Part 2-The Witness True Crime Obsession Explained: What Happens When You Stop Watching and Walk into the Room
00:00:00 Evet: Welcome to the original Self podcast. I’m Evet DeCota, owner of DeCota Life Coaching and a psychology-informed life coach. Exploring resilience, mindset, and the courage to become your authentic self. This is a space for honest conversations about growth, identity, relationships, and all the messy moments in between that shape. Who we become. Between the salon chair and coaching sessions, I’ve watched people move through life in patterns they rarely notice. Patterns that are subtle, familiar, and incredibly hard to see from the inside. Today, we’re talking about one of the most fascinating and under-examined patterns of our time, a pattern that most of us share and almost none of us question. This is Episode Twelve-Part 2: True Crime Obsession Explained | What Happens When You Stop Watching and Actually Walk into the Room.
Hello and welcome back. Last week in part one, we went into the deep psychology behind our true crime obsession, uh, the evolutionary science of morbid curiosity. Why women are specifically and rationally drawn to this genre, the dopamine loop that makes these stories impossible to put down. And finally, the costs that accumulate when we consume it without consciousness. If you haven’t listened to part one yet, I’d encourage you to start there. Uh. It will make everything you hear today land very differently for you.
Today we are going somewhere. That part one never took us not into that research, but into the actual room. My guest took the relationship with true crime further than most of us ever will. She didn’t watch the Lori Vallow Daybell sentencing on a screen. She got on a plane, booked a hotel, drove to the courthouse in Idaho, and sat in the room where a woman who murdered her own children received her sentence. What she found there, what it did to her, what it could not have prepared her for, is what this episode is about.
My guest today is Rhonda Gaines, a close friend of mine and someone I’ve known for forty-three years. Sharp, honest, and is someone who, like me, has always been drawn to the more complicated corners of the human mind and human behaviors.
My fascination with her going to this case —what compels a person to cross that line from follower to witness? What do you find when the documentary is gone and the music stops? It’s just a room full of people and the unmediated reality of what one human being did to two others who called her mom.
I asked Rhonda to come on today because I think the answer to those questions gets at the heart of everything we’re exploring in this episode. I think what she experienced in that room is something that no podcast, no docuseries, and obviously no Reddit thread could have given her or us without her going.
Evet: Yeah. Hi, Rhonda.
00:04:01 Rhonda: That’s. Hello.
00:04:03 Evet: I’m so excited that you’re here right now.
00:04:05 Rhonda: I’m excited to be here too. Thank you so much for having me on your show.
00:04:10 Evet: Yes, it’s very exciting. All right, so let’s just start at the very beginning. When did you first hear about the Lori Vallow Daybell case, and what exactly was the crime? I’d like you to tell us everything. Like what? Got your what got its hooks in you.
00:04:29 Rhonda: Let’s see. Okay. Well, the very first time I heard about this case was in the Costco parking lot at Vintage Oaks in Novato, California. I ran into a girl from high school randomly. Her name is Sonia Landy. I don’t know if you remember her. She’s a hoot. No, she had a really, like, uncanny ability of just. She. She made her approach. I’ve probably seen her in about. I’d maybe seen her in like twenty-four, twenty-five years. Maybe it was the last time I’d seen her. She approached me as if that had been a few minutes ago. Rhonda. Rhonda and she just saying hi. She wants to know how everybody is. What have I been doing? And I’m just kind of like quickly summarizing twenty-five years for her real quick. And then she wants to know if I’ve heard of the Lori Vallow Daybell case.
00:05:18 Evet: That’s random.
00:05:19 Rhonda: It was pretty random. It was pretty, pretty random. I hadn’t heard of it, and I was in it was such a halfway crazy conversation anyway. Costco parking lot. Sonia Landy. So much time has gone by. Sonia. What the fuck are you talking about? And so she just started to kind of go on about this really nutty case she was following. She was like, It’s all over Facebook. There’s groups, there’s all this, whatever. There’s these missing kids. There’s these missing kids out of Idaho. Everybody’s looking for them. Their mom’s not saying where they are. And I thought, oh, okay, that’s a trip. But I mean, it wasn’t I didn’t I didn’t pursue it. I didn’t pursue it. It was just a weird little interaction that we had. I went on the following November, I think this was over the summer that I ran into her. And then in November twenty-twenty-three, I was at my cousin’s wedding in Mexico, and it was this beautiful wedding. And I so don’t drink alcohol. And the kids were partying so hard and having fun and just whatever. Me and my sober husband just kind of made our way back to our little cabana. And we were, we were just kind of looking at the phones as the old folks do in bed. And I just stumbled upon this funny, like, little Spotify thing by these two sisters out of Idaho, and they called themselves the Psychic Sisters, and they had a podcast, and they were covering this case. This was happening in their town. So all this shit from this case was going down in their little town, and these ladies were so awesome and so down home, and I found them so randomly. They were like in their forties. They were extremely overweight potato people. They were really just like, you’re not gonna believe what blew into Rexburg this week. They just they were beside themselves with the media presence, and just it was insanity.
00:07:19 Evet: So they’re, um, just absolute all in ness made you go, what’s going on here? Like I need to know more.
