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She Killed Her Kids Then Forced Another Child to Dismember a Body · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: In 2017, a state inspector walked into a living room
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: in Fayetteville, North Carolina. They were there to check on
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: a 10-year-old boy.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: And the inspector looked at the child sitting in that room,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: you know, verified the demographic details, matched the clipboard, checked
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: a box to confirm the child was alive and well,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: and walked out the door.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Just a standard check.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The only problem, that boy was a complete imposter.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Oh, God.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The real 10-year-old boy was already dead. And the
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: woman who orchestrated this incredible, just chilling deception wasn't a
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: stranger who had kidnapped him. She was a woman heavily vetted,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: fully licensed, and explicitly endorsed by the state to protect him.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Which is just, it's terrifying.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: It is. So today, you and I are going to
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: unpack how a woman with a perfect paper trail managed
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: to build a literal dungeon inside a state-sanctioned home. We're
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: looking at a case that is going to fundamentally challenge
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: everything you think you know about the safety nets we
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: rely on. We are examining the harrowing allegations against 63-year-old
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Avanta Devon, who is an adoptive mother accused of a
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: years-long campaign of abuse, murder, and just a massive cover-up.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: And we're doing this by diving deeply into a highly
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: detailed transcript from the Law and Crime Network, which, by
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: the way, includes some incredibly sharp systemic analysis from former
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: felony prosecutor and trial attorney Andrea Lewis.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Her insights are amazing.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: They really are. But I think it's vital to note
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: right at the start that the details we are going
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: to explore today in this deep dive are severe. Yeah.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Listener discretion is definitely advised here.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. Because this isn't just a true crime story. It
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: is a mechanical breakdown of a catastrophic systemic failure. We're
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: going to look at the exact vulnerabilities in the systems
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: we implicitly trust. You know, the spaces where bureaucracy ends
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: and human reality is supposed to begin and how those
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: spaces were just exploited with devastating precision.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: I want to start by looking at the architecture of trust,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: because to understand how this happened, you really have to
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: understand the facade that allowed it to happen.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: The paperwork.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The paperwork. Let's look at Avante Devon on paper.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: If you're a caseworker and her file slides across your desk,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: you aren't just seeing a willing participant. You're seeing the
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: gold standard.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: She looked perfect.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: She really did. From 2007 to 2013, she operated as
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: a licensed foster parent. That is six years of baseline
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: interaction with the state.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: Which means six years of home visits, background checks, and
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: presumably a track record of complete stability.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Right. And then she transitions into becoming a licensed adoptive parent.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: But it's the documentation she acquired along the way that really,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: it just stops me in my tracks.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the recommendations.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Yes. She possessed seven different letters of recommendation from multiple agencies.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: That is a crucial data point, because when we talk
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: about letters of recommendation in the context of state adoption,
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: we aren't talking about, like, a neighbor saying, oh, Avante
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: keeps a tidy lawn and waves in the morning. Right.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: It's not a character reference from a friend.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: No, these are institutional endorsements. According to the reporting, these
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: recommendations came from behavioral health organizations.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: Which is wild.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: It is. These are entities staffed by clinicians, psychologists, social workers...
