seems kind of unfair to go to the

240
00:16:48.080 --> 00:16:55.120
desert and hunt coyotes and or rattlesnakes, Yeah, because that's where they live.

241
00:16:55.519 --> 00:16:57.320
I know, I know, but
that's what he liked to do.

242
00:16:59.360 --> 00:17:03.960
After the police he left, Connor
pulled Chris aside. So Connor is Ashling's

243
00:17:03.000 --> 00:17:07.559
husband. He pulled Chris aside and
said, did you do what I think

244
00:17:07.599 --> 00:17:10.599
you did? Chris said, what
are you even talking about? You know

245
00:17:10.680 --> 00:17:14.200
me better than that, and Connor
replied, I swear to God, Chris,

246
00:17:14.240 --> 00:17:17.759
you'd better not have done anything to
that girl. And so Connor was

247
00:17:17.839 --> 00:17:25.000
also obviously suspicious right out of the
gate about Chris. Investigators definitely started zero

248
00:17:25.079 --> 00:17:27.359
in on Chris at this point,
but they also weren't ruling out John.

249
00:17:27.519 --> 00:17:30.079
I was just going to ask,
Yeah, I mean, there wasn't anyone

250
00:17:30.079 --> 00:17:34.559
who could verify John's alibi that he
stayed in the apartment playing video games most

251
00:17:34.559 --> 00:17:38.000
of the day. And as we
talked about last episode, why did he

252
00:17:38.039 --> 00:17:41.839
wait until Sunday morning to report her
missing, and as we talked about,

253
00:17:41.920 --> 00:17:48.599
John's explanation was that he thought that
you couldn't report someone missing until twenty four

254
00:17:48.640 --> 00:17:52.880
hours. He also seemed way too
calm and withdrawn, which made the police

255
00:17:52.920 --> 00:18:00.319
suspicious you under the circumstances. The
media also started circling around John. His

256
00:18:00.400 --> 00:18:03.680
commanding officer ordered him not to speak
to the media, and the police told

257
00:18:03.759 --> 00:18:08.160
him he couldn't participate in the search
because of the possibility of contaminating evidence.

258
00:18:10.119 --> 00:18:14.279
The media didn't know anything about Chris
or his affair with Aaron, so of

259
00:18:14.279 --> 00:18:18.240
course they put the spotlight on the
spouse. Over time, a lot of

260
00:18:18.319 --> 00:18:22.839
John's marine friends also started avoiding him, and some of Aaron's friends openly questioned

261
00:18:22.839 --> 00:18:27.000
whether he was involved. So John
didn't tell the police about the affair,

262
00:18:27.680 --> 00:18:30.640
not that I know of. I
know they heard about it from Ashley,

263
00:18:30.759 --> 00:18:36.480
but I don't know if he said
anything about it or not. Doesn't think

264
00:18:36.519 --> 00:18:41.319
it was important, or was he
trying to be kind to his wife not

265
00:18:41.440 --> 00:18:45.079
wanting that to get out. I
don't know. It's a good question.

266
00:18:45.119 --> 00:18:47.680
I mean, I kind of get
the feeling that at this point, at

267
00:18:47.759 --> 00:18:52.920
least he thought maybe she got lost
in the desert, or maybe she,

268
00:18:52.319 --> 00:18:56.160
you know, because they had been
having problems, maybe she decided to leave

269
00:18:56.240 --> 00:19:00.480
and go stay at a friend's house. So I'm not sure why he didn't,

270
00:19:00.519 --> 00:19:03.759
you know, kind of bring up
the Chris angle. But but yeah,

271
00:19:03.759 --> 00:19:04.920
I don't. I don't think he
did. But the one thing I

272
00:19:04.960 --> 00:19:10.279
was going to say to round out
the conversation about John and the suspicion around

273
00:19:10.319 --> 00:19:15.240
him is that Aaron's mom and dad
never doubted John's innocence, so they actually

274
00:19:15.240 --> 00:19:21.519
never thought that John was involved in
this. On Sunday afternoon, the police

275
00:19:21.559 --> 00:19:26.079
called some of Aaron's friends, including
her best friend back in Tennessee, Jesse,

276
00:19:26.720 --> 00:19:30.400
who again we talked about in Part
one. Aaron confided everything in Jesse,

277
00:19:30.559 --> 00:19:33.759
so Jesse knew about the affair.
She knew a lot of things that

278
00:19:33.799 --> 00:19:37.480
were going on in Aaron's life that
she hadn't necessarily shared with other people.

279
00:19:38.599 --> 00:19:41.400
When Jesse talked to the police,
she said, well, maybe you should

280
00:19:41.400 --> 00:19:45.240
talk to Chris, and the police
said, well, actually, we just

281
00:19:45.319 --> 00:19:49.759
got done talking to him. And
at this point Jesse freaked out because she

282
00:19:49.920 --> 00:19:53.640
now knew that Chris was back at
the base. But Aaron was not,

283
00:19:53.839 --> 00:20:00.519
and so she told the police everything
At that point, we're going to talk

284
00:20:00.559 --> 00:20:04.000
about now what actually happened over the
last couple of months. That when we

285
00:20:04.039 --> 00:20:07.720
thought the affair ended, it didn't
actually end, is the bottom line.

286
00:20:08.359 --> 00:20:14.480
I'm shocked, I know. So
when Nicole found out about Chris and Aaron,

287
00:20:15.160 --> 00:20:18.599
so the relationship did get put on
hold for a couple of weeks.

288
00:20:18.640 --> 00:20:23.799
But then Chris wrote a poem and
secretly handed it to Aaron. The poem

289
00:20:23.799 --> 00:20:27.680
read, like it or not,
you still hold a part of my heart.

290
00:20:29.359 --> 00:20:32.359
Ready or not, we were going
to get caught. Don't give up

291
00:20:32.359 --> 00:20:36.440
and I won't too hopefully like me, you still think I love you?

292
00:20:37.519 --> 00:20:41.160
Beautiful poem. I'm sorry, I'll
be right back. Throw up. It's

293
00:20:41.160 --> 00:20:45.400
a little nauseating, Okay, poetry
doesn't have to always rhyme people, good

294
00:20:45.519 --> 00:20:51.880
point. So regardless of how bad
the poem might have been, Aaron was

295
00:20:52.000 --> 00:20:55.920
touched by this, and she and
Chris started seeing each other again, but

296
00:20:56.000 --> 00:20:59.799
this time they were a lot more
careful. They used the messaging app that

297
00:20:59.880 --> 00:21:03.400
was more private, and in early
May they had sex for the first time.

298
00:21:04.559 --> 00:21:08.119
Aaron was falling in love with Chris. She told Jesse that she was

299
00:21:08.160 --> 00:21:12.039
going to leave John and moved to
Alaska with Chris. She was even looking

300
00:21:12.039 --> 00:21:17.480
for apartments in Anchorage. So it's
not like Chris is a great catch.

301
00:21:18.000 --> 00:21:21.240
John sounds like a pretty good,
solid guy. Yeah, I think so,

302
00:21:21.480 --> 00:21:23.759
I think. But you know,
John was also a little bit reserved

303
00:21:23.839 --> 00:21:29.000
and didn't share his emotions and things
like that, which I can understand that,

304
00:21:29.240 --> 00:21:30.880
you know, that might be hard. But yeah, Chris doesn't seem

305
00:21:30.920 --> 00:21:36.039
like a great catch to me either. I guess we're just older and I

306
00:21:36.079 --> 00:21:40.519
know that I've never really been tempted. But the grass isn't greener on the

307
00:21:40.519 --> 00:21:42.759
other side, you know. Yeah, falling in love is a lot of

308
00:21:44.240 --> 00:21:49.119
hormones and it's not really real and
I don't know, I know, well,

309
00:21:49.160 --> 00:21:52.200
and they were so young too.
I mean, I just think anybody

310
00:21:52.359 --> 00:21:57.359
that gets married when they're eighteen with
really they're the first boyfriend they've ever had.

311
00:21:59.119 --> 00:22:02.920
It's just it's probably not going to
end well, you know, although

312
00:22:03.000 --> 00:22:04.599
sometimes it does sometimes I think,
you know, there's plenty of people in

313
00:22:06.119 --> 00:22:12.400
high school that are together forever and
happy together surever. So Aaron had found

314
00:22:12.440 --> 00:22:17.720
out that she was pregnant before the
day that she and John had gone to

315
00:22:17.720 --> 00:22:21.920
the ear. So you remember I
did that math. Yeah, so,

316
00:22:22.720 --> 00:22:26.440
yeah, she had gone to the
ear with John on June twenty second,

317
00:22:26.480 --> 00:22:30.640
but she actually found out she was
pregnant like a week before that, and

318
00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:33.640
she knew that the baby was Chris's. Wait, so you said that she

319
00:22:33.720 --> 00:22:37.240
was three weeks pregnant, so she
found it when she was two weeks.