00:07:26 Rhonda: Really interesting story. They started telling the story in a way that just like two sort of Idaho housewife hens can kind of tell it, right? Like you’re drinking some ice tea, you’re listening up. They’re laying down the facts of this case. So the facts of this case are so tweaked. It’s it involves a cult like religion that is, uh, kind of created by this weird prophet that lives in their town. Uh, he’s an author of kind of doomsday books. He’s a self-published guy. Um, they, they just live in a, and he’s kind of, it’s a filtered, I’d say, uh, not a filtered, but a, um, like the FLDS is a fragment of the Mormon faith. So he starts calling his little, his little part of the Mormon faith, the church of the firstborn. And it has things to do with really old-school Mormonism, like atonement, like blood atonement. Um. What is it called again when you marry like a bunch of people? Sorry, I’m getting a little bit of brain fog at the moment, polygamy and things of that nature. So just kind of weird beliefs. He believes that he was, you know, um, kind of John, John the Baptist, in a past life. And he’s got all these past life things, and he starts telling women, you know, Hey, we were like married before, and you were or this biblical person, and I was that biblical person kind of starts getting this little group together. And it’s mostly these Mormon housewives that are just feeling really moved by the spirit, even though they’re really wanting, they’re wanting to hear more about how sexy they were when they were biblically with Chad Daybell in a previous life. Pretty gross.
00:09:14 Evet: Yeah. So gross is another way to describe it.
00:09:17 Rhonda: So it’s kind of a culty, just religion thing. They form like a group, but what it comes down to is they end up the two of them get together and murder his wife, murder her husband, and then her children.
00:09:33 Evet: I didn’t know that. Yeah, I didn’t know that.
00:09:35 Rhonda: Yeah. No, there’s there’s more than just the kids. They got rid of the spouses, too. They had. Excuse me. Insurance. I don’t talk my throat dry. They had insurance on everybody. She was I mean, it was it was a money thing. They were saying they were putting, you know, pulling all their money together for this church that they were creating. And, and he convinced them that the world was ending. And so, like, nobody was going to be looking for them because, like, all these bad earthquakes were going to be happening, floods, fires, etcetera. End of days. He was this doomsday guy that preppers the whole nine. It’s it’s it’s such a. But here’s the thing, Yvette. At the end of the day, like you can look at all these variables, right? Growing up in a tight culture that is Mormonism. This is what they grew up around. It was very provincial, totally sheltered environment. Yes. Okay. So they’ve they’ve got this set of beliefs. She’s a mom.
00:10:35 Evet: Yeah.
00:10:36 Rhonda: She’s a mom. I, that’s where I couldn’t it never from the beginning when when Sonia Landy in the parking lot told me they can’t find the kids and the mom’s not saying where they are. So right away I went, oh well, the kids are okay. The mom just doesn’t want to say where they are, right?
00:10:57 Evet: Because because you can’t imagine something like that.
00:11:00 Rhonda: And this isn’t like, you know, the kind of case where you’ve got a mom that’s like strung out on drugs, there’s abandonment, there’s negligence, she’s out of her head and the kids end up in foster care there. It wasn’t like, I don’t really know where my kids are at because I’m so out of my head. This was a soccer mom. This was a attractive woman. This was a married woman. She had three children. She grew up with strong family connections, strong community connection. She was big in her church. She was a gospel singer. She had been on Wheel of Fortune. She had been in the Miss Texas.
00:11:40 Evet: Did she win?
00:11:41 Rhonda: She won some money on Wheel of Fortune.
00:11:43 Evet: Did she?
00:11:44 Rhonda: She did not know. She did not. I think she I don’t even know that she was a runner up, but she was in Miss Texas. Strange correlations in the world of killers and Wheel of Fortune. That might be a later episode.
00:11:57 Evet: But I don’t know this. I would have to investigate this. Okay, so.
00:12:04 Rhonda: This was a woman that you see on a normal weekend with her family out at the store, out at the park, out at the ball game. Carton the kids around doing the school drop off. You know, this this nothing made sense. Nothing made sense. And that is what piqued my interest. Now, when November hit and I was at that wedding, started tuning it again. They had just found the kids.
00:12:31 Evet: Oh, okay.
00:12:32 Rhonda: And so now they knew they were dead.
00:12:36 Evet: And those kids, if I remember correctly, were in a grave in the backyard of her husband’s.
00:12:43 Rhonda: Yeah. Her new husband.
00:12:44 Evet: Her new.
00:12:44 Rhonda: Husband. They’d offed their spouses, married each other, right? The kids were buried on his property. Yes. Okay. She the daughter? The, um. Who was? I guess she was fifteen at the time. Yeah. Was, uh, badly burned and dismembered. And they couldn’t tell even how she had died.
00:13:04 Evet: Oh my God.
00:13:05 Rhonda: The the the little boy who seven forever, uh, was in pajamas. He was in a, in a garbage bag that was then wrapped like, um, this duct tape all around it. Mummified with with duct tape all around.
00:13:26 Evet: So crazy.
00:13:27 Rhonda: And they had been there for since September. The year previous.
00:13:32 Evet: Oh.
00:13:33 Rhonda: So they’d been missing for a long time that she had been. They’d they’d asked her to show proof of life of the kids. She did not. That’s when they had to arrest her. At that time, it was for abandonment because she wasn’t saying where they were.
00:13:48 Evet: And she was in Hawaii, right. She was in Hawaii.
00:13:50 Rhonda: That’s where they had planned to move. They just split. They she has another living son. They didn’t tell him where they were going. He’s an adult. Right. Um, and he has five children that are adults. And they split on them and just came to Hawaii.