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: The very people whose entire professional mandate is to identify
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: psychological red flags. Right.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: They're trained for this.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They assess caregiver capacity. They evaluate the environmental safety
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: of a home.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Which just makes the failure so much more profound. You
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: have professionals trained to spot the micro-expressions of instability, essentially
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: stamping her paperwork with an official seal of approval.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Because she presented to them exactly what they needed to see.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: She knew how to play the game. And because of
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: that flawless administrative facade, the state entrusted her with five children.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: She adopted three biologically related boys and two girls who
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: were unrelated to each other and unrelated to the boys.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Together, under her roof, they became known in the system
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: as the five adoptive Devon children. Five kids who had
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: already been through the trauma of the foster system, looking
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: for an anchor, a forever home.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: Which is the hardest part to swallow.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: It really is. And here is where I really struggle. Okay,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: let's unpack this. How does a home that looks like
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: a beacon of stability on a caseworker's desk transform into
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: an environment of absolute torture? And more importantly, how does
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: it stay hidden? Because a system failure of this magnitude,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: it doesn't happen overnight.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: No, it doesn't. And that is the paradox at the
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: heart of this case. The contrast between Anda Barnes' administrative
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: identity and her physical reality is just absolute.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Night and day.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Totally. And to understand how it stayed hidden, you have
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: to look at the mechanics of isolation. She didn't just
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: lock the front door. She built a closed ecosystem where
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: she was the sole arbiter of reality. And we only
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: know the true nature of this ecosystem because of what
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: happened years later, in April 2024, when police and the
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: Department of Social Services finally managed to deeply and independently
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: interview the surviving children.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: And what those kids described, it fundamentally breaks down any
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: assumption you might have about basic human survival in a
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: modern American suburb.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: That's horrific.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: The baseline of their existence was a small room that
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: was kept almost completely dark. They were locked inside. I
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: want to pause on that because it's easy to just
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: hear locked in a room and kind of move past it. Right.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: You just picture a bedroom. Yeah.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: But think about the physical and psychological.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: Toll of that. We really need to examine that deeply.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: Sensory deprivation is one of the most fundamental and destructive
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: tactics used to break down a human being.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: It's literally a torture tactic.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: It is. When you strip away light, you aren't just
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: making it hard to see. You are stripping away the
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: victim's circadian rhythm. You are stripping away the passage of time.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: A child in a dark room doesn't know if it's
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: Tuesday morning or Friday night. They lose their connection to
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: the outside world. And more importantly, their cognitive framework begins
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: to degrade. They lose the ability to calibrate their own sanity.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: And into that void, Avanti introduced starvation. Food deprivation wasn't
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: just like a byproduct of neglect. It was weaponized.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: It was deliberate. Totally.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: It was a calculated primary tool of control. It got
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: to the point of such extreme desperation that one of
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: the adoptive daughters, Cherish, resorted to hiding dog food in
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: the air vents just to have something to eat.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: I mean, put yourself in the psychology of that specific
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: action for a moment. hiding dog food in an air
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: vent in the pitch black.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: It's unimaginable.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: It speaks to the most primal, irrepressible instinct a human has, right?
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: The biological mandate to survive. Yeah. But it also speaks
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: volumes about the absolute environmental control Avanti had established. Cherish
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: couldn't just sneak into a pantry.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: She couldn't slip out a window and ask a neighbor
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: for an apple.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Her entire universe of sustenance was reduced to whatever meager,
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: non-human calories she could scavenge and conceal within the walls
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: of her own prison.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: But wait, this is where the dynamic shifts from simple
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: abuse into something incredibly bizarre and deeply sadistic. Because Avante
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: layered psychological control right on top of the physical starvation.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: The paperwork.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: The paperwork. The children told investigators that they could only
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: earn their food by completing Avante's paperwork.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: Which is just.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: Now, even today, the surviving kids aren't entirely sure what
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: this paperwork actually was. It remains this ambiguous, shifting concept.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: But look at the mechanism here. It's like a hostile
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: corporate environment taken to a completely sociopathic extreme. Basic human needs, food, water,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: baseline survival, are gated behind arbitrary, meaningless administrative tasks.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: The word administrative is exactly right. And it points to
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: a very specific type of psychological manipulation. Yeah. From a
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: behavioral perspective, and drawing on what prosecutor Andrea Lewis highlights,
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: mixing severe physical deprivation with absurd psychological games is a
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: hallmark of establishing total unchecked dominance.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Hell so.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: Well, if an abuser simply starves you, the dynamic is clear, right?
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: They are the enemy, you are the victim. And your
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: brain organizes around the concept of resistance or escape, even
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: if it's impossible.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Right, you know they're the bad guy.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But if they create a bureaucratic system where you
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: have to earn your survival through their arbitrary, ever-changing rules.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: You become complicit in your own exhaustion.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: Yes.