320
00:22:37.920 --> 00:22:41.400
Yeah, that doesn't Maybe she wasn't
she must have been. Yeah, I'm

321
00:22:41.440 --> 00:22:47.400
pretty sure you I had. I
had the same exact questions. That was

322
00:22:47.799 --> 00:22:51.200
clearly stated in the book that I
read. But I think that must have

323
00:22:51.240 --> 00:22:55.000
been wrong. I just gave it
a quick google and for people with regular

324
00:22:55.039 --> 00:23:00.519
menstrual cycles and at home pregnancy test
can generally detect pregnancy about four weeks from

325
00:23:00.559 --> 00:23:04.799
the first day of your last period, okay, and a doctor test can

326
00:23:04.880 --> 00:23:07.839
detected a few days earlier than that. Yeah, so I'm guessing that was

327
00:23:08.079 --> 00:23:11.519
that was a little bit off,
a little early. It's probably further along

328
00:23:11.519 --> 00:23:15.480
than we thought. But she did
know that it was Chris's, and so

329
00:23:15.759 --> 00:23:22.079
she actually told Chris about a week
before John had found out on the twenty

330
00:23:22.119 --> 00:23:25.559
second. She wasn't sure how Chris
would react to the news, but he

331
00:23:25.640 --> 00:23:29.680
seemed excited about it. He asked
Aaron not to tell anyone for a bit

332
00:23:29.759 --> 00:23:33.640
so that he could figure out how
to break the news to Nicole. A

333
00:23:33.680 --> 00:23:37.440
few days before Aaron disappeared, Chris
told Aaron that he wanted to take her

334
00:23:37.480 --> 00:23:44.559
somewhere special to celebrate her pregnancy and
that he had a quote special surprise unquote

335
00:23:44.640 --> 00:23:49.359
for Aaron. Aaron texted Jesse saying, quote, so apparently this surprise trip

336
00:23:49.440 --> 00:23:53.279
is super important and I finally got
to got him to tell me it's by

337
00:23:53.319 --> 00:24:00.119
the National Park unquote. So I'm
guessing Chris didn't know that Jesse was part

338
00:24:00.160 --> 00:24:03.240
of the equation, right, Yeah. I think he thought Aaron was keeping

339
00:24:03.279 --> 00:24:08.119
everything super secret to herself. So
they decided on the twenty eighth that would

340
00:24:08.119 --> 00:24:11.599
be the day that they would go
out to the desert and Chris would share

341
00:24:11.640 --> 00:24:17.920
his secret surprise with Aaron. And
that's why she told John that she needed

342
00:24:17.960 --> 00:24:21.200
some me time that day. My
blood pressure is starting to rise here.

343
00:24:22.279 --> 00:24:26.440
Aaron was giddy leading up to the
twenty eighth. She was thinking that Chris

344
00:24:26.480 --> 00:24:29.359
was going to tell her that he
was leaving the coal and that he was

345
00:24:29.400 --> 00:24:33.720
going to propose to her that day. She texted Jesse, saying, this

346
00:24:33.799 --> 00:24:37.799
day cannot come quick enough. Oh, oh, poor Aaron. I know,

347
00:24:37.839 --> 00:24:42.440
it's horrible thinking she went out there
with these expectations, and she had

348
00:24:42.480 --> 00:24:48.319
confided everything in Jesse. Jesse had
tried to keep her friend's secret for her,

349
00:24:48.400 --> 00:24:51.880
but when she realized that Aaron was
missing and that Chris had come back

350
00:24:51.920 --> 00:24:55.400
from the desert alone that day,
she knew that something was terribly wrong.

351
00:24:56.079 --> 00:24:59.519
Well, how dumb is Chris,
Well, yeah, he's pretty dumb.

352
00:25:00.559 --> 00:25:06.359
That was a rhetorical Chris. So
after Jesse spilled the beans to the police,

353
00:25:06.599 --> 00:25:10.000
she talked to John and she told
him everything as well. And as

354
00:25:10.039 --> 00:25:12.759
you can imagine, John was devastated
because he really thought the affair had ended.

355
00:25:14.039 --> 00:25:18.559
You know, a couple months before, Jesse also called Aaron's mom,

356
00:25:18.839 --> 00:25:22.319
Lare and told her everything. Lare, of course, was also heartbroken and

357
00:25:22.599 --> 00:25:27.799
you know, overcome with worry.
She and John's mom both flew in from

358
00:25:27.799 --> 00:25:32.279
Tennessee the next morning, and then
the dads flew in a couple of days

359
00:25:32.359 --> 00:25:37.799
later. On Monday, June thirtieth, Aaron's car was found parked in a

360
00:25:37.880 --> 00:25:41.240
remote spot a few miles from the
military base. There was a set of

361
00:25:41.279 --> 00:25:47.759
footprints in the dirt leading from her
blue Corolla to another set of tire tracks,

362
00:25:47.799 --> 00:25:49.000
and then they ended, so it
was like she got out of the

363
00:25:49.000 --> 00:25:52.920
car walked to somebody else's car.
By now, there were a lot of

364
00:25:52.960 --> 00:25:57.480
agencies involved in the search for Aaron, the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department,

365
00:25:57.559 --> 00:26:03.599
the FBI, the Border Patrol,
and officials from nearby La County and Kern

366
00:26:03.640 --> 00:26:08.279
County. In the meantime, police
brought Chris in for a formal interrogation and

367
00:26:08.440 --> 00:26:14.000
also got search warrants for John and
Aaron's apartment, Chris and Nicole's apartment,

368
00:26:14.400 --> 00:26:18.440
and both Aaron's and Chris's vehicles.
In Aaron's apartment, they found the poem

369
00:26:18.559 --> 00:26:23.000
that Chris had written. When they
searched Nicole's and Chris's apartment, they only

370
00:26:23.000 --> 00:26:26.279
found one of Chris's guns, even
though they knew that he also had a

371
00:26:26.359 --> 00:26:30.160
hunting rifle registered in his name and
a potato gun. Yeah, and the

372
00:26:30.200 --> 00:26:34.000
potato gun. They actually, I
didn't go into this in my script,

373
00:26:34.000 --> 00:26:38.480
but they actually arrested him later about
the potato gun because they wanted they wanted

374
00:26:38.519 --> 00:26:42.319
an excuse to arrest him, and
so the potato gun was what they had

375
00:26:42.359 --> 00:26:47.440
at the time. Potato guns are
illegal, illegal in California. Okay,

376
00:26:47.480 --> 00:26:49.319
can you explain that to me?
No, I can't. I can't explain

377
00:26:49.359 --> 00:26:53.559
it. You could buy an R
fifteen, but a potato gun can't have

378
00:26:53.680 --> 00:26:59.519
that. You're lying. I'm not
lied. Our nerve guns illegal. I

379
00:26:59.559 --> 00:27:03.599
don't think so. We actually had
a potato gun growing up, did you.

380
00:27:03.160 --> 00:27:07.480
We built one at home. I
remember once you know it was,

381
00:27:07.720 --> 00:27:11.319
well, it was a tennis ball
cannon. I guess that's different than a

382
00:27:11.319 --> 00:27:15.599
potato gun. A potato gun isn't
a whole potato unless I'm wrong. Oh,

383
00:27:15.640 --> 00:27:17.480
I don't know. I thought you
could put a whole potato in there.

