Growing Up With Lori Vallow - Cousin Megan Conner | Ep 1760

hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon stories podcast I'm your host John delin it is May 1st 2023 and today we are in the midst of coverage on Mormon stories podcast of a sobering Assad a tragic story we are covering the Laurie valo and Chad dabel stories um and specifically right now in Boise Idaho uh there is a trial uh undergoing with Lori valo she has been charged with conspiracy to commit murder of her two children JJ and Tyler along uh with Tammy um day Bell which is her I guess her current husband's uh late wife she's also been charged with murder for um JJ and Ty Lee and then over in Arizona their fraud charges and then finally over in Arizona she will she has been charged with conspiracy to murder her late husband Charles um this is the story of course uh this story has a very Mormon flavor to it because um as you all know uh Lori valo was raised a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or Mormon um she ended up becoming what we call within the Mormon tradition of prepper which meant she became fascinated with preparing for the last days coming of Jesus Christ and uh that sort of thing but it took a weird spin when she met Chad dabel who was an author and a publisher and as they got together uh honestly people started to die and it's a really dark story we've been covering hero Mormon stories and a face that won't be unfamiliar to many of you who have been following we have Mindy Caldwell here today in studio to help with today's interview hey Mindy hi John thanks for joining us thank you so much I'm happy to be back yeah and in studio today we are uh very pleased to have with us Megan Connor who is Lori valo's cousin Megan thank you for joining us on warmer stories thank you for having me any trouble all the way from where from San Antonio yeah thanks for making the trip yeah happy to do it yeah so this is um and it's a it's the trial is very popular it's it's kind of a national news story but we're also dealing with the murder of children and of adults and very dark things and so I'll just give that sort of content warning up front today we're going to be talking about very serious and sobering things and while it's exciting we also don't want to sound giddy or gleeful that we're talking about the deaths of so many people and I think it's particularly sensitive for you Megan because this is literally your family right yeah so anyway I think the the intention for today is to kind of combine your Mormon story because you were raised LDS is that right yep but also to allow you to share your Reflections both on Lori and her family growing up and her maiden name is Cox Cox so the Cox family your Reflections on your observations and experiences with the Cox family because Lori's mom and your mother were sisters is that no so Lori's mom is my dad's sister okay so Lori's mom is your dad's sister okay and you're and and so your dad's last name is Connor Connor okay and so Lori's mom grew up with Connor right okay and so okay and so you would have observations both of of uh Lori's upbringing but also of um her experiences kind of as an adult right yeah okay um before we kind of jump into those stories and then of course we want to hear your thoughts on the trial because you've been following the trial is that right yeah I have been yeah I've wanted to hear you know I'll fill in all of the holes of things that I didn't know or understand um after I sort of lost touch with her and and the rest of the family yeah and then I think probably what's different about today's interview than maybe some of the other interviews you've done will probably go in more depth than in all the interviews you've done before but there's going to be kind of the Mormon lens of kind of how you feel pretty strongly about how Mormonism is kind of interwoven into Lori's story yeah is that right yeah for sure okay yeah all right any any disclaimers you want to kind of offer before and and Mindy I'm going to have you do a little introduction to but any disclaimers that you want to offer before we kind of jump into your yeah thank you for asking that actually because um I want to clarify that nothing that I say about Lori is to justify anything that she's done it's merely as a reflection of how I think we got to this place and I think the big question from for me and for most people too is you know people want to understand how does a mother get to the point where they're willing to do something so horrific and so I can shed a little bit of light on that um the other part is that I don't speak for anybody else in the family I'm I'm I think I'm pretty uh unique in my point of view um because I am out of the church and because I have been through um the healing process of exiting several abusive systems and so I I see things very differently than most of my family does and um so I don't speak for them and also um my my perspective is looking at it from outside of the family system and I recognize fully that the people who are still really enmeshed in the family system may not see things the way that I do and that's okay um it's just a you know this is it's just my perspective so just as we were talking before we started you've been going through your own kind of Faith journey and transition just in the past what year or so so I I I was you know what what they call physically and mentally out shortly after my divorce in 2017. so it's been a gradual deconstruction since then um but I really I mean I I resigned my membership in February and it was after you know finding out a few things that I just as soon as I found out that for sure I knew it wasn't true it was like okay I'm done it was no no more trying to see how I can make it fit and make it work and would you say everything that's gone on with Lori and Chad we're we're parts or components of your deconstruction within the church or was it totally unrelated it was foreign I don't think that I really tied those two things together until I fully resigned and and started doing my own deconstruction and mainly because I didn't follow a lot of the media coverage when all of this first happened because I felt like it was very sensationalized and a lot of speculation and to me that's not helpful to me I really wanted to know what really happened and so um I didn't start learning about Chad or his beliefs or any of that until very recently and that that was when I sort of started to connect the dots of how these two things fit together okay so you're processing for like like it's true for most of us your process is still ongoing yes very much so yeah okay well Mindy we've had you on a few times before but people still are kind of asking why why does John keep bringing Mindy on they all know you're you're really knowledgeable about this case but let's give people kind of maybe a refresher on your your connections and interest with this case and why you're my co-host for today sure so so yeah I have been on the podcast a few times talking about the uh the day Bell case and I do I have gotten a few messages from people um who have seen these podcasts and have asked me what's your story and what why are you so interested in this case and how do you know the delons and so um I thought I would just just give a little update on that so I did grow up a very active LDS here in Utah I did all of the things checked all the boxes and I got married in the temple and I've been married for 27 years I have six children and about nine years ago is when my faith started to unravel and that's when I found Mormon stories and it was just a crucial component in my processing out of the church and was so helpful for me and so I have valued Mormon stories for many years along the way we were fortunate to meet John and Margie personally and we've become dear friends with John and Margie and so throughout the course of our friendship I mentioned to John and Margie a few times about my family experiences with a few of my family members who have been pretty heavily involved in sort of this LDS prepper end times ideas with you know the supplies and the conferences and the books and not affiliated with the the Chad dabel group but um yeah so my my radar was kind of heightened for that sort of thing so when this when this case broke I was instantly intrigued by this case because of those elements and very very concerned about the missing children JJ and Tyler you know as a mom I my heart went out to their family members who are were searching for them and then we Lori and Chad were nor to be found and and and like most people I was so hopeful that those kids were safe somewhere in a bunker or somewhere but as more time went on it became less likely that that was the case and then of course it was devastating to learn that their um their remains were found in Chad's yard and it's just such a tragic and compelling case and I do think that there are so many LDS or Mormon elements to this case that um that have been brought up in the trial so far and that I think it's so important to discuss these things and I'm so happy that Megan is here to talk about the her experience with Lori and with the Cox family I think so many people are very interested to to help to better understand how this can happen how a mother can allow this these things to happen and and be involved in this and and so I think it's a very valuable conversation and I'm really grateful that you're here to shed some light on on what you know and I'm also really interested to hear your Mormon story as well so thanks so much John and Megan for having me here today thanks Mindy and yeah it's Megan not Megan yep I'll do my best to remember that you guys can correct me if I get it wrong yeah that's the question how does a a Mormon mom end up you know killing at least one of her ex-husbands there's a question maybe another there's her there's her brother and then there's her two kids and then there's the wife of her lover and uh how does that happen so um so that's it anything else you want to say before we jump in Megan I don't think so okay well where does your your story begin um well I I did grow up um LDS my my parents met at BYU and and got married and my dad's family um which is the side that Lori comes from they actually joined the church in San Antonio in the 60s his mom was tracked out by some missionaries and ended up getting baptized um his dad never joined the church and he actually made the kids wait until they were a little older than eight before they got baptized um so she was kind of doing the um you know single Mormon mom thing for a while uh with with no support from her husband and going to the church and and all of that so um but my mom's family um you know fifth generation Pioneers um you know they all most of them lived here in Utah for quite some time and uh yeah so um you know I've actually this once tell me your dad's full name one more time Cliff Connor Cliff Connor okay okay all right so um those are your parents and uh okay so they met where'd they meet BYU oh yeah yeah okay did your dad serve a mission he did okay um I was just telling Mindy beforehand actually served a mission in France and he and His companion and then two other sets of companions all shared a house and they had a house mother whose name was Megan laga and that's who I'm named for okay okay and again it's it's your dad Cliff who's connected to Lori right right okay what can you tell us about your dad's upbringing the Mormon upbringing that's kind of worth mentioning her of note and again your dad's sister is Lori's Mom right and her name is Janice Janice Cox James Cox okay tell us about what you know about cliff and Janice's Mormon upbringing well um both of my dad's parents died very young um and so there were sort of family legends about my about my grandmother being this amazing wonderful person um you know looking back in light of what I know now I think the stories probably were definitely were embellished even though she uh she was by all accounts a very good woman and um and very loving there's also a famous story where Janice wanted to go to a dance and um my grandmother whose name was Novell but we called her Noni didn't want her to go and she literally sat on Janus until it was too late for her to go to the dance so I can't even imagine how that happened but I I guess maybe Janice was putting her shoes on or something and and noni went over there and literally sat on her until she um until it was too late for her to go um and then there's another funny story that she you know Noni would pack lunches for the kids and she would leave little funny notes in there and one time she made a ham sandwich for her other daughter and left a note in The Lunchbox that said if if eating this makes you feel like a cannibal don't eat it [Laughter] funny also I think probably a little bit you know over the line sometimes with some of some of that behavior but she was very faithful in the church she um she took my you know my dad and and the sub the other siblings to church every Sunday Very Faithfully they this is San Antonio yeah they lived in San Antonio and the closest stake was in Houston so they would have to take the train to Houston to go to state conference and things like that but she was very faithful in doing that and then um is she divorced my grandfather and then he passed away and she decided to remarry and her number one goal was to marry somebody who would take her to the temple that was all she cared about and so she married this man who was 64 years old and so he was quite a bit older than her and he'd never been married and never had children and he was from New England and so he was a bit odd um and he wasn't very attractive and nobody in the family really liked him very much but what she cared about was that um he would take her to the temple and that they could read scriptures together and pray together that was really all she cared about and there's another family stories that they got married and they were on their honeymoon and it was Sunday morning and uh you know he wasn't getting up to get ready to go to church and he's she said are you gonna are you gonna go to priesthood this morning and he said oh it's we had a long day yesterday I think I'll sleep in and she ripped the covers off of him and said my husband goes to priesthood she was very insistent that he'd be faithful the Noni was intense she was apparently yes I mean she died when I was a baby so I never really got to meet her but all of these stories you know make me feel like I know her a little bit so cliff and Janice grew up you know a faithful Mormon household but a family that experienced divorce but with a lot of strictness but also not kind of the model Mormon family right and my dad's dad was a colonel in the Air Force and they um they traveled all over the place spent some time in England and some time in Japan and he was very very strict about the way he wanted his household run and he was very adamant that the children behave a certain way and um by all accounts was very controlling and very demanding so he sort of had uh you know two parents who were very different in that way okay how many children were in the the Janice and cliff family so there's four okay Janice is the oldest and then my dad and then Teresa was the other sister and then Rex is the youngest okay okay so um I guess uh I guess let's what can you tell us about um cliff and Janice in terms of like did they go off to college did they go to BYU did they marry in the temple that sort of thing yeah so um I don't really remember where uh where Janice went to school I think she may have gone to BYU but I may be wrong about that but um she and Barry did marry in the temple my parents married in the temple um the other two siblings married in the temple so you know they were very much on on the Mormon track and you said Cliff went where to school he went to BYU also my dad yeah okay okay because you said your parents met there right correct right yeah okay so your mom's name is Elaine Elaine okay just trying to get all these names I know it's a lot it's very complicated okay okay so is there even a way to describe the culture the family culture other than saying strict in LDS and maybe a appearance based I don't know is there any way to just kind of summarize the family culture that you're dead and and Janus would have grown up in yeah I think I don't know if the appearance-based culture came from noni's family or or if that sort of came later but it was that was definitely a big deal and um family loyalty huge we keep each other's secrets you know and um no one person in the family knows the whole story about certain things and so there will be family rumors about something and you know it's almost like you have to talk to four or five people to get the whole story because nobody really knows everything you know um so yeah very controlling um very much uh concerned with everybody perceiving them to be the the model Mormon family and that was it that was it was that way in my family growing up too okay so you grew up mostly where well so my dad was also in the Air Force and so we moved around a bunch um I was born in California then we moved to Louisiana two different places in Louisiana and then um after that my dad after my I did my dad got out of the Air Force he worked for Citibank which was almost as bad moving around wise we we moved to South Dakota and then to Connecticut and then they finally moved to San Antonio after I graduated from high school so where was high school for you so I did middle school high school years in Connecticut okay but that was what the military you're dead being in the military that was after he worked for Citibank so he worked in New York City and we lived in Connecticut okay Citibank yeah so kind of New York High Finance kind of stuff yeah yeah okay and those are good schools right in Connecticut those have been really fancy schools yeah we lived in a very fancy part of the country but we you know we were from South Dakota so we were kind of pumpkins and we did not fit in okay especially being Mormon not a huge Mormon population there um in fact I remember somebody saying that Chad served a mission in the New York area in the 80s and that's right when we would have been there and New York City Mission was our mission um but our stake was New York and Connecticut I think it might have been New Jersey it was his mission but maybe he served served some time in the New York area yeah yeah so what was your family culture like growing up like how many siblings again with you there's four of us okay I have an older brother and a younger brother and a younger sister second okay what just like my dad it was it a traditional Orthodox Mormon family very much so yeah yeah so all the things all the things very very straight laced and very expectant that we check all the boxes and everything but it was very hard to do because my older brother and I were the only Mormons in our high school and in our Middle School and so our our Ward um was comprised of several towns several small towns and we were not in the town where most of the youth were and so we had to travel for Seminary and things like that it was it was pretty tough yeah yeah we in Mormonism we call that the mission field if you're raised anywhere outside of Utah right it's called the mission field I was raised in Texas Houston okay and so it's different because you'll you'll be in a high school there might be six you know two thousand sixteen hundred kids in the high school and there might be five or ten that are Mormon yeah what was that was that so in my high school there were about 900 kids and two of us were Mormon yeah me and my brother yeah so there's no way that you could date members of the church because there just was no way I mean you could but they were all in towns that were you know farther away you didn't see people at school who you know who you knew well you know so did they have like a like a a vibrant like steak activity system like were you able to meet other LDS kids yeah I'm sure you had to travel it sounds like to do that but and and so we were right on the border on the New York border and so part of our stake was New York as well and um there were a lot of good steak activities and the award that had the most youth in it probably had maybe 40 and they met in the same building as us but they were not the same ward as us so it was kind of you know we did we belonged but we didn't belong you know yeah okay so you're like all the family prayer family scripture study family of evening yep did your dad have callings your mom were they you know leaders leaders in the church yeah my dad um actually while we lived in South Dakota he was a member of the state presidency and the stake was pretty big and I remember traveling with him to all these little tiny branches that met in you know above a store somewhere and we would go on Sundays and and travel and do that and then when we lived in Connecticut he was Ward clerk for a while and you know did some young men activity things and my mom was in young women's for a while she was a seminary teacher for a while so as far as just the average Mormon family goes as you understand it up through graduating high school would you say you were just it was just it was a average normal Mormon family I would say on the outside for sure okay 100 okay on the inside it was not that way oh and that's probably sensitive stuff yeah and you probably have family members that are still living so yeah I don't want to pry right is there anything you want to share about what that you know meant yeah I will I will just say I think the difficulty is that you know my parents did the best they could with the knowledge that they had and the upbringings that they each came from and I think that they did not know how to do things any other way than to be controlling because it was it felt like I one of the things my mom said is that she she thought that if she just told us no every time we asked for something that we turn out okay which sort of gives the implication that you're inherently bad you're going to ask for bad things so I'm just gonna say no to everything and that way you won't get it in into any trouble you know I I think it was you know she came by that concept honestly I think that was probably prevalent in her upbringing her dad was very strict about being Mormon and um very controlling as well would not allow her to when she went to BYU she wanted to major in physical education be a PE teacher and he would not allow her to do that he said that's not ladylike and so she ended up majoring in English instead and then didn't graduate because she married my dad and that that was what you did you got married and you you were a stay-at-home mom you know so I think she didn't really know how to do things differently and you know and then we later found out that my parents had some marital troubles and some other things that were you know related to it to their own issues and as a result us kids kind of took a back seat to all of that that was going on so there was definitely some emotional neglect my parents are not good with emotions didn't know how to handle their own emotions and so we were not allowed to have emotions either we had to kind of make ourselves really small and just um you know try to sweep things under the rug that came up you know there's a lot of secrecy a lot of shame it was just it was just very difficult because I think they just didn't know how to do it any differently you might have mentioned this already Megan but how many children grew up in your immediate family and where did you fall in that yeah and there were four and I was the second okay he did okay sorry no you're good usually it's me that asked multiple times I promise I'm trying to pay attention this is a lot yeah okay yeah okay so these themes that I wrote down about noni's family appearance and perception loyalty secrets and controlling it sounds like some of that carried into your family as well yeah for sure yep and it wasn't just your your dad that brought that right it sounds like your mom might have brought that too and maybe that's all families I don't know many families it's hard to say like yeah so so as far as you're as far as like just focusing on your dad for a second since he's got the tie to Lori's mom anything else worth saying about like what might have been unique that maybe ties into to what we're going to be exploring about Laurie or did we kind of cover the main things I think we kind of covered the main things there there may be something that comes up later but okay so and again everyone all parents I think all Parents try their best I'm pretty sure all Parents try their best so yeah I don't think I don't think any parent goes into it going well I really am going to screw this up you know that's what I want to be a jerk you know yeah yeah but there was for me when I started having my own kids there was a very conscious moment where I said I am not going to parent my kids the way I was parented you know um I didn't want to have that kind of relationship with my children so I think that there is a Consciousness that can take place where you you realize that maybe this isn't going the right way and maybe I should do something differently so if there is one thing that I that I sort of begrudge my parents that is it you know I I definitely give them the benefit of the doubt and and their upbringing and and they're doing their best I just wish that they would have had some introspection but I know that's that's hard to it's hard to get especially when they're growing up in the 50s and 60s and 70s it's just a different time period yeah okay so so I guess uh Lori's mom and dad would have been Aunt Janice and Uncle Barry to you yeah is that right yep so what are your earliest memories of Uncle Barry and Aunt Janice and do you have memories of Lori as a cousin up through high school yeah so um we spent a lot of time over there in the Summers and um where at the Cox's house in in California okay so when we they're they're in Orange County right right by this point right right so we're talking 80s the 80s yeah so when we lived in South Dakota we would drive down to Utah spend a week with my mom's family and then drive to California spend two weeks there and then make our way back and so we spent two weeks at a time every summer with the Cox's and we loved going to the Cox's because they were the fun house you know they were close to Disneyland they had money they had a swimming pool you know it was like we looked forward to that a lot because it was a lot of stuff that we didn't get at our house how similar in age are you to to Lori Lori is a year older than me whoa and so you're really close and Summer's a year younger than me so yeah wow yeah and so were you guys like three think is it was it I don't want to just impose a a three like a three-person close kind of thing but yeah for the most part um I I have a lot more memories with just me and Lori than I do of the three of us together but we definitely the three of us hung out all the time so would you say you were close to Lori yeah oh wow yeah so for like over a decade you would you would spend a couple weeks a year just hanging out with Lori and her family yep and then we we would write letters to each other during the school year and keep up with each other and ah so so what are your memories of Lori um well I'll say that you had asked earlier what some of my first memories of Janice and Barry oh yeah um and so being at their house um I remember Barry taking us to go see Rambo which was that's very odd as kids I don't remember how old I was or what year that movie came out but I was very young so for those who don't know this is a Sylvester Stallone movie where he's a Vietnam vet and he comes back from Vietnam and has PTSD and gets in a conflict with the sheriff in the town and just shoots up the town basically it's I don't know if it was our it was definitely our and it definitely had one of the highest body counts of any movie that was out at that time so it was pretty scandalous for Uncle Barry to take it and it was me Lori summer and Stacy I believe and it was like why would you choose to take what age do you think it was probably eight or nine maybe you know and then and then the next