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  Speaker 1: You're no longer fighting the fact that you shouldn't have
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: to earn a meal. You're just frantically trying to figure
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: out how to fill out the form, how to appease
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: the boss, how to crack the code of the paperwork
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: so you don't starve today.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It completely scrambles the victim's cognitive framework. The abuser
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: elevates themselves from a simple captor into the all-powerful arbiter
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: of reality. They become a god of this dark, closed universe.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: And when you factor in the extreme isolation, the lack
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: of light, the lack of outside contact, these children are
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: prevented from ever testing these rules against the real world.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: Because they have no baseline for normal.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: Right. They are never allowed the perspective to realize that
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: these conditions are fundamentally abnormal, which prevents them from even
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: conceptualizing a plea for outside help.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't just the withholding of food and light.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: The details regarding sanitation are just, well, they're unfathomable.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: They really are.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: The children were completely denied access to a working bathroom. Instead,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: they were forced to use a small plastic container in
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: that dark room. And according to the interviews, this container
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be emptied for days, sometimes weeks or even months.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: Which introduces massive systemic biological and health risks on top
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: of the severe malnourishment. Absolutely. But beyond the physical danger,
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: think about the psychological degradation. It is a systematic daily
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: destruction of human dignity. Yeah. When a child is forced
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: to live in their own waste, it is a deliberate
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: message from the abuser that they are less than human.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: It is a complete reduction of their humanity designed to
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: make them feel worthless, which further solidifies the abuser's control.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: So having established this baseline, this incredibly calculated environment of torture,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: we have to look at the inevitable tragic result. We
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: have to look at the first known fatal casualty of
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: this ecosystem.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It was only a matter of time.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: And the truly extraordinary lengths this woman went to in
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: order to conceal it. Because this wasn't just a house
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: where children were abused. It became a site of absolute erasure. Right.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: We have to move the timeline back to 2017. So why?
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: 2017 is the year investigators now believe Blake Devon died.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: He would have been approximately 10 years old at the time.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: A 10-year-old boy. And the cause of death is the
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: direct biological conclusion of the conditions we just described. Starvation,
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: physical abuse, and neglect. Yeah. His body, after enduring the
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: sensory deprivation, the extreme withholding of food, the biological hazard
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: of the plastic container, simply began to shut down.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: The human body can only cannibalize its own resources for
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: so long before organ failure cascades. And even as his
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: organs were failing, even as a 10-year-old child was actively
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: dying in her home, Avante Devon refused to seek medical care. Nothing.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: There was no 911 call. There was no sudden panic.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: No moment of realization where an abuser realizes they've pushed
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: too far and tries to backtrack.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: Which tells you everything about her intent. She watched him die.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: And the immediate aftermath involves a level of darkness that
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: is genuinely hard to articulate. According to the allegations from
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: the surviving children, after Blake died, Avante forced his sister Cherish, who, remember,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: is also a child enduring this exact same torture and starvation.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: She forced her to go out by a saw and
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: then use it to dismember her younger brother's body.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: We really need to pause and absorb the psychological weight
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: of that moment. You have a child who is already
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: severely malnourished, already deeply traumatized by the environment. And now
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: she is being actively coerced into an act of unimaginable
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: horror against her own sibling.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: I have to jump in here because the logistics of
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: this are staggering. She made Cherish go out and buy
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: a saw. Yeah. How does a starving, traumatized child coerce
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: go to a hardware store, interact with a cashier, and
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: not scream for help.
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: It speaks to the absolute totality of the trauma bond
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: and the psychological control we discussed earlier. Cherish wasn't operating
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: as a free agent in a hardware store. She was
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: essentially a remote-controlled hostage. Wow. When you have been starved, degraded,
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: and mentally broken to the point where your reality is
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: entirely dictated by your captor, the fear of disobedience overrides
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: everything else.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: So she was just terrified of the consequences.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The threat of what awaits you back at the
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: house if you fail the task is far more terrifying
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: than the strange environment of the outside world. She was
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: acting out of pure terror-driven compliance.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: And it didn't end with the dismemberment. Following that horrific act,
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Cherish was forced to watch as her younger brother's remains
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: were burned in a backyard fire pit.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: Just horrible.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: It is the total, literal destruction of a human being,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: witnessed by his sister, and orchestrated entirely by the person
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: the state legally designated to protect them.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: This brings us to the mechanics of the cover-up. And
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: this is where the sheer calculation of Avanti's actions becomes
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: terrifyingly clear. Right. She didn't just panic and bury a
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: body in the woods in the middle of the night.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: She managed a long-term narrative. When police or authorities eventually...