00:14:03 Evet: The husband, the husband had five children. Okay.
00:14:06 Rhonda: Yeah. So he kills her mom and they all stand by him now it’s.
00:14:10 Evet: Oh, well, that’s another fun topic.
00:14:12 Rhonda: It’s it’s it’s it’s a crazy story. It’s so crazy. And there’s even, even so much more that has to do with they collected money on them when they were missing before people knew they were missing.
00:14:25 Evet: Like they were getting a GoFundMe.
00:14:26 Rhonda: They were getting SSI. I know it was from their father’s death. They were receiving benefits from that. And also the child was the younger son was autistic and receiving state benefits. So she was collecting about four thousand dollars a month on her dead children just to live on. And then they had received insurance money from her husband’s death. Or no, that was the thing. How they started, how it started unraveling is he had actually saw that she’d gone on the computer and tried to fuck around with the insurance. So he actually he put it for his sister to get it.
00:15:02 Evet: The the son did that. Um, her.
00:15:05 Rhonda: Husband.
00:15:05 Evet: Her husband did that. And the husband she killed. Uh huh. Oh.
00:15:09 Rhonda: So he died and the sister got it. And the sister’s like, um. I feel like you killed Charles.
00:15:15 Evet: Oh, wow.
00:15:16 Rhonda: Yeah.
00:15:17 Evet: Oh my God. Okay, so a lot of people follow cases obsessively, right? I mean, I hear my salon clients talk about it. I hear my girlfriends talk about it. At what point did you go from online to deciding, I’m going to this trial? I’m gonna get on a plane, like I said earlier, and I’m going to go to Idaho and go to this trial.
00:15:43 Rhonda: I think there were a lot of parts to that question at the time. I do remember when I booked the flight and the hotel room, I was, uh, I was angry at my family. We were driving home from Oregon and we’d been on a little family trip. That was really fun. And of course, I can’t remember. I was really annoyed and I was like, I’m fucking myself. Another goddamn trip. And I, I’d had that thought that it’d be cool to go see it, you know, and I was, you know, hoping that it was going to be televised and that I’d have the opportunity to do it that way. Well, then it came out that they were going to play audio of the day of that day’s court later in the day. And it was kind of like, oh, well, I was grateful for whatever insight I was going to get, but I also really wanted to see. I wanted to see the testimony. I wanted to see her. I wanted to know. I wanted to know because there was a lot of. She was basically saying, I know nothing, I did nothing. This is crazy. This is a. Whatever I needed to know. I had to know.
00:16:56 Evet: So she she pled not guilty the entire time. And I never did a thing.
00:17:00 Rhonda: She’s got five life sentences, right? She’s. She been to three different trials the last two. She represented herself. Oh, she’s. This woman is a hoot and holler.
00:17:11 Evet: Does she have a law degree? No, no. Okay, okay.
00:17:14 Rhonda: She’s got a very high degree of narcissistic traits.
00:17:20 Evet: Yeah, yeah.
00:17:20 Rhonda: Yeah, that, uh, and very histrionic. Yeah. And also, she was when she was tested, it was like an obsessive degree of religiosity.
00:17:31 Evet: Okay.
00:17:31 Rhonda: Delusional schizoid thinking.
00:17:33 Evet: Sure, sure.
00:17:34 Rhonda: So that was her final, you know, final, final. I didn’t know these words in my mind. I’m just thinking she either really didn’t do anything.
00:17:43 Evet: Okay.
00:17:45 Rhonda: She did something and she cannot face it. And it’s completely.
00:17:51 Evet: Blocked. Yeah.
00:17:52 Rhonda: Or she knows what she’s doing.
00:17:54 Evet: Yeah. I’m going to go with number three.
00:17:55 Rhonda: That’s what it was.
00:17:56 Evet: Yeah.
00:17:57 Rhonda: But you know what? If that was hard that I, I, I kind of wanted to sit in presence with that I did. It was wild to me because I, I had, I just followed cases of, of, uh, domestic violence or, or abandonment, neglect, things like that, trauma based things that happen in families. This was so different. This was something so evil.
00:18:19 Evet: Yeah.
00:18:19 Rhonda: This was evil.
00:18:21 Evet: Totally.
00:18:21 Rhonda: And it was also something that I don’t think. I think it’s awakened. I don’t think that this just pops up one day. I think that that this woman was running with this her whole life. And, and kind of with knowing this about her now and looking back through her history, it’s quite interesting.
00:18:44 Evet: So when you said awakened, you just mean for her. You don’t, do you? Do you mean it came to life?
00:18:50 Rhonda: I think, oh no, God.
00:18:52 Evet: I.
00:18:52 Rhonda: Really don’t. I, and I really I really hope not. But end of the day, I don’t know. I, I don’t know that I, I, I just feel that. Meeting this man and kind of just where she was. So she was fired up on religion. She’s been reading his books, he writes all these doomsday books and, and, and stories and talks about the future. She’s dreaming of some kind of an apocalypse where she’s one of the chosen ones. Because in this story of their religion, there’s one hundred and forty four thousand chosen ones that will remain and they’re going to repopulate the earth, right? So she was feeling pretty big for her britches, you know, pretty sure she was one of these. I know I’m not. I’m not even in the bottom. Whatever it is. Are you serious? Repopulate the earth. Send me back to space. I don’t want no part of it. I want no part of it.
00:19:49 Evet: Beam me up.