384
00:27:18.119 --> 00:27:21.599
Oh maybe that maybe, maybe there's
different versions. The one that we

385
00:27:21.680 --> 00:27:25.799
had was like you literally just stuck
the tip of the gun into a potato

386
00:27:25.839 --> 00:27:29.319
and it just had like a a
smidge of potato. Oh. I thought

387
00:27:29.359 --> 00:27:32.839
it was like a tube that you've
stuck the potato down in. So when

388
00:27:32.880 --> 00:27:34.920
I was young, I had two
older brothers and they, you guys,

389
00:27:34.920 --> 00:27:40.680
were just a just a bunch of
clowns. We were. So my brothers

390
00:27:40.720 --> 00:27:45.119
built a tennis ball cannon, which
is basically a long tube that you would

391
00:27:45.160 --> 00:27:47.839
put a tennis ball down in and
then you would put like I don't know,

392
00:27:48.240 --> 00:27:51.599
like some kind of like gasoline or
something in the bottom that would like

393
00:27:51.640 --> 00:27:53.759
cause an explosion. And they built
it, yeah, and the tennis ball

394
00:27:53.759 --> 00:27:57.079
would shoot out of the cannon at
like really really high speeds. And so

395
00:27:57.519 --> 00:28:02.240
my one brother aimed it at my
other brother who stood at the at the

396
00:28:02.319 --> 00:28:06.200
end of the yard. Okay,
wait, let me guess Tom aimed it

397
00:28:06.319 --> 00:28:08.839
at Mike. No, it was
the other way around. So Tom interesting,

398
00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:11.960
Tom got a baseball glove and I
think he put some pads on to

399
00:28:12.039 --> 00:28:15.279
be for safety, the safety first, and he stood at the other end

400
00:28:15.279 --> 00:28:19.119
of the yard and Mike fired the
tennis ball cannon at so he was willing.

401
00:28:19.400 --> 00:28:22.359
Yeah, he tried to catch it, and I don't I don't remember

402
00:28:22.359 --> 00:28:25.839
if he caught or not. But
this but the tennis ball came out like,

403
00:28:25.880 --> 00:28:27.960
you know, one hundred miles an
hour. It was like a rocket.

404
00:28:29.119 --> 00:28:30.640
That's really funny. Actually, you
have never heard this story before.

405
00:28:32.440 --> 00:28:37.720
Your poor mom, she rest in
people. So I did a quick google

406
00:28:37.759 --> 00:28:41.559
a potato gun and literally the one
that we had growing up is like you

407
00:28:41.640 --> 00:28:44.440
stuck, you know, just the
tiny it was just you know, like

408
00:28:44.480 --> 00:28:49.480
a ner razer sized potato. But
I can understand why a potato launcher would

409
00:28:49.519 --> 00:28:55.519
be illegal because it's again I think
mostly a DIY type project. But yeah,

410
00:28:55.559 --> 00:29:00.559
it's like a cannon. Right.
Yeah, did you know you can

411
00:29:00.599 --> 00:29:03.640
send a potato in the mail?
No? Yeah, you can. Well,

412
00:29:03.680 --> 00:29:06.440
I mean, of course you can
send a potato in a mail,

413
00:29:06.720 --> 00:29:10.720
but you can just take a potato
and you can write yeah, and they

414
00:29:10.799 --> 00:29:14.480
will they will know it, and
it would be really funny if a listener

415
00:29:14.920 --> 00:29:22.200
potato, our listeners potatoes. Oh
we've gone down quite the rabbit hole here,

416
00:29:22.240 --> 00:29:25.480
but let's go back to the story. So, so, yeah,

417
00:29:25.480 --> 00:29:27.599
they only found one of Chris's guns
they knew he had. He had a

418
00:29:27.680 --> 00:29:32.200
hunting rifle that was registered in his
name that they didn't find in the apartment.

419
00:29:33.200 --> 00:29:37.039
During Chris's interrogation, he stuck to
his story that he and Aaron had

420
00:29:37.079 --> 00:29:40.200
broken it off a couple months earlier
and that they had never had sex.

421
00:29:41.200 --> 00:29:45.039
Investigators acted dumb. They didn't want
to reveal yet that Jesse had told them

422
00:29:45.079 --> 00:29:49.279
otherwise. Here's one short clip of
an interesting moment in the interrogation when they

423
00:29:49.279 --> 00:30:02.000
asked Chris if he had made any
phone calls calls out because are they in

424
00:30:02.039 --> 00:30:04.680
a tunnel. Yeah, the audio
is not the best on that, but

425
00:30:06.079 --> 00:30:11.039
you might not have picked up.
So they asked if he made any I

426
00:30:11.240 --> 00:30:14.359
just put the other biscuit in your
mouth. I was about to ask you

427
00:30:14.400 --> 00:30:19.680
a question. Let's take a quick
break so Tina can chew her biscuit.

428
00:30:26.880 --> 00:30:29.720
Okay, how is your sorry?
I think you were going to want me

429
00:30:29.759 --> 00:30:32.640
to talk for am it? And
I'm really hungry? Okay, I mean

430
00:30:32.799 --> 00:30:37.319
like two bites of an apple,
half a bee. Anyway, I agree,

431
00:30:37.400 --> 00:30:40.079
I'm sorry, it's okay. I
know that clip was a little hard

432
00:30:40.079 --> 00:30:41.839
to hear, but the police were
asking him about using his phone, and

433
00:30:41.960 --> 00:30:45.119
I don't know if he picked up
on his answer, but he said,

434
00:30:45.680 --> 00:30:51.359
quote that area we were in we
plural. See That's why I'm not a

435
00:30:51.359 --> 00:30:53.160
criminal, because that's the exact mistake
I would make. Yeah. Well,

436
00:30:53.200 --> 00:30:57.039
detectives took note of it. They
didn't say anything, but they quietly noted

437
00:30:57.839 --> 00:31:00.920
that he had used the earl we
at that point when he was supposed to

438
00:31:00.960 --> 00:31:07.160
be by himself. They told Chris
that they had found Aaron's car, and

439
00:31:07.200 --> 00:31:10.920
he seemed surprised about that, and
they told him that the tire tracks matched

440
00:31:10.960 --> 00:31:14.519
his jeep, even though they didn't
actually know that at the time. It

441
00:31:14.559 --> 00:31:18.720
was kind of a bluff, but
it worked because now Chris changed his story

442
00:31:18.799 --> 00:31:22.720
again. He still maintained that he
didn't see Aaron that day, but now

443
00:31:22.759 --> 00:31:25.799
he said he saw her car and
he drove over to see if she was

444
00:31:25.839 --> 00:31:30.119
in it, but she wasn't.
At this point, the cops stopped playing

445
00:31:30.160 --> 00:31:33.680
dumb and they turned to bad cop
mode. They told him that Jesse had

446
00:31:33.720 --> 00:31:38.240
revealed everything to them about the affair
and the pregnancy and his plans for a

447
00:31:38.319 --> 00:31:42.640
special surprise that day, and they
had a copy of all of Jesse's text

448
00:31:42.680 --> 00:31:47.680
messages that she had sent them to
back this all up. They asked Chris

449
00:31:47.720 --> 00:31:51.240
if he would take a polygraph,
but he said no because he was quote

450
00:31:51.240 --> 00:31:55.240
emotionally unstable unquote and he was worried
that it would give a false reading.

451
00:31:56.240 --> 00:32:00.440
They asked if they would find any
suspicious searches on his computer. He said,

452
00:32:00.799 --> 00:32:02.599
well, I did look up ways
to dispose a body a few weeks

453
00:32:02.640 --> 00:32:07.160
ago. You know, I was
just hanging out with one of my marine

454
00:32:07.200 --> 00:32:12.119
buddies and the subject came up randomly, so I searched for it, but

455
00:32:12.119 --> 00:32:15.440
he couldn't actually remember who the buddy
was that he was with. They also

456
00:32:15.480 --> 00:32:19.799
asked about the rifle that they didn't
find during the search, and Chris admitted

457
00:32:19.839 --> 00:32:23.039
that he had asked Nicole to take
the rifle to the horse ranch and stash

458
00:32:23.079 --> 00:32:28.880
it there, which she did without
Isabel's permission. Isabel the owner of the

459
00:32:28.880 --> 00:32:31.720
horse ranch. So Nicole took this
rifle to the horse ranch and put it

460
00:32:31.759 --> 00:32:36.839
in Isabel's closet in her house.
Oh my god, I know. Do

461
00:32:36.920 --> 00:32:40.839
you believe that. Isabel was like, please find it. But Chris told

462
00:32:40.839 --> 00:32:44.000
them, I mean, he told
them that he gave it to Nicole.

463
00:32:45.400 --> 00:32:49.640
So Nicole just took the gun and
no questions asked, or probably some questions

464
00:32:49.720 --> 00:32:52.480
asked. Nicole's role in this whole
thing is very questionable to me because of

465
00:32:52.480 --> 00:32:55.720
the way that she acted toward Aaron, that some of the things she said

466
00:32:55.759 --> 00:32:59.720
to people. I don't think I
put it in my script, but at

467
00:32:59.720 --> 00:33:02.920
one point she was talking to Aaron
or to Isabel, sorry, and she

468
00:33:04.039 --> 00:33:07.680
said something like, well nobody,
no crime, like if they don't find

469
00:33:07.680 --> 00:33:10.920
the body. Yeah, So I
don't know. I don't know about Nicole.