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: at some point, inquired about Blake's whereabouts. She didn't just
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: say he was out playing.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: No.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: She claimed he was at a Buddhist retreat in the mountains.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: A Buddhist retreat for a 10-year-old boy, which is absurd
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: on its face. It's almost insulting in its audacity.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: It is absurd, but look at the specific language she chose.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: She used the vocabulary of wellness, of spiritual care, to
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: mask a homicide. Ah, I see. It's a calculated deflection
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: designed to sound progressive and benign, making it awkward for
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: an authority figure to question aggressively without seeming culturally insensitive
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: or intrusive.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: But the Buddhist retreat lie pales in comparison to what
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: happened next. The ultimate deception, the moment that truly exposes
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: the fragility of our systems, happened when the Department of
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Social Services actually came to the house for an inspection.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is unbelievable.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Avanti enlisted a family friend to physically pretend to be Blake.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: She presented a stand-in child to the state. Here's where
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: it gets really interesting. And by interesting, I mean deeply,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: systemically terrifying. How on earth does a DSS inspector get
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: fooled by a stand-in child?
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: This is the critical juncture of the systemic failure.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: Right. Does this suggest the inspector had never actually laid
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: eyes on the real Blake before? Or is the system
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: just so fundamentally overburdened, so broken, that as long as
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: a child matching a vague demographic description, right age, right gender,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: right height, is sitting on the couch, the inspector just
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: checks the box and moves on to the next file?
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: It is a devastating combination of both. Heavily weighted toward
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: a system that functions on absolute minimal verification due to
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: systemic overload.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: So they just don't have the time?
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: No, they don't. If the inspector doesn't have a deep,
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: ongoing personal relationship with a child, which they rarely do
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: given the massive caseload social workers carry, they are literally
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: just matching a name on a clipboard to a face
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: in the room. Wow. They're checking for a pulse and
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: a lack of visible bruises. They are not conducting a
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: biometric identity verification.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: They're just doing the bare minimum.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: Right. But we have to look at what this fake
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: Blake scenario means for Avanti's state of mind. because it
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: entirely negates any defense of temporary insanity or sudden tragedy.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: Exactly. This requires immense cold-blooded premeditation. You don't just stumble
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: into having a fake child on a Tuesday.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: No, you do not. Think about the logistics of this conspiracy.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: You have to find a child roughly the same age
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: and physical appearance. You have to convince the parents of
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: that child or whoever this family friend is to allow
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: their child to play this bizarre role.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: Like, what did she even say to them?
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Exactly. What did she tell the friend? Hey, the state
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: is coming. Can I borrow your kid so I don't
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: lose my funding? Whatever the lie was, it required Avanti
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: to actively manage a coordinated conspiracy involving third parties outside
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: the home to deceive state regulators.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: She had to coach the kid.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: She had to coach the fake child on how to
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: respond if spoken to.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: Which means she knew with crystal clarity that what she
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: was doing was deeply illegal, profoundly immoral, and required elaborate,
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: multi-layered camouflage. She beat the system. She looked a state
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: inspector in the eye, presented a fake human being, and
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: the inspector signed off.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: And that successful deception is the crucial pivot point in
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: this entire tragedy.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: Because it emboldened her.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Exactly. If Blake's death had been a tragic anomaly
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: that she couldn't hide, if the inspector had caught the lie,
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: the police would have been called, the house would have
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: been searched, and it would have ended there in 2017. Right.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: He would have been the only casualty.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: But the system gave her a pass. The successful cover-up
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: validated her absolute control. It proved to her that she
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: was smarter than the state, that the walls of her
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: closed ecosystem were impenetrable. And that sense of invulnerability directly
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: paved the way for her to repeat the cycle.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to 2019. This is the estimated year
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: that London Devon died. And I say estimated because the
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: exact date of her death remains unknown. Right. She essentially
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: vanished into the walls of that house. She is estimated
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: to have been between 15 and 19 years old at
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: the time she died.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: The parallels to Blake's death are striking. Methodical. and horrific.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: The cause of death once again was starvation, severe physical
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: abuse and neglect. And the manner of death was definitively
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: ruled a homicide by investigators.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: But the specific trigger for London's death, according to the evidence,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: is that she was so profoundly malnourished that her brain
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: essentially short-circuited. She suffered a fatal seizure directly caused by
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: the starvation.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: Her body was entirely depleted of the basic foundational nutrients
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: required for neurological function. The brain simply cannot operate without
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: glucose and electrolytes. When those are completely withheld, the electrical
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: system of the body misfires catastrophically.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: And the moment London dies, Avante initiates cover-up part two.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: She uses the exact same playbook, just with a slightly
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: adjusted script. When investigators eventually asked about London's whereabouts, Avante
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: didn't use the Buddhist retreat excuse this time. She claimed
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: London was a way at a mental institution.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: Notice the pattern here. She consistently uses institutional excuses. A
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: spiritual retreat, a mental health facility. She uses the language
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: of institutional care to explain the physical absence of the child.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: It's so mental. It's brilliant in a highly manipulative way.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: Because it provides a convenient, legally complex reason why the
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: child cannot be immediately spoken to or produced. It shuts
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: down casual inquiries.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: And the destruction of the physical evidence was just as
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: methodical as the narrative cover-up. Just as with Blake, Avante
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: forced a surviving child to help her erase the victim.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: She had them throw out a specific rug and literally
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: repaint the area of the house where London died. She
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: was scrubbing her physical existence from the environment. You know,
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: looking at this, the source material explicitly brings up a
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: comparison to the Ruby Frankie case.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: Oh, the YouTube vlogger who horribly abused her children behind
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: the facade of a perfect online family.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Yes, but I have a major issue with that comparison
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: because there is a massive, systemic distinction here. Ruby Franke
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: was abusing her biological children. She didn't have to ask
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: the state for permission to have them.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: Right. Entirely different starting point.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: But Avante Devon went through a rigorous state-sponsored licensing process.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: She had seven letters of recommendation. She was licensed by
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: the government to adopt five highly vulnerable children. I find
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: myself constantly asking, how is someone permitted to essentially hoard
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: children in this manner without anyone checking the inventory?