that's not a Mormon thing so for a Mormon dad to take you should be going to our movie at all right but to be taken nine-year-old girls violent movie that is a little off yeah yeah and you mentioned Stacy maybe you can explain who Stacy is today's story so Stacy's the oldest of the Cox's children okay um she uh so it's so in the Cox family Stacy's the oldest and then Alex and then Adam and then Lori and then summer and they also had a baby who died very young she was three months old I think and Barry's profession was what so he was an estate planner and um I did not really understand what that was when I was a kid I just knew that he had an office he worked for himself he made lots of money he drove fancy cars he had race horses um and we later found out that he was doing that without a law license so um okay and and what was Janice like um she was always done up always beautiful her hair was always done and and later on Lori was the one who would have to do her hair but she was when we were at her house I almost never saw her dressed in regular clothes she was almost always in a swimsuit or a bikini and she was always laying out by the pool okay urbitially my Mormon Bells go off no bikinis are a No-No romanism right so so dad's taking you to Rambo movies and and moms in a bikini yeah that's a No-No yeah so what's up how did you encode that did you did you encode it as weird and then how did you process it I definitely as a young child thought okay this is not what my parents do I I definitely felt like it was off but I didn't know in what way it was off and it wasn't until I was a teenager that I sort of started to put pieces together and go okay this is not this is not the Mormonism that I grew up with you know it's definitely a different family system from my so I have a question about that just about the apparent closeness between your family and the Cox family to where you would it sounds like almost every year you would travel to California was it was California the draw just to be in the Sun and maybe go to Disneyland you know we're we're Janice and Cliff your dad were they close as siblings did you see your other cousins in that family as much or would you say that you're your family was particularly close with Barry and Janice's family yeah we did see our other cousins as well um but it just I think was a general idea that family was really important yeah to my parents and I think it was important to them that that we cousins got to know each other so on my mom's side there are 24 cousins and on my dad's side there are 21 cousins and you know we all did grow up together and and we were pretty close and I would say that that my dad and Janice were close they you know they they got along really well together and I think had a lot in common did you ever have instances where you were visiting the Cox family and you know with like the movie or the bikini did you ever get like a conversation with your parents like yeah yes I I know in my experience we had some cousins that maybe weren't following all of the same rules that our family did and occasionally we would get a little talking to like okay we love them but we love them we love them standards yeah we don't we don't support curious as to if you had those conversations with your with your family yeah so my family doesn't really have those conversations okay directly but there was always this sort of indirect you know communication of this is okay this is not okay and but it was never like we would never leave the Cox's and my parents would say okay what happened just now was really not okay you know they would never they would never directly say um Janice should not be wearing a bikini and I don't want you wearing a bikini it was never a direct thing but if my mom and I were at the store together and I was you know looking at swimsuits and I was looking at a bikini she would say no we're not we're not doing that so it was never nothing ever got and I don't like to use absolutes but very rarely did anything get a dress head on so okay so in terms of your observations around Barry and Janice uh especially on non-lds viewers and listeners are going to be like why are we talking about bikinis and rainbow like that's not even interesting any other behaviors on on the part of Janice and Barry that were really off that you noticed up through High School let's just say yeah once I got to be a teenager and started observing more of their behavior and especially there were a couple of times where I was at their house without my parents that was when I really started to see the real family I think and there was a lot of very intense fighting that went on between Barry and Janice in those instances and that was something I hadn't really been exposed to before because my parents were very polite about their fighting they would fight behind closed doors and we very rarely heard heard it going on but but definitely you know loud arguments and you know the the kids were also the Cox kids were also very aware of what their parents sexual relationship was like and what was going on behind closed doors it was it just it was a discussion like we would come home from church and they would go to take a nap and that was the discussion among the kids was like oh Mom and Dad are taking a nap again better not go in there oh yeah that happened one time yeah I went through the door and boy I sure was sorry that I went in there and it was a whole discussion about how often they had sex and you know they even we you know they would bring up things like at one point I think the Brethren said that there should be no oral sex and then they had to kind of recant on that so I got exposed to a lot of sex conversation at a young age that never would have happened in my home so wow yeah so like I mean I'm trying to process my parents got divorced but yeah that would have never been a topic like whatever if my parents are having sex I would have known about it like it just wasn't part of my upbringing with my parents just never discussed it never even known about right right yeah I mean I think most of us probably assume that our parents are having sex but I think it is unusual for it to be so openly talked about with like younger kids right and I think a lot of people have hypothesized that about the about the Cox family and about Alex and and Lori maybe having a little bit of an inappropriate um the way that they interacted with each other was maybe inappropriately too sexual or so that makes sense if they were exposed to just kind of open sexual behavior you know and I think maybe that can be done in a healthy way but it doesn't sound like like this was the healthiest way no it was really it was very much like the butt of a joke and you know sort of a scandalous conversation that was um you know that they liked to talk about it because it felt you know dangerous enticing enticing exciting and and there was just a lot of you know like has been talked about just inappropriate interactions between um you know Lori and Alex also though like it was it was just okay for them to like grab each other's body parts and you know sizzlings yeah just you know strange just very strange to me because I there was none of that touchy-feely stuff in my house but it sounds like that wouldn't have come from Janice Janice's side of the family potentially I can't imagine that Noni you know in in viewing that into Janus and so maybe it's Barry that brought that I really definitely think so and Barry was always the more touchy-feely and you know you would come in the house and he'd put his hands on your shoulders and rub your shoulders kind of thing and I was always a little weirded out by that I didn't like it yeah that's creepy okay so Barry made you feel kind of uncomfortable definitely okay yeah yeah and like you said Mindy there is kind of like a healthy sexuality where sure you kind of model for the kids that sex is a good thing right but and that it's healthy and that yeah we do it too and you'll enjoy it someday but but you're saying it crossed that line definitely yeah definitely especially with the kids talking about um you know what might be going on behind closed doors that that was very odd to me um and there was one uh time when we were all in Austin visiting my my great uncle and um Barry wanted to take us all to Barton Springs which is a famous swimming area over there and he had me Lori and summer dress up and he wanted to do a photo shoot and so he had bought like a brand new camera and he wanted to take all these pictures of us and so he was you know having us pose and how old were you at this time do you think I was 13 or 14. wow that's a red flag yeah grown man wanting to photograph teenage girls yeah probably in swimwear yeah in swimwear yeah and and having us pose all these different ways too it was very yeah I just I don't I don't have those pictures anymore and I'm grateful that I don't um I hope that they never get out you know people related to the case have seen them so is there any talk that you're aware of that you're comfortable sharing about Barry being sexually abusive to any of his kids well he does he definitely has been under investigation for sexual abuse I can say that for children um or of other people of other other people other family members and I know that in the divorce proceedings between Stacy and her husband that um Stacy's ex-husband alleged that Barry had sexually abused her was there the third of she's the oldest she's the oldest okay okay oh right okay yeah okay and I'm sure we'll get to it but Stacy ends up passing away John I don't know if you're familiar with that part of the story but we'll I'm sure we'll talk about that um I have a question about the photo shoot you said you said that you felt uncomfortable did you get a sense from uh summer or Lori that they've felt uncomfortable with that or do you think that that behavior had become so so normalized in their family culture that you know maybe it's hard to remember that but do you remember I remember perfectly yeah uh Lori was very excited about doing that she loved having her picture taken and she loved being the center of attention you know so if anything it was like oh Dad wants to take our pictures let's do that yeah wow you know it was very she was very excited about that okay so so did Lori or summer um ever express to you concerns about their dad awkwardness discomfort nothing no okay not nothing none of that ever came from Lori or summer or Stacy um Stacy and I were not close enough in age to really yeah to talk like that okay but yeah what was what was your perception of Barry's relationship with the church was he in leadership was he did he also try and be a spiritual quote spiritual giant patriarchal leader kind of thing oh definitely um I don't know the specific callings that he would have had but um he was the self-proclaimed patriarch of the family you know not not my dad not Rex it was Barry and um whenever we got together siblings oh yeah siblings oh yeah okay whenever we got together as a family um Barry loved to pontificate and quote scripture and give us his views and opinions on politics and everything was framed around you know he would he would do a scripture quote and then talk about whatever his political view was and so he very much considered himself a spiritual giant a scriptorian and later when they moved to San Antonio he and Janice were both Temple workers hmm do you know if he served in Bishop Briggs or any of that I don't know about that okay and where did Barry grow up again do you know I I honestly don't know I think California I'm pretty sure he did grow up in California I remember there being stories about his dad owning a chain of fast food restaurants called Barry's Better Burgers and he he worked there when Janice and he were first married Okay so yeah so he he probably fancied himself a renaissance man wealthy spiritual and somehow sexually liberated all the same time yeah maybe he's got a beautiful wife he's beautiful kids you have to address the 95 and five the lower 95. so that was one of the things when he would pontificate that he would talk very frequently about this concept of the lower 95 and he would just flippantly say something about well that's the lower 95 for you and it would be in context of talking about somebody who had done or said something stupid and his his world view was that 95 percent of the population are stupid morons and the five percent that includes our family we're we're the smartest we're the brightest we're the most intelligent we're the most attractive the best looking yeah so he considered himself in the 95th percentile basically of humanity top five top five percent yeah I think yeah I'm trying to remember yeah that's definitely not in the lower 95. okay so kind of arrogant very yeah so when I talking about uh Janus really quick like the first thing that comes to my mind from what I've heard so far is kind of the Stepford wife trophy wife kind of thing beautiful homemaker but also sexually liberated but to please her husband kind of thing anything worth saying about Janice other than what we've said you know Janice I think is very very smart and um she and my dad would kind of bond over Trivial Pursuit and she would sit by the pool with a box of Trivial Pursuit cards and she would memorize the answers you know she she was very smart um I don't I don't know that I really understand Janice very well um because there seemed to be so many conflicting things you know but she was always done up she was definitely the trophy wife and um you know high heels and makeup and hair done all the time and um when I think about spending time with her as opposed to listening to other people talk about her it's just very it's just very different you know she she would say things or I would people would relate to me things that she would say that I would find incongruent with with who I thought she was so I don't know that I really know her you know but if I were we were to if maybe I were to pull you aside your senior year of high school and said what do you think about you know Barry and Janice what what would you have said as a senior in high school they're awesome I love them they're creepy oh man as a senior in high school I probably would have said you know they're they're the fun they're the fun aunt and uncle you always want to be at their house and you know they're they're always traveling going to Hawaii going to Las Vegas they would talk about how um they were in Las Vegas a lot and whenever anybody asked them about it they would say well we have a really good dentist there and it is really hard to find a good dentist what are two devout Mormons doing spending a lot of time in Vegas no seriously no that's what I'm saying we not nobody knew really what what they did there was a little nudge nudge wink wink we don't know what's going on but they're they're going to the dentist why are you smiling Mindy I'm remembering from my notes I reviewed some of my notes about the Cox's and I do believe that there was a charge against Barry for sale visiting a prostitute at some point in the 90s maybe that's you know just an indication of something not necessarily that that happened in Las Vegas but but yeah I think it just points to to his character yeah I mean this seems to be leading to is the perception of like a double life where they're trying to be wealthy but also devoutly Mormon but also a party lifestyle maybe hidden behind the scenes I'm just trying to fill in the blanks yeah I just I definitely think that for me there was an aha moment when when they were Temple workers in the San Antonio Temple and trying to piece together what I knew about them and their lifestyle and everything it just didn't fit for me and that was really hard for me to to comprehend and it was part of what made me feel gross about the temple in general was that like Barry and Janice are Temple workers like are these the kind of people that you really want in the most holy place you know that's fascinating and so for me it was hard for me to go to the temple because I would look at the other Temple workers and go what secrets are you hiding you know and I would I remember having that that feeling and that thought and knowing about some of these allegations against Barry and I remember going to a state conference shortly after that and I was sitting the whole entire um gym area was full and and the only seats left were on the stage so I was sitting on the stage and I was looking out at this huge congregation in front of me and all I could think about was how many of you are secretly abusing people and it was no longer for me this feeling of um community that I had known before where it was like we all believe the same thing we're all we all have the same goals we all want the same things and then at that point for me it was like that was over I could never look at it the same way again it was like just a Place full of um abusers that were hiding behind Church callings what made your brain go to abuse and again what age was this um I was this was when I was you know much later when I was an adult and it was it was um oh gosh I was probably 35 or so and you know it was when it was when some of these abuse allegations against Barry started to come out this is long before the Lori and Chad stuff yeah okay so we'll maybe we'll come back yeah we'll come back to that at some point I mean I mean Mindy tell me if this makes sense to you but like I what I noticed growing up I didn't have any sense of abuse happening within the church sexual abuse or physical abuse personally what I did notice was that in my extended family there was a heavy emphasis on appearance and a a tendency within my family and extended family to have dark secrets that were hidden and not talked about and and then there could be a lot of pressure not with my parents per se but with other aunts and uncles a real pressure to look good and to make everything seem perfect and that just meant mental health wise that's a recipe for dysfunction when there's High control high emphasis on appearance but then Secrets it leads to kind of double lives right and and learning to lie and hide things which is super dark right so that's this jives with my experience minus the abuse part because I wasn't aware of it but now that we look back and we see the the church Mormon church has been willing to settle for almost a billion dollars with all the Boy Scout abuse cases and then we've just seen coming out of the rampant sexual abuse cover-ups for decades of tens of thousands of Mormon children and teens yeah we realize that the Mormon church has this probably centuries-long history of a lot of child abuse that that's been covered up so that part I'm learning now about the other parts I resonate with in my Mormon Abrahim Mindy I don't know if there's anything you want to yeah I would agree with that you know um I think most of us that grew up as Mormon it was important to have the you know the facade that everything was going well but yeah my family had secrets and a lot of a lot of families have have you know issues that they've had to deal with or maybe that they didn't want out in the open and and your um your thoughts about that made me recall a book club or a girls weekend or something that I went to like in my late 20s and we were all friends in the war together and everyone had grown up with what seemed like a pretty typical LDS background and one person opened up about something that happened to them a sexual abuse and then another and another and I'm not exaggerating it seemed like the majority of the girls in this group just in this tiny sample had had some sort of something that had happened to them where um it wasn't talked about or you know the church you know didn't deal with it in in an appropriate way and it shook me because I just thought I just think that this happens a lot more than than people want to admit and so anytime these allegations come out I'm sadly not surprised that this has been going on and been covered up yeah and you have this culture that's created by the doctrine of the church that is so filled with shame right and so necessarily you're going to have people keeping secrets because the stakes are so unbelievably high if you do admit that there's something going wrong right and it's so public sexual sin is a sin extra murder exactly right exactly and and it's so public you know you're not taking the sacrament you lose your calling you could possibly get excommunicated and then your entire family system is gone too so the stakes are just unbelievably High Eternal salvation please Eternal status together versus not right so I feel like the church doctrine creates this culture where the stakes are so high that we have to keep secrets because if we don't it's everything your your entire world your Eternal salvation and everything that you know is gone and I think that that argument is used sometimes when allegations come to light and maybe are an ecclesiastical leader is involved where they will say let's think about this let's think about this eternal family you know do we really want to go there because this eternal family is at stake and so that's a lot of pressure to put on somebody that's coming forward with with an allegation that probably should be going to the police but instead is Consulting with an ecclesiastical leader like a bishop right and especially when the allegation comes from inside the family exactly it's just that that makes it even worse right okay um while this is helping paint a picture uh for me so thank you if it's okay let's talk about your impressions of Lori okay as a as a teen and of Alex and summer at least them too because and I guess even if Stacy yeah yeah let's talk about Laureate her siblings yeah so um Lori was you know the cheerleader she was you know beautiful blonde-haired blue-eyed you know skinny athletic dancer love to dance love to sing Love to You Know put on a show anytime the family would get together she and summer would choreograph something and do a dance and um you know they would get up and sing and just love to perform in front of everybody you know um so wait performing in front of family like what is that how like families are together how would a performance break out yeah [Laughter] talent show we would get finished eating dinner and we'd all go in the living room and you know the piano would be there and you know I would I'd sit down and play something and Barry would want to sing and summer and Lori would would be off in the other room choreographing something and Stacy sometimes too you know they would the three of them choreographed some some number while we were doing our stuff and then they would come out and you know share whatever they had made up like the Osmonds kind of nice yeah for sure sounds like it yeah okay okay um any Dark Side to Lori's personality in through her high school years that you remember um I didn't really notice anything until after high school okay um maybe probably because I wasn't looking for it but also because I I didn't ever disagree with Laura we didn't have any arguments really as long as you did everything Lori said you were fine are you saying she was high control yeah was she kind of the leader amongst her sisters even Stacy an older sister yeah so so Stacy I I think she was older older enough than Lori that I don't I didn't perceive that Stacy sort of fell in line with that um and I don't really think that Lori was like that as a teenager necessarily I think it was I think it started sort of started to evolve when she was a teenager she started to realize that she did have power in the family system and that she could make people do what she wanted him to do you know so it was it was very much a setting where if she wanted to do something everybody else kind of fall fell in line and I was part of that too because I didn't have my own brain at that point you know I didn't realize I could say no to things and so if Lori wanted me to do something I would I would do it um and what what about Summer's personality and Alex's personality so summer being a little younger than me as kids we didn't hang out as much I got to know her more as an adult um through keeping in touch through social media and stuff like that but she was always very sweet very kind um she did definitely have a stubborn streak you know and she could put her foot down and get her way too but she did it kind of I think in a different way than Lori did um I perceived that Lori's way was more covert and summer was more like you know she would demand something you know overtly not in a bad way I you know I didn't get any kind of bad vibes from Summer that way um Alex was always the comedian first like that was his number one role and that was actually how we would find out about a lot of the family secrets is that Alex would make a joke about it you know something would come up and he would make a comment that was that he thought was really funny and we would go what Is that real did that really happen wow and most of the time yes it really did yeah any examples of the types of things he would reveal through jokes or oh I mean nothing was off limits he would talk about people's mistakes he would talk about um you know body shaming you know Adam was a little chubby as a kid and and Laurie actually was a little bit chubby as a kid and then she she and Adam both kind of did this thing where freshman year of high school or so they just stretched out over the summer and you know and got skinny but before that it was the constant Bud of jokes was you know body shaming Lori and Adam wow by by Alex and um yeah I mean nothing was off limits did not matter how you felt about it everything from you know you tripped and fell to you had childhood trauma it was like everything was a joke to him it's been mentioned in other places that um that Alex suffered from some sort of brain injury as a teen yeah so this is another one of those family rumors that we don't really we and when I say we I mean my part of the family doesn't really know all of the details of what happened but um he was in a car accident he he drove this red Toyota pickup truck and he was in a car accident where the car was totaled and he just left the car and walked away and like did not nobody called the police nobody called an ambulance nobody did anything to correct this you know this accident it just he just literally walked away from the car and it was I remember trying to like figure out how does that work was the car paid for already I'm sure it probably was was there insurance I'm sure there wasn't you know it was that kind of thing and um so the family rumor is that he suffered some kind of a traumatic brain injury at that point and um was not really the same after that and I can't really speak to whether that's true or not because I didn't know him well enough before the accident to make the comparison to make that comparison yeah but I can definitely say I mean he never kept a job for very long he never had relationships for very long he was excommunicated twice and I think he wanted extramarital yeah relationships yeah yeah and so I think that shows like him being willing to get re-baptized that he wanted to do what was right and follow what he was taught as a kid but maybe just wasn't capable of it weren't there also excommunications with Barry and Janice or am I remembering that incorrectly if there were I don't know about okay perhaps I'm thinking of Alex's excommunications was there a a culture of kind of fat shaming or fat phobia within the Cox family definitely you want to talk about that well because image was so important Beauty was so important and almost universally um you would come into the Cox household and the very first comments out of everybody's mouth was about your appearance your hair your clothes your you know when one of my other cousins got married they saw a picture of the guy she was marrying and and the you know the only comments that they made were while they're going to have really pretty babies they're both beautiful gorgeous people and so that was that was so important in that family culture that somebody being overweight was you know that was unacceptable and Janice was I'm I'm pretty sure that she had or has some kind of an eating disorder because we would have family meals