00:19:49 Rhonda: Like we’re going to restructure this. No.
00:19:51 Evet: Thank you. Exactly. So maybe she was idolizing Daybell at first, but then, because she was part of the scenario, all of her past lives and he really kissed her up. Yeah.
00:20:05 Rhonda: He asked her up into.
00:20:07 Evet: Yeah.
00:20:07 Rhonda: You’re definitely part of this new earth, right? That is coming. But also together we are stronger. And what we need to do is get obstacles out of the way. And so they, they would call them kind of zombies. They needed to make it like, ooh, they’re, they’re, they’re possessed. Yeah. So the kids were showing signs of being possessed by demons and such. So they, they, that’s what they needed to call it and, and to murder these people. But, you know, Interesting.
00:20:37 Evet: Um. So I think I got what you’re you hoped to get. Like you wanted to look at her. You wanted to just check her out, right? Like, yeah.
00:20:48 Rhonda: I wanted to be there. And I wanted to see her reactions, her responses, her expressions. I like studying like you. I enjoy behavior, I enjoy microexpressions, I enjoy tone, cadence, the whole thing. I want to be there.
00:21:02 Evet: And I think you’re a big empath. I know we both are. And I think sometimes we know things before it ever comes to the to light. Right. And so I, I would think I’m putting words in your mouth that that was another reason why you’d be there just to like just to feel this.
00:21:21 Rhonda: I wanted to know. And it probably, I think I knew that I would feel the certainty. Exactly. And there was a lot hanging there. But when I said before, like, hey, I think there were so many reasons, like I, you know, in the moment of a spontaneous. Well, I’m going to take a little trip by myself. I know that that was in there. Yeah. And then I do have a friend that lives in Idaho. I thought it’d be fun to see her one night. Okay. And we did. We had dinner and talked and stuff. I’ve never gone anywhere by myself like that on a plane to a different, you know, thing for no reason other than to just explore something I find interesting. And I thought that that was pretty fucking liberating, I’ll tell you.
00:21:58 Evet: I think it’s super cool. Yeah.
00:21:59 Rhonda: I had these, like, little Italian shoes. Okay. So I bought clothes for court. That was something else that I felt strongly about. I wanted to dress and I wanted to look like I belonged there. And so a couple of really fun things happened. Um, so I did, I had some, I had some nice slacks, I bought myself some Italian loafers. And I did have a, some pretty blouses, um, hairstyle. Of course I had everything going on the very first day that I got there, I put my little Italian loafers on and I wanted to go out and kind of get the lay of the land and just sort of see where I was, how close I was to the courthouse, all that stuff, where the food was. So I embarked on a walk and I got lost very quickly, um, in a major downtown area, which didn’t seem possible, but they have north, south, east, west type streets. Yes. Uh, need I say more?
00:22:51 Evet: No. So where’s the target? What corner is it on?
00:22:56 Rhonda: Then I have my phone and I’m, like, trying to do that. But then it’s saying like, you know, walk north like it’s doing the same thing. And I’m looking. How do you translate North. South. East, West. Yeah. Front back, left right. You can’t do it. It turns out you need some kind of a focal point. So that’s where I was having trouble locating a focal point.
00:23:20 Evet: Yes.
00:23:21 Rhonda: So I wandered around. Oh my God, Yvette, the blisters from these shoes. So I, I had to take off the loafers. And I had huge blisters all over my feet before I found my way back to the hotel. Rest of the trip. Every cute court outfit worn with cowboy boots. The only other shoes I had. It was horrible.
00:23:42 Evet: You were in Idaho, cowboy?
00:23:44 Rhonda: It’s not with a court outfit. And also the people in Idaho are not like that.
00:23:49 Evet: Oh, really?
00:23:50 Rhonda: Not in Boise. Very, very upstanding. Conservative, very white, but very friendly bunch.
00:23:58 Evet: That’s nice. Yes.
00:23:59 Rhonda: Very friendly bunch. Very warm. They found me very interesting. They liked me.
00:24:03 Evet: And.
00:24:03 Rhonda: I did. They did. They liked me in Idaho. I did make a couple of girlfriends.
00:24:07 Evet: That’s very nice.
00:24:08 Rhonda: I did, I made friends, we sat by each other, and then we would just giggle about what was happening, you know? But it was nice to have somebody next to you to be like, oh, oh my God, did you see what she just did?
00:24:18 Evet: Right. Okay. So so now you’re in the courthouse or in the courtroom is what I’m trying to say. What did it look and feel like when you realize, okay, I’m no longer watching this on television. I’m no longer listening to this. I’m actually in it. There she is. What did that feel like?
00:24:41 Rhonda: It felt like I was supposed to be there and that it was meant to happen. I felt comfortable there. I just I was on time every day. I wasn’t bored, I listened, I enjoyed talking to people on the breaks. And at the lunch I met a lot of my favorite podcasters that I’d been listening to leading up to this point. And I felt that was wonderful because I just love knowing you’ve got like pals and people that think like you, like all over the place, you know, just everywhere. It’s kind of cool.
00:25:14 Evet: We’re the podcasters, mostly women. Yes, yes, yes. That’s interesting.
00:25:18 Rhonda: There were, uh, two that I met that were one that I don’t actually, uh, it’s interesting because she’s kind of fallen off as being, um, kind of a credible podcaster, so I don’t listen to her anymore. But but my other friend Gigi, I listened to religiously. I like Gigi, Gigi.