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: This is where former prosecutor Andrea Lewis provides some truly
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: vital analysis on the systemic blind spots of child welfare.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: And speaking directly to you listening, this is where we
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: have to confront the false sense of security that society
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: has built up regarding foster care and adoption.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: We just assume it works.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: We operate under the assumption that because these bureaucratic systems exist,
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: they're constantly monitoring the output. Right.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: I think most people assume that if a kid is
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: in the system, the system is watching them. Think about
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: it like a network firewall. You assume the firewall is
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: constantly monitoring the traffic.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: But that analogy perfectly explains the flaw. Because there is
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: a massive legal shift that occurs the very moment a
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: judge finalizes an adoption.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Oh, interesting.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: While a child is in foster care, they are legally
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: a ward of the state. There are mandatory check-ins, social
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: workers are assigned, court dates are set, and biological parents
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: often have visitation rights. There are eyes on the child.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: But once that final adoption decree goes through, that child
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: legally becomes the exact same as a biological child. The
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: continued governmental oversight completely vanishes.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: The firewall stops monitoring.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: The state essentially says, you passed the security check, you're
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: on the network, we trust you completely now. The file
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: is closed.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: The file is entirely closed. Adoptive parents are instantly granted
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: the exact same constitutional rights to privacy and familial autonomy
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: as biological parents. Wow. The Fourth Amendment protects them from
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: unreasonable search and seizure, which means no one from the
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: state is knocking on the door to check in on
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: a Tuesday afternoon without probable cause of a crime.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: Because they're legally just a normal family now. Right.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: The foundational assumption of the legal system is that the
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: initial vetting process worked, the new family unit is formed,
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: and the state must step back to allow them to
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: live freely.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Which in theory is supposed to be the happy ending.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: You want the state to step back so the family
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: can bond and be a normal family without government agents
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: in their living room.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: But the tragic irony here is suffocating. You have children
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: who are already in the system precisely because they suffered
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: past trauma. Children who are incredibly vulnerable. And they are
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: handed over to a sadistic abuser under the absolute guise
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: of finding a forever home. The very legal mechanism designed
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: to save them, the constitutional privacy of a family, is
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: exactly what provided Avante the total darkness she needed to
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: torture them.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: The shield of privacy became a weapon of erasure. The
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: state vetted her on paper, physically handed over the children,
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: and then legally agreed to look the other way, trusting
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: her seven letters of recommendation over any ongoing physical reality.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: And that legally enforced secrecy held for years. From Blake's
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: death in 2017, through London's death in 2019, all the
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: way until 2024. It's a long time. The horrific reality
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: was literally buried in the backyard, just waiting to be
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: uncovered by the very siblings who were forced to survive it.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: The unraveling of this entire facade finally began in April 2024.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: This is the moment when police and the Department of
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: Social Services finally get in a room where and deeply
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: independently interview the surviving children away from Avante's control.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: And once those interviews happened, once the children finally spoke,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: the physical evidence followed almost immediately. Behind Avante's home, investigators
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: found a metal burn barrel. Yeah. Inside that barrel, amidst
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: the ash, they found two sets of human remains. One
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: set of remains has been positively, 100% confirmed as London.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: The other set is currently pending the final absolute forensic
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: positive ID, but investigators firmly believe it is Blake.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: It is the stark physical manifestation of all those years
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: of secrets. All the paperwork, all the fake inspections, all
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: the lies about mental institutions and Buddhist retreats. Ultimately reducing
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: down to human remains sitting in a metal barrel in
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: a suburban backyard.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: But what really stands out to me in this current
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: phase of the case is the role of Cherish Devon.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: She hasn't hidden away.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: No, she hasn't.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: She has become incredibly outspoken. She has been going to
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: local TV stations, doing on-camera interviews. She is the one
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: who stepped into the light and revealed the excruciating details
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: of the dark room, the dog food in the air vents,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: the plastic container bathroom.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: She's so brave.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: And she is the one who revealed the forced dismemberment
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: and the burning of her own brother.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: This raises an incredibly important point about how the public
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: processes trauma. And Prosecutor Lewis explicitly addresses the online victim
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: blaming that it started to bubble up around Cherish.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: I hate that.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: You have people sitting comfortably behind their keyboards reading these
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: headlines and asking, how could the daughter do this? Why
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: didn't she run? How could she cut up her own brother?
