The Kooky Case of Raven Abaroa

[Music] hey you and welcome my name is mike and in this whole video we're uh we're trying we're going to durham north carolina to look at um let's say one in the stranger stories i've covered recently enough yeah you've got travel you get a guy who really loves the sound of his own voice and you got uh contact lenses that's a new one it's fitting that the name raven is in this one because we gotta we got a few bones to pick and a few baffling yolks to look at like along the way which we will get to when of course we as always give it a gift [Music] durham north carolina is home for us today and you know usually when i'm talking about uh the places in these old videos they tend to be set in small towns a lot of time which means i tend to run out of things to say but this is like the opposite of that but i will say my interest level remains the same non-existent it's home to a number of universities cultural institutions many prominent companies and over 275 000 people already pretty sweet but you know for us as usual it ain't the place it's who's in it that was the abaroas on fairand drive north west durham before they were the abaros though they were raven abaroa and janet christiansen raven and janet were college sweethearts meeting on a soccer ball field at southern virginia university a school not just chosen for shits and giggles it's a church of jesus christ of latter-day saint school based on the university's standards of conduct it's also party central of course they met in the soccer field there's literally nothing else to do don't know about you but i'm not sure if i could have kept up with that you know code of conduct self-respect come on raven and janet they were both you know the athletic sort and pretty soon they were in there like swimwear or that uh funny underwear mormons were maybe this rule was easier to keep than i thought but anyways back to what i was talking about and raven's rockin 90's haircut what a time to be alive so janet who came from a big loving family she had nine siblings fell for the charming raven when they met in 98 and fell hard so hard that two years after they met they married in august 2000 shortly after they moved to a town called smithfield virginia quite a ways away from where they first met and they settled in for their future lives together they both then later on ended up getting jobs at the same sporting goods company and that my friends is how we end up back at the beginning back in durham and see they ended up renting a house in the suburbs on ferrand drive things were going well you know they were trying for a baby just because you're trying doesn't mean you want to succeed as usual uh going well until it wasn't going so well in 2003 raven told janet that he was having an affair and he wanted to get going and be gone he actually uh had been seen a couple of chicks on the side and it was pretty much right after that that janna found out she had a bun in the oven for uh janet prince charming over here turned into prince [ __ ] but they reconciled raven bird boy uh yo he came back they ended up reckoned reconciling he said here listen done with daflander and stuff no more you know come on come on come on let's bygones be bygones and by god i'm gonna be a papa not long after they welcomed a baby together kaiden abbaroa now kaiden uh was kind of an accidental band-aid baby you know as they say because although they loved the kids they didn't necessarily love each other and things weren't great their finances were in [ __ ] shape but their child brought them great joy they ended up going to their church for help which which they got a few bob in the back pocket they ended up being a couple months behind on rent and their landlord had to help them out their landlord helped them out and he gave them a couple of months off the books see they were both working for a company called sports endeavors a company that sells well balls and either their spending checks their ass couldn't cash or they were being paid peanuts because they were always behind on bills even more so when the kid arrived and eventually they became they became broker when they were both fired despite the story janet wasn't involved at all the only involvement she had was her involvement with raven see raven it turned out had been stealing from the company like the birds they do that you know this wasn't a crime of desperation you've got to put food on the table just wanted the money uh you know he had ordered 25 to 30 pairs of shoes but had the merch delivered to his own home then sold the shoes himself under the username footballer guy the supplying company eventually contacted sports endeavour saying uh you never paid us sports never said well you never delivered it until they seen where it was delivered to and well yeah raven abroad was charged with embezzlement in march 2005. two months later things went from bad to worse [Music] on the evening of the 26th of april 2005 raven he went off to play some soccer ball you know with his friends he's still he's still mad about it he left the house at about 8pm uh you know left janet kyden back in the house when he left she was in bed watching tv and it was all good she was dozing off to sleep once again because she was pregnant for round two when he arrived back home after 10 pm the house was dark the house was quiet and in the bedroom janet was in the kneeling position covered in blood twenty-five-year-old janet abaroa was dead [Applause] [Music] um nothing could be done when the emergency responders arrived she was in a pool of blood raven hysterically croaking like his namesake hyperventilating believed she had done it to herself upon investigating the cops soon soon disagreed she hadn't been shot like raven said on the phone she had been stabbed multiple times in the chest fingerprints and a footprint were found a laptop missing along with one of raven's knives and he was he was a collector that's my new knife not for christmas thank you bought it myself my dad would be very proud i like to click nice but diamond rings were left on the counter the investigation was on and although there were you know odd things in the home there was no sign of any kind of forced entry into the house and the door was locked but raven hey he was at soccer