00:25:38 Evet: Um, okay, so Lori comes in.
00:25:41 Rhonda: Lori comes in.
00:25:44 Evet: Tell me what that was like when you first started. I know you said you’re comfortable and all that stuff, but now she comes in and to me, what she’s been accused of, like you said, is pure evil. Yeah. And so I imagine that I might have been uncomfortable, that I might have felt a little bit nervous. But how did that like when you saw her, like, there she is. What went through your mind?
00:26:11 Rhonda: I think I kind of it kind of slowed down. I think that it kind of was a little bit suspended. Like, ah, but you, I even from the jump, there’s a reptilian quality to her.
00:26:30 Evet: Tell me more about that.
00:26:32 Rhonda: The way she looks around the room is predatory.
00:26:35 Evet: Oh, yeah.
00:26:36 Rhonda: Yeah. There, there. There’s just a way of a gaze. There’s a there’s a way of fixing your gaze. There’s a way of looking around to see who’s there. And then there’s a way of kind of checking yourself against who’s there. I felt that way. I felt her attention go around that way.
00:26:57 Evet: That’s that’s very interesting. Because when you were saying before, like, you know, maybe the schizoid or narcissistic or all of the above. I was thinking about how she was a, you know, infamous on Wheel of Fortune and she was in the Miss Texas pageant. And all of that is a lot of look at me. Look at me. Yeah. And now she was the she was in a situation, the ultimate look at me situation. Right. So then finding how she’s looking at the room, like you said, like who she’s up against? That’s right. That’s a very interesting character.
00:27:38 Rhonda: And it just does feel kind of I mean, it did her her gaze was, I would describe as predatory.
00:27:46 Evet: Oh that’s crazy.
00:27:47 Rhonda: Um, yeah. And and cold.
00:27:49 Evet: Yeah. Okay.
00:27:50 Rhonda: So it was, it was a, a presence. And also, I think what it turned into for me was just a lot of frustration because this person won’t ever tell the truth. And that’s what it, that’s what it, that’s what you come to reckon. Like I, I started to recognize that what I wanted, what you want is you want to know what. Why? Yeah. You want to know what happened to you?
00:28:15 Evet: Oh, yeah. I mean, that’s the whole reason.
00:28:17 Rhonda: Yeah. How did this happen to you? Yeah. What moment did you snap? Was it a thousand cuts? How did you get there? Right. Because I I, I can’t get there like I, I wouldn’t get there. Exactly. Now I feel safe in saying that I don’t understand it, but in a sense, you almost feel like is it maybe I’m safer watching her from over here knowing I’m never going to do this. Like she, in a sense, has taken this on for everybody. I can watch you for way over here. Right. I can see a horror show. I’m not a part of this, but I still have to explore how nuts this is.
00:29:03 Evet: Yeah.
00:29:03 Rhonda: Yeah. So I it’s it’s pretty baffling. I, I don’t know why that and in that case in particular struck me like no other. There’s a few more I’m getting into deep diving. Yeah. And they all are women. They’re all women that kill.
00:29:18 Evet: Right. Which is unusual. And so I think as you know, making up over seventy percent of true crime viewers as women. When we see women that kill. It’s always very interesting to me because I, I, we obviously have that trait in us, but I always think of it more as like self-defense, right? And so when you realize like, you killed your babies, you killed your ex-husband and his ex-wife, like, because of Jesus, like, I mean, it doesn’t make any sense to me. Right. But I mean, the world doesn’t make sense sometimes, right? So. Okay, I have another question. The victim’s family, uh, maybe a mom. You said another son that Lori had. You said he had, uh, Daybell had five kids. Yeah. Were they in the courtroom.
00:30:20 Rhonda: When I know they were not.
00:30:22 Evet: Okay.
00:30:23 Rhonda: Uh, they were not, because they were all going to be testifying. I see. And so they’re not allowed to be present. So after they testified, they could be. I was there for a week, like I watched five days of trial. Okay. So, um, in the days that I was there. No.
00:30:37 Evet: Okay. And you didn’t see them?
00:30:38 Rhonda: Well, actually, the grandma and grandpa were the grandma and the grandpa. Whose grandmother? Um, it was the grandma and grandpa of the kids.
00:30:47 Evet: But whose parent? Lori. Or it was.
00:30:49 Rhonda: Actually, his sister. His her husband’s sister, the one that he had left the money to. This is where the story gets a little bit confusing. Not for somebody like you, but think of it, I.
00:31:02 Evet: Feel.
00:31:02 Rhonda: Just like. Think of it. Well, I’ll put it to you this way. Okay. There was a a young couple that had a baby, but they were addicted to drugs, so they adopted their baby to, uh, the guy’s uncle. Right. So say. Okay, that uncle happened to be. That was Charles, her husband. Okay, so the kids who had the baby that was his sister’s kids.
00:31:27 Evet: His niece and nephew or his niece.
00:31:29 Rhonda: That was that. That was there. Yeah. Okay. So it was like his sister who was like in her sixties. Her son had a kid.
00:31:36 Evet: Oh, that’s the grandparents.
00:31:37 Rhonda: And then so they felt like they couldn’t raise the kid. But Charles had a young family already, so he adopted JJ into their family. So that was actually her grandchild.
00:31:47 Evet: I got it.
00:31:47 Rhonda: Now. And it was Charles’s nephew. Okay. But they adopted him as their son. Got it. So?