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: What's fascinating here is how predictably awful the Internet can be.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: It's infuriating. It's people looking at a horror movie from
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: the safety of their couch and harshly judging the person involved.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: Who is literally tied to the chair for not fighting
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: back correctly.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: It shows a complete lack of understanding of coercion.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: It does. And Lewis firmly reframes Cherish's position. And we
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: need to emphasize it here. Cherish is the ultimate victim
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: in this dynamic. We have to constantly remember the context
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: of her reality. Right. She was a child herself. A
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: child who was previously removed from tragic circumstances, seeking safety,
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: only to be dropped into a house of literal torture.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: She was completely starved, isolated in a sensory-depriving dark room,
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: and utterly reliant on a sadistic caregiver for her most
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: basic biological survival.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Let's be very clear about this. When you are starving
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: to death, and the person holding the only source of
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: food tells you to pick up a saw, you aren't
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: making a moral, philosophical choice.
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: Not at all.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: You are a hostage reacting to a terrorist. Your brain
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: is operating purely on the reptilian instinct to survive the
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: next five minutes.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: That is the absolute psychological reality. She was coerced into
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: the destruction of her brother's body under the very real, immediate,
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: and demonstrated threat of enduring the exact same fate.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Because she saw it happen.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: She knew what happened to Blake because she was watching
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: it happen. And she knew Avante would do it to her.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: And the lifelong psychological scars of not only witnessing your
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: sibling's murder... But being physically forced to participate in the
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: erasure of their existence, well, it is a level of
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: trauma that is almost impossible for a healthy brain to comprehend.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: Which brings up a really intense practical question about the
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: legal process moving forward. If this goes to a jury trial,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: and given the charges it likely will, the immense weight
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: of the prosecution's case is going to rest heavily on
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: Cherish's shoulders.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: The prosecution absolutely needs her eyewitness testimony to explain what
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: happened in that house and how those bodies ended up
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: in that barrel. But how do you balance the legal
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: necessity of putting her on the stand with the profound
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: trauma of forcing her to sit in a courtroom, look
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Avante Devon in the eye, and relive the darkest nightmare
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: imaginable in front of 12 strangers?
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: It is the hardest tightrope a prosecutor has to walk.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: You want justice for Blake in London. And Cherish is
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: the living voice for that justice.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: But the legal system is essentially asking her to bleed
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: for it all over again on the witness stand. The
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: prosecution will have to prepare her incredibly carefully, ensuring she
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: has a massive structured support system.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: Because the defense is going to come for her.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The defense attorney's only real tactical move will be
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: to try and rattle her, to confuse timelines and to
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: exploit the very trauma she suffered to make her seem unreliable.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: Which shifts our focus to the impending legal battle, the accountability,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: and what Avante is actually facing right now. In June
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: of last year, the hammer finally fell. Avante was arrested.
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: The charge sheet is as extensive as it is severe.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: She currently faces two counts of first-degree murder, two counts
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: of concealment of death, one count of kidnapping, which specifically
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: relates to the confinement of London, and two counts of
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: felony child abuse relating to Blake.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: And she is currently being held at the Cumberland County
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: Detention Center without bond, exactly where she belongs.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: Definitely.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: But as we look at this from a systemic and
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: criminal justice perspective, the why is still hovering over everything.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: Why do this? Why adopt? five kids just to torture them?