with his mates and pretty soon he was somewhere else that's somewhere else being not in the state of north carolina a few days after the murder he upped and left [Music] he went to utah with his son to be with his family which is fair understandable in this difficult time but to others it looked like he liked it right after the murder he got an attorney and wasn't interested in talking to anyone least of all janet's a large family who arrived with rewards for helping solve the case janet's family were from pennsylvania and virginia and that's where she would go she would go home to be buried in antrim township in pennsylvania before she was buried though raven had a phone call to make because she had a life insurance baby [Music] she had half a million and although they had been having money troubles for a while for days and days raven always made sure to pay the policy every month now i hear you barking big dog you can see where this is going wouldn't be so sure about that the footprints at the house and the fingerprints didn't match our birdie four months after janet's death raven pled guilty to embezzlement charges and was sentenced to two years probation and ordered to pay back nearly ten thousand dollars at this point though it was um it's kind of small potatoes compared to uh you know so tell me do you mind if i interrupt for just one second don't move my hand where's my coffee [Laughter] okay and we're off and running again okay i don't um i don't like talking about what happened to her and it's not because i don't love her and it's not because i don't want to find out who did it but it's because i have so many good memories with her that you know i hate thinking about the the bad times you know the time that yeah i can't honestly i can't even put that image in my head right now like i refuse to even allow myself to think it because it's one of those things that it you know could break a person oh the what ifs you know i have so many what-ifs that that just overwhelm me from things like what if i had gone to that other college you know and never met janet you know i love her so much that i would have easily never met her just so i would have never put her in harm's way um why would somebody enter this quiet home in a quiet neighborhood why would somebody harm someone so innocent so kind as janet as my wife and what what are the motives you know and so as i think about that lots of scenarios play through my head the worst scenarios are scenarios that involve me you know involve was it somebody who was trying to get back at me was it someone who was breaking into my home because of something i did and if that's the case you know how do you live with yourself you know because i didn't live the lifestyle that i should have been living because that offered an opportunity for people to want to seek revenge on me or to hate me or to you know just want to provide harm and instead you know they encounter my wife and they end up harming her it's just it's not fair my justice comes from just knowing understanding that plan that why why is this allowed to happen he really loved himself i guess he was he was very mad he's always mad to yap away uh he even had his own website raven's tree ugh all right so that's uh done and dusted i'll uh i'll see you later i'm off until he bopped his wings and moved to utah with a few a few bob in his back pocket his son and a new life that he was planning on starting while he was having a grand old time in salt lake city durham was under the scope with this investigation and people were constantly inquiring about the state of it two years and no answers for the family of a murdered mother janet abaroa was killed two years ago she was pregnant with her second child for the first time police are telling us janet abaroa's husband raven avaroa has not been eliminated as a suspect in this case more and more questions were asked about a long gone raven who met a woman in salt lake city named vanessa pond and he was opted to races once more now using his brief widower status to get some hoon tang he told vanessa that an intruder had broken in and ended janet left without that you know left out the parts where he was a major person of interest in the investigation i'd leave it out too it didn't take too long for her to learn what others were saying about him though but charming raven was able to slow her role calmed her down and convinced her he had no part in his wife's death raven and vanessa then married after of course janet's family contacted her told her big mistake big red x but she still went ahead with it and years years would pass with no answers in the stabbing death of janet um so nothing good on that front and nothing good on our other front the marriage front really you know the sequel didn't do any better for raven raven was a complicated guy and that's rarely used as a compliment see vanessa and raven well over time he became more and more abusive it started with words and he worked his way up to physical abuse pushing her around throwing her on the floor convincing her she tripped that sort of thing suddenly he's convincing that he never had anything to do with you know his previous wife her death that started to look like the old trickeroo the marriage lasted less than six months with raven and vanessa separating and getting the marriage annulled he had me convinced that everyone was trying to frame him in the meantime and i mean four years after the murder nearly everyone suspected raven of being behind it he was unable to keep his story straight and consistent but there was no direct evidence tying him to it and any clues left behind didn't match raven but then again they didn't match anyone but what was odd was that if there was you know if it was someone else there was no sign of a break-in there were no signs of a disturbance and janet would have put up a fight especially as she was she was pregnant and had her baby in the next room at the end of uh 2009 2010 a new detective took over the case one of the first things he did was call raven you know who was all the way over in utah and raven was a gas light he was gas man because he had a habit of recording himself and this was a recording he made when he just got off the phone with that cop he seems to know [ __ ] is about to hit the