470
00:33:12.000 --> 00:33:16.480
Well, we'll talk it's possible.
I think it's certainly possible. I'm

471
00:33:16.519 --> 00:33:21.359
not going to be any part of
your getting rid of your mistress, just

472
00:33:21.400 --> 00:33:23.880
so you know. Okay, fair
enough to be clear, though, I

473
00:33:23.920 --> 00:33:28.799
do not have a mistress. Okay, good, good to know I didn't.

474
00:33:28.839 --> 00:33:31.279
I did not really think you did. I know. When the five

475
00:33:31.279 --> 00:33:36.920
hour interrogation ended, Chris seemed surprised
that they were letting him go without arresting

476
00:33:37.000 --> 00:33:38.920
him. But without a body,
they still didn't have proof that he had

477
00:33:38.920 --> 00:33:44.480
committed a crime. Another story.
Again, I didn't put this in my

478
00:33:44.519 --> 00:33:46.359
original script, but I thought it
was interesting. When the police drove Chris

479
00:33:46.400 --> 00:33:52.720
back to his apartment complex, he
was like asking them questions about like,

480
00:33:52.200 --> 00:33:55.000
well, when a body is lost
in the desert, do you guys always

481
00:33:55.039 --> 00:33:58.480
find it? And oh my gosh, and the police were like, yet,

482
00:33:58.559 --> 00:34:01.480
we've never not found a body.
So it was really kind of yeah,

483
00:34:01.640 --> 00:34:09.000
just he's dumb. He's dumb.
Apparently he's dominant, horrible person and

484
00:34:09.119 --> 00:34:14.239
evil. Yeah. While the search
for Aaron was going on, Chris's active

485
00:34:14.320 --> 00:34:20.599
duty service officially ended on July eighth, ten days after Aaron's disappearance, Chris,

486
00:34:20.719 --> 00:34:23.039
Nicole, and Liberty got into a
U haul and they started their trek

487
00:34:23.079 --> 00:34:27.320
back to Alaska. Did the police
know this, Yeah, they did,

488
00:34:27.559 --> 00:34:30.360
and that was actually why they arrested
him for the potato gun thing, so

489
00:34:30.400 --> 00:34:32.920
they could basically tell him, you
have to if you know, when it

490
00:34:32.920 --> 00:34:36.280
comes to trial, you have to
come back to the state, but you

491
00:34:36.320 --> 00:34:39.119
can go to Alaska if you if
you need to. Once they got to

492
00:34:39.159 --> 00:34:44.480
Alaska, Chris told his parents about
the whole situation, including his affair with

493
00:34:44.519 --> 00:34:47.840
Aaron. They didn't believe that he
could have killed her, but they pulled

494
00:34:47.840 --> 00:34:52.039
their funds together to hire a top
rated criminal attorney from California just to be

495
00:34:52.159 --> 00:34:58.760
safe. As the police questioned various
friends, they found out that Chris had

496
00:34:58.800 --> 00:35:04.800
made comments weak for Errand's disappearance about
finding some abandoned minds that were so remote

497
00:35:04.840 --> 00:35:07.519
that no one would ever find them, and so they started focusing their search

498
00:35:07.599 --> 00:35:12.679
on the abandoned mines. That may
make it sound like they could narrow the

499
00:35:12.679 --> 00:35:16.639
search down, but we're talking about
two thousand square miles of desert and more

500
00:35:16.679 --> 00:35:22.159
than twelve thousand abandoned mind shafts.
Yeah, and there's no there's no like

501
00:35:22.239 --> 00:35:25.840
database of minds or a map showing
all of them. It's just the twelve

502
00:35:25.920 --> 00:35:30.239
thousand. Yeah, they're all over
in the state of California or you know,

503
00:35:30.559 --> 00:35:32.719
in the Mojave Desert. These are
like kidding, Yeah, these are

504
00:35:32.719 --> 00:35:36.960
like old gold mines that people would
dig. Some of them were like you

505
00:35:37.000 --> 00:35:39.000
know, vertical vertical that would go
down in the ground. Some were going

506
00:35:39.000 --> 00:35:42.599
into the side of cliffs. But
they were like everywhere. Well, you

507
00:35:42.679 --> 00:35:46.920
hear so many stories of people disappearing
and potentially being in a mind shaft.

508
00:35:46.960 --> 00:35:51.000
I really had no idea there were
that many abandoned minds. Yeah, it's

509
00:35:51.000 --> 00:35:53.079
crazy. And like I mentioned,
there's no there's no map of them all.

510
00:35:53.119 --> 00:35:55.800
They're just you know, they're just
everywhere. Well, how is that

511
00:35:55.880 --> 00:36:01.880
safe to I'm just I guess this
is not another rabbit hole, but like

512
00:36:01.920 --> 00:36:06.239
a mine in the desert, a
hole in the ground, right, it

513
00:36:06.280 --> 00:36:09.039
just seems very vulnerable to have a
mine and then sand on top of it.

514
00:36:09.119 --> 00:36:15.280
And yeah, yeah, it's definitely
h I mean, there's not like

515
00:36:15.639 --> 00:36:16.679
their whole. It's a hole in
the ground, right, so you can

516
00:36:16.760 --> 00:36:21.039
see it if you're walking up to
it, but it's definitely a but just

517
00:36:21.119 --> 00:36:25.599
the area around the hole would be
vulnerable and it could be yeah. So

518
00:36:25.639 --> 00:36:30.039
because of like how many of these
mine shafts there were and how big of

519
00:36:30.079 --> 00:36:32.880
an area we were talking about,
the police started preparing for the possibility of

520
00:36:34.000 --> 00:36:37.239
charging Chris without a body, which
we actually talked about that in the last

521
00:36:37.239 --> 00:36:40.840
episode. It's definitely harder to you
know, get a conviction that way,

522
00:36:40.840 --> 00:36:45.519
but it's becoming more common with you
know, DNA and other things. But

523
00:36:45.599 --> 00:36:51.079
a break came in the case when
they talked to Chris's friend, Joseph Hollifield.

524
00:36:51.800 --> 00:36:54.199
If you remember, Hollifield went out
into the desert with Chris less than

525
00:36:54.239 --> 00:36:59.320
a week before Aaron's disappearance, and
that was the trip where Chris Setti found

526
00:36:59.360 --> 00:37:04.280
some mine shaft that were really cool
and really remote. Hallafield couldn't tell them

527
00:37:04.280 --> 00:37:07.079
exactly where they were, but he
had a bunch of photos on his phone

528
00:37:07.199 --> 00:37:12.039
from that day. The bad news
was that the photos didn't have a lot

529
00:37:12.079 --> 00:37:15.559
of recognizable landmarks. They were just
a bunch of pictures of you know,

530
00:37:15.679 --> 00:37:20.719
abandoned mines in the desert. But
they got their second break in the case

531
00:37:20.800 --> 00:37:24.760
when they brought in a guy named
Doug Billings to help. So Billings was

532
00:37:24.760 --> 00:37:30.280
a local guy who helped run his
family's hardware store, but his real passion

533
00:37:30.360 --> 00:37:35.679
was caving. He traveled all over
the world exploring and mapping caves, and

534
00:37:35.719 --> 00:37:39.559
he happened to be the world's biggest
expert on the abandoned mine shafts in and

535
00:37:39.599 --> 00:37:45.360
around Joshua Tree National Park. They
brought Hollafield's photos to Doug Billings and he

536
00:37:45.440 --> 00:37:52.159
immediately knew where everyone was taken.
I know, this is just amazing to

537
00:37:52.199 --> 00:37:54.800
me. He knew the area so
well that even if there was like a

538
00:37:54.800 --> 00:37:59.519
minor landmark like a little, you
know, building, or a weird looking

539
00:37:59.519 --> 00:38:02.280
tree or whatever, he knew exactly
where it was. That's bananas, because

540
00:38:02.280 --> 00:38:06.760
you would think they would all look
very similar. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

541
00:38:06.800 --> 00:38:09.880
So with his knowledge of the locations, combined with the time stamps of

542
00:38:09.920 --> 00:38:14.599
the photos and the angle of the
sun, they were able to map out

543
00:38:14.760 --> 00:38:19.920
Chris and Joseph's route that day almost
exactly. So on Saturday, July second,

544
00:38:20.159 --> 00:38:23.159
they drove around to the area where
the photos were taken. That day,

545
00:38:23.199 --> 00:38:27.360
they searched on foot as best they
could, and they took cadaver dogs

546
00:38:27.400 --> 00:38:30.639
around, but they had no luck. Even narrowing down the search as they

547
00:38:30.639 --> 00:38:36.239
did, they were still over six
hundred mines that the team decided were possibilities.