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: Prosecutor Lewis offers a theory on the motive that I
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: want to examine, but I have some pushback on it.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: Lewis points out that often abusers like this start by
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: volunteering or entering caregiving roles purely to secure government benefits
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: or stipends.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: It begins as a transactional relationship. The state pays a
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: monthly stipend for foster care and they want that check.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: But here's where I struggle with that theory. The stipend
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: for fostering or adopting isn't that much money.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: True, it's not a lot.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: It certainly isn't enough money to justify the immense, terrifying
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: risk of torturing a child, hiding a body, and orchestrating
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: a multi-year cover-up with fake kids. There has to be
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: something more primal, more deeply broken here than just a
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: monthly financial hustle, right?
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: You are absolutely right. And that is where the financial
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: theory has to evolve into a psychological one. The initial
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: impulse to enter the system might be the financial hustle.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: They want the check. They think it's easy money.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: But over time, the dynamic morphs. The facade drops behind
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: closed doors, revealing that they never actually wanted the children.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: They wanted the resource. And when they get the resource,
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: they suddenly find themselves with absolute power over vulnerable dependents.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: So the money is the gateway, but the control is
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: the actual addiction.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: Precisely. It is the corruption of power in a closed system.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: When someone with underlying antisocial, narcissistic, or sadistic traits is
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: given total unchecked authority over a group of isolated children
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: and the state stops checking in, that initial financial hustle
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: evolves into a full-blown tyranny.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: They just get off on it.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: They realize they can do whatever they want. They can
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: set arbitrary rules. They can withhold food. They can demand paperwork.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: And no one is coming to stop them. The cruelty
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: becomes the point.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: So looking at the road ahead, if you are the
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: defense attorney assigned to Avanta Devon, I mean, I don't
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: envy you for a second.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: No, absolutely not.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: How do you even begin to mount a defense against this?
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: Could she possibly claim insanity? Could she say she lost
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: her mind and didn't know what she was doing?
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: Lewis argues very strongly against the viability of an insanity
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: plea in this case. And the facts firmly support that argument.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: OK, why is that?
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: Well, to prove legal insanity in most jurisdictions, you generally
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: have to meet a very high bar. You have to
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: show the defendant suffered from a severe mental disease or
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: defect that prevented them from understanding the nature of their
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: actions or prevented them from knowing that what they were
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: doing was wrong.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: Which the cover up completely destroys.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The legal concept is consciousness of guilt. And her
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: extreme calculation eliminates the insanity defense entirely. If you genuinely
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: think you are doing something right, or if you are
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: so detached from reality that you think starvation is normal,
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: you don't invent a fake Buddhist retreat.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: Right. You just tell the truth because you wouldn't think
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: it was bad. Right.
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: You don't tell the police that London is in a
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: mental institution to explain her absence. You don't force a
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: child to repaint a room to hide evidence. And you
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: certainly don't orchestrate a highly complex fake Blake inspection with
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: a stand-in child.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that takes planning.
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: All of those specific, deliberate actions point to a sharp,
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: highly lucid awareness of guilt. She knew exactly what the
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: law was. She knew she was breaking it. And she
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: actively worked to evade detection.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Okay, so if insanity's off the table, what else does
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: the defense have? Could she try to shift the blame?
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: Could she point the finger at Cherish saying the kids
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: turned on each other, or maybe blame the family friend
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: who brought the fake Blake, or some other unknown third party.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: She might try to muddy the waters with those theories,
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: but this raises a fundamental legal concept called the duty
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: of care, which is a massive, inescapable hurdle for her.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: The duty of care. Yes.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: Avanti Devon was the licensed sole adult caregiver in that home.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: Let's explore her hypothetical defense. Let's say, purely for the
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: sake of argument, A rogue third party did come in
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: and hurt those kids. Or the kids hurt each other. Okay.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: As the legal parent with the explicit duty of care,
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: where is her 911 call? Why were these children starved
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: to death under her roof over a period of years
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: without her ever seeking medical intervention?