together and she would like chew up bits of food and spit it back out on the plate and she would say I don't really need to swallow it I just need to taste it you noticed that yeah I find that so fascinating that she did that just openly yeah at the table yeah wow and she would have a full plate of food but she would never consume any of it she would just do you recall that anyone ever commented on that or oh yeah that would have been you know the butt of Alex's jokes you know all that kind of stuff but maybe no concern that that was an unhealthy approach nope wow what about like maybe fat shaming other people or like commenting on people being overweight or not attractive yeah I mean that that was a pervasive conversation throughout the Cox household was everybody else's appearance not only our appearances but everybody else's appearance too you know okay and I think I shared um when I was on Lauren's podcast this story about um that I was in the foyer of the chapel one time and Barry was up bearing his testimony um open mic Sunday as I call it and um and he was talking about being a temple worker and watching the people come into the temple and looking at them and saying these are not a-listers these are not the celebrities these are not the beautiful people these people are coming in to the temple and I'm thinking you know these are just not great people but they have a temple recommend so they must be okay they must be good people anyway hmm so it was it's just that sort of stunning that he would get up in the front of a Congregation of these people who obviously were coming into the temple some of them probably greeted him at the temple you know and they're listening to him talk about how ugly they are he's essentially doing the the lower 95 like in his testimony yep on Sunday yeah so I'm I've always been curious about how people in in the lives of the Barry and Janice Cox family growing up I'm so curious as to how they were perceived by like their neighbors or Ward members because that would turn me off so quickly to have you know we've all known people in words that we've lived in over the years that are little blow hards or maybe a little bit arrogant but that to me is kind of next level do you have any perspective about how they were perceived by by their neighbors or their fellow Ward members I I don't have a lot of information about that but I do know that people in the temple seem to really love them wow so they would find out that I was related to them and say oh I love Janice and Barry and I would go really wow so I'm getting a I'm getting a bit of a dichotomy you're saying they were the fun kind of the favorites and they were also kind of problematic from your perspective yeah I mean when I was a kid of course they were the fun you know I never would have gotten to go see a James Bond movie or a Rambo movie you know as a kid with my parents but sure you know Barry could provide that experience we're hanging out by the pool or go to Disneyland right right and you know and for whatever reason Knott's Berry Farm I don't know why they love that place so much but I thought it was terrible I never wanted to go there but it was like that was exciting to bury let's all go to Knott's Berry Farm um but yeah as an adult you know once I had my own kids and um had a different framework of how to view things I realized how unhealthy a lot of those behaviors were and and and how toxic a lot of the Dynamics were okay so you kind of touched on this but any indication Alex would become violent from his kind of high school years that you saw I had no indication of anything like that when I was a teenager um but I did and this was you know as an adult much later looking back on it he really didn't have the ability to form attachments with people and so there was no there was that joking and comedian style was a very much a way of avoiding any kind of connection or intimacy so that's interesting so maybe he maybe that was his personality or maybe he played a paid a price for playing that functional role within his family yeah yeah because there is the truth teller in family systems yes there is whether it's through jokes or whatever right that say the things that everybody else is trying to keep secret or hide or that everyone's afraid to talk about right that's really interesting for you to say that because I never thought of Alex as the truth teller until you put that together just now but that's really possible that that's what he was trying to do was call attention to these unhealthy things and didn't know any other way to deal with it and humor is sometimes the softest way to kind of say something that people don't want to hear yeah right yeah it's like the sugar that helps the medicine go down so yes and I'm just making stuff up well that's that's an interesting information for sure yeah yeah okay any other we'll come back to your story now but any other Cox family stories kind of through the high school years that you think are really important to what happens later well I didn't get to get a chance to talk about Stacy but I would just want to say how much I loved her she she was so kind and she was just um a bright spot in that family you know she was smart and she was sweet and she was always willing to do whatever she needed to do to do to help everybody else out you know she just was I felt like she was such a good person hmm okay I know you mentioned this on a previous interview but would you feel comfortable sharing the story about driving in the car oh yeah I think that was very impactful when I heard it the first time yeah so uh this was one of the times that my brother and I visited the Cox's without my parents and Janice and Berry I think were in Vegas and they had left um Stacy in charge and my brother went off with Adam and Alex and Lori wanted to go on a date with her boyfriend and so she found a friend for me and we went to um you know typical mini golf and dinner and whatever and afterwards she wanted to go make out with her boyfriend so we went to this golf course where it was dark there was nobody around and she and her boyfriend went off into a corner and then she left me to deal with this other guy which I was not appreciative of I had no experience with these kinds of things and I was really traumatic for me but um and you know just neither here nor there just one of those things that that I didn't appreciate but I could not have spoken up and said I don't want to do this I could not have said to Laurie you go ahead and go on a date with your boyfriend I'll hang out at home with summer or something you know that would have not been an option but we were on our way back home and her boyfriend had this Jeep and they had the top off and the doors off and everything and they were playing loud music and just hanging out the sides of the car and sort of a joyride situation and we were coming down this residential street and there was a cat that ran across the street and her boyfriend just made a conscious effort to run over this cat and kill it and he's sort of like after the after he hit the cat sort of tapped his brakes and they all sort of looked to see if it was dead and everybody started laughing and I was shocked and traumatized and and horrified by that and I was looking over at Lori to just like see are you are you okay with this that just happened and she was just laughing and there was no reaction there was no remorse there was no sadness there was and I was crying you know I was horrified and it was really hard for me to see that there was no reaction from anybody else in the car it wasn't just Lori it was her boyfriend and and the other friend too right you know yeah so she wasn't the driver of the car but it sounds like she didn't have a a real strong reaction to to a cat being intentionally killed she thought it was funny yeah yeah so I mean immediately that pulls for me this diagnosis of a personality disorder called anti-social personality disorder which isn't people when they don't know the term they think oh that means you don't have friends or you're not anti-social anti-social personality disorders I understand it means you don't really have a conscience or you don't really have empathy you just don't have it and it's the type of thing where Jeffrey Dahmer could do what he did and not really be phased by it just so that makes me want to check in about Lori and her just basic levels of empathy or compassion for others animals or people did you ever get a sense for that that she had a lack of narcissism lack of empathy or narcissism definitely um knowing what I know about narcissistic personality disorder having you know been around lots of those people she definitely has those qualities for sure that's that's an easy one check you know as far as other cluster B personality disorders obviously I'm I'm not a professional you know you you are but I um you know I can only say that I I see some of those behaviors in her and you know certainly in my experiences with her later on as an adult would definitely indicate that she has those qualities meaning a lack of empathy lack of empathy for people's pain and suffering yeah lack of empathy and more concerned with what's best for her and you know to the detriment of whoever happens to be around her okay okay um all right so let's shift back to your story for a bit if that's okay sure anything about let's just say your life up through High School that's notable in terms of your Mormon trajectory story and or you know uh lorries yeah so I have kind of a weird story about girls camp and I don't if you want to edit this out later you're welcome to but I'm really curious to know if this is something that is odd or if it's normal um I loved Girls Camp growing up I loved everything about it and um in our stake we did this little closing ceremony thing that was called the legend of liahona have you guys heard of this I I am just anxiously waiting to hear what this is so so the the um Juniors and seniors were the were the youth leaders at girls camp and so we got to be in charge of doing you know these kinds of putting on these kinds of Productions and on the last night of camp we would dress up like American Indians face paint and everything oh yeah and um there was a there was a path that went from the dining hall down to the water and we would stand in pairs across from each other on this path and held a hold a lighted candle and stare at each other and the younger girls were made to feel like this was a very sacred very important part of girls camp and so they were all told to be very quiet but if you must talk you must whisper which has Echoes of the temple you know so I didn't realize till later but the younger girls would all come down this path and see us all dressed as American Indians standing there staring at each other and then you would get down there and there was a huge bonfire and then on the dock which was about probably 10 or 15 feet up you know off of the shore there was a an American Indian princess standing facing away from the crowd and she had the whole head feathered headdress and everything and once everybody got seated she would turn around and there'd be a microphone out there and she would deliver this monologue that was called The Legend of liahona and it was basically a story about the American Indians and tying it in with the Book of Mormon and all that kind of stuff and it was it was a very big deal and um yeah in Connecticut okay and it would this is this had been going on for like years and years and years it happened all six years that I went to Girls Camp so I mean it was before I was there and probably continued on for a long time after I left um but I was on the stake youth Council as a as a teenager and a senior and and I I really wanted to be the one who played the liahona because I I was a performer and you know I thought that'd be so cool um I didn't know how to go about it I think you had to be chosen or somebody had to recommend you or something like that well I never I never got the call so I was fine I was kind of sad about that and then the Sunday after Girls Camp was over you do this sort of debrief testimony meeting where it's the young men and the young women together and the young women get a chance to Bear their testimony about girls camp and how things you know how things went and some of the leaders got up too and one of the leaders got up and said um that she'd had this wonderful experience and she loved Girls Camp and everything and she wanted to talk for a second about the legend of leahona she said somebody had approached her and asked her if she had a recommendation for her Legend of leahona and she put forward a name and the stake young women's president said to her well what about so and so in your ward and she didn't name the person and she said um I had to tell this person that no I couldn't recommend this young woman even though she might seem like the right person because I knew that she had been lying to her parents and I just about fell off my chair because I knew that my parents had recently talked to the bishop and told them that I had lied to them about some things and so what was horrifying for me about that was that my parents had talked to the bishop and then the bishop had talked to the young women's leader and then this young women's leader had talked to the state young women's president and you know essentially all these people talking about me behind my back but nobody ever coming to me and saying you know is this true what were the circumstances or even my Bishop calling me in and saying you know your parents are concerned that you're lying to them what what happened you know nobody wanted my side of the story you know and so that was just that was a really um hard thing for me and it was sort of this moment where I was like can I trust my Bishop you know or can I trust my young women's leaders you know they're all talking about me and nobody wants to talk to me so that was a that was the first moment that I think I really felt like maybe there's something weird going on with the leadership of the church and they're not really who they say they are you know hmm I'm sure that was impactful and it's just an icky feeling to know that all these people are talking about you yeah and I think it's a glimpse into how sometimes Church leadership works and yeah things can get spread around without maybe going to the source right and finding out yeah I'm sorry about that that sounds like it was a disappointing experience yeah it was it was disappointing and sad for me because I I thought that I trusted my young women's leaders you know is this around dating boys kind of stuff yeah I mean it my my mother was horrified that I didn't have very many girlfriends I mostly had friends that were guys and um so I had a I had a boyfriend and I had a group of guys that I like to hang out with it was my boyfriend his twin brother and three or four of their friends and we would go bowling or we'd go to the movies or something like that but my mom told me that if I continue to hang out with these boys everybody was going to assume that I was having sex with all of them and that was a bad that was a bad look yeah and so she did not want me hanging out with these guys so a lot of times I would tell her that there was another girl going along or I would tell her that I was going to my girlfriend's house when really I was going out with all these guys you know to hang out or whatever and she found out about it eventually so that was the big lie yeah it seems so innocent you know and I'm thinking who who else in in that young women's group you know has lied to their parents it's just unfortunate that that's how it came yeah and it ended up coming back around again because I really wanted to go to BYU um it was the only true school well of course in our family system absolutely yeah um I'm not a cougar so I disagree spoiler alert I did not end up going to BYU but but I remember you know asking my Bishop for the ecclesiastical endorsement that I needed for my application and we had a really brief conversation but it was like in public at youth conference at a dance he came up to me and said something about you know I heard you you need this endorsement and I said yeah I really want to go to BYU and he said well where else are you applying and I I told him I had applied to two other schools one of them was the University of Connecticut which was notoriously a party school and he said I don't know how in the world you're going to keep your standards if you go someplace like that and I remember thinking that was a very odd thing for him to say but I was like but that's my safety school you know I want to go to BYU and um he brought up the lying thing again he said your parents you know talked to me and apparently there's you know some some maybe some things we need to visit about and I said okay I'm you know I'm happy to talk to you about it we can figure that out and then I never heard from him again wow and then the next thing I got was a letter from BYU saying that my application was incomplete they had never received my ecclesiastical endorsement oh that's disappointing yeah and there would so just to be I don't know explicit like there were never conversations with you and the bishop about like premarital sex or anything like that no so he wouldn't have had any reason in his conversations with you to think there were grounds for you not being worthy of following the honor code or any of that stuff right and I I went to the temple did baptisms for the dead and so we'd had conversations before you know but there was never anything that came up in those conversations that he told that he was concerned about or that he thought I had done something wrong you know so you're thinking your mom was suspicious of your worthiness and so she told the bishop you might not be worthy I mean is that I think that's really possible you know um again it's that it's that culture of secrecy in our family where we just don't talk about things and that would have been a confrontation she would have been really uncomfortable with so it would been more comfortable for her to go to the bishop and say something to him and vicariously maybe get the results she wanted hmm wow so what would you do where'd you go well I ended up going to the University of Connecticut you were a husky yes for one whole semester um you know there again my parents and I never had a conversation about money or anything like that and and I didn't you know I don't think they knew how to help me go to college anywhere but BYU because that was the only experience they had had and um I was 17 when I graduated from high school and so when I got to to college I was 17 you know I was still a minor and I had no idea what I was doing and um I just wanted to keep myself as busy as possible because I was for the first time away from my family system realizing how painful it had been and how um how many hurt feelings I had over so many different things and I was really in a bad place emotionally I was very I was devastated by getting out of it and and looking back on it and thinking oh my gosh that stuff was all really horrible you know so I got I got to Uconn and there again it was me and the first Sunday I went to church and there was one other girl who was a member and then there was a boy who was a member but he was on the basketball team and so he was going to be gone for like the whole semester basically and so I was like okay well here I am again with you know nobody around me who really believes the same things that I do and I was incredibly depressed um and I I just wanted to keep as busy as I could so I signed up for 21 credits and I also got a part-time job at the Hamburger Stand and I also got another part-time job as an usher at the theater so I just packed my schedule really really full and um I ended up uh you know getting into the drinking partying part of it and it was at first a way to sort of fit in with everybody else but then it also I very quickly learned that when I was drinking I did not feel pain and so it started to be a numbing thing for me and so I spent a lot of time experimenting with alcohol and I ended up in a bad situation and ended up being the victim of sexual assault really into sort of a dissociative State I don't really remember a lot about the rest of the semester and I ended up finally going to the health clinic because I was so depressed and did not know what was happening to me and I couldn't function and so I went thinking maybe I have some kind of a virus because I couldn't get out of bed I you know I was sleeping all the time and I don't remember how my mom got involved but she ended up coming to pick me up and I don't remember if it was her or me that made up the lie that it was mono but one of us did because that was a good cover and I went home for a couple of weeks and tried to sort of get my brain right and um by the time I went back the semester was almost over and only six of those credits ended up transferring and it was just a it was a really hard horrible time for me and during that time my dad got a job in San Antonio so they were moving and uh I really wanted to stay in Connecticut I loved New York City I would have loved to stay there but I didn't have the confidence that I thought I could do that so I stayed with the house until it sold and then I moved to Austin to move in with Lori and Adam because they were in Austin my parents were in San Antonio are we talking about another word so so okay first of all I'm really sorry that happened my reflection Mindy I'm curious if you agree is that a Mormon teenager is completely ill-equipped grows up completely ill-equipped to go to a state school right that's exactly what my thinking was yeah so we just we send these little sheep out into the Wolves you know yeah and especially if um if if a child has been raised in a family where just a lot of things weren't talked about including you know things that could be dangerous or to avoid um I'm guessing that that wasn't something that you guys that your family talked about very much how to drink responsibly no no no it's just that like going back to what my mom had said before it's just no you just don't do that you don't drink because you have a lot of big friends without the dialogue yeah how to choose healthy friends how to find Community yeah like just in a gazillion ways Mormon teens I I grew up in Katy Texas which is outside of Houston I could have gone to any University I wanted to within reason and BYU was the only University I played to because there was no other path yeah and all my friends that didn't go to a BYU School ended up out of the church and and probably living kind of sadder lives because you're just not equipped in all the ways it's just like you're on the train the Mormon train and if you go to state school you're getting off the Mormon train without any tools to survive yeah I'll push back on that because I I didn't go to a BYU school I went to Utah State and Weber are you talking about kids that are who are raised outside of Utah what I mean sorry yeah it's kind of like the BYU's or a Utah University sure right where there's a strong yes Institute presence right and so you still get the heavy Mormon experience at a Utah State or even a University of Utah right or Weber you're still going to get the Mormon experience for sure yeah I'm sure there might be like in maybe in some of the California Arizona or Idaho schools there would be a strong Institute presence but not a Yukon right I mean I was just feeling so much you know so tender for 17 year old you who goes to leaves leaves the nest without a great support system you know uh without a great solid Family Foundation for how to handle those types of experiences I mean I went to a state school where we had Institute and I knew a lot of LDS people and I still really struggled that first year it's just a hard year yeah it's a hard year for teens and there's so much to to process and so many new things and you don't feel quite ready and you really lean on the people that you feel like you can trust and that can be there for you so I'm sorry that that you seemed that you didn't have the support that you needed during that time yeah I'm sure that was really tough thank you I was I was completely unprepared for the outside world I had no idea what I was doing and um there was never a conversation like I don't think I ever heard my parents say the word sex until I was an adult you know never had those conversations I really think that they believed that the church it was up to the church to teach me to be chaste and modest and all of that yeah because that I mean the the implication was always like we're going to church we're we're watching General Conference we're going to all of our meetings you're going to Young Women's your young women's leaders are teaching you these things you know we we don't we don't need to have a conversation about it it's the expectation you just meet the expectation that's probably not super uncommon for some families to feel like yeah this is awkward to talk about these things so thank goodness that the kids are going to young men's and young women's and they're getting the messages that that maybe we're uncomfortable thank goodness for standards night thank goodness for the pamphlet what's it called the strength of you yeah yeah and that one night a year where we we sort of talk about the sacred powers of procreation and that's it wow okay so how so I'm remembering now when the Moon Turns The Blood the book yeah where Lori ends up not not going to BYU she ends up like running away with a boy and getting married and he was a non-member boy if I remember right so maybe tell us how Lori ends up that halorians up in Austin yeah and then how you end up with Lori and Austin she married her High School boyfriend sort of surreptitiously ran off with him Nelson I don't remember his last name so how'd she get away with marrying a non-member and marrying outside the temple when she's from a devout Mormon family you know again this is one of those family stories that I don't really know the whole story all I know is that she ran off with her High School boyfriend and Barry marched down there and kidnapped her and made her get it in alt that was that's the family story that's all I heard that I know that's all you know yeah Barry and maybe one of the brothers or something probably down to yeah to rescue her from this hasty marriage his name was Nelson Nelson and did you know Nelson nope okay you didn't know him okay so by the time okay so take help us get from Lori in Orange County to Lori and Austin she she runs away with this boy gets married the marriage is an old do you know how she gets to Austin I think she went to Austin right after that and and Adam was in Austin and he was working as a prime time DJ and so um you know he he had a big fan base there and I think Lori moved there to to be with him and to sort of be away from her parents Adam's brother okay okay he's the third in their family so she goes to live with her brother Adam in Austin yeah okay okay all right and that's when you you how did you get connected to them well I just we had kept in touch you know and I I told them my family's moving to San Antonio I didn't really want to live with my parents anymore and you know we just sort of made a plan to make it work I was like you know I kind of asked is it okay if I come and stay with you guys and you know until I can figure out what I'm gonna do with my next phase of life so this was after Lori's Hasty marriage to Nelson okay gotcha yeah and Austin's a fun town it's a music town it's it's got great restaurants great nightlife it's the capital of Texas so the legislature's there yeah so it's not a it's not an unfun place to live but I didn't know anything about it I you know I didn't know anything about Austin I thought I was moving to like scrub rush and tumbleweeds yeah yeah okay to my surprise and Delight it was great so how long were you with Lori in Austin um just a few months okay and um so Adam was was DJing working at night and Lauren radio station yeah radio station and it was like the radio station like the top 40 radio station so he was pretty well known and Lori was working at a tanning salon because of course she was and I mean it