548
00:38:37.199 --> 00:38:42.559
So for the next seven weeks,
groups of volunteers and teams of two

549
00:38:42.679 --> 00:38:46.039
or three searched every mine on the
list, starting most days at three am

550
00:38:46.199 --> 00:38:52.159
to avoid the desert heat goodness,
but they had no luck. After eight

551
00:38:52.159 --> 00:38:57.679
weeks searched six hundred mines. Holy
moly, after eight weeks, everyone involved

552
00:38:57.719 --> 00:39:01.320
in the search was exhausted and they
were getting hopeless. All of these people

553
00:39:01.360 --> 00:39:05.559
they had risked their lives like going
down into these mines, like you know,

554
00:39:05.679 --> 00:39:08.440
you pointed out a lot of them
were unstable, you know, definitely

555
00:39:08.559 --> 00:39:15.599
dangerous, and investigators decided that Saturday, August sixteenth would be the official final

556
00:39:15.679 --> 00:39:20.920
day of the search. As that
day was drawing to a close, a

557
00:39:20.960 --> 00:39:24.920
group of volunteers led by a software
engineer named Luca Cherbini, a native of

558
00:39:24.960 --> 00:39:30.360
Italy and a big time adventurer,
they approached the last mine on the list,

559
00:39:30.440 --> 00:39:34.199
a ten foot by ten foot one
hundred and forty foot deep pit.

560
00:39:35.119 --> 00:39:37.840
As they got close to it,
they smelled gasoline and the awful smell of

561
00:39:37.880 --> 00:39:43.599
decay. They radioed another team that
was nearby and asked them to bring the

562
00:39:43.639 --> 00:39:46.800
bucket cam, which was basically a
GoPro camera and a light rigged up in

563
00:39:46.800 --> 00:39:51.280
a bucket with a long rope that
they could lower down into the caves.

564
00:39:52.119 --> 00:39:55.440
But this particular mind had it had
a slope to it, and so someone

565
00:39:55.480 --> 00:39:59.920
had to go down in the mine
about thirty to forty feet and then lower

566
00:40:00.079 --> 00:40:02.679
the bucket the rest of the way
from there. So they set up like

567
00:40:02.679 --> 00:40:07.440
a tripod over the mine so that
Luca could start repelling down into the mine.

568
00:40:08.320 --> 00:40:13.360
He had a gas mask on,
but his gas detector went off about

569
00:40:13.360 --> 00:40:17.000
twenty feet down, indicating that the
air was toxic. His eyes were stinging.

570
00:40:17.360 --> 00:40:21.880
He got to thirty or forty feet
down and then he was able to

571
00:40:21.920 --> 00:40:24.360
lower the bucket down. He could
only stay down there for a couple more

572
00:40:24.360 --> 00:40:28.639
minutes because it was so unbearable,
and so then they brought him back up

573
00:40:28.679 --> 00:40:31.440
and they looked at the GoPro footage. It wasn't clear, but it looked

574
00:40:31.480 --> 00:40:36.440
like there might be a body.
So what was the gas that was causing

575
00:40:36.840 --> 00:40:39.280
his detector to go off? Well, do you remember the propane tank I

576
00:40:39.320 --> 00:40:45.119
talked about earlier, So there was
propane and there was also gasoline. Apparently

577
00:40:45.159 --> 00:40:49.360
what Chris had done was through the
propane tank down, opened it up,

578
00:40:49.639 --> 00:40:52.360
put gasoline down there. I think
his intent was to like blow the mine

579
00:40:52.440 --> 00:40:57.280
up or to start a fire that
would incinerate everything. So I'm guessing this

580
00:40:57.440 --> 00:41:01.320
mine was pretty remote. Yeah,
super sup remote and super deep to like

581
00:41:01.360 --> 00:41:06.760
one hundred and forty feet down if
you can imagine. So with the footage

582
00:41:06.760 --> 00:41:08.800
from the GoPro, in addition to
what they thought might be a body,

583
00:41:09.239 --> 00:41:14.440
they could clearly see a propane tank
also on the floor of the mine,

584
00:41:15.159 --> 00:41:17.800
and so that was basically the point
when the detectives were like, yeah,

585
00:41:17.800 --> 00:41:23.599
this is this is probably Aaron's body. Another caver went down, this time

586
00:41:23.599 --> 00:41:27.760
with a full respirator so that he
was able to go nearly all the way

587
00:41:27.800 --> 00:41:30.559
to the bottom. He verified that
it was indeed a body at the bottom,

588
00:41:30.719 --> 00:41:36.119
wearing the same clothes that Aaron had
on when she went missing. Getting

589
00:41:36.159 --> 00:41:39.000
her body out of the mine was
incredibly challenging, both because of how deep

590
00:41:39.039 --> 00:41:44.639
and precarious the mind was, but
also because her body was in an advanced

591
00:41:44.800 --> 00:41:49.599
stage of decomposition. How much time
had passed eight weeks okay, yeah,

592
00:41:49.639 --> 00:41:52.199
and you know the desert heat and
everything. But they were able to get

593
00:41:52.199 --> 00:41:55.559
her body out the next day.
Her body also was on like a there

594
00:41:55.599 --> 00:41:59.679
was like a false bottom to the
mine, like there was a wooden like

595
00:41:59.760 --> 00:42:02.119
a wooden plank that lay across and
she was on top of that, and

596
00:42:02.159 --> 00:42:06.960
so they were worried about this,
you know, this wooden plank might have

597
00:42:07.000 --> 00:42:10.880
collapsed, and they had no idea
how deep the mine was. He didn't

598
00:42:10.880 --> 00:42:15.639
go into the mine, He just
threw her body down there. Yeah,

599
00:42:15.679 --> 00:42:19.960
so they were they were actually actually
able to get her body out the next

600
00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:24.199
day. During the recovery, they
found that there was a garat around Aaron's

601
00:42:24.280 --> 00:42:30.079
neck. The autopsy revealed fractures to
Aaron's clavical to one of her ribs,

602
00:42:30.079 --> 00:42:35.639
and the back of her skull was
also fractured. The medical examiner believed that

603
00:42:35.679 --> 00:42:38.559
the clavical and the rib fractures were
due to the fall down the mine shaft,

604
00:42:38.679 --> 00:42:42.880
but the skull fractures appeared to be
the result of being hit with a

605
00:42:42.880 --> 00:42:46.079
blunt object. It was hard to
tell for sure, but the examiner believed

606
00:42:46.280 --> 00:42:51.960
the manner of death was strangling by
the garrot found around her neck. They

607
00:42:52.039 --> 00:42:55.519
weren't able to determine in the autopsy
whether Aaron was pregnant and if so,

608
00:42:55.599 --> 00:43:00.639
whose baby it was just because her
body was just too badly composed. If

609
00:43:00.639 --> 00:43:05.119
they could have verified that, Chris
might have been charged with a second murder.

610
00:43:05.519 --> 00:43:08.280
Oh it's horrible, you know,
it's really Yeah, the whole thing

611
00:43:08.360 --> 00:43:13.320
is just really sad. Just can
never wrap my head around like he's she's

612
00:43:13.880 --> 00:43:19.159
you allegedly love her and she's pregnant
with your baby. I know, it's

613
00:43:19.199 --> 00:43:23.119
horrible. And he thinks he's going
to get away with his mistress disappearing and

614
00:43:23.559 --> 00:43:28.440
disgusting, and she's going out to
the desert thinking like he's going to propose

615
00:43:28.519 --> 00:43:30.719
to her, so she's all,
you know, excited, and it just

616
00:43:30.760 --> 00:43:35.280
makes me sick. Baby, yeah
twenty years old. Yeah, not even

617
00:43:35.320 --> 00:43:38.719
twenty And just so sad. I
know, like you get emotional in a

618
00:43:38.760 --> 00:43:42.960
lot of your cases, and I
tend not to get as emotional, but

619
00:43:43.079 --> 00:43:46.199
this one, as I was researching
it, there were many times that I

620
00:43:46.239 --> 00:43:50.159
just can't. I remember you were
tearing up one day when I went to

621
00:43:50.239 --> 00:43:53.360
visit you. Yeah, this was
just a hard one. So that night,

622
00:43:53.519 --> 00:43:59.199
Chris was arrested in Anchorage for first
degree murder. They impounded his car

623
00:43:59.599 --> 00:44:01.880
and when they searched it, They
were surprised to find under the passenger seat

624
00:44:01.880 --> 00:44:07.360
a homemade garat very similar to the
one that had been found with Aaron's body.