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: The silence is the crime.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The failure to act, the failure to protect a
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: child when you have the legal duty to do so
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: is in itself criminal. You cannot wiggle out of a
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: murder charge by pointing the finger at someone else. When
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: you locked the door, hid the bodies, forced the survivors
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: to clean up the evidence, and lied to the police
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: and state inspectors about it for years.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You can't just say, it wasn't me. No.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: The cover-up cements her liability, regardless of exactly whose hands
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: did what in the darkest moments.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? When you synthesize all
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: of this, the prosecution has an absolutely overwhelming upper hand.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: They really do.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: You have the DNA evidence confirming the identities of the remains.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: You have these physical remains recovered exactly where the witness
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: said they would be, inside a burn barrel.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: You have the paper trail of lies to the state.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: And you have highly motivated eyewitnesses, the surviving children, who
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: lived through the torture and can narrate exactly how the
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: ecosystem of that house operated. It feels like an insurmountable
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: mountain of evidence against her.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: It is a prosecutor's dream scenario in terms of evidence,
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: despite being an absolute human nightmare. The physical forensic evidence
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: corroborates the testimonial evidence from the survivors perfectly. It is
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: a locked box case.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: So let's pull all of this together and look at
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: the big picture. We started this deep dive looking at
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: a woman who, on paper, was the gold standard of
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: the child care system.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: Perfect on paper.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: Seven glowing letters of recommendation from behavioral health experts. A
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: license to foster. A license to adopt. A woman who
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: was explicitly entrusted by the state of North Carolina to
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: take in five deeply vulnerable children and provide them with
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: a safe harbor.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: And we follow the horrific reality that existed behind that
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: pristine paper trail. A descent into a calculated, years-long regime
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: of sensory deprivation and starvation. Children locked in darkness. forced
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: to forage for dog food and air vents, subjected to
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: bizarre psychological paperwork games just to earn basic sustenance. And ultimately,
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: a 10-year-old boy and a teenage girl starved to death,
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: their existence erased, their bodies destroyed by their own traumatized
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: siblings under extreme duress.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: And we have to remember this wasn't a momentary lapse
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: in judgment. It wasn't a sudden, unpredictable tragedy. It was
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: a sustained, deliberate system of abuse that hidden perfectly behind
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: the closed doors of a state-sanctioned adoption, protected by a
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: matrix of lies that included fake kids, phantom Buddhist retreats,
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: and imaginary mental institutions.
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: It's just evil.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: For you listening, this case forces a really uncomfortable, necessary reckoning.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: It forces us to ask how much blind trust we
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: place in administrative vetting. Paperwork, licenses, recommendations, they are only
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: as good as the physical, ongoing oversight that backs them up.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: A glowing letter of recommendation cannot see a child starving
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: in a dark room. A checked box on a clipboard
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: cannot detect a fake child if the inspector isn't looking closely.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: We have to recognize that the bureaucratic systems we rely
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: on to protect the most vulnerable members of our society
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: have massive systemic blind spots.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: They are built on assumptions of good faith. And when
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: those blind spots are exploited by someone with a calculated
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: intent to do harm, the results are catastrophic.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: Which leaves us with something incredibly heavy to mull over
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: as we wrap this up. We talked deeply about how
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: government oversight rightfully ends after a legal adoption to protect
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: a family's privacy under the Fourth Amendment. We want families
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: to be independent. We don't want the state monitoring our
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: living rooms. But in this specific case, that very legal
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: privacy is exactly what allowed these highly vulnerable, previously traumatized
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: children to be tortured and murdered in absolute legally protected secret.
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: The privacy was the weapon. Exactly.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: So it begs a profound question that we as a
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: society have to answer. Should we redefine the legal boundaries
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: of privacy for parents who adopt children directly out of
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: the state's care?
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: It's a tough question.
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: Where exactly is the line between a newly formed family's
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: constitutional right to be left alone and a vulnerable state-placed
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: child's fundamental right to survive?
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: It is the ultimate tension between state intervention and familial rights.
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: And this case proves that our current balance can be fatal.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: And it is a question we have to figure out
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: the answer to before another perfect paper trail leads to
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: another dark room. Thank you so much for joining us
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: for this deep dive. It's a heavy journey, but... Examining
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: these systemic failures, looking closely at how the machinery breaks down,
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: is the only way we ever begin to fix them.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: We appreciate your time and your willingness to look at
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: the hard truths.
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: Thank you for listening and for seeking to understand the
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: deep complexities behind these tragic headlines. Take care of yourselves
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: and stay curious.