tracks right right it's on brand um so around what year was this do you remember this would have been the spring of 1993. okay all right so I'm just I'm graduating from BYU where are you in 93 Mindy 93 I am finishing my first year at Utah State okay yep go Aggies yeah of course yeah 93 yeah Lori's doing a tanning salon thing get there so she she got me a job there too so we could work together I didn't have a car I didn't have anything I mean I basically had two suitcases and that was it you know so I just came down there hoping that I could do anything but move back in with my parents you know so um we were we were working together and you know trying to figure out life in South Austin and um there was a guy that came into the tanning salon pretty frequently and he asked Lori out on a date and they went out on their date um she already had a boyfriend as far as I knew because we had when we had gone out with Adam there was this other guy that she'd been spending time with but I don't I don't really know what their relationship status was at the time so I shouldn't um cast aspersions but um she agreed to go out of date on this guy with this guy she comes back to the apartment after the date and she's not impressed you know she's like ah he was okay I don't I don't really think I like him you know we're probably not going to go out again and uh that was that and then a few days later he was in the tanning salon asked me if I wanted to go out and I was like well Lori didn't like him he's not really that cute but I was like okay whatever I don't you know I wasn't doing anything else socially except hanging out with Lori and Adam so we went out on a date um it was uneventful it was unromantic I didn't really enjoy it came back and Lori just like gave me the third degree about where did you go what were you doing what did you guys talk about did you talk about me did you talk about my date with him you know just giving me the third degree about what happened on this date and I you know I told her I didn't really like him that much you know he gave me a kiss goodnight but it was not a big deal you know it was just one day probably not going to see him again and a few days later she told me that Janice was coming into town and I was surprised by this because I didn't know this was the plan and we're on our way to the airport okay yeah Janice her mom Lori's mom we're on our way to the airport and she starts grilling me again about this guy and making the implications she thinks I slept with him oh wow and I was like very blindsided by that and we get to the airport and I find out that the reason Janice is coming is because Lori has called Janice and told her everything that I'd been up to and I'm going to put that in quotes and that I was a bad influence and Janice wanted me out of the apartment and at this point I was not doing anything that Lori was not doing we were doing everything together you know but I if I felt like it was really about this guy like she saw me as a threat wow and she wanted me gone so she called her mom to come and kick me out of the apartment so we picked up Janice at the airport we went back to the apartment and Janice was basically there to supervise me packing my stuff and getting out were you was there tension between you and Lori not until that car ride huh you know it was he like the guy she didn't even like him she she didn't like the idea of him liking you yeah that's the bottom line yeah you women are connecting on this that was it well I mean this is the way jealous females behave sometimes yes if you know if there's a perception that maybe she's going out with somebody that I like but even if you don't like them it just it seems so odd to me I was like you don't even like this guy so why does it why does it matter I don't think it was about the guy I think it was about it was about you yeah and I think that she was starting to see you as a threat like you said yeah I was taken away I was taken away from her attention right if somebody liked me then that may then maybe they wouldn't like her right exactly but then I could see a healthy way to approach that it's just hey you know me again this isn't working out yeah you know sorry could you go find somewhere else to live right not call Mom and cow well San Antonio not California well she was in California at this point she hadn't moved to San Antonio called Mom from California to come tell my cousin roommate to leave that's right that's weird right okay so I packed my suitcases and bought a bus ticket to San Antonio and came down to live with my parents because I didn't have anywhere else to go well were your parents involved with that whole incident I don't think so because when I talked to my dad about it a short time ago he didn't remember that happening so I don't think that there was ever any kind of communication between him and Janice where Janice called him and said you know Megan's misbehaving maybe there was I don't know or maybe there was a phone call between Janice and my mom that I don't know about but it would be very on brand for the family to just not say anything about it you know I find it interesting that Janice was accusing you of doing some of the same things that it sounds like Laurie was doing as well do you think that some of that was just a deflection like she didn't want her parents to know or yes 100 that she was doing that so it was just way easier to just kind of dump all of that behavior on you oh yeah and make you the bad guy I I there's no doubt in my mind that Lori the conversation did not go I've been drinking and partying and so has Megan you know that is not something that never would have happened yeah and so the part of the story I kind of left out a little is that you know Adam being a top 40 DJ got invited to all these parties and you know clubs on 6th Street they all knew him they would all buy him drinks for free and we were with him so even though I was only 18 and she was only 19 we got into all these clubs and people would buy us drinks and they thought we were of age you know so we were both together this entire time doing these things together okay how did that affect your relationship with Lori after that conflict um the sad part is that we never talked about it and family's family so um it was only two years later that I got married and you know thinking about who are my bridesmaids going to be and it was like well all of my high school friends are back in Connecticut and none of them are going to travel down here for a wedding so it was my sister and Lori and summer were my bridesmaids okay and that was really kind of like the next conversation that we had after that you know it was two years later and and it wasn't discussed like no it did it seem awkward to talk to her again after kind of not talking or is that just kind of the mo of the family just like let's pretend it didn't happen and we're moving on to the next thing let's pretend it didn't happen everything's fine now we're not living together now so there's no chance it's gonna happen again sure so we just don't talk about it we move on and this boy was he a Mormon boy not a Mormon boy that you married not a Mormon boy so you had a couple years of not living the gospel should we say yeah yeah and I really I went once I went to UConn I was not in the church okay at all and I was you know I was trying to figure out who I was I didn't really feel like I had an identity at that point I had just done everything my parents told me to do and and there were a lot of things that didn't fit for me um maybe a huge part of the story that I left out is that I'm bisexual and I started having bisexual feelings when I was in seventh grade and that did not fit yeah in the late 80s early 90s right yeah and I didn't even really know what bisexual was all I knew was that there was this girl that I really thought was beautiful and I would try to go up and talk to her and I would just get butterflies in my stomach and she was in my Orchestra class and um we had a concert and we were all in the the orchestra room getting ready for the concert and she had worn this beautiful black crepe dress with a sweetheart neckline and I just remember seeing her and thinking oh my gosh she's so beautiful I want to go tell her how beautiful she is and I walked over there to talk to her and I just could not get the words out and I was like I just I just wanna I just want to be around you and you know maybe smell your hair and just I'm just kidding um like sexual feelings but just attractive beautiful and just wanted to be close to her you know and um I remember thinking to myself well that that's not it's there's nothing sexual about this this is not wrong it's just that I admire her you know I want to be her friend um but then you know after a few more years of things like that I did start having sexual feelings towards girls and I thought it just it's just wrong I'm just not going to have those feelings I'm just not going to have those thoughts I just am not going to entertain anything like that and I'm just going to pretend like I don't feel that way you know and if there were sleepovers or anything like that if there was an opportunity to you know experiment or do anything I just I just said that's wrong I'm just not going to do that so I kind of pretended that I didn't have those feelings for a very very long time and are you saying that maybe that influenced you not being as active in the church for a while yeah because once I got to college I started trying to think about who I really was and did I fit into this mold that my parents wanted me to be in and I felt like I didn't I felt odd you know I felt like I didn't really belong and so I was wrestling with that and you know feelings of depression and getting out of my family and all that kind of stuff it was a very hard time for me okay so when I moved to San Antonio my only option was to go to Community College because my GPA was so terrible and so I rolled enrolled in this community college and I met I met a guy and um I wanted to get out of my house so badly and this guy really liked me and he wanted to marry me and he was 31 years old and you were like 20 and I was 19. oh 19. oh at this point okay and um yeah he really wanted to marry me and I really wanted to get married so so we got engaged and I told my parents that we were engaged and my you know we went over there did the whole thing went to my parents house and you know they had met him before and knew who he was and and he said that he wanted to marry me and my parents were just very silent and we started talking about you know what kind of ceremony we might want to have and where we might want to have the reception and my dad just stopped him and he said this is not a celebration for us and it was very an eye-opening moment for me because I realized at that moment that if I didn't continue on the Mormon path that I was not going to be acceptable to my parents so that was hard for me um I sort of ended up coming to the conclusion though he was not he was not a good person he was not good to me he was not kind he was verbally abusive and I later found out that he was um Distributing marijuana and I decided I didn't want to be married to somebody like that so we broke up and then two weeks later I found out I was pregnant oh so um I made I started making a plan to get away from my parents and I found a few friends at school that maybe wanted to move in together and um I just made this plan to go get a job close to the school to live close to the school so I didn't have a car but that's how I was going to make that work and I was just gonna not talk to my parents again ever for like maybe a couple years and then maybe I would introduce them to their grandchild so your plan was to not even tell them that you were pregnant yeah because I knew the shame and the I knew that was going to be the end of the world for them you know I knew that it was going to be um a fight I didn't want to have you know yeah and I knew I was going to be unacceptable and so I made this big plan and then one day they came to pick me up from school and it was both my parents in the car and I was like that's odd why are they both here and I get in the car and my mom hands me an envelope that has been opened and it was a it was a letter from my OB GYN with the blood test results that was positive for pregnancy and so she just handed me the envelope and she said we know you're pregnant has anyone heard of HIPAA ever well I I was 19 years old and the letter was addressed to me and it was from an OB GYN so of course my mom wanted to open it she you know okay she was suspicious so wow so how did that how did that end up with I mean who so was Laurie a bridesmaid at a wedding yeah but that it's it's coming sorry I had to rewind I had to rewind a little bit because we have to get to the point where I had a child already when I got married so um yeah so so that was all horrible it was it was really hard um I my mom uh got up in testimony meeting and relief society and told everybody that I was pregnant and um you know did the whole crying horrible thing and whatever it was it was really really hard um she made me go tell my Bishop um she made me read the miracle of forgiveness oh no which made me feel like I wanted to die I felt like garbage after I read that book um do you remember what it was about the book that made you feel like garbage well um I had same sex attraction issues as the church called it back then and um I felt like there was nothing I could do to change that and and the book made me feel like Not only was it the sin next to murder because I was pregnant but then also um being grouped in with people who are committing bestiality just you know made me feel like a terrible human being and also I feel like the book should have been called there's no hope for forgiveness because I felt hopeless after I read that book I felt like there was nothing that I could do to make myself clean again and for the never Mormons who are watching or listening this is a book that was published by one of the prophets of the Mormon Church supposed to be Kimball and for decades it was like considered almost up there with the Mormon scriptures the Bible the Book of Mormon the doctrine Covenants and then like there's you know talmologist books Jesus the Christ and the articles of faith and then the miracle forgiveness it's one of like four books missionaries were even allowed to read but if you ever sinned it's the book that your Bishop would hand you to hand to you because it was written by a prophet and was all about repentance fast forward to 2023 it's been the it's its publication has been ceased it's no longer sold because it's such a heinous horrendous book and yet it governed how Mormons thought about themselves in Morality and virtue and sex and sexuality it governed 50 years of Mormonism at least it was the textbook for repentance yeah yeah and so it's a horrible book and it was horrible for you to read it yeah yeah I remember my stepmom telling me don't ever read that book and she was a faithful she still is a faithful Act of Mormon oh wow and when she heard that I was thinking about reading it as a faithful active woman she said please John don't ever read that book I was like what that's crazy and then I read it yeah because I hadn't sinned in any of those major ways so yeah no skin off my back yeah it made me feel good it's like yeah I'm not doing those bad things you know what I mean and there are long lists of bad things that that are listed in that book oh yeah it seems like most most people the list the long lists of other indiscretions in my experience don't seem to be as notable as if you've had sexual sin it seems like it was a pretty much the textbook for for trying to get rid of your sexual sin right we have there's a Mormon stories episode where we read some of the most heinous portions of the miracle forgiveness so if you want to check that out do Mormon stories podcast Miracle forgiveness and you can watch that episode okay so you read that book felt like dirt yep lower than dirt yep and then also had to be subjected to LDS Family Services because the appropriate thing at the time was to go to counseling to try and get the young couple who had sinned to get married and I felt like that was a huge step backwards because I had already decided I did not want to be with this person you know but I attended the counseling sessions because it was you're you're either going to marry this guy or you're going to give up this baby for adoption that was the official um path forward and um I remember the counselor telling me about this other girl that she had worked with who gave up her baby for adoption and had a great relationship with the adoptive mother and got to see her kid once a year and the mother sent her pictures and all that stuff and I just remember thinking no that is wrong I don't want to do that I don't want somebody else raising my child you know I I'm a perfectly capable human being yeah and I'm gonna it was the it was the first time I had ever done something that defiant to say I'm not going to go down this path I'm gonna I'm gonna keep this child and I'm gonna raise this child and that's really brave because I do think a lot of women especially in the what would this have been like early 90s you know who who were faced with that decision it seems like those are the options right you just didn't hear a lot about about women who were pregnant out of wedlock right who chose to keep the baby but didn't want to stay with the partner yeah so that's really Brave of you thank you I didn't think of it like that at the time at the time I just all I was focused on was that the fact that I did I could not there I did not have it in me to give my child away right there's just no way that I could have done that and and lived through it I just it would it would have been like ripping my heart out you know I just couldn't do it and I'm so grateful that I was able to make that decision because I mean I can't imagine my life without my oldest girl you know of course and the church pressure has pressured decades and decades and Decades of women to give up their babies for adoption yeah and also into bad relationships because right where you're either going to marry the father of the baby or you're going to give it and those are the only two options right because it's not acceptable for a young woman to be raising a child on her own on her own so did you um did you maintain a relationship with with your baby's father or um I did not I made it very clear to him that I did not want him to be a part of her life it was probably extreme and cruel of me to do that at the time but I looked at his lifestyle and I thought I don't want my child to be associated with that I also knew his family relatively well I knew there was a lot of dysfunction there and I just really wanted to try to protect her from that if I could and I'm not sure if I would do do it the same way now I probably would have tried to figure out a healthier way to navigate through that but um this is fast forwarding just a little bit because I met I met my husband while I was pregnant with my oldest daughter oh wow and um he got involved with me knowing that I was pregnant with another man's child and I thought was pretty brave of him to throw himself into that situation um but I wanted the baby's father to be involved to a certain extent until the day that I gave birth and he showed up at the hospital with his casual sex girlfriend and another baby who had just been born like a month before and he was the father of that baby yeah oh I said you know what why don't you raise that baby you know and I had you know I had already met my my future husband and um we had already talked about getting married and so I was like you know I'll just have my life over here you have your life over there and that was kind of it but at this point now my parents were thrilled that I was getting married and did not care that he was not a member of the church okay because at this point all they wanted me to do was right the wrong of having a child out of my life yeah and so they didn't really know much about him but he was a bartender and you know it was they were they were just happy that I was getting married at this point so now there could be a celebration and so yes I invited Lori and summer to be my bridesmaids along with my sister and um so that's why there's there's a picture floating around out there of Lori holding my my daughter when she's dressed in the bridesmaid's dress I don't know if I made that connection when I saw that photo that that was your daughter yeah oh thank you for explaining that but funny story about the bridesmaids dresses is that um Lori and summer were living in Austin and I was in San Antonio and I had called her up and invited her to be my bridesmaid and said you know you guys can get your own dresses I want you to have something that you want to wear but I told her that my my wedding colors were purple and you know had all this all this other Decor that went along with that and the day before the wedding she showed up with these royal blue bridesmaids dresses they are very blue they are not purple at all they did not match anything oh and um I felt a little sorry for my sister because they had kind of this low plunging neckline and they were spaghetti straps with a little jacket over it and she was only 14 and I felt terrible about making her wear that dress because I knew she would be uncomfortable yeah and I think she did share with me later that she felt really uncomfortable wearing that dress but it was what Lori had picked and it was what she wanted and nobody could tell her otherwise so that's what we went with wow after not having seen her for two years yeah yeah she comes onto the scene with the wrong colored dress right and it's her way or the highway sounds like okay and you may have already said this but was the man you married LDS he was not not LDS and y'all were married how long 22 years oh that's a oh wow that's a significant achievement 22 years I say seven years is an achievement yeah okay and you had how many children together six well so six total so my oldest daughter and then we had five more wow okay so any any stories about Lori at the wedding or anything before we just go back to your life was it no no that was pretty much it okay yeah did you see Lori very often after you had your wedding and started having your family um yeah so after I got married she then married Billy and had her oldest son Colby okay so my oldest daughter and Colby are very close in age um so they were born right around the same time okay so after she had her first marriage annulled she married who Billy Billy William lajoya and did you know him I'd never met him okay nope okay and they together had Colby the oldest son okay and she was married how long to him I don't remember but he lived in Del Rio and so I remember there was a lot of her going back and forth between Del Rio and and by this time her parents had moved to San Antonio and Del Rio is in Texas forgive my yeah no it's okay it's about it's about 90 minutes outside of San Antonio I think so okay so it's it's Texas for both of you for for this time for those 22 years were you in Texas basically okay in the same house yeah okay that's San Antonio yep okay all right okay so did you uh become activated in the LDS church during those 22 years yeah so do you want to talk about that yeah so as soon as my daughter was born um I thought I I wanted to get back into church because I wanted her to have a good moral foundation and I had really enjoyed primary growing up and girls camp and all of that and so I thought that's what I wanted for her too and um so yeah I I got back active in the church when she was two and um then tried to get my former husband to get baptized and so that was like all the focus of everybody was at that point was like oh well you know if Megan's back in the church let's get her husband back in the church and let's get them married in the temple and that would have made things nice and even smooth and calm for everybody right so um he did he did take the missionary discussions he went through two or three sets of Elders taking the discussions and um he did eventually get baptized and it was right when he was um turning 30 and he was sort of having like a a moment where he wanted to decide what he wanted to do with his life and so he you know he agreed to get baptized and and how long had you been married at this point about two years and had you had a child together yeah so I it was right after I gave birth to my second child yeah yeah and so he got baptized he was active they and he immediately called him to the Sunday School presidency wow nobody ever talked to him about what his responsibilities were or anything as far as he knew his job was to get all the teenagers to go to class and hold doors open for people that's what he told me he believed his job was and he was only active for about probably four months or so and then he just decided he was not going to do it anymore and I asked him you know I was like well what about your calling and that's when he told me what he believed his responsibilities were and I said didn't anybody ever you know talk to you about that and he said no nobody really you know and this is somebody who's never been a Mormon and they're expecting him to jump right into a Sunday school leadership position but not tell him anything about it and I I remember asking a couple of the men in the ward like can you befriend my husband can you you know hang out with him take an interest in him see if you guys have something in common so that he has people in the ward that he can associate with so that he can understand what this all means you know because this is brand new for him right and of course he was taking the new member lessons but I think the Assumption was well like you're married to a Mormon so you'll you'll figure it out you know right but he really needed to be fellowshipped and that just didn't happen and I was really disappointed by that because even one of our home teacher at the time said you know every every man in the church needs a responsibility and a friend I remember that yeah and it just didn't happen so I remember being really disappointed that people were not following their own advice you know to try and get him activated did you have a spiritual quote repentance and Reawakening as a part of having the baby out of wedlock and Marrying an on member and the parental shame yeah I don't know that you did you have some sort of spiritual Epiphany that brought you back into the church or no I just I think it was just more the experiences that I had as a young woman you know I did have a testimony and I did love the scriptures and I did um love going to do baptisms for the dead in the in the Washington DC Temple and I did I remember bearing my testimony on many occasions and feeling very strongly um that that this was right you know this that what my parents had taught me was true you know and um I really wanted to be acceptable to God that was that was really important to me and so I wanted I wanted to raise my children in that tradition where I felt like I understood who who I was in the Eternal sense like I really did feel like I was a child of God and I felt like I was I felt like he loved me I felt like he knew my name and knew my circumstances and that was a good feeling and I wanted I wanted my kids to feel that too that's beautiful I think I'm thinking back to how you you said earlier that you made a conscious decision when you had children to not do certain things to not you know raise your family in the way that you were raised so it sounds like you took that but also we're holding on to the good parts of the church that you were raised with and were influenced by and so maybe the combination of what you learned from your parents and the way that they raised your family and then you know the good things from the church sounding like that's what you wanted to present to your children yeah and I I had this realization that I thought I thought the way that my parents taught the gospel was wrong oh you know I thought I thought it was my parents that had done it wrong I didn't realize till later that that's just the