625
00:44:07.119 --> 00:44:13.400
Fast forward two years, September twenty
first, twenty sixteen, jury selection

626
00:44:13.519 --> 00:44:17.719
begins in the trial of Chris Lee. The prosecutor felt confident as they had

627
00:44:17.760 --> 00:44:22.840
a lot of evidence linking Chris to
the crime scene. They found Chris's DNA

628
00:44:22.000 --> 00:44:27.199
on a number of items found near
Aaron's body, including a T shirt that

629
00:44:27.280 --> 00:44:31.239
he had apparently tried unsuccessfully to use
as a torch. So he had created

630
00:44:31.239 --> 00:44:36.320
this homemade torch with a T shirt
and he had put the propane tank down

631
00:44:36.320 --> 00:44:37.639
there. He had poured a bunch
of gas, leaned down and he tried

632
00:44:37.679 --> 00:44:42.400
to light it, and apparently it
didn't light. They also found a sprite

633
00:44:42.400 --> 00:44:45.079
bottle at the bottom of the mine
that had Chris's DNA on it, and

634
00:44:45.199 --> 00:44:51.079
there was a shell casing found at
the scene that matched Chris's rifle. The

635
00:44:51.199 --> 00:44:54.199
DA decided not to seek the death
penalty, partly because Aaron's parents didn't want

636
00:44:54.239 --> 00:44:59.519
that. I'm not sure if that
was for moral reasons or just because they

637
00:44:59.599 --> 00:45:04.639
knew that anyone convicted in a death
penalty case would automatically get multiple appeals that

638
00:45:04.719 --> 00:45:07.559
could go on for decades, and
they just didn't want to have to relive

639
00:45:07.760 --> 00:45:13.679
this nightmare. The prosecution's case was
simple. On finding out that Aaron was

640
00:45:13.719 --> 00:45:17.239
pregnant with his child, Chris realized
that this would complicate his life, possibly

641
00:45:17.280 --> 00:45:22.119
destroy his marriage and his relationship with
his daughter Liberty, and so he decided

642
00:45:22.159 --> 00:45:25.400
that the best thing to do would
be to remove Aaron from the equation by

643
00:45:25.480 --> 00:45:30.639
killing her. Aaron's mom, Lore
was the first witness for the prosecution.

644
00:45:31.519 --> 00:45:36.480
She testified about talking to Aaron the
last time over the phone when the two

645
00:45:36.519 --> 00:45:40.280
of them were planning Laura's visit.
When the defense cross examined Lor, they

646
00:45:40.280 --> 00:45:45.480
oddly seemed to focus on the other
daughter that Lor had lost, her daughter,

647
00:45:45.559 --> 00:45:49.280
Tricia, who had died when she
was three from an infection when Aaron

648
00:45:49.360 --> 00:45:52.800
was six or seven. They asked
how Aaron had reacted to Tricia's passing and

649
00:45:52.840 --> 00:45:58.679
if she had behaved strangely after.
When they questioned John, the defense also

650
00:45:58.719 --> 00:46:02.280
spent time asking about Tricia, but
John said that Aaron didn't talk much about

651
00:46:02.320 --> 00:46:06.920
the death of her little sister,
so it was very odd. On the

652
00:46:06.960 --> 00:46:10.119
fifth day, of the trial,
Nicole showed up for a witness readiness hearing.

653
00:46:10.719 --> 00:46:15.800
Both the prosecution and the defense were
considering calling Nicole to the stand,

654
00:46:15.039 --> 00:46:20.519
but neither had decided yet. During
a break, when Nicole left the courtroom,

655
00:46:20.679 --> 00:46:23.360
the jurors were all sitting out in
the hall. As Nicole passed the

656
00:46:23.440 --> 00:46:27.239
jurors, one of them said,
I like your shoes. Where did you

657
00:46:27.280 --> 00:46:30.840
get them? Nicole stopped and chatted
briefly with a juror, which is a

658
00:46:30.920 --> 00:46:36.079
really big no no and could result
in a mistrial. The bailiff saw what

659
00:46:36.199 --> 00:46:38.960
was happening, and she told Nicole
not to talk to the jurors. Do

660
00:46:38.960 --> 00:46:43.280
you think it's was Nicole's intent?
I mean, the juror was the one

661
00:46:43.280 --> 00:46:46.280
who initiated the conversation, so I
don't think so. And Nicole got really

662
00:46:46.280 --> 00:46:50.639
snippy about it and said, well, she was talking to me. So

663
00:46:50.679 --> 00:46:52.679
there was kind of a commotion as
she argued with the bailiff, and the

664
00:46:52.719 --> 00:46:59.159
bays kept very very separate. Yeah, it seemed kept in a separate room,

665
00:46:59.159 --> 00:47:00.639
not in the hallway. Yeah.
I think they were just out there

666
00:47:00.719 --> 00:47:04.920
for like a short period of time, and they probably didn't know who Nicole

667
00:47:05.119 --> 00:47:08.199
was, so it was probably an
innocent thing. Anyway, the judge decided

668
00:47:08.239 --> 00:47:12.719
that it wasn't this wasn't a serious
enough thing to impact the trial, and

669
00:47:12.719 --> 00:47:15.960
they went on. But again,
I just thought Nicole's role in this is

670
00:47:15.400 --> 00:47:21.719
to me very interesting. And ultimately
Nicole was not called as a witness by

671
00:47:21.719 --> 00:47:25.199
either the prosecution or the defense.
Anyway, Chris would actually end up being

672
00:47:25.239 --> 00:47:30.760
the only witness called by the defense. If you didn't yeah, and if

673
00:47:30.800 --> 00:47:35.639
you didn't already hate him enough,
his testimony will make you hate him even

674
00:47:35.679 --> 00:47:39.639
more because Chris actually admitted on the
stand for the first time that he actually

675
00:47:39.639 --> 00:47:45.119
did kill Aaron, but he said
that it wasn't premeditated and that it was

676
00:47:45.199 --> 00:47:50.079
because of something horrible that Aaron did. Oh God. According to Chris,

677
00:47:50.280 --> 00:47:53.320
at some point weeks earlier, Nicole, his wife, had noticed that their

678
00:47:53.400 --> 00:47:58.079
daughter, Liberty's crotch was read and
irritated when giving her a bath, and

679
00:47:58.159 --> 00:48:02.679
Nicole thought that maybe had molested her. Chris said that he had dismissed it

680
00:48:02.719 --> 00:48:06.599
at the time, but while they
were out in the desert, Aaron kept

681
00:48:06.639 --> 00:48:09.039
talking about how much she loved Liberty
and wanted to be part of their family.

682
00:48:09.800 --> 00:48:15.239
Here's how Chris said on the stand. Things unfolded from there. When

683
00:48:15.320 --> 00:48:19.760
Aaron told me she loved Liberty and
she wanted to be with her, you

684
00:48:19.800 --> 00:48:23.519
know something thick. It turned a
gear in my head and I said,

685
00:48:23.519 --> 00:48:27.320
why do you care about Liberty so
much? Why do you want to be

686
00:48:27.400 --> 00:48:30.800
part of her life? And Aaron, Aaron told me, you know,

687
00:48:30.880 --> 00:48:35.360
I just love her. And I
stood up and I stopped her. I

688
00:48:35.400 --> 00:48:40.639
said, did you touch Liberty?
And she reeled back a little bit and

689
00:48:40.719 --> 00:48:44.880
started starting on her words, and
she was saying, you know. I

690
00:48:45.960 --> 00:48:49.320
stopped her again, and I yelled
her. This time, I said,

691
00:48:49.400 --> 00:48:55.400
did you molest my daughter? And
she said yes, but and that was

692
00:48:55.679 --> 00:49:01.599
the last thing I heard say.
I stumbled back and I sat on the

693
00:49:01.760 --> 00:49:07.079
edge of my jeep and caught myself
with my hands, and in my right

694
00:49:07.079 --> 00:49:10.840
hand I felt the medal from the
grow. It set me off. I

695
00:49:10.920 --> 00:49:17.440
just felt so much hate, so
much brage, and I grabbed it and

696
00:49:17.480 --> 00:49:22.119
I stood up and I came up
behind her and I put it around her

697
00:49:22.159 --> 00:49:25.320
neck. Training took over there,
and I turned around and I started pulling.