00:31:54 Evet: So that’s.
00:31:54 Rhonda: And he was like a little autistic boy.
00:31:56 Evet: Yeah. So when you did you look at them? Did you like see how. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And how were they.
00:32:04 Rhonda: Well they’re. Oh my God. These Larry and um, and Kay are so strong and so close and very tight knit with their family. Yeah. They are like, she’s like a strong Catholic Background. They’re just total salt of the earth they live in, um, like poor Charles, like Louisiana. Um, and they’re just really down to earth. Really, really sweet people. Totally southern. Very gracious. Yeah. Yeah.
00:32:40 Evet: Well all right.
00:32:42 Rhonda: And the press loved them. They spoke with them outside all the time. Okay. The grandpa’s like a total sweetie. Kind of funny.
00:32:49 Evet: Yeah.
00:32:50 Rhonda: Personality. And everybody really liked them a lot.
00:32:54 Evet: So I’ve watched a few court trials. Right. And, um, it always seems, you know, like you watch the reenactment and it’s so dramatic. Right? But what was the atmosphere like in the courtroom? Was it just. Question, answer objection. Like, you know, was it did it ever get dramatic?
00:33:16 Rhonda: Definitely, definitely. I was there on one day. That was very dramatic. But I think for the most part, It’s just it’s fairly dry. Yeah. In this case, the, uh, defense lawyer was pretty salty. Um, and the prosecution was pretty smart, and so there was like some little fun sparks at times, but for the most part, fairly dry. Yeah. Nothing. Nothing exciting. But really the most fascinating was just getting to learn more information, because it had been a few years for this to get to trial. And you don’t, you know, you get to only learn so many things that are in the indictment, but you don’t know a lot of the of the evidence. And so it was learning a lot of evidence, and that kept you very engaged with the testimony. There was one woman one day and she revealed something that hadn’t been revealed, and that the defense lawyer was not prepared for and had never heard before and was totally pissed off that she said. And, um, that had to do with the conversation that she’d had with Laurie that where Lori had described that she was going to hurt her and, you know, she was threatening her, essentially. But that had never been mentioned before. Right. The defense lawyer, he fucking yelled at her. He’s just like, why would you say that? You have never said that before. No, no, no no no, she cried everything. So it’s true. It’s true. But me and my little friend that I made looked at each other. Oh my God.
00:34:44 Evet: So okay. The kids names were JJ and Tylee. Tyler. Tyler. Tyler. Tyler. Okay. Did you see images of them?
00:34:55 Rhonda: No, I was not there that week.
00:34:57 Evet: It was not.
00:34:57 Rhonda: There. No. And I wouldn’t go on a week where that’s that that would stick with me. And I know myself well enough. I could maybe I can watch, like, scary movies and stuff, but like a real like this is a real photo of a real child. No. No way.
00:35:10 Evet: Okay.
00:35:11 Rhonda: No, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t show up for that. So you can. And I believe that that day, the family also didn’t come. Yeah, you know what I mean. So. No, that that wasn’t happening the week I was there.
00:35:21 Evet: But when you heard about this and then they were, I would assume that they were talking about these children being murdered. They did being in the courtroom, did it make Tylee and JJ more real, even more real? Like these were real children? Oh, yeah. Yeah.
00:35:42 Rhonda: Oh, God. Yeah. They were so real already because so many photos, so many like little video clips of them. Yeah. So many other family members talking about them. The search had gone on for them for almost a year. Yeah. It was, it was like you, you did. And, and a lot of history about them and learning about them, their school, their personalities, what they liked. And so you felt like you already they were real children that you could totally feel like you knew already. And so the, the thoughts of like their last moments or whatever really happened isn’t something I can really contemplate, right?
00:36:21 Evet: Absolutely. It’s it’s it’s too much. I would say.
00:36:24 Rhonda: Just more the that the blessing that it’s over.
00:36:26 Evet: Yeah, absolutely. Um, there’s a moment in a lot of true crime coverage where the perpetrator becomes almost the protagonist. And, you know, obviously the story centers on them, their psychology, their choices. Did that shift at all when you were sitting in the room? Like, did like what came up about her that like, oh, this is for me. This is why I did it or. I guess I’m saying, was there like a defense? Uh, the defense attorney saying like, oh, well, you know, she was beaten her whole life. You know, I’m making something up, but that kind of.
00:37:11 Rhonda: No, really her, her, her defense attorney. And especially when he gave his closing argument as well. He shed tears. His, uh. He really believed that she was someone that loved Jesus and that she really believed everything that Chad Daybell had told her that she was. That it was the right thing to do, that the children were being tormented and that they were dead anyway and taken over. And they they were releasing their spirits by killing them. And, uh, you know, whatever they needed to tell themselves. I think that she got into a loop with it. She has to say she has to. I don’t know if she can actually believe that, but I believe that that’s what she has to keep saying. Yeah. And that’s what she’s not changed her story. Well, actually she did. She changed her where she she said more than she tried to make it sound to her son, her surviving son, on a phone call. She tried to tell him that the daughter had killed the little boy and then killed herself, and that Laurie, to save her daughter’s reputation, took the hit. And, uh.
00:38:30 Evet: And therefore.
00:38:30 Rhonda: They.
00:38:30 Evet: Just got the story centers on her. Exactly. There we go.
00:38:34 Rhonda: Yeah. She she she was the victim and the hero.
00:38:37 Evet: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. There we go. Yeah. Wow. Um.
00:38:43 Rhonda: And I’m happy to say at this point now, I mean, what is true about it is it did run its course. I, I mean, I, I was totally intrigued and captivated. I learned all about it until I got to the point where I realized there’s things I’m not going to understand. And that’s fine. Right. There’s things in life I’m not going to. But the awareness that that exists is a little bit challenging because It’s you know, I don’t ever think that about anyone I meet. Right. And I never would have thought that about her. She’s somebody probably would have been, you know, we would have seen her around town. Right. You know what I mean? Maybe not if she was in the whole, like, religious deal or whatever, but she’d get her hair cut from you.
00:39:33 Evet: God, I hope not. Well, she.
00:39:34 Rhonda: She was a hairstylist. Evet. She was. She was. Yeah.
00:39:37 Evet: You know, a different bunch.
00:39:40 Rhonda: She was a hair girl. Yeah.
00:39:42 Evet: Okay. Wait, so you were not there for the sentencing? No. But did you watch? Listen to it. Watch it.
00:39:50 Rhonda: It did show the sentencing on TV.
00:39:51 Evet: Oh, so you did watch it? Yeah. Okay. So what do you remember most vividly about the sentencing? Because I did not.
00:39:58 Rhonda: She seemed unmoved and emotionless.
00:40:01 Evet: She just took it.
00:40:02 Rhonda: No tears. No. No change of facial expression, no nothing.
00:40:09 Evet: What about in the courtroom?
00:40:11 Rhonda: She never cried.
00:40:12 Evet: No. The reactions of others.
00:40:15 Rhonda: There she had a big reaction when that one girl said something that hadn’t been spoken before.
00:40:20 Evet: Right? No, but I mean, when she was being sentenced.
00:40:22 Rhonda: Oh, when she was being sentenced.
00:40:24 Evet: No, it was quite.
00:40:25 Rhonda: No.
00:40:26 Evet: Interesting. Nothing.
00:40:27 Rhonda: She will not. She you you get that feeling. It’s that prideful feeling. She’s not going to give it to you.
00:40:34 Evet: Yeah. Yeah. Well, like you said, predatory. Right. She’s watching the reactions.
00:40:39 Rhonda: Yeah. She’s she’s she’s not. And she went on to do a couple of like little interviews in the jail, one by East Idaho News and another by Arizona family. And in both she’s I mean it it it is a sketch in in probably that I can’t say narcissistic or histrionic. I can’t, but I can say, you’re going to see what I’m talking about if you watch those interviews, it’s pretty nuts, especially if you like body language. Sure. Yeah.
00:41:11 Evet: Yeah. It’s very revealing.
00:41:12 Rhonda: It’s it’s it’s a lot. Wow. It’s a lot.
00:41:16 Evet: So did what? Lori didn’t say anything in the courtroom when she was being sentenced. Not a thing. Did she get.
00:41:24 Rhonda: Well? She did make an allocution, not an allocution. But, like, you know, you can make a statement before he delivers.
00:41:30 Evet: I was just going to ask you that.
00:41:31 Rhonda: And that is. Yes she did.
00:41:32 Evet: Okay.
00:41:33 Rhonda: She did. Again, just claiming innocence. Yes. And kind of making it. She’s like accidental this and that is not you know she tried to everything. She had an answer for everything.
00:41:44 Evet: Yeah.
00:41:45 Rhonda: For eight million zillion things. Here’s a reason why, you know, no matter what anybody else says. See, I just couldn’t. I mean, here’s the thing. I just worst criminal ever. I’d immediately say everything I did because I’d be, like, so ashamed.
00:42:04 Evet: And horrified.
00:42:05 Rhonda: We’re bad liars, and I want the whole thing to just be over with. And I’d be like, blah. Yeah. And then just like, whatever, like, help me put the cuffs on, make this change. Turn me into something else. I hate this. Yeah. I, I’d be so horrified. I just would. Yeah. Every time I try to lie about something, like, like, even if it’s small, I always have somebody go, are you lying? They can tell. They know you. They can just tell because it’s not worth it. Wrong. Yeah. And it’s just, you know it and it’s not worth it. It’s not who gives a shit? No, but I, I have not killed somebody, so it doesn’t matter. Okay. But I’m telling you, if I did, I’d be the first. You’d still say so. I’d be like, hey, man, I just I cannot unburden me, right? I’ve gotta unburden myself right now. Oh. All right. So flying back from the Idaho. What did it feel like? Like, not what you were thinking. What did it feel like? Like, like just a, like a really cool, interesting experience that I would love to do again. Okay, yeah, I’ll definitely do it again when I feel, you know, really connected to something. And it was also I had to do with like, I kind of, and I’ve run this past Alan also, and he likes the idea of like, because we were thinking of going to Arizona because for her last trial and just make a little, how do the five days of trial and like, if you wanted to come in the day, you could, or if you wanted to go do something else and then we could just play at night or whatever, have fun with it, you know? So there’s some place like Florida is a great place to see, uh, to see court cases. They’re there, they’re plentiful, they are very plentiful and they’re interesting. And they’re many, many, many women involved in the crime community in Florida. Yes. I feel like, um, of, of the true crime that I’ve watched, I don’t know, I can’t give you a full percentage, a real percentage, but I’m going to go with like ninety percent or so. Usually in Florida, but they’ve got their sunshine laws, so they show everything they show. That’s why. So we get to see it doesn’t mean it’s not happening in other places. Sure. We’re just not. But we do. We also feel like it’s true. There is more there, though. Come on. All right. Is there anything you wish you had known before going there? I mean, it sounds like it was an overall good experience for you, but just probably walking shoes, back up shoes. I would say that that was the major kink that the very first day my outfits were going to look bad for the week. I could have cried. I, I, everyone, everyone chosen with care. And now and then just with the boots and then. Okay. I told my aunts, hey, I got all the, you know, cute outfits. She’s like, I want to see a picture of you on your way to court every morning. And I said, all right. So every morning and not take a picture in that mirror, full length mirror in the room and with the boots and everything. And then finally, by Friday, she’s on. Did you bring any other shoes?
00:45:23 Evet: Those shoes and those blisters. I like that, that’s what we’re taking away. All right. Um, last question for you.
00:45:32 Rhonda: Where have I heard that before?
00:45:34 Evet: I know it’s usually a lie. We’re spending this whole episode asking why we’re drawn to these stories. Right?
00:45:43 Rhonda: Right.
00:45:44 Evet: Especially why women are. Right. And after everything you have been through, seen and heard in this case. What do you think it’s really about? Why? Why did we go there?
00:46:01 Rhonda: I do believe that it is exploring a darker side of ourselves through another person. I think that we recognize human frailties and faults and conditions and and we can watch them play out and we can judge it from far away or break it apart. And it’s just easier because it’s not personal. But it doesn’t mean that you’re not learning like, wow, you know, this stuff exists. But I don’t know. That I fear these things in myself. I honestly, I just don’t think that I see them. Right. You know, and I, I haven’t had an opportunity to be like, let’s see now, I’ve never explored, um, welfare fraud using my children. I mean, this is a thought that’s never occurred to me. Where did that come from? Like what happened? What? It’s just it’s very it’s. She. They also her husband made good money and a lot of the things that she did were. So she was. Yeah. It didn’t it didn’t seem to make sense.
00:47:15 Evet: Yeah. Do you think that we are attracted to true crime? As you know, I was saying on part one of this, the cautionary you know, women are taught to walk with their keys in between their fingers and don’t go running at night. And, you know, when you get the hairs standing up on the back of your neck, move, get out, get out of the elevator, like whatever it is, if somebody comes in and you feel that way, do you think that we are so interested in this, besides the fact that we like the human psyche and human behavior, is it a cautionary? Warning? I don’t pay attention, ladies.
00:47:55 Rhonda: I mean, I guess it could be I, I don’t know because I don’t really think that way. It just I don’t think it’s really changed me like that because like I said, I feel like if I met her in some out of context way, I would not think anything too much of it. And I can do consider myself an empath, but I’m only picking up things that are on my radar. I only pick up what I kind of am attuned to. Sure. And I don’t think I’m attuned to that way of thinking.
00:48:23 Evet: Absolutely not. Absolutely not. But I do think that you are. Keen enough to see something’s different, right? You may not know what it is, but.
00:48:36 Rhonda: I think I think you would over a longer period. I think that you’d need a little bit more interaction and a little bit more context. But, um, you know, I’d probably get there with her. I’d be like, something’s going on. Okay.
00:48:50 Evet: Yeah, something’s going on there.
00:48:51 Rhonda: But I’d love to hear about the Wheel of Fortune. I’d love to hear about it. Oh, yeah. Tell me your stories, you know.
00:48:56 Evet: Yeah, I’d like to.
00:48:58 Evet: I’m going to explore that more after this. Um, thank you so much for being here today.
00:49:03 Rhonda: Wow.
00:49:03 Evet: It was, uh, I don’t know. I really you’re the only person I know that’s ever done that. And I know there’s more. You just told me how you made friends there, but I did find it very interesting. And now it’s definitely more clear as to why you went there. And I hope that it helps.
00:49:20 Rhonda: Anybody has an opportunity. If you’ve felt a little interested in something, it’s also a really cool way to learn more about like, just the justice system and what a regular court looks like. Yeah. Pretty interesting. Yeah. But I’m kind of a nerd in that sense.
00:49:33 Evet: You’re not a nerd. You’re very cool, very pretty, very cool. Okay. Thank you so much.
00:49:37 Rhonda: Radio pretty. You’re very welcome.
00:49:41 Evet: Well, thanks to Rhonda for going, for coming back and for being willing to tell us what she found out.
What strikes me most, just sitting here and thinking about what she shared is how different it is, the room versus the screen. The research we talked about in part one describes what true crime does to our brains in the abstract.
But Rhonda just showed us what it looks like when the abstraction falls away and you’re sitting ten feet from the reality of it, the empathy that we build watching these stories, or the hatred from a distance is, is very real.
But what Rhonda experienced in that courtroom in the same air as the perpetrator, it’s a different order of things entirely. It’s a reminder that maybe behind every case we consume, there are real people still living inside of it long after we’ve moved on to another episode.
If this two part episode has done anything, I hope it’s made you a little more conscious of that. Not guilty. Just aware there’s a difference because that, I think more than any specific habit, is the work of the original self. Choosing what you let in, knowing why and staying honest about what it costs you.
If something in these two episodes stirred anything in you um, a recognition, a question, something you want to look at more honestly, I’d love to speak with you. That’s the work I do.
You can find me at decotalifecoaching.com but until next time, keep coming back to yourself. Thank you for listening.