Gospel According to the Mormon Church you know it is a manipulative controlling shame-filled gospel and I thought that my parents had done it wrong and so I was like well maybe I can do it better maybe there's a more healthy way to teach you know these principles and and the principle of free agency which is what the entire church is founded on is like your right to make a choice um that didn't exist in my home growing up there there was no question like you you are going to go to church you are going to do these things you are going to check the boxes and I thought maybe I can do it in a way where I teach my children about it and then let them make a choice instead of forcing them to do it that work out when those decisions find did you did you live up to that you know do you feel like when your kids were getting old enough to make decisions I say that because I think some when I was a young parent I had ideas of how I wanted to do things and then when I was actually faced with some of those situations I felt some of my upbringing kind of creepy yeah you know well I mean we all say things that we're gonna do as parents sure you know that then later turns out we can't do those things because you know parenting is a real thing and not just a concept um so yeah I mean definitely in a perfect world things would have gone differently but um when my oldest son was 14 he started having doubts and and did not want to go to church anymore and I feel I think it was easier for him to tell me that because my husband at the time wasn't going his dad wasn't going and so it was like safe for him to have doubts and and that that was something that I I didn't have and you know in my family it was like every single family member is a faithful believing Mormon so when he came to me with that I he said I just don't believe this anymore and I sat down with him and I said well tell me what you do believe and he said well I believe in God I think you have to be stupid to not believe in God and I said okay well let's start with that and I said you don't have to believe everything right now but let's figure out what you do believe and start there and maybe things maybe other things will come later um well they didn't and he he never did go back to church and and now he's an atheist so that that thought about there has to be a God you know didn't didn't come to fruition either that didn't stick around but I didn't blame him you know he was um he was really bullied in the church and and I felt I was a second class citizen just bottom line I my husband was not a member I I had wanted to go through the temple but my Bishop asked me he counseled me to wait until my husband was ready to go and um so I did wait I waited for about seven years and then I finally said look this guy's not coming back to church there's no chance he was a member but not active yeah right he'd been baptized but he was only active for four months and then he didn't he didn't ever come he would come to church if I was singing Yeah okay or sometimes he would come to church if there was like that he would come for the primary program sometimes to see our kids but eventually stop doing that too um so I I very much felt ostracized and overlooked and I remember when I did finally go through the temple I um you know got up and released society and bore my testimony about my experience and the Release Society president came up to me afterwards and she said I'm so glad that you told us that you went through the temple because we really wanted you to be a Release Society teacher but we felt really strongly it had to be somebody who had been through the temple and so now that you've been through now you can teach early Society you know and she's like saying it as a compliment exactly of an insult right yeah exactly yeah yeah well that's too bad okay so yeah I guess part part member families and especially going to LDS Church as a woman whose husband isn't attending and you're always hearing about eternal families and righteous priesthood holders not and then your kids are all where's your dad oh he's not active like that's not a fun that's not that doesn't seem like a super fun experience yeah it was really heartbreaking a lot of the time to sit and listen to all of those lessons all the time about eternal families and thinking well if I stay in this marriage I'm never going to have that you know and also super heartbreaking had a miscarriage and the Relief Society president told me you know it's like what we believe is that families will be together forever and she said I know that's probably a happy and a sad thing for you because now you've miscarried this baby but you weren't sealed together and so you maybe are not ever going to see that baby again you know super harmful oh those types of stories are just so damaging yeah they're just and you just hear about about those types of comments all the time it's really unfortunate yeah yeah I'm I'm connecting to it because my sister Gina married a non-mormon and she had three kids and raised them and she she died um you know seven years ago of colon cancer but she didn't like to go to the doctor and part of it I think was she just she felt like her life was a disappointment like her husband never joined she was Raising her kids and then when her kids got to adult years and and really weren't into the church anymore she's like I basically just need to get on to the next life because this one I'll meet my eternal companion in the next life I can't divorce my non-member husband now my kids aren't in the church anymore I don't have much to live for I may as well just hurry and go to the next life and she like got her cancer diagnosis in like October and she was dead by December wow but I just thought she wasn't happy yeah even though the church meant everything to her the way her life played out was just a total disappointment to the plan and I don't know if you felt some of that yeah I definitely felt that way and I remember talking to my I can't remember if it was my bishop or my stake president um probably during a temple recommend interview and I said why can't I just get sealed to my kids you know I'm a faithful believing member I'm you know teaching gospel Doctrine I'm teaching you know new member missionary lessons in a ward where we baptize 30 people a year so I was teaching new member lessons two and three times a week you know I'm bringing my kids to church by myself every single Sunday and if I'm gone or if I'm sick I get a ride for them and I make sure they go they go to Every activity you know they're checking all the boxes they're you know getting Temple recommends and doing baptisms for the dead and all that stuff I had a tradition with my kids when they turned 12 I would take them on their birthday to the temple um we're doing all these things I said why can't I just get sealed to my kids and maybe fill in the Gap later when I find somebody faithful or like maybe after this life I'll get sealed to somebody or something like that or maybe when he dies somebody can see us by proxy you know or something and of course you know that was laughable it was a laughable concept you know this the person I was talking to said well you know the church is about families it's about whole families families with an asterisk right not not partial families right we don't seal partial families what you probably did know then and may or may not know now is that Joseph Smith was sealed to other men really yeah he was sealed other men and he was sealed other men's wives who I didn't know that but I mean the point is is and these were called dynastic ceilings but in the early years of the church all sorts of people got sealed together it wasn't just husband to wife necessarily so there is a historical precedent for untraditional ceilings but it's just we kind of got corporatized and you know the patriarchy kind of traditional family all kind of weaves in there can you see the look of shock on my face at finding out that we're not doing something now that was done way back in in the in the original church right yeah so many examples of that so so some a parallel now that I'm kind of drawing well let me ask this did you live those 22 years as a faithful Mormon regretting you straying From the Path as a teenager well how much of it was like if only I'd gone to BYU if only I had found that return missionary if only I had married in the temple if only I had lived a lot of Chastity and the word of wisdom not had a baby out of wedlock and married my return missionary at BYU I could have had the model Mormon family versus what ended up happening and kind of beating yourself up over those early decisions I don't think that I I think there maybe was a short phase where I felt that way but for the most part I really did feel like everything happens for a reason you know and I felt like I went through those experiences in my younger life and I was I was pretty open about it you know there were a couple of times when I I remember bearing my testimony and saying you know I was out of the church for a while and I was not happy and I was promised that if I came to church came back to church and I was faithful and I did all the things right that I could find true happiness and that's what I was searching for so I don't think there was a lot of regret about that it was like oh I knew that I I knew that I wasn't living the gospel and that's why I was unhappy so you used your own story as a cautionary tell when you would talk to yeah other people yeah but it turns out it was really just because I had layers and layers of trauma and not because I was just not living the gospel you didn't beat yourself up and wallow in a lot of Shame no I really didn't okay I really felt like that like everything that had happened to me up to that point had taught me something and brought me to where I was and I there was a long time when when I was faithful that I was um sort of on autopilot you know doing all of the things that I felt were right and hoping hoping hoping that it was going to bring me the happiness that I was promised and how was your happiness Level Church wise in those 22 years it did not happen that way yeah yeah and it was also because my marriage was not a good marriage I think we had a few happy years in the beginning and then controlling behaviors started creeping in and um and then alcoholism and then physical abuse and then emotional abuse very much a coercive control situation but I um believed that I needed to stay and I I prayed a lot about whether or not I should get a divorce and I talked to my Bishop about it counseled with my bishop and and he said you know what I know that you're a faithful woman and that I and whatever you decide either way that I'm I'm behind you on that that was the one good Bishop that I had he was actually a great great supportive guy all the other Bishops I had were not supportive not not good guys for the most part um but I stayed for a very long time much longer than I should have because I believed that I was doing the right thing and I believed that my kids were better off with us staying together you know it wasn't until I sort of had some some watershed moments that we can get to later but but I stayed in I stayed in there for probably 10 years longer than I should have so it's 2023 how many years ago were you divorced 2017 so it's been five years five years ago okay okay and and the Lorry stuff starts coming on the scenes 2018 when I think the story broke in December of 2019 yeah but but she starts getting in she meets Chad when yeah but I think there's evidence that she was reading his books and kind of following him like maybe it is clear back to like 2015 or 16. Okay so let's rewind just a little bit because I want to talk about Laurie's other marriages and where I was in all of that as well that would be interesting so um after after she divorced um Colby's dad she moved to Austin to be a hairdresser and um I'm trying to think of sort of where where so yeah so I would go to visit her in Austin she would do my hair and Colby she would leave Colby with her dad a lot okay so you had a relationship with Lori after you got married yeah okay yeah yeah she would do your hair yeah she was a hairdresser yeah okay yeah okay yeah so um she was married to her second husband for how long about Colby's dad I don't really I don't really know okay it wasn't very long Okay um and so we were sort of you know both single moms at the same time you know in in a way and and then I got married and then um we would get Colby and my oldest daughter together uh pretty frequently we'd we would go to like the target picture studio and get pictures of the two of them taken together oh really yeah okay yeah so you're becoming close friends again yeah yeah and um so yeah she would she would do my hair and I don't really remember um being invited to her wedding with Joe her next husband but I do remember after they got married visiting them at their home in Austin and Tyler would have been two or three years old and that was kind of the last that I that I was in touch with her mainly because so Tyler was from her third marriage right okay right so she married Joe Ryan they had Tyler together and then Joe Ryan adopted Colby so that's why Colby's last name is Ryan and I don't remember how long they were married a few years I think and when she started to uh go through her divorce with Joe is when I sort of lost touch with her because there was a lot of really nasty information that came out of that divorce proceeding she had accused him of sexually abusing both of the kids and it was one of those situations where you know our our part of the family didn't have all the information we only got bits and pieces of things and I guess there's the idea that he was abusive or there's the idea that when divorce happens it gets messy and people can get falsely accused right exactly exactly and and what ended up coming out of that was I guess they had a custody evaluation and the evaluator interviewed Colby and you know interviewed Laurie and interviewed Joe and observed all the situations and what came out of it was that actually there might have been some inappropriate stuff going on on on Lori's side and I didn't know what to believe and I didn't have all the information and and we just sort of were losing touch at that point and I really wanted to stay as far away from that as I could meaning Lori had been possibly sexually inappropriate in some way or there was some suggestion that you know her talking about sex and sexual things in front of the the kids might not have been appropriate you know and that would have been consistent with her upbringing yeah with Jamie and Barry yeah for sure okay yeah Janice Janice yeah it's okay it's hard to keep all the names straight okay so so that's an ugly divorce an ugly divorce very ugly very very much had Echoes of Stacy's divorce from her husband as well um and has that happened before yes yeah so Stacy got married when I was relatively young it was it would have been the late 80s and um they had a very ugly divorce there was a lot of different allegations that flew around and things like that and Stacy just was very um she was very sickly a lot now we knew she had type 1 diabetes but there also was this Epstein-Barr virus that we weren't you know really sure how much of her illness was being caused by that and how much of it was maybe an eating disorder but it was like the family rumors were never we never got the full story on on everything that was happening but what did end up happening is that Stacy got divorced and um her husband ended up with custody of their daughter Melanie because she was Stacy was unable to care for Melanie because she was just too sick and also Steve did not want Melanie around the Cox's and he was very adamant that that was a very unhealthy situation and he did not want her daughter raised anywhere near them so he ended up getting awarded full custody of Melanie and I think our you had mentioned previously that maybe it came out in Stacy's divorce that she had possibly been sexually abused by her dad Barry yeah she Stacy so that so what came out in the divorce documents is that Steve alleged that Stacy had confided in him that she'd been sexually abused by Barry Barry yeah and so Steve wouldn't have wanted his kids around Barry exactly or Janus exactly okay yeah there's a very inflammatory incident about Barry going into Steve copes um place of work and um and he confronted Steve and threatened him physically and I think he quoted scripture Adam and then like grabbed him and threw him up against a wall or something and one of one of Steve Cope's co-workers called the police and I think charges were pressed against him for assault yeah does the family story is that during that assault that Barry shoved the pages of the divorce decree down Steve's shirt wow that's interesting had him up against the wall and was quoting scripture at him and what was going on there I mean Barry was angry that that Steve was divorcing Stacy and telling all the family secrets and trying to take Melanie away and he was trying to intervene in in the best way that he knew how family secrets like potentially abuse others potentially abuse and and that maybe Stacy had an eating disorder and you know just airing airing which could be associated with all the fat shaming diet culture right appearance appearance centered yeah and he said in those um in those proceedings that we have taken them to Hawaii and Disneyland and and Knott's Berry Farm they do have a thing for Knott's Berry Farm which is interesting it comes up later with Chad and and Lori when they're brand new married right after Tammy dies they take Chad's kids to Knott's Berry Farm so it's interesting that that place keeps coming up in this story but so he just was kind of bragging about all the material things that he had given Steve and I just think that it was pretty glaring that I think that's how he perceived to be a good dad as he's giving his kids a lot of material things right and these things and maybe not meeting their emotional needs right and there was very much this idea of like I spent all this money on you so now you owe me your loyalty yes so okay so to sort of go back to Stacy for a minute I do want to talk about her death and I have to I have to give my apologies to Lauren if she'll eventually watch this because I I didn't tell the whole story because I wanted to be respectful of family members but the more I thought about that the more I thought I it's a story that needs to be told if if anything it's one of the most important stories in this entire thing because um you'll understand why so at this time Stacy is living with Janice and Barry in San Antonio and I believe at this time I want to say that Lori was married to Joe at this time but I don't know that for sure because I can't remember what the years were of her marriage to Joe but that would have seemed to be about right anyway um so Alex was also living in San Antonio and he had his own apartment which was kind of a rare thing because he was very much a couch Surfer and he did live with Janice and Mary for quite some time and um so Stacy you know was in this state where she had been sick a lot and she wasn't doing very well managing her diabetes and um Alex even though he lived in San Antonio he and I didn't spend a whole lot of time together but every once in a while he would call me up or I would call him up and we would get together and have take out and watch a movie that was kind of what we would do when we hung out what's strange though is that we had gone a long time without really talking to each other and a lot of my calls went unreturned and I just thought well he's probably just busy or whatever but one night he called me kind of out of the blue and asked if I wanted to hang out and I was like sure you know I'm happy to be finally you know talking to him again and so he got some take out and was probably Taco Bell if I want to be real about it um came over to my house and we were watching a movie and I just remember he wasn't as um jovial and joking as he normally is he was a lot quieter normally you couldn't really watch a movie because he was constantly making a joke or a comment or something and he was much more quiet than normal and about a third of the way through the movie he actually stopped the movie and and he said um I've been really worried about Stacy lately and I said what's going on and he said well you know how sick she's been and you know that she has you know really struggled with her diabetes and I think she's been really depressed lately and I'm just really worried about her and I said okay well what do you what do you want to do about it you know he said well I'm just the reason that I'm really concerned is because tonight she told me that she was just going to take a big shot and go to bed and I didn't know very much about type 1 diabetes at the time but now that I do I have a son who's type 1 diabetic and I know that if you take a huge shot of insulin your blood sugar is going to go way low and that's very dangerous you can end up you know not not waking up if you don't have somebody there to wake you up when your sugar goes low to get you you know to eat something and so at the time I didn't really know what that meant take a big shot and go to sleep does that mean that like if you take a big shot that you're gonna sleep longer or better or whatever and he said I'm just really worried that she might do something to hurt herself and he said will you come with me to my parents house to go check on her and I said yeah sure I'd be happy to do that so did you already mention that the parents were out of out of town or they were in Hawaii yeah so when we were on their way over there I was asking them you know where where is everybody else why is nobody with her and he said that they were all in Hawaii so Janice Berry Lori Colby and summer were had all gone to Hawaii and Adam was working and so it was just Alex and Stacy and Alex was in his own apartment so Stacy was at the Cox house by herself and and so he told me that you know they were all on vacation so we drove over there and I don't really remember if the door was locked or how we got in but when we opened the door all the lights were off everything was dark and um I know Stacy had her own room but what was odd to me was that we went straight upstairs to Janice and Barry's room and Alex was like leading the way and I was like why why would she be up here he's like well their bed's more comfortable or something like I can't remember what he said and we go in there and and she's lying on the bed and she's sleeping and Alex goes over and tries to shake her and wake her and she won't she won't wake up and he he calls her name and calls her name again and then he shakes her harder and she won't wake up and I remember not really understanding what was going on I just thought like I was like that's weird why won't she wake up I mean she's I could see she was breathing she looked like she was fine to me and um but she just wouldn't wake up and so Alex called 9-1-1 and the paramedics got there and almost immediately one of the paramedics got up on the bed next to her and thumped her really hard in the sternum with his two fingers and called her name and she wouldn't wake up and so he immediately got off the bed they immediately brought a stretcher up the stairs and they started cutting her clothes away and I I just like turned away and I was like what is going on why why does everybody know what's happening except for me like everybody obviously knows this is very serious but all I can tell is that she can't she's not waking up so they they get her on the stretcher and um and and take her to the hospital and Alex and I sat there and waited for you know the doctors to come out and tell us what was going on and I called my parents and my parents came and um they came out and told us that she was in a diabetic coma and that she was not going to wake up and um I just uh it took me a long time to absorb those words it was kind of like they echoed in my head for a long time and my parents were there and so I I thought well they'll they'll call Janice and Berry and they'll let them know what's going on and um and they did and gradually over the next few hours we sort of started to figure out what what was happening and they they did keep Stacy at the hospital for a few more days while my parents arranged for hospice care and I thought that you know everybody would come home and you know and be there with Stacy but they didn't come home they stayed in Hawaii and I remember when they transferred Stacy to the hospice facility and I came in and right after they had gotten her settled and Alex showed up shortly after that and um hospice from this event yeah so they so they kept her in the hospital for just a few days and when they realized she wasn't gonna revive they sent her to hospice care because they knew she only had a few days left so you were around during this time yeah around what year would this have been this was 1998 okay so um when Alex showed up at at the hospice care I kind of asked him I was like where have you been you know it's been a couple days and my parents had been there and I was there but there Alex was nowhere to be seen Alex is nowhere to be seen and Janice Berry and the rest of the family are in Hawaii yeah while their oldest child is dying is dying it's it's such an absurd and heartbreaking story to me yeah I've always I could never make sense of this story did they know that she was really sick when they were on the trip yes well so yeah that she had been sickly you know what I mean and maybe there's more to it well I think in light of everything that's happened we cannot ignore the fact that Janice and Barry had told Stacy over and over maybe it's your time to go she'd been sick for a long time she was somewhat of a burden on Barry and Janice you know not working having racking up all these medical bills at one point Barry was giving her morphine and I didn't think she was sick enough to need something like that but I didn't know for sure because again you know family secrets and everything and and I I think we just can't ignore the possibility that they went to Hawaii and Alex performed a mercy killing I really think that's what happened especially in light of everything else looking back on how suspicious the circumstances were and how he used me basically as an alibi to go with him to Barry and Janice's house and find Stacy together so that he wouldn't be the last person that saw her alive Megan and that he mentioned to you he planted the idea that Stacy had been suggesting taking a shot a huge shot of insulin and setting it up and telling me she'd been depressed it's it's suspicious for sure and that and she wasn't in her in the same bedroom that she normally was in and that became sort of the family rumor was that she'd been depressed and maybe she did do something to hurt herself you know maybe that's maybe that's what happened and what I was about to say is that when Alex finally did show up at hospice and I asked him where he'd been he told me that he'd been shopping and he went out and bought golf clubs and new comforter and all of this on Stacy's credit card and when I asked him about that I said why would you do that she's obviously dying and he said well I don't think she would mind she would want me to have stuff and she's not gonna she's not gonna need it so it's like very much this callous yeah unfeeling unemotional response to the situation of like what's in it what can I get out of this as long as we're here and she's dying anyway I might as well run up her credit cards because she'll never have to pay him back and neither will I this is such an interesting story that I think so many people who have followed this case have had these same questions and I think as an isolated incident who knows but I think now when you have the whole story of what Alex is capable of and some of these mentalities that this family has subscribed to you know some of the ideas I don't know it's interesting would that make Barry and Janus potentially complicit or conspirators I would think so but I don't know what the legal requirements are to bring charges on that and I did after all of this started coming to light