698
00:49:27.039 --> 00:49:30.960
Nothing would have stopped me from doing
what I was doing. I told

699
00:49:30.960 --> 00:49:36.679
myself while I was doing this,
never again, I wasn't gonna let anybody

700
00:49:36.840 --> 00:49:39.760
hurt my daughter. Again, I
had let her into my daughter's life.

701
00:49:40.400 --> 00:49:46.000
It was my fault that my daughter
was hurt. He's disgusting, I know,

702
00:49:46.280 --> 00:49:50.159
isn't that like horrible? So now
it was it was clear like now

703
00:49:50.239 --> 00:49:53.559
why Chris's lawyers were asking about the
little sister who had died, Tricia,

704
00:49:53.599 --> 00:49:58.599
because they were basically trying to imply
that Aaron had maybe molested her when she

705
00:49:58.719 --> 00:50:02.960
was younger. I know, the
whole that it's so disgusting, pathetic,

706
00:50:04.400 --> 00:50:07.880
like just horrible that that that was
going to be the angle that they would

707
00:50:07.920 --> 00:50:12.679
take to defend Chris when there was
absolutely no evidence, no exactly no evidence

708
00:50:12.719 --> 00:50:15.079
at all. And it was liberty
ever taken to a doctor or anything.

709
00:50:15.519 --> 00:50:20.320
That was just that was you know, when the prosecutor cross examined Chris,

710
00:50:20.320 --> 00:50:22.639
they were like, okay, so
when you noticed your daughter, like,

711
00:50:22.840 --> 00:50:25.159
you know, she had this irritation
on her cross did you call the police,

712
00:50:25.199 --> 00:50:28.320
did you call anyone? Did you
take her to the doctor? No?

713
00:50:28.440 --> 00:50:30.519
No, no? Oh? And
you kept having an affair with the

714
00:50:30.559 --> 00:50:36.280
woman that you thought was responsible for
this. Yes, I mean it was

715
00:50:36.320 --> 00:50:38.760
just a desperate attempt and like but
it was shocking. I think no one

716
00:50:38.880 --> 00:50:43.199
in the courtroom expected it. But
I think he knew he was going to

717
00:50:43.239 --> 00:50:45.440
be found guilty, and so this
was his attempt at trying to at least

718
00:50:45.480 --> 00:50:51.679
get it reduced to a manslaughter charge. But luckily the jury saw through it.

719
00:50:52.599 --> 00:50:55.199
They were only out for an hour
and a half. Actually, deliberations

720
00:50:55.239 --> 00:51:00.760
only took fifteen minutes because but they
decided to wait until they had lunch.

721
00:51:00.800 --> 00:51:04.119
I'm sorry I need to laugh about
this, but we've seen a lot of

722
00:51:04.119 --> 00:51:07.679
things lightly about lunch juries that like
they come to a decision, but then

723
00:51:07.719 --> 00:51:09.719
they're like, well, but we
already ordered lunch, so let's just wait

724
00:51:09.760 --> 00:51:14.599
a while. So they waited until
after lunch, and then they announced their

725
00:51:14.679 --> 00:51:21.599
verdict, which was guilty of first
degree murder life without parole. Without knowing

726
00:51:21.639 --> 00:51:24.840
what the verdict would be, Aaron's
mom, Laura, had handwritten twelve thank

727
00:51:24.880 --> 00:51:29.920
you cards to the jury. Oh
I know that that's good to tear up,

728
00:51:30.480 --> 00:51:32.199
so she wrote, and the thank
you cards quote, no matter what

729
00:51:32.199 --> 00:51:35.679
the verdict is, I want to
thank you for giving up so much of

730
00:51:35.719 --> 00:51:38.719
your time for this unquote after the
nice gesture. I've never heard of anyone

731
00:51:38.760 --> 00:51:44.320
doing that before I know she's Laura
is just such a nice woman. Thing.

732
00:51:44.400 --> 00:51:46.199
That's part of what why I get
emotional about this case. I know

733
00:51:46.280 --> 00:51:52.119
it's those because we're parents and when
you hear you know just you know what

734
00:51:52.199 --> 00:51:55.519
that suffering would feel like where and
also all the volunteers too that helped out

735
00:51:55.599 --> 00:52:00.639
the search and everything. But so
after the vert was announced, Lore waited

736
00:52:00.639 --> 00:52:05.760
outside the courthouse to give the cards
to the jurors. Nicole and her brother

737
00:52:05.920 --> 00:52:09.159
were also outside the courthouse, and
Nicole's brother came rushing over to Lare,

738
00:52:09.360 --> 00:52:14.280
holding his phone up with a picture
of Liberty, saying, she remembers everything

739
00:52:14.280 --> 00:52:16.800
that was done to her, and
then Nicole charged over and chimed in.

740
00:52:16.920 --> 00:52:21.920
She remembered every she remembers every touch, every tickle, she remembers everything.

741
00:52:22.519 --> 00:52:25.280
Nicole was screaming, and a guard
escorted both her and her brother out.

742
00:52:27.360 --> 00:52:30.000
The jurors then came out and Lower
gave them her cards. Several of the

743
00:52:30.079 --> 00:52:35.159
jurors had tears in their eyes and
they hugged Lore and Aaron's other family members.

744
00:52:36.639 --> 00:52:38.039
All right, we're almost done.
Just a few a few notes about

745
00:52:38.039 --> 00:52:44.079
the aftermath. First, Nicole has
never been charged with anything, but there

746
00:52:44.199 --> 00:52:49.239
was definitely suspicion about whether she knew
about Chris's plan and whether she helped him

747
00:52:49.280 --> 00:52:53.239
plan or helped him covered it up. Prosecutors haven't ruled out the possibility that

748
00:52:53.239 --> 00:52:57.679
she would be charged in the future, but I'd say it seems unlikely at

749
00:52:57.679 --> 00:53:01.559
this point. Doug Billing, the
caver who was able to identify the location

750
00:53:01.639 --> 00:53:06.880
of all the photos and helped organize
the search, He built a small desert

751
00:53:06.920 --> 00:53:10.079
garden on a hill twenty miles south
of twenty nine Palms that he called Aaron's

752
00:53:10.119 --> 00:53:16.239
Garden Get the motionally good too.
During the trial, he took Lore and

753
00:53:16.400 --> 00:53:20.760
some of Aaron's friends who were in
town for the trial to visit. He

754
00:53:20.880 --> 00:53:24.079
stops SPI regularly to help maintain it
and send pictures to Lore. Yeah,

755
00:53:24.199 --> 00:53:28.920
is lovely. What a nice gesture. You know. There's there's a registry

756
00:53:28.960 --> 00:53:31.840
book at the park which many have
signed, including a lot of the detectives

757
00:53:31.840 --> 00:53:37.480
and the volunteers who searched tirelessly for
Aaron for eight weeks. Sadly, Luca

758
00:53:37.599 --> 00:53:42.400
Cherubini, the caver who was the
first one down into the cave where Aaron's

759
00:53:42.440 --> 00:53:46.320
body was found, died in twenty
seventeen, at age forty seven, he

760
00:53:46.360 --> 00:53:51.440
was hiking with a couple of friends
in central California and trying to cross a

761
00:53:51.559 --> 00:53:57.239
rapid river when he slipped and he
got swept downstream and drowned. After John's

762
00:53:57.360 --> 00:54:00.280
service in the Marines ended, he
moved back to Oak Ridge, Tennessee,

763
00:54:00.360 --> 00:54:05.519
and enrolled in a trade school to
become a welder. A few months after

764
00:54:05.599 --> 00:54:08.800
returning, he met someone, fell
in love, and ended up getting married

765
00:54:08.840 --> 00:54:13.719
again. About Aaron, he said, quote, I sure wish I could

766
00:54:13.719 --> 00:54:15.519
have been there for her more.
I tried my artist, but it wasn't

767
00:54:15.639 --> 00:54:21.280
wasn't enough. Unquote well, the
shoe is on the other but no,

768
00:54:21.559 --> 00:54:25.079
isn't it mister mister, I always
make fun of my I know, I

769
00:54:25.119 --> 00:54:29.239
know, it's good. It's good, you're you're a human. It's gonna

770
00:54:29.239 --> 00:54:30.880
get worse here too, so okay, you can do it. After losing

771
00:54:30.920 --> 00:54:35.719
one daughter to illness more than ten
years earlier, and now another to murder,

772
00:54:36.320 --> 00:54:39.440
Laura went through a serious bout of
depression and anxiety. For a while.

773
00:54:39.480 --> 00:54:43.039
She went on medication to help,
but she didn't like the way that

774
00:54:43.039 --> 00:54:45.840
it made her feel, and so
she weaned herself off of it. Over

775
00:54:45.920 --> 00:54:50.639
time, she got tattoos, one
on each wrist representing the two girls that

776
00:54:50.719 --> 00:54:53.320
she had lost. For Aaron,
an image of a horse with a purple

777
00:54:53.400 --> 00:54:57.719
mane. As I mentioned at the
top of the first episode, purple had

778
00:54:57.760 --> 00:55:00.880
come to represent Aaron during the search
because that was the color of the dress

779
00:55:00.920 --> 00:55:06.119
she wore at the day she got
married. And then for Tricia, she

780
00:55:06.400 --> 00:55:10.679
got tattooed a pink heart with angel
wings. While Bill preferred to mourn privately

781
00:55:10.719 --> 00:55:15.639
and never really spoke publicly about his
daughter's loss, Lor spoke at a memorial

782
00:55:15.679 --> 00:55:21.440
service that was held in Tennessee after
the trial. She expressed her appreciation for

783
00:55:22.199 --> 00:55:27.079
all the detectives and volunteers who worked
so hard to find Aaron. About Aaron,

784
00:55:27.199 --> 00:55:30.800
she said, quote, she was
sweet, kind, very naive.

785
00:55:30.400 --> 00:55:35.440
Anyone that knew her loved her.
Unquote. In lieu of flowers, Aaron's

786
00:55:35.480 --> 00:55:38.039
family asked for donations to be made
to the search and rescue teams that helped

787
00:55:38.119 --> 00:55:44.800
find Aaron. Laura still keeps in
contact with many of the detectives, along

788
00:55:44.800 --> 00:55:47.920
with many of the rescuers, jurors, several of Aaron's friends, and she

789
00:55:49.000 --> 00:55:53.519
still regularly sees John, who lives
nearby she and Bill are retired and they

790
00:55:53.559 --> 00:56:00.679
spend their time visiting their grand at
their children and their grandchildren. Deep breath,

791
00:56:00.280 --> 00:56:05.440
one more sad thing to share.
So I'll include a list of all

792
00:56:05.480 --> 00:56:07.320
my sources in the description for this
episode, but I wanted to give a

793
00:56:07.320 --> 00:56:12.280
shout out to the main source,
which was a book by Shanna Hogan called

794
00:56:12.480 --> 00:56:15.480
Secrets of a Marine's Wife. You
said that was a really good book.

795
00:56:15.480 --> 00:56:19.480
It's an excellent book, really well
researched and well written, so I highly

796
00:56:19.519 --> 00:56:22.280
recommend it. But if the case
didn't have enough sadness to it, I

797
00:56:22.320 --> 00:56:27.480
found out that the author, Shannah
Hogan, died in twenty twenty at age

798
00:56:27.559 --> 00:56:31.400
thirty eight from a freak accident.
She drowned in her own swimming pool.

799
00:56:32.679 --> 00:56:36.760
Yeah. So Secrets of a Marine's
Wife that book, that was the final

800
00:56:36.800 --> 00:56:40.519
book that she published before her death. Has she written other books. She

801
00:56:40.559 --> 00:56:45.599
has written a few other books,
including one about Jodi Arias. That is

802
00:56:45.760 --> 00:56:51.440
pretty well. Yeah, so that's
it. That's the sad story of Aaron,

803
00:56:51.880 --> 00:56:57.199
Aaron and John Corwin. Well you
did. You did a fabulous job,

804
00:56:57.760 --> 00:57:01.360
as always, But yeah, that's
it's so hard, it is.

805
00:57:01.719 --> 00:57:06.079
I mean, she had a lot
of life. She had her whole life,

806
00:57:06.119 --> 00:57:09.599
literally, her whole life out of
her what. Oh it makes me.

807
00:57:09.719 --> 00:57:13.519
It makes me really mad, it
does. I would be scarbage,

808
00:57:13.559 --> 00:57:15.239
I know. Yeah. One thing
I was thinking of, like I wanted

809
00:57:15.280 --> 00:57:21.280
to ask you your opinion about as
a parent, Like what do you do

810
00:57:21.480 --> 00:57:24.480
when like when she you know,
basically told her parents she's leaving, you

811
00:57:24.519 --> 00:57:28.960
know, to go live in California
and get married when she's eighteen years old.

812
00:57:29.840 --> 00:57:32.599
Like, you know, they knew
that this was probably a bad decision,

813
00:57:32.719 --> 00:57:36.960
but you know, they kind of
supported her. But it's such a

814
00:57:37.000 --> 00:57:39.639
tough situation as a parent to know, Like, I think you know how

815
00:57:39.679 --> 00:57:44.079
to be supportive, but at the
same time trying to steer your child in

816
00:57:44.119 --> 00:57:46.320
the right direction. I mean,
once you're a child's eighteen, you really

817
00:57:46.360 --> 00:57:51.639
have to you have to support them
and let them make their own decisions.

818
00:57:51.639 --> 00:57:54.320
You can't make decisions for your child
after they're eighteen, you know. That's

819
00:57:54.320 --> 00:57:59.239
why. You know, as your
child ages, you have to let them

820
00:57:59.280 --> 00:58:04.960
make age appropriate decisions on your own
and if you don't, then, yeah,

821
00:58:05.000 --> 00:58:07.840
you're not doing your job. Yeah, for sure. I think I

822
00:58:07.880 --> 00:58:14.440
think Lore and Billy John John didn't
kill Aaron, right, Yeah, yeah,

823
00:58:15.000 --> 00:58:17.719
but the situation was, you know, a tough situation to be in

824
00:58:17.760 --> 00:58:21.559
when you're eighteen years old and you're
in a marriage, you're in a remote

825
00:58:21.559 --> 00:58:24.000
location where you don't you know,
have your family around and things like that,

826
00:58:24.079 --> 00:58:30.360
so it wasn't ideal. It's heartbreaking. They're all heartbreaking, but when

827
00:58:30.400 --> 00:58:35.960
they're so young, and yeah,
we'll rest in peace, Aaron, Yeah,

828
00:58:36.280 --> 00:58:44.960
rest in peace. So what are
you gonna do with the rest of

829
00:58:44.960 --> 00:58:47.199
your day? I'm going to bake
a cake. You are someone very important

830
00:58:47.320 --> 00:58:52.760
birthday. Oh, who's Keith Morrison's
birthday? Oh, Keith Morrison. Keith

831
00:58:52.800 --> 00:58:55.719
Morrison. Happy Birthday, Keith Morrison
by Keith Morrison. We wouldn't be here

832
00:58:55.719 --> 00:59:00.920
without you, so it's at not. It's also the forty anniversary of the

833
00:59:00.920 --> 00:59:06.079
movie Airplane. Well, of course
we celebrate that every year too. You're

834
00:59:06.079 --> 00:59:10.119
supposed say, surely you're joking,
Sure, surely you're joking. No,

835
00:59:10.239 --> 00:59:15.239
I'm not joking, and don't call
me Shirley. Well, as always,

836
00:59:15.239 --> 00:59:20.280
thanks everybody for listening. We appreciate
each and every one of you, and

837
00:59:20.360 --> 00:59:24.199
we're grateful for all of our listeners. Follow us on Instagram or Facebook at

838
00:59:24.280 --> 00:59:29.920
Love Mary Kill or on Twitter at
LMK pod and we love to hear from

839
00:59:29.960 --> 00:59:31.079
all of you, so please,
you know, get in touch with us

840
00:59:31.119 --> 00:59:36.639
on social media, send us your
feedback, your questions, your snack suggestions,

841
00:59:36.719 --> 00:59:38.920
yeah, case suggestions or snacks.
Email us at Love Mary Kill at

842
00:59:38.960 --> 00:59:45.119
gmail dot com or via the feedback
early Tree. And if you like what

843
00:59:45.400 --> 00:59:50.400
we're doing, give us a rating, a review, subscribe. It really

844
00:59:50.400 --> 00:59:53.800
helps us a lot. Until next
time, don't kill your husband, don't

845
00:59:53.880 --> 01:00:43.480
kill your wife. Hey Tina,
Hey Rich, how are you