fan um [Music] all right all right thank you i appreciate your time all right we'll see you later i feel myself getting frustrated uh i'm not 100 sure why i need to win the lottery you know if i were to win three million dollars i would dedicate two million dollars to fighting this two-thirds of my winnings [Music] i'm virginia so i've got my work out for me jeez hey one lottery that's my name because this fight you need money you need power little vlogger over here you know not odd at all wonder what else he records then the police made a big dent in the case when they had janet's body exhumed for reasons that were odd contact lens reasons janet always took her contact lenses out when she was going to bed as most people do thing is her contact lens holder was empty when searching the house they never found them so where could they be well i found out when they exhumed her body they were a little dissolved but largely intact and this once again was another inconsistency in raven's story if she was wearing them she wouldn't have been in bed as he said she was when he last saw her digital forensics also turned up uh something remember how his laptop was missing from the house well they ended up discovering some cds multiple cds and on them was pretty much everything that would have been on his laptop so he had backed up everything from his laptop and the date of those backups him downloading everything was the 25th of april 2005 which is the day before janet was murdered and his laptop was stolen miraculous [ __ ] perhaps he should have beefed up his home security instead i wonder what they found on those cds here's a final recording another was that on the way home ravens stopped in a convenience store and there was security footage however when the police arrived at his home he was wearing a different top so he had he had time to change one month after this video raven was arrested pam raven albarro is charged with murdering his pregnant wife janet in april of 2005. durham police arrested abaroa at his home in montpelier idaho today he did not resist in 2013 raven abaroa went on trial it was a circumstantial case i believe he said to me that that she had asked him why do i hurt so bad but a lot of women took the stand and talked about raven and his character women he had had affairs with while married to janet and they talked of him being being violent and then of course vanessa pond she was one of the star witnesses and she took the stand when he sees weakness or a woman crying he just comes at you harder and harder he told me how much he hated me and how much he didn't care if i died and he expressed how much he wanted to hit me and he swung his hand back and he stopped right before he hit my face and got in my face and laughed at me we're flinching and then left and they left the room i then had to compose myself and be late to my bridal shower the defense in the meantime had the footprint the fingerprints no evidence physically linking raven to the scene and a canine dog which when brought to the house led police to a creek out back where the trail ended signs that somebody else was in the home the farther away from that crime scene and that trail you get in this case ladies and gentlemen the greater chance that an innocent man is convicted of murder at the end of all the evidence we will ask you to return the only appropriate verdict in this case that's not guilt after five weeks long enough trial the jury was sent off to try and you know reach a conclusion after three days they reached one and by one i mean none i don't think that additional time spent deliberating is going to allow us to change our final outcome we can't make you reachable the system is not designed to make you reachable it allows you to attempt to decide these cases only you can do eleven wanted a guilty verdict one not guilty and they were at an impasse and so the judge declared a mistrial it was approximately a year later that raven's second trial was set for and as it inched closer well well it didn't happen raven abaroa entered an alfred play for voluntary manslaughter he admitted he killed her but not that he murdered her and even then not really i would just like to state that i didn't receive a fair trial the first time i don't think i'll receive a fair trial a second time and the fact is i love my family very much and i don't think it's worth risking the possibility of spending the rest of my life in prison for something i didn't do i take this plea to ensure that that doesn't happen and that's the only reason i did not kill my wife enough alfred plea is when you know they have enough to convict you but you're not saying you did it just that you know they'll find you guilty i did it but i didn't do it so just this you know a satisfactory conclusion no he was sentenced to eight to ten years in prison given credit for time served he had already spent four years in jail before the trial and when it was on so he so he didn't really have to spend a whole lot of time behind bars at all on christmas day 2017 he was a free man and he now lives in utah so yeah that's the story of that one you know and it kind of [Music] just sort of ends no uh no definitive uh conclusion janet's family don't think they got real justice it's like he can't even really say he did it being an alfred plea it's kind of a kind of a get out of jail free card although he spent time on bars yeah not a whole lot it's more of a kind of like i'll dip my toes than bounce card so i guess we can't really say what happens because an alpha play is quite frustrating and we may never know what happened truly so it's a big question mark you know wink wink on this one but with our birdman all his galvan his videos what a lot of women said about him kind of guy who was what happened that night i don't know it's a real thinker all right [Music] thank you so much for watching uh i really appreciate you taking the time to do so um watch the whole video and all that so thank you um and here you listen go on i'll see you as always real soon in the next old video until then please take care of yourselves [Music] you

Channel: That Chapter

Views: 1,755,432

Keywords: that chapter, raven abaroa

Id: SVUqtqGP3vc

Length: 24min 37sec (1477 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 21 2022