and um you know with everything that was happening I did call the FBI and tell them my suspicions really and they advised me to contact the law enforcement in the county where the crime occurred and I did and I made a I made a report and you know unfortunately Stacy was cremated and everybody gets cremated yeah and so that was I mean there's pretty much no no way for us to ever know or to ever hold anybody accountable for that because you have I mean I guess we could look up the medical records again I remember there being some kind of accusation about alcohol in her system in her bloodstream but I didn't ever know her to consume alcohol so I don't know and Steve wouldn't have been around to protect Stacy from Alex no he was he was he was away and he had Melanie and you know I think he had remarried at this point yeah they were so yeah so he my my dad was able to get in touch with Steve and tell him what was happening and they were able to come and say goodbye to her before she died and I want to clarify when I said everyone is cremated I'm I'm just meaning these critical cases where some answers would be nice right Stacy Joe Ryan um Alex was Alex not cremated as he was yeah so were were Janice and Barry around When Stacy died no they were in Hawaii they were still in Hawaii when she died they were in Hawaii when she died and they had the opportunity they because your parents had arranged the hospice there was time for them to come home they had days and days and days I'm just I'm just stunned by that story did they have any explanation as to why they why they wouldn't come home do they feel like they'd already made their peace with her maybe that was part of it I don't I don't really know because I wasn't privy to the conversations between my dad and Janice and if if we're just all speculating here right but if Stacy had um had suggested sorry to Steve that maybe Barry had abused Stacy and if Stacy were working through having been a victim she could have been estranged from from Barry and Janice yeah as a result of those types she was living in she was living at their house at the time so they were they were taking care of her as she was as she was dealing with her her diabetes yeah so it sounds like there's at least you know a shallow relationship there and then if if Alex did it would he have done it through the insulin or would he have done it are you thinking through like some type of poison I I don't know it's obviously speculation at this point but I mean he he had access to her supplies and there's a million ways you could introduce something into you know into the the insulin vial or the needle or you know something else or maybe he he really did just give her a big shot I just I find that part so interesting that he went out of his way to tell you that that's what he claims Stacy had said it it feels just like he's maybe planting that story yeah you know as part of you know an explanation yeah but that's pretty dark if Mom and Dad say to son take care of daughter you know what I mean yeah or if you take or if he just takes it on himself without the you know necessarily upon instruction of his parents but maybe if he just took it on himself and I just think him using her credit cards while she's literally dying just shows just such callous disregard for plus not being around yeah she's in hospice right No Remorse no no responsibility and no feeling and Lori wasn't there either Lori didn't come back either right what about summer they were all together okay so well that's dark yeah thanks for sharing yeah I mean it's like I said when it whenever all of this stuff started happening I I had to start re-examining every interaction that I had with this family and thinking about it through these new through this new lens of who who are these people really and what are they capable and what are they capable of and there was a time when I I felt like I was in danger and and like my kids were too so were there any other suspicious deaths I think have you talked about Joe Ryan yeah we haven't so we were just about to talk about Joe um when we kind of went back to Stacy a little bit so um yeah so during the divorce proceedings with Joe Lori had accused him of abusing both of the children and um Alex got really angry and upset about that and decided that he was going to take matters into his own hands and um the family rumor now is that the plan was for him to tase Joe and throw him in the trunk of a car and go take care of him somehow dang Mark John it really it really is it's like well you you abuse children so I feel Justified you know um so he did actually get Joe with a taser and Joe ended up having some hard complications and things like that afterwards because of it and Alex did serve time for that assault as well I think that's starting to fall into the whole um Narrative of of Alex being Laurie's protector she was very very vocal about about Alex being her protector and I think he took that role very seriously and then especially when Chad came onto the scene and they they talked about about Alex being Laurie's protector and how he had you know this this Beyond Earthly you know the previous probations and and and there and this was his his special reason for being on the earth at this time was to be Lori's protector and it sounds like the seeds of that of that idea were planted even before she met Chad you know that Alex had always just kind of been her her right-hand man and yeah and would take care of the thing maybe the undesirable things that that she didn't want to face you hear suggestions that somehow Lori and Alex may have had some inappropriate I don't know Communications or behaviors towards each other implying weird sexual stuff did we talk about that or no we I mean we touched on it a little bit I I did hear you know the call with Alex's ex-wife about you know their their inappropriate touching and things like that and I wasn't really around them enough as adults to witness any of that but it's not surprising given given the context of the family and you know lots of touchy feeliness and you know just grabbing each other's body parts for you know to make fun of them or to you know make a joke or something like that so it's I you know I don't we can only speculate as to what that relationship was really like if there was actually any you know sexuality there but I would be surprised honestly if that was the case because I think Alex got his needs met elsewhere and you know I don't think there was necessarily any real desire to be with his sister in that way I know we're talking about super dark things here but yeah hmm okay but we can't know you know we also you know we don't know if if uh Lori Also may have been abused you know by Barry if he abused one daughter it stands to reason he may have abused all his daughters but we don't know that for sure we can only speculate and I know it's um it's probably well I I know from first hand experience that nobody in the family wants to believe that Barry is a sexual abuser nobody does and there is a division in the family about people who think that he is and people who think that he isn't remind me if Barry and Janice are still alive yeah oh yeah yeah oh still alive still married oh so you were going to say yeah I I remember reading about some suspicious things around Joe's death yeah and and maybe you know more about this than I do really because um I just kind of read about it after after the fact but I know that he was found in suspicious circumstances and Lori did collect some life insurance did she not right I think that was an underlying theme of you know of of all of these deaths was what she could gain financially from people dying and I and I should have rushed up on on Joe Ryan but um there was the allegations of abuse and then the the confrontations with Alex and and then I if I remember correctly Joe was deceased and Lori and the kids were gone and I don't think that he was found deceased until several days later yeah um and that he was cremated and maybe we'll never know what happened to him but I think it's important to note that Lori is on um she's recorded talking about her relationship with Joe Ryan where she's at I believe she's at one of these little Fireside conferences and she's it's she's presenting it as a spiritual faith building um experience that she's had but she she admits that she had murderous feelings towards towards Joe and she said and she admits that she talked to her Bishop about it and she says I'm either going to commit murder or I need to go to the temple and and people are laughing in the audience and I'm like oh my goodness this is wild so I just don't know if we'll ever know with Joe but I think I do think you have to look at people's patterns and I feel like there's a pattern here with Lori and people dying collecting money moving on to something else and that Alex could have been involved right oh absolutely with Joe yeah absolutely I think if if if Lori and or Al if if they're responsible I think certainly they probably did that as a team yeah I think that Joe's sister Annie Cushing is trying to get the interest of law enforcement re-involved in Joe's death and I think she may have a petition out there so yeah I'm so glad you brought her up Annie um so this is Tyler's Tyler's Aunt yeah Annie who has been very vocal in trying to get some exposure on this part of the of the story yeah so I would love it if if people would find out more about that and and we could you know try to help her get a certain recognition and attention that that case deserves right I agree completely hmm Okay so during this time was Lori ever telling you man my life has just gone in the crappers what's wrong with my life things aren't working out for me any of that kind of thing oh no that those words never would have come out of her mouth no no she was very much like uh no matter what was happening it was all good everything's good everything's great and all the bad things are someone else's fault someone else's fault yeah so you never saw her get down or discouraged or no Express sadness or frustration I never saw those emotions from her interesting hmm I mean that going back to the cat story yeah it's just like a certain set of of emotions and it's it's about her and it's and it's um not so concerned about other people and just kind of what what's going on with her right hmm and maybe angry at other people but angry if they're getting in her way yeah angry if they're preventing her from getting what she wants really yeah was her Wheel of Fortune experience was that during her marriage to Joe I don't remember if that was I think it came after when she was married to Charles she does talk about a marriage on the Wheel of Fortune story I thought that was in Austin it might have been Joe well I wish I could I believe she met Charles in Austin also okay so it could have been true because she was cutting his hair and that's how they met that's how they met that's right and then and I seem to remember that well yeah because he got baptized I I seem to remember being there for his baptism and meeting him briefly and so that would have had to have happened in in Texas in in Austin most likely but also my memory is a little fuzzy in those years because I was going through my own too many terrible stuff yes Okay so Joe dies does Joe die before she marries Charles I don't know and was there a long time between Joe and Charles or not that long I don't remember okay I'm sorry this is the part this is the part that gets fuzzy for me because I lost touch with her at this point you know and she wasn't um coming to all the family functions and things like that that were happening in San Antonio so I didn't I just didn't really see her very often after this point okay so at some point she marries Charles at some point they moved to Arizona correct okay and it would have been while married to Charles that she learns about Chad yes so this part I do have a little bit more information about so I know that she and Charles had been living in Houston and that's where his business was and they had adopted JJ at this point and um and then yeah she's this is when about around 2018 when the family says that she started getting really interested in these prepper podcasts and starting becoming she started becoming more involved with the end times kind of prophecies thing I mean that was that was something she talked about a lot anyway but I feel like that was when the family said she started really diving into those kinds of things and she started going to the temple every day at this point and there was a time where she was she and Tyler had gone to Hawaii and she was you know basically away from Charles for an extended period of time a couple of months I think when Charles had JJ yeah yeah so she she went to to Hawaii with Tyler it was in the 50-something days 56 days 59 days yeah it was a long time that that they weren't like officially separated but she just took off with Tyler and left Charles with JJ yeah and when she came back from that I believe is when they started talking about getting divorced and Lori started saying weird things that Charles didn't understand and then he went on a business trip and while he was gone she cleared some money out of the business account and took his truck away from the airport and you know when I heard about that I thought well that sounds pretty on brand for Lori if she's upset with her husband she's gonna do she's going to act out and that's going to be vindictive yeah be vindictive and try to get what she wants and needs you know before things go south and then Charles actually rented that home for her in Arizona and I think they chose that spot because by this time Janice and Barry are living there Summer's living there and you know she wanted to be around the rest of the family so Jameson Berry moved to Arizona so they all kind of left Texas at some point and moved to Arizona yeah okay the interest one interesting thing about this time frame is that Lori is is putting out there all these accusations about Charles and my husband and I call this you spot it you got it like so she's accusing him of having Affairs she's accusing Adam of wanting to kill her for her life insurance and perhaps that was later on in the timeline but she's so her brother yeah her brother Adam who was actually one that Charles confided in and was seeking poor Charles he was seeking help he knew that Lori was talking crazy you know when she was saying that he had been taken over by these evil spirits that had names you know Ned Schneider and hippos and Garrett and I mean she and he's trying to get help and he's trying to tell people that he feels like his life is in danger and he just it just falls on deaf ears and it's really sad and so he arranges on actually on the morning that he was killed he had arranged to meet with Adam Lori's brother to try to talk some sense into her and meanwhile she's lodging these accusations at him for being unfaithful and and you know some of the same things that she's engaged in herself and you right when you first came to Austin right which is a very very narcissistic thing right that narcissists do where they will accuse other people of doing the very things that they're doing right in order to deflect attention away from them right and project onto others right right and at this time I I actually was living in San Antonio still and my oldest daughter was living in Rexburg she was she had gotten married already and was her husband was going to school there and it was summertime and I was on my way up to go visit my daughter but I we were driving and I needed a place to like break up my journey because it's like a long it's like a 26 hour drive from San Antonio to Rexburg and so I contacted summer and I said hey is it okay if I come and stay with you guys overnight while I I'm on my way up you know to to Idaho she said sure we would love to see you um you know come on over and I sent another message a few days before we were going to leave and didn't get a response and so the day before we left I said you know hey it's if you guys are busy it's totally fine I can stay somewhere else but I would still really love to see everybody and we'd love to just come through and like have dinner with you or something like that and um got no response so I went ahead and stayed with another friend in Gilbert and and then went and drove up to Rexburg and it was just like two days later that a family member texted me and told me Charles had been killed oh my goodness again so it was so you could have been in town when that went down and I'm really grateful that I wasn't but it was it was shocking to say the least to hear that that Charles had been killed and when I started to learn some of the circumstances um Adam's wife Nicole reached out to me to to talk to me about it and um she she indicated the same as you that that Charles had reached out to Adam for help because he really thought Lori was going crazy and she had said by this time that she was going to kill him right and she had said all those crazy things like I could shoot you and I would have an angel to destroy your body or to dispose of your body you know and I was learning all of this from Adam's wife and she also told me that you know Alex lived nearby there was no reason for him to be staying the night at Lori's house he had just bought a gun three days prior you know it was a total very clearly set up planned very clearly planned in advance and very clearly set up and that was that was so incredibly shocking and disturbing to me that they had that they'd done this you know so you learned initially that Alex was the shooter and that there had been so because some some family members it sounds like they heard these really vague details in the beginning about you know Lori lied to Charles's Sons about how he died and you know Chad lied to Tammy's family about how Charles died and yeah so there's all these you know stories that aren't don't sound as bad that we're floating around but you did hear the real story it sounds like from the very beginning from it was several times later yeah several days later and and Lori had even lied to her own nephew who was staying there um you know with with oh it's it's um it's Zach exactly yeah and and had told him that Charles had a heart attack wow and then he you know found out from Alex that no Alex actually shot him and so I mean this was this was just beyond anything to me it was like okay there's there's always been this weirdness there's always been you know some strange stories and some Strange Behaviors and some definitely unhealthy Dynamics and all that kind of stuff but this is like the next level for something that I never ever expected was going to happen I you probably already mentioned this but did you ever meet Charles I think I I met him when he got baptized okay other than that though but that was it did never hang out with them or get to know them no and so who all was in Arizona at the time of the murder did we say Barry and Jamie Janice Janice were both in Arizona yes so like it's Barry Janice Alex Adam and Laurie they're all there so summer was living in Arizona also also summer so Barry Janice and summer were there Lori was there um Alex was there Adam was actually living in another state at the time okay but he was traveling to Arizona to help with this okay right intervention to try to to try to help Lori Charles had contacted him because he felt like Adam was a really level-headed right person and maybe you know make some sense to Alex and Laurie Laurie that that was his hope I believe that that Adam would come in and try to talk with Lori and and Janice had said famously at this point oh Lori's not hurting anybody with these beliefs just leave her alone you know she's she's going to the temple every day she's obviously fine and this is a hard question but like clearly I mean Stacy had died she and she was well before she died we know Alex and we know Lori were Adam and summer among sort of more normal healthy of the five siblings and I guess that's an impossible well from what I observed yes but there I mean there's always going to be some you know unhealthy stuff that comes out of a family like that and if you don't go work on those unhealthy issues you're going to perpetuate them but I did perceive that summer Summer's marriage relationship seem to be relatively normal and you know her mothering seemed to be relatively normal she seemed like a normal good mom to me you know and that was one of the reasons we kept in touch because Lori seemed to be like all over the place doing her own thing but summer was in the in in one place you know um and then Adam you know going around to different radio stations and stuff like that but other than that he's he and Nicole seem to have a good relationship for the most part he remained a DJ yeah oh yeah okay and and he seemed to be good dad and they seem to have a relatively normal family life if summer and Adam done interviews like about Lori and all that I think summer only did one interview with her mom Janice on one of the news programs dateliner 2020 or something before the bodies were found and they and she mentions that in her phone call where she while she was believing while she was believing that Laurie's story and so when she's blasting her on the phone call and saying we defended you on TV that's what she's referring to but to my knowledge I don't think that that summer has done any other interviews to this point I don't think so and Adam did um appear in something I didn't watch it or see it so I don't know exactly what it was but it was some sort of a dateline or 2020 something that was focused mainly on his story and I know the Adam's son Zach who had some exposure with Charles and Laurie's family he he has given a couple interviews as well yeah is summer still married to her original husband and is Adam still married to his original wife I believe they're divorced now okay I think that's really recent okay so when Lori was getting into the prepper Chad dabel stuff did you did you catch wind of that prior to Charles's death when she was kind of going down that road no um the only thing that there were there were a few social media posts that Janice made and then that summer made that Lori was going to the temple every single day and I thought that was very odd but other than that I didn't hear anything okay so you and Lori weren't in touch she was and she wasn't on social media and that's probably the main reason because that's that's how summer and I kept touched this was through Facebook and Instagram and Lori really wasn't involved in that and so I didn't see her updates from her I mean this is a stereotyping narcissist but you would think a narcissist would be all over Facebook you would think so yeah you would think so she is a goddess at this point she doesn't need social media she's got a bigger mission to fulfill okay so once Charles dies then do you have any interaction with Lori no um at this point I was I was so horrified with what had happened that I wanted to distance myself even more did you reach out to Summer and go what's up with Lori kind of thing I I actually I didn't I don't think I reached out to her immediately when when Charles died I did reach out to her once the kids were missing and um I most of the information that I got came to me from Adam's wife Nicole because she she was in regular contact with Kay and Larry Woodcock who were JJ's grandparents and she knew that side of the story and so she was the only one in the family system who was who knew both sides of the story that's interesting this is Nicole Adam's wife so she did she reach out to the woodcocks do you know or did the woodcocks reach out to her to try to get some help from the Cox family I think there may have been some just Mutual going back and forth there because um because Charles did reach out to Adam and then once Charles was killed I think that there was already that there was that connection there yeah so I think that's that's how that all happened yeah do we know it approximately the time between Charles's death and Lori and JJ and Tyler's death yeah Charles was killed on July 11th and what year 2019 2019 and then JJ his last known date of being alive was September 9th and then Tyler's was September 22nd okay so the kids were killed within a few months of Charles and then Tammy was was gone on October 19th of the same year 2019. so between July and October Tammy then Tyler then JJ excuse me Charles then then tightly then JJ then Tammy and then what about uh Alex and then Alex dies in December of 2019. so is that six deaths within a five six month period yeah yep and I remember the trail of death yeah jeez I remember getting a phone call from Adam's wife asking me if my daughter was still in Rexburg so that at this time Charles had been killed and it was before we knew the kids were missing and Nicole called me and she said is your daughter still in Rexburg and I said yeah she's you know her husband goes to school there and and she said you need to make sure that she stays away from Lori and Alex because they're in Rexburg now so your daughter was in the same town as and so they're getting Intel that things are getting dangerous and they're afraid for the safety of the family yeah so I I asked her I was like what what is going on and she's that's when she started telling me about Chad's teachings and the dark light and dark system and that was when she told me that Chad has a list of everybody in the family and whether they're light or dark and I think I went out the next day and put a security system on my home I that day called my daughter and said if they reach out to you please do not answer their calls if they come to your house don't answer the door I said don't have anything to do with these people there is something horrible going on here so did your daughter have a relationship with Aunt Lori she did in Rexburg well no I mean because Laurie moved to Rexburg after Arizona right right that's that's where they went as soon as Charles was killed they moved to Rexburg because that's where Chad was so my daughter did know Aunt Lori very well they got along great she was you know Colby's mom so they you know loved each other and you know I was really scared that Lori would reach out to her and and that she would respond because they knew each other and you know had a happy relationship up to that point your daughter and Colby were friends yeah oh yeah one person I want to talk about is Melanie palowski yeah Melanie Boudreau pawlowski um what can you tell us about her and what are your thoughts about you know what she might know or or if if you just have anything interesting about Melanie that I just the last time that I saw her was at Stacy's funeral hmm and so she was young she was very young and um you know her dad had kind of secreted her away from the family for a really long time and she was away from all of us and and Steve didn't really let her have a lot of contact with the family until she was much older and then I think she sort of re-established contact with the family so the Melanie that I know is not the Melanie that is in this story you know I just I know I remember her as a little girl Melanie yes Stacy's daughter yeah oh I wonder I thought oh that's I've heard that Melanie name before that's the same one so there's two Melodies In this story that are of importance and one is Melanie Gibb who is Laurie's friend who's testified and she was the night the night that JJ died and then Melanie polowski is Stacy's daughter Lori's niece Lori's niece yeah and her husband was shot at by Alex because why do we think you know why well do you want to answer that well I mean Melanie's um she was right in there with Lori and all these teachings and and that whole movement and everything and um you know I I had actually I knew that Melanie had married Brandon and um you know they had invited me to their wedding I sent him a card I think and but I didn't actually go um so I'd never met Brandon but I did keep up with Melanie on social media so I kind of got her posts I saw her kids grow up a little bit and the next thing that I heard she was accusing Brandon of being homosexual having an affair and she was yeah and she was trying and he had taken the kids and she was trying to get them back and so it was he probably just worried about he was probably just oh I'm sure he was terrified yeah he took his kids to his parents house in Utah to try to protect them from Melanie and Alex and the one thing about the trial that I found really interesting is is the police investigating the shooting of Brandon which is was likely for if he and Melanie were still technically married and if he died then they would they would get the money the insurance money for Brandon um but the investigation into Brandon shooting was really instrumental in everything getting started in Rexburg which I didn't realize as much that coupled with K trying to find JJ and discovering that you know through an Amazon account that that Lori lived in Rexburg and so I just I wasn't aware of the connection to the Brandon Boudreau shooting and Rexburg so there were a couple different avenues that were converging at the same time to point the spotlight on Chad and Laurie and Alex and Melanie all in Rexburg at the time yeah so when Brandon got shot at they found out that the vehicle that he identified was Tyler's Jeep and so they they were reasonably certain that that was Alex that that was trying to shoot at him and they started to put pieces together at that point because he was getting in the way I think they just wanted his money yeah yeah and she had already found a new husband at that point Melanie had Ian who's also in the in the small group of people um okay so Chad had coded all your family members as light or dark is that what you said yeah do you know how far out The Hit List exactly that's exactly the way that I saw it because they you know at knowing what they had said about Charles that he was dark that he was possessed and then they killed him and then there's a list of family members with dark and light ratings and I was like well I definitely got to be on the dark side one point I did we did have across ways me and Lori you know over the whole apartment thing like that came back into my mind and I was like well maybe she really doesn't like me that much and maybe I should be worried you know so you were afraid yeah and also I was there when Stacy died and you know could potentially implicate Alex and I didn't put all of that together until all this happened and then I just saw he slowly had realizations and I was like oh no I bet that's what happened but yeah I was very scared when that list came out it turns out I was not important enough to be on it thank goodness but it was it's still I think every one of us in the family system had to go okay where do we stand with these people is that list public yeah I've never seen it yeah yeah it is it turns out that it was really just Chad and his family it was Laurie's immediate family the kids um I think Chad's kids are on there there were a few other random people on there but it wasn't super extensive yeah Barry was dark for sure really what'd Barry do I have no idea what we've been talking about if you got crosswise with them at some point I don't know we do know that in the in this like patriarchal blessing that's become public during the trial when Chad gave up you know a patriarchal blessing to Alex um they mentioned I know he says he has the authority of like he said he was he was a brother of Jesus and then he was also the Holy Ghost in his past probations um so he claimed that he had whatever Authority he claims he had in the Church of the firstborn he gives Alex a patriarchal blessing which honestly if you didn't know the context and you're just listening to it it sounds like a very typical LDS patriarchal blessing or Father's blessing or yeah yeah and he's very emotional your sins are forgiven you you can hear Alex sniffling there's other people in the room they're quite emotional about this blessing but I he does make reference in that blessing to Lori and Alex's upbringing having serious challenges and that they had overcome a lot so I don't remember going into detail but he does make reference to that they had a bad upbringing or he might even mention the um their parents and the blessing I can't recall exactly but there's reference to that that there were there were problems with with Alex and Lori's parents so Barry escaped by the skin of his teeth looks like apparently yeah it's so interesting that we're talking about this you know it's not a fairy tale it's not a it's not like a cheap novel you know it's just like lives that they were playing with and and and people had very very strong reason to be scared for their lives it's just astounding to me well that's I mean because I've never seen or been in the same room with any of these people I'm just learning about them now you knew all these people exactly so I mean yeah what's what's so when people start dying and the kids go missing what's that like for you um I think as soon as Charles was killed I realized that there was you know they that they were just they were terrible people and and when I started hearing about these teachings I just started thinking you know uh I I realized that they were capable of you know of horrific things but I had no earthly idea that they would ever hurt the kids you know and and so when the kids went missing I found out about it just like everybody else like I think I heard about it on the news and saw some posts on social media and you know saw that Kay and Larry were offering a reward and at this time nobody knew where Lori was either and so there was a space of several months I I think it was several months maybe my timing is off on that where um everybody was looking for Lori everybody want to know where where is Lori where are the kids and um I called the FBI and I was like have you tried Hawaii yeah because that's where they always escape to Hawaii there were always you know they were always going to Hawaii for whatever for whatever reason by that point I'm pretty sure they already knew she was there but it was like why would you say she's in Hawaii you know like do I need to be suspicious of you because you know something kind of thing oh that's an interesting I did have a couple of of interviews with the FBI and I I didn't know anything that was useful I just was trying to say whatever I knew whatever I did know I wanted to say because I was I was afraid that something else horrible was gonna happen um I think that for a long time I hoped that the family rumor was true that she was secreting them away somewhere and trying to prevent them from being taken away from her um but even before the kids were found I I lost hope relatively shortly because I thought you know of my own kids who are that age and what's the likelihood that they would allow themselves to be secreted away in a bunker somewhere away from their friends away from their family members who love them away from their school um and I really I really had to go ahead and grieve and process that before they were even found because I just didn't have any hope that they were going to be found alive how much time had you spent with with Tyler and JJ I never met JJ and I only knew Tyler when she was like three years old so I hadn't spent any time with them but um it was the implication of these people that are part of my family that I share DNA with are capable of killing children it was just well people you grew up with yeah and people that I loved and devoted time and energy to and Brides made at your wedding right yeah would have would have done just about anything for any one of them if they had asked me you know when Laurie's in Hawaii after the kids are missing was she a chat at that point yes how long were Lori and Chad in Hawaii together a long time months several months because you hear about the you know they get married and they dance and um some are screaming about photos of them dancing but they were there for quite some time yeah so just to recap the timeline July 11th Charles is dead September 9th Tyler's dead September 22nd JJ's dead October 9th 19th Tammy's dead so Tyler would have been buried in Chad's backyard while he was still married to Tammy and she was alive and in a month or two before JJ six weeks yeah six weeks before Jade yeah so Tyler was September 9th JJ was September 20. so both kids were buried back there while while Tammy was still alive Chad saying there was a raccoon or something yeah with Ty Lee or Jason yeah that was Kylie he texted her and said that he wanted to burn some limbs before the storm came and then he found a big raccoon on the property and shot it and buried it in the pet cemetery so Tammy was living with a murderer yes yes for at least a month or two with those sweet kids in her backyard mm-hmm okay so that timeline happens JJ's killed last of the two right he's killed what month September 22nd and then and then Tammy on October 19th and then on November 5th they're in Hawaii getting married okay and then do we Alex died so Alex Dyson in December and the timing is what's super suspicious and I would love for you to talk about this so in light of everything that happened you know Chad leaving and marrying Lori two weeks after how many weeks just two two weeks after just up over two years after his wife's funeral um they started to get suspicious the kids were missing you know Charles had been killed and so they decided to go ahead and exhume Tammy's body and they exhumed her on December 10th and Alex's Alex was dead one day later what do we make of that well I have some theories and he was on the phone his wife zulema who we talked about on the other podcast she testified that he was on the phone with Chad and Laurie who were in Hawaii at the time and I believe there was a part of the conversation that she wasn't allowed to either she wasn't there she wasn't allowed to hear part of the conversation or she won't say or she won't say that's a good point so talk me through your suspicions of the timeline okay so after Tammy was killed October 19th and then at the end of November right before Thanksgiving is when Alex and zulema get married and then they exhumed Hammy's body on December 10th who does the Springville Utah place with the help of Rexburg police at the request of Rexburg yeah and and then Alex is dead one day later so so what I make of this is all conjecture right please don't anybody you know take this as as you know anything that I know for sure but um I Alex had wanted to get married and Chad and Lori were insistent that zulema married sorry Mary Alex zulemma was a part of Chad's Inner Circle had told her that she had a special important mission and so she was part of the trusted group of people and then so so they get married the person who marries them in Las Vegas says that the ceremony is super weird there's like no attachment no there's like no feeling no feeling it was super quick just very sterile very business-like um and then Alex says that he's going to take salima's last name which is odd and then we have zuleima saying that on their honeymoon night that Alex wants to stop and get something plastic to cover the bed because he's going to give her a massage and he doesn't want to get the bed dirty but the plastic turns out to be actually a tarp and zulemma is suspicious rightfully so and then Alex is on the phone with Chad and Lori quite a bit and nothing ends up happening so Alex was contemplating killing zulemma possibly possibly we can speculate and also I don't know if Sulema is a trustworthy person in this I don't know her at all but if she was that close to Chad and Laurie stands to reason that she may have known more than she's willing to say on the witness stand you know so Chad and Laurie might have wanted to get rid of zulemma because she knew too much maybe maybe that's a possibility no yeah but also my feeling is too that um if Alex were to die and not be married his body would be returned to his parents and given the suspicious circumstances of everything else most likely there would have been an autopsy done but because he was married to zulema she gets custody of his body and he was immediately cremated that kind of blows my mind me again that's a really good theory with the whole marriage thing yeah I don't know and also something you know if Sulema and Alex were married then zulemma you know has access to Alex and can take care of something if something needs to be taken care of if Alex starts to regret his actions or if he starts to say that he's going to tell people what happened or anything like that then you know then they have an Insider track they have an Insider who can help out with that situation and zulemma testified that Alex did con confide in her around this time that he was worried that he was going to be yeah so he maybe had some conscious conscious moments or conscience challenges sneaking in there so it would have had to have been zulemma that killed either Alex killed himself or perhaps ulama but I think it's really important to note that he it was deemed natural causes or a pulmonary embolism they did do an autopsy and it was deemed to be a pulmonary embolism he did have the same blood tinged foam coming out of his mouth that Tammy had coming out of her mouth when she died and so it's entirely possible that there was something undetectable because when you do a talk screen from what I understand you have to you have to ask for very specific things you can't just do a panel and it'll come back just a blanket panel right so you have to be very specific about what you ask for in that and and then he was cremated so there's no possibility of going back if we find something out later and testing to see if that if that was indeed what killed him so right I know the official cause I know medical people have said it's not uncommon for there to be blood tinged foam when there's a pulmonary embolism but you will never be able to convince me that Alex died of natural causes not ever the timing of it is just way too suspicious so either killed Chad no Alex either either dilemma killed Alex or Alex killed himself and either one of those likely would have been at the direction of Chad and Lori yeah I believe so when I talked to Larry he said that patriarchal blessing was that man's last rights that is an interesting observation yeah because the patriarchal blessing happened shortly before right wow wow hmm okay and again this is the Alex that you would spend Summers with hearing him tell jokes right yeah super inappropriate joke nothing like nothing that he would that you would want to be sort of like nervous laughter not not genuine belly laughs um I don't know if you've heard the portion of his stand-up routine regarding his interaction with Joe but it's oh where he talks yes I have heard that I couldn't recall it enough too and then he yeah and he yeah where he talks about the different people he met in yeah just really really racist comments and just doesn't seem aware at all that what he's saying is inappropriate right yeah he just thinks it's funny um okay so like wow so when Alex died um I sort of had this moment where I was like oh no is there going to be a family funeral am I going to be expected to go you know show up and pay my respects to someone who I don't respect at all um but turns out we didn't have to worry about that because Janice didn't tell anybody about a memorial for him outside of the family and her comment later was that they only invited people to the funeral who didn't think he was a murderer so there was a very small group of people and what are you know what are Barry and Janice thinking when like their their grandkids are to have disappeared Lori's taken off Lori's ex-husbanded one to two of Lori's husbands have been killed and then Alex dies yeah where's freaking Jennison burying all this yeah I will say that I do have some empathy for for the situation of knowing that your children are complicit in murder and not wanting to be involved or to speak up or to be in denial about that I I get it I get it that's horrible nobody should have to go through that but Janice you know she did make her one appearance um yeah and that was before the bodies were found and she said she didn't believe that Lori would ever hurt her children um which is of course I think what any mother would say would want to say in that circumstance so I I get it I understand and then since then they've been silent silent has Barry given any interviews no not to my knowledge but I will fight in the IRS and his other things that he does yeah I don't know if we if you knew this or not but Barry did serve time in federal prison for tax evasion and he tried he basically tried to sue the federal government and say that the IRS is an illegal organization and so that just continues his Narrative of superiority and his belief that he is above the law grandiosity yeah that he can practice Law Without A you know without passing the bar he got a cease and desist from the state of Arizona because he was trying to do estate planning there and didn't have a law license so but I do think it's been pointed out by many people that particularly when the when the kids were missing that um that buries lack of any statement or anything there just wasn't anything from very right and they're they're certainly not going to show up in court to sit on the right side of the bench and you know be vilified in public even though they may still I mean by now they have to believe she's guilty right I would hope so are they in Arizona still do we know uh no they're living in St George St George what if they go to their Ward well I think they do holy moly one of my listeners is in Janice and Barry's word I guarantee you wow for sure yeah or if not multiple yeah if so reach out to me yeah and let us know what are they Temple workers what are they doing yeah you know it's just yeah it's mind-blowing okay well to close out I guess the discussion of Glory and you know her Barry and Janice and and Alex and all that let's just say there's there's two extremes and then it's always somewhere in the middle there's this is just unhealthy people in an unhealthy family system and this could have happened as Evangelical Christians or as Jehovah's Witnesses or let's just say as atheists and it's just sometimes there are unhealthy family systems and sometimes there's unhealthy individuals in unhealthy family systems and sometimes people do bad things and even murder and this has nothing to do with Mormonism this is just bad people doing bad things let's say that's one extreme another extreme is Lori would have never you know Chad and Laurie would have never been murderers without these weird beliefs and so beliefs and spirits and beliefs in the end of times and sexual shame and a culture of hiding things and of lying and of avoiding talking about things and all the pressure and and then all the theological beliefs on top of that it's mormonism's fault right and and then there's somewhere where it's maybe a combination of the two I think one of the reasons you reached out to me if I'm right Megan is because you felt like while it's probably both that Mormonism does have a role to play in how this all shook out is that right yeah absolutely and so yeah I'd love to hear your theories on that yeah and and I and I won't ever go to the extreme of saying that it's mormonism's fault because there are individuals with their own free will and choice you know um involved in this but I The Silence from Salt Lake City is deafening and when should they when should they have spoken out throughout this whole process in your mind and how I remember them issuing some kind of a statement that said that you shouldn't be doing energy work or energy healing and that was as close as as they got to it um I don't know what the right point would have been for them to come forward but but and say something but the fact that they even now won't say anything about it I think is um it's that's a really harmful stance to take to just cower in the corner and say we didn't have anything to do with this these these were evil people you've got Lori sending a text that says this was in Nephi and Laban situation referring to Charles you've got them tying together that Chad and Lori visited the temple the day before each one of these killings happened you've got Chad and Laurie secreting off to some room in the temple and getting sealed there's a family rumor that they had sex in the temple I don't know how possible that is but it wouldn't surprise me at this point you know um and you have this obsession with end of days and when you've got somebody who doesn't believe that the world is going to continue rolling on people who do almost anything you know it's like there's no consequences for anything if the world's about to end and you've got Chad dabel who's just a regular guy saying that he has visions that Heavenly beings have appeared to him and that he has power and authority and that's exactly the origin story of the church exactly and also you have this parallel where I don't know if it was genius or just dumb luck between Joseph Smith and Chad dabell where they're trying to get a movement going and they like the attention and power that they're getting and so what they do is they have this little group of followers and they give each one of them some power and some responsibility and they tell each of these people that they're instrumental in bringing to pass this great and marvelous work that's going to happen and that's where you get loyal followers that will stay as long as there's power and as long as there's a recognition and attention and so to me the parallels are just really striking and I felt that way before the end of my faith crisis but once I went through that Faith crisis I got really angry because if the church is true if the teachings of the church are true they're still harmful and there's still a harmful culture there and but we can deal with that if it's actually true but knowing that it's not true and knowing that the Brethren have known that for a hundred years known what that it's not true so now review the Brethren know the church isn't true right and now that's speculation it is it is a lot of speculation what what led you to believe that so was it the Shannon Caldwell Montez stuff knowing that they knew there were problems of the book of Abraham in the early 1900s right knowing with the BH Roberts stuff that there are problems with the Book of Mormon is that what what leads you to believe they've at least known that there were significant problems with the historicity right of the of the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham is that what you mean yes so there's there's that and then there was an interview that I saw or not an interview as a lecturer that I saw with Sandra Tanner where she describes an interaction that she had with a church historian and her question Joseph Fielding Smith probably who became a prophet maybe keep going so I it wasn't Sandra Tanner had an interaction with a church historian was it Joseph Fielding Smith I think yeah I think that was one of them because there was the whole question of the first Vision right and her trying to figure out what happened to the original 18 was there 1832 First Vision account and it would have been Joseph Fielding Smith who later who's an apostle church historian who later became a prophet who was the one that had ripped that account out of Joseph's journal and hid it right and sander was trying to track that down right in this particular conversation I don't know if it was Joseph Fielding Smith or another historian but she posed the question how do you get around the fact that Joseph Smith is a sexual predator hmm and the historian's answer was well he was sincere meaning Joseph really believed he was a prophet he really believed that he should be practicing polygamy he really believed that he was offering salvation to these young women and so that excuses it and that was a super disturbing comment coming from a church historian and then his follow-up was well the church does so much more good than harm and to me if that's your response then that means you know it was wrong you know it and you're trying to excuse it you're trying to apologize for it and so it was that part of it and you know my own history of sexual abuse thinking of a 14 year old girl and I read her diary right and what 14 year old girl talking about Kim uh Kimball right Helen Keller Kimball who's one of the 14 year olds Joseph married right okay right and I'm thinking to myself as a 14 year old girl if I really believe that a man is a prophet of God and he tells me that I can secure the salvation of my family by marrying him of course I'm going to do that of course it would be so selfish of me to throw away my entire family's salvation just because I didn't want to marry somebody of course I would give my whole life for that and so it's it's incredibly manipulative and and I can't imagine in in what world that's defensible and to me that's no better than Warren Jeff's Behavior tell me if I'm understanding right it sounds like you start seeing Joseph Smith in Chad's behaviors is that what you're saying yeah basically Chad just kind of like believed a lot of the same things Joseph did and behaved in a lot of the same ways Joseph Smith sorry Chad believed a lot of the same thing Joseph Smith believed and behaved in a lot of the same ways Joseph Smith behaved yeah in terms of fooling people using his power manipulating people with spirituality and sexual escapades and lighting lying and hiding lying about it and hiding and that sort of thing yeah and telling people that he got a revelation from God that you should do this thing and that thing was always something that benefited him hmm wow so Megan time when time excuse me timeline wise was was your processing through this whole Chad and Laurie case was it was it instrumental in you finally kind of taking a hard look at your faith or and maybe you don't if it's too personal to you don't have to have to answer if it's too personal but I'm just curious if there was a connection between because you did say that your your faith transition has been fairly recent correct yeah and I it it's it's together and it's separate it's sort of coincide the end of it coincided sort of at the same time but I really started um losing my faith during my divorce process and um this is this is kind of what I said we would get back to later um in 2015 my dad and I had sort of been on autopilot for as I said for a lot of my marriage just kind of checking the boxes trying to do my thing and and my dad called me up one day and said that he wanted to talk to me about the kind of father that he had been and to sort of um maybe apologize he didn't use that word but that was sort of what it felt like and my my immediate reaction was that no no hell no I don't want to have that conversation I was like I'm out we're good we have a decent relationship let's just move on we want to go back there and and that conversation really um it it forced me to confront the reality that I had been dissociating from all all of that time and I started I started having panic attacks whenever I had to spend time with my parents um I would have panic attacks during sacrament meeting it was just a really destabilizing event for me and but it but it turned out to be a good thing because I finally confronted with all of those physical symptoms had to go and get help because I could not I couldn't function and um so I I sought out a therapist that was not an LDS therapist for the first time in my life and started to work through some of those childhood issues and through the process of um doing I did talk therapy for about three years and then we got to a point where she couldn't really help me much anymore because there were there was a lot of trauma that hadn't been addressed and her idea was that well you're just always going to have triggers you just learn to manage them and you'll you'll be able to get along okay and I said absolutely not that's not the way I want to live my life I don't I don't want to you know she painted this scenario for me it's like what if you're at a party and you and your friends are talking and something comes up and it triggers you and you have a panic attack you just excuse yourself to the bathroom have a good cry come out a few minutes later and say I'm really sorry something just about that just triggered me and I and I needed a minute and I was like no I don't want to be that person I don't want to live that way I don't want to live my life being afraid that somebody's gonna mention something random and it's going to send me off the deep end absolutely not so I started researching trauma-based therapy and came across EMDR therapy and I started doing that and it was miraculous for me I was able to process through all of my childhood trauma and you know everything that had happened in my home growing up and my sexual abuse and my sexual assault and all of that um over the course of a few years but the the Fallout of that is that when you start to reframe those things in your mind you start seeing everything in a very different way than it was before and I started systematically removing things from my life that felt abusive or oppressive and so I got divorced and after my divorce I really felt isolated I felt like even more of a now I felt like a third class citizen in the church culture you know because now I was a divorce divorced woman woman doesn't go to church her husband doesn't go to church who's never been sealed in the temple who's bisexual who's bisexual and two of my sons came out as lgbtq as well and I I was begging for help and support of some kind and my Bishop literally laughed at me I I sat down with him and I said I think everybody assumes that because I'm coming to church and bringing my kids to church and checking the boxes and doing all the faithful things fulfilling my callings that I'm doing great and I feel like people are on the shore like waving to me and I'm out there and they think I'm swimming but I'm actually drowning and I need help and he sat back in his chair and chuckled and said what do you expect us to do for you and and the implication there was like you chose to get divorced you know you were married to a non-member in the first place you made these choices so what are we supposed to do about it and I said all I really want is for some people to Shepherd my children to be interested in their lives to to help them have a safe place and for my home teachers to come and visit me when they're supposed to you know and they didn't nobody showed up and so I wrote a letter to my State president and I said I talked to the bishop I asked him for some very specific things I said if my husband had died instead of divorcing me I would have been encumbered with help and support from my ward but there was nothing and he said you know what you're right let me make sure that you get assigned a really good home teacher and and I'll talk to your bishop and we'll we'll make sure to get you taken care of and nothing changed nothing so from the time that I was divorced in 2017 until this very day not a single person came to ever visit me ever so I mean that's not a reason to leave the church it's not a reason to have a faith crisis but I I started doubting like are these men inspired or not do they are did are they going to live by the words that they preach or not are they going to take care of people or not and you think they flagged you because you chose to get divorced and so you were on their bad list I don't know I don't I don't think I thought that I didn't think I was on any bad list I thought people just didn't care and and I had always heard that we take care of the widows and the fatherless and my children were now fatherless you know they had a dad who was not involved in their lives and you know are are we going to live up to those things that we say or are we not you know so I started to have these these creeping doubts and I I resigned from my callings because I was a single mom and I was barely surviving and so I the one calling I kept was to play the organ once a month and that was it I was like I can do that I could show up once a month but I had even told them my mental health is suffering and I I get up on a Sunday morning and have a panic attack and can't show up to play the organ what's going to happen you know so I was like once a month I can probably handle it if I like psych myself up for it in in advance I can probably do that so I really started to doubt about whether the Brethren were inspired or not and I started sort of pulling myself away from the extra activities and all that stuff because it was just too painful I got left out of Social Circles all the time because I didn't have a husband who participated and so it just was that part of it was painful for me and I was also trying to figure out where do I fit in this and then the pandemic hit and it was a miracle because Church stopped and I got to just sit at home and teach my children about Jesus Christ sitting around our kitchen table instead of going to church and listening to all those things that were hurting me and that was also around the time that the George Floyd incident happened and I started examining the racism in the church the inherent in the church and my own possible racism and where did I fit in that and I seem to remember when I was teaching gospel doctrine that there were some black men ordained to the priesthood and I started thinking well when did they stop doing that because I think Joseph Smith did and then I remember that the women were admonished for not using their priesthood Authority and I was like where did we stop where did we get this wrong where did we go wrong and I started thinking well maybe it was Brigham Young when he took over and he started you know implementing policies that favored his own predisposed Notions about society and all of that and around the same time my daughter came forward as a as a victim of sexual assault and she and I started having more regular conversations about those things and she told me about Natasha Helfer and it was before the excommunication so I started digging into what she was teaching and I was having these conversations with my daughter I was like yeah the way that we teach about sex and sexuality in the church is really harmful and I had experienced that certainly as a kid and um you know I started listening to Natasha's story and that was actually the first time that I saw you or heard of you John because um of your vigil and I really really wanted to dig into it more but the podcasts were like four hours long and I was like I was like yeah exactly and so I was like okay I was like okay maybe I can't maybe I can't do all of that but I start it started it started me asking questions about my own sexuality and that it was the first time that I had really confronted it and said I I am bisexual I can't I can't just push that away anymore and there is no place for a divorced bisexual woman in this church I don't belong here I don't fit here and I started trying to figure out is there a way for me to do Mormonism or not and ultimately came to the conclusion that probably probably there isn't you know so I I remember my my daughter got married in 2018 and I had had my temple recommend interview in 2016 so it was like almost the last day that my recommend was valid and I went to her wedding her ceiling in the temple and I remember walking out the door and thinking I will probably never set foot in the temple again so it was kind of this long you know thought process that happened over those over those few years and I had written a book about my healing experiences and my trauma and everything and I I wrote the chapter on Mormonism at the time that my daughter got married and so I was still very much at the time disaffected with the church and the church culture and the harm and you know certainly Natasha's story contributed to my feelings about that and and race in the priesthood and all of that and so I I sort of tweaked that chapter and rewrote it during that pandemic time and then I got my book ready to be published and I wanted somebody to read that chapter who had never been in the church and asked them have I said everything that I needed to say and so I gave it to my partner Samuel and he's never been in the church and has honestly been horrified of the church teachings and everything that he's learned about the church and I gave it to him and I said I want to know if I've said everything that needs to be said and he he couldn't even get through the first couple of pages of it where he start he started getting angry and asking me questions and like is this real did this really happen this kind of stuff and so we came to the conclusion at the end of finally going through that that no I had not said everything that needed to be said and I needed to go back and write it where I am now instead of the apologetic Viewpoint that I had back then and I wanted to make sure that I got some things right and so um write maybe two months before this I had gone to a business conference on investing and we were talking about different kinds of Investments and how to tell if an investment is right for you or profitable or whatever and we were in this Roundtable discussion and we had been given a prospectus by somebody who wanted our money and we were our job was to go through the prospectus and determine if this was a good investment or not and why and when it came to my turn to talk about this investment prospectus I gave my reasons for why or why not I thought it was good and then he said if you had to give your money right now today would you do it and I said no and he said why not and I said because I would never invest in something where the only information I had about it came to me from the source of the person who's asking me for the money and this little distant bell ring in my head moment I was like I have only ever read what the church writes about the church I have only ever seen what the church puts out about the church I've consumed all the propaganda I kept the council to read only the best books all of my time was consumed with the scriptures and the conference talks and everything else and I had never once read anything negative about the church even when the CES letter came out I was like I don't need to read it you know so I finally allowed myself to to do research that was not put out officially by the church and that was when I came across the um Shannon Caldwell Montez thesis of the secret Mormon meetings of 1922 and that was a watershed moment for me it was so just blatant to me that a church historian who worked for the church had gone and done all of this research and found all of these problems with the historicity of the Book of Mormon and presented it to the brethren and their response was to stand up and bear their testimony and so he then took it to other people whose response was like no this is probably a problem but nobody did anything about it and then all of those things were shoved away and put away and I was so angry to think that I had given 40 years of my life to this organization and all my money even when my husband and I were declaring bankruptcy under crushing business debt I was paying my tithing Faithfully and I was so angry that I felt like they have known this whole entire time that Joseph Smith made it up so Book of Mormon is a work of fiction that he didn't see what he said he saw and then I started to see all of the different ways in which the system perpetuates itself because the people in power want to stay in power and then I started tying it together with the Chad day Bell stuff and I got angry all over again and then there were more killings and there's more murders and there are more people who are poisoning their spouse because they don't want to get a divorce or whatever the case is the problem is yeah this is different yeah different different stuff I think I think when I wrote to you it was about the dentist who had poisoned his wife Colorado and Colorado yeah and finding out that he was a member and knowing the implications of probably the reasons why he didn't want to get a divorce he just it's you know and then tying together all of these mormonisms of the chat in St George yeah and Enoch that killed himself and his whole family and his mother and there's something about middle-aged white Mormons offering their spouses both for insurance money and to get out of a marriage they don't want to be in yeah it's a thing it is to be recently at least right and it's it has so much to do with the shame and the secrecy in the culture of the church and the thing that that my partner Samuel said to me that really just drove it home was I kept talking about the culture the culture the culture and he said to me the doctrine determines the culture and that really hit me hard because he's right he's absolutely right if we didn't have the doctrine that we did we wouldn't have the culture that we do and therefore these Splinter groups and spin-offs and crazy people would not exist and I would love it if somebody from the church would tell the truth if somebody would come forward and say no there was no vision or maybe it was a dream or maybe it was just inspired but there's no such thing as justifiable homicide I would love it if the church would say that but that causes so many problems because then they have to discredit the Book of Mormon the Bible and the Bible yeah yeah so in your view someone who knew Lori and Alex growing up can you see these murders and these deaths happening without the doctrine and the theology that Chad and Lori ended up adopting and running with I think there's an off chance possibility that Lori may have gotten here at some point because she did talk often about how easy it would be for us to just raise our kids in the Millennium instead of now you know wait till Jesus comes you know or let's just go to heaven now and then raise our kids later when Christ is reigning on the earth wasn't there an incident where she spoke about being tempted to like Drive the kids off a cliff or something for that same reason exactly so there was that idea for her which I think just was maybe the spark behind all of tying what Chad dabel said together with the things that she already sort of thought and believed and wanted to believe and so you know I I don't think that necessarily it would have ended up in this long trail of bodies but I think there would have been some kind of something that happened if it was Lori by herself but it's it's also this this desire and the culture and and in the family system to be perceived as living everything correctly on the outside but having all this sickness on the inside that we don't talk about because the stakes are too high and the pressure to appear perfect and to not admit mistakes and right that sort of thing I often said it's okay for us to talk about mistakes if we've already overcome them you know how many times did we get counseled as teachers of the Gospel to not share personal stories or to not out our personal sins or to talk about them but it was okay to say at one point I struggled with the word of wisdom but even saying that would have been pretty shocking because people look at you differently you know so if we were to sort of conclude with your assessment as to whether or not the Mormon church has come somehow in some percentage complicit in the in the deaths that ended up occurring it sounds like you're you're saying at least a little bit complicit is that what you're saying yeah yeah definitely I think that there are so many there's just too many Parallels for for the church to be able to look at a situation like this and say that has nothing to do with us is incredibly arrogant and dangerous I think and and it's it would have been even now if somebody would come out and denounce Chad dabell in his teachings I know he's been excommunicated but Lori hasn't and she was teaching the same things and this is what's dangerous about it in that patriarchal blessing Chad is talking about the Church of the firstborn like this is a real church that he is forming and those ideas are still out there and his followers are still out there there are still people out there who believe these teachings now they may not think that it's okay to murder people but some of them might some of them might use these teachings to justify other things and now you've got yet another Splinter of Mormonism called The Church of the firstborn where you can be possessed by demons and the only way to get rid of that demon is for the body to die it's incredibly harmful teaching and the church needs to come and say something about it and denounce it so I'm hearing you say that some of the ways the church might be complicit are and the parallels between Joseph Smith and Chad daybell in the the doctrines and the theological Concepts that Chad and Laurie adopted to be able to end up justifying the things that they did and through the church's silence and unwillingness to nip all this fundamentalist prepper Mormonism in the bud are those the main three ways you're seeing that the churches being complicit yeah and lacking the spirit of discernment to stop it all when they claim the gift of discernment yes exactly and it it's just stunning to me that you know Lori and Chad use the temple too for some of these rituals and you know people going to the temple for purposes other than it was intended I would think that would be a huge slap in the face to the leadership of the church and that they would want to do something about that because now you have all these faithful believing members for whom the temple is a solid place because what other people are there using the temple for nefarious purposes or at least for odd spiritual practices that have no place there Mindy is there any other I'm just thinking where does the church start with this you know I just feel like there are just so many tentacles that have just branched out um I just feel like it's gotten a little out of control and and the moment me to to uh try to put the hammer down on some of these things I just think it's going to be tricky for them to to put and to put a stop to some of these groups and I'm not sure how they do that or what that looks like yeah um it seems like they are they more eagerly go against as you were seeing on another podcast John they more eagerly go against um maybe those who are fighting the church in a different way you know just maybe more liberal or or different um things that they see threatening but I don't know what it looks like for the church to go against against these types of groups other than maybe other church members Having the courage now to be more vocal if they see you know if they see things that maybe are Brewing that that seem dangerous or that that seem like they could possibly um blossom into something that's that's that could be harmful you know or or even deadly and maybe this experience this case has taught leaders to listen because there were warnings that were given you know there were a few people in in this circle that were reporting to their leaders that they were nervous about some of the things that were going on and perhaps just the exposure of this will maybe wake people up to to take these types of things a little more seriously yeah and maybe the church will say we have come out and said you know you can't get Revelation for anybody but yourself you know you can't you can't get Revelation for the whole church you shouldn't be you know telling people that they have a mission or or whatever the case is but man I had a home teacher come to my house one time and tell me that he had a vision that my son was going to go on a mission to Brazil and this was after he was out already you know and so your son was out after after my son was out yeah and so you have these like you say they're little tentacles that that where do you begin with it but I think I think where you begin with it is by dress addressing this specific group at this specific time and denouncing this group and these teachings and saying that this is not right and I feel like that's something the church has not done ever is to address something head-on they will talk about it but they will not speak directly to it and that feels very familiar and very gross to me familiar meaning kind of like your families of origin or what yeah um interesting so you're saying going against like those that were in this actual inner group making sure that at least at least if they're going to start somewhere start with Melanie Gibb and David Warwick and I don't even know some of them are still official members I think they probably are zulemma and you know yeah or I mean and there's others you know that associated with this group that perhaps wasn't like part of like the trust Circle or whatever but and I don't think they necessarily need to go and and say individual people's names okay but I guarantee you the leadership of the church knows about these teachings and knows the specifics and knows probably a lot more than we do about what's being taught and who's teaching it and I would think that they what I would hope is that they would come out and issue a statement that says the teachings of the Church of the firstborn are apostate teachings they are not part of mainstream Mormonism and they are harmful and nobody should be affiliating themselves with these groups that would be a start I agree yeah I think what's hard is the church can't condemn the idea of personal revelation the church can't condemn the idea that these are the latter days it's in the name they can't condemn the idea that Jesus is coming soon that we should get prepared for it you know that people can give blessings and have inspiration for others like like there's so much in this that's so Mormon even the church can't even condemn that you shouldn't kill if the spirit tells you to do so because it's in the third chapter in The Book of Mormon right like that there's the church's hands are tied in just almost every way doctrinally and theologically yeah that if they start clamping down on preparedness and end times and prophecy and personal revelation there that what do they have left and I feel like this is what we're all saying is that they can't denounce these harmful teachings because they originated they're the authors of it yeah and they're founded on it and they still rely on it yeah on them you know and I think that that Concept in itself should be a wake-up call to people to say okay if the church can't denounce harmful teachings because they're rooted in the teachings of the actual church maybe that should be a wake-up call for people yeah and I just have to get this in we talked about this last episode but like Sam young advocates for the protection of children he's axed Natasha Alfred Parker advocates for healthy sexuality she's axed you know some of us Jeremy Reynolds or I who advocate for honesty and history or in my case for LGBT rights we're asked Kate Kelly advocates for women's rights she's X how long did Chad Dabo go yeah without it you know how many of these people around him all these Preppers and all these extremists that where was the church I've seen these people well he wrote 25 books yeah all the nde stuff right but didn't get excommunicated until he got arrested so how many years was he out there spreading this false information like several you know when did you start publishing books like 2012 maybe 13 I could be wrong yeah long time ramp it just shows how terrified they are because I don't think they like this stuff but they're just terrified to touch it yeah yeah I think you're probably right they're afraid of what they're going to lose if they talk about it I wonder if a way that they can a way that they can start trying to prevent some of these you know more extreme things from happening I wonder if they'll if they would talk about the conferences just like the preparing of people or the you know because that's something that they could they could name you know the firm Expo and some of these other things to the Heartland or stuff right that could be a place where they could start but who knows some of these people I think are in the camp that the mainstream church leaders have gone astray and and you know they may just carry on and keep doing their things and not really care if the if the if the top leaders of the church came out with an official statement about it but then at least they wouldn't have access to temples and to mainstream that's a great point and to pull more people away with yes that's a good point yeah I think that the truth is the only thing that really matters and it's harmful the truth is harmful to people who have not confronted their own shame and it's hurtful to people who haven't done their own work and I think the church leadership is in that camp hmm powerful well Megan Connor I'm I'm sure Mindy you joined me in saying this we're so sorry for this tragedy that's come upon your family people you have known people you have loved and for us it's like a new a fascinating news story that is personal because it's Mormon but not because we know the people for you it's personal because you grew up with these people and we are so sorry that that this has happened to you and your family yeah thank you it's it has been really difficult it's it's going to be a long time before all of us are really healed from all this but we're also very grateful that you were courageous enough to reach out and to tell your story because what's the opposite of these secrets and elephants in the in the room that we don't talk about and the duplicitousness of The Superficial appearance but then the Dark Secrets what's the opposite of that it's bringing it all out into the sunlight and talking openly about it some of your family members will probably not really love that you did this but how else are we going to heal and Learn and Grow if we don't so we're so we're so grateful that you're willing to kind of share your perspectives with all of us yeah well thank you for giving me the opportunity to tell the truth because that I really do believe that is the most important thing hmm well thank you and Mindy I this would be a shadow of the podcast oh goodness without you thank you John thanks for coming I really enjoyed chatting with you Megan and hearing your story and I think you're incredibly Brave and wise and I just wish nothing but the best for you going forward as you continue to heal and process this terrible tragedy and as you go forward in your own life I just hope we can keep in touch yeah of course I would love that I've really I've got some Duets to sing yeah we do together that's right do you see Lori being convicted I sure hope so you do I really do I've I've been really nervous up until now that that the evidence has been circumstantial and that they're is going to be enough Reasonable Doubt for for them to let her go but I'm really hoping today was your announcement today was a big announcement they found a hair of Lori's in the duct tape that was used to wrap JJ and even though there are some potential holes in that evidence I hope that that's enough to sway the jury and I really I think that it would be it would be a travesty of Justice if she was not convicted even if she's not convicted here she still has to stand trial for Charles but um JJ entirely deserve justice and so does Tammy all right well thanks Megan Connor Thank you so much please stay in touch yes I will thanks Mindy you're welcome John thanks for having me and thanks everyone for joining us today on Mormon stories podcast we appreciate it uh we appreciate Lauren uh Matthias and her podcast real hidden True Crime please check her out as well subscribe to YouTube to the Mormon stories podcast YouTube channel but also check out Lauren Matthias and her amazing hidden True Crime YouTube channel because she and her husband and her husband John as well yes yeah yeah and thanks for supporting us uh on Mormon stories and we couldn't do without your support so we we always appreciate your support you can go to mormonstorage.org and become a supporter there thanks everybody take care be good to each other be kind to each other seek the truth stay away from harmful Supernatural or theological beliefs that are granted in reality um and we'll see all again soon on another episode of Mormon stores podcast take care

Channel: Mormon Stories Podcast

Views: 220,228

Keywords: mormon, the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints, Mormon Stories, LDS Church, Exmormon, LDS, John Dehlin, Lori Vallow, Chad Daybell, Preppers

Id: -bjoN15ZKBY

Length: 265min 28sec (15928 seconds)

Published: Tue May 02 2023