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Man Pleads Guilty to Killing, Dismembering Pregnant Sister · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: Imagine, just for a moment, the safest place in the world. Yeah,
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and I don't mean a physical location with you know,
0:06
reinforced steel doors or a bunker buried one hundred feet underground.
0:11
I'm talking about the psychological definition of safety, right, the
0:14
feeling of it exactly For the vast majority of human
0:17
history and probably for most of you listening right now.
0:20
That image isn't a fortress or a bank vault. It's
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a kitchen table. It's a simple dinner plate set across
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from a sibling. It's the implicit, just bone deep belief
0:33
that the people who share your DNA, the people who
0:35
share your childhood memories and your inside jokes, are the
0:38
ones who will stand between you and the rest of
0:40
the world.
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Speaker 2: There your safety net, right.
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Speaker 1: We build our entire lives on this foundation. It's the
0:45
bedrock of society, really. But what happens when that foundation
0:48
doesn't just crack, what happens when it completely violently shatters?
0:52
Speaker 2: That is the uh, the terrifying premise we're wrestling with today.
0:56
You know, we spend so much time looking out the window,
0:58
worrying about the other. We talk talk about stranger danger,
1:01
we talk about being in the wrong place at the
1:02
wrong time, walking down a dark alley.
1:04
Speaker 1: Way, always looking outward exactly.
1:07
Speaker 2: But the data, the raw statistics, tell a much darker,
1:11
much more uncomfortable story. The most dangerous interactions in a
1:15
human life often happened behind locked doors between people who
1:19
claim to love one another. And the case we are
1:22
looking at today, honestly, and all the files are reviewed
1:25
in all the years of looking at criminal pathology, this
1:27
might be the most extreme, heartbreaking example of that betrayal
1:31
I've ever come across.
1:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're doing a deep dive into what we're calling
1:35
the betrayal of innocence. We're talking about the case of
1:38
Jack Joseph Ball and the murder of his sister bethany
1:42
Enne Israel and her unborn son Levy. Now I have
1:45
to go warning right at the top here.
1:47
Speaker 2: It's necessary for this one very much.
1:49
Speaker 1: So. We are going to be discussing graphic violence, we
1:51
are going to be discussing crimes against pregnant women, and
1:53
we are going to be discussing severe untreated mental illness.
1:58
So if you have little ones around, or if you
2:00
aren't in the headspace for heavy lifting today, hit pause,
2:03
come back when you're ready. This isn't one to listen.
2:05
Speaker 2: Too lately, Absolutely, and to orient everyone because this story
2:09
has been moving fast and there have been a lot
2:10
of headlines. Today is February twenty fourth, twenty twenty six.
2:14
This story has been in the public consciousness for nearly
2:17
two years. But the reason we're sitting here today right
2:20
now is because we just hit a massive pivotal turning
2:24
point in the legal process.
2:25
Speaker 1: Right This isn't pold history. This is active just last month, specifically,
2:30
on January twenty fourth, twenty twenty six, Jack Ball stood
2:34
in a courtroom in Dakota County and pleaded guilty. And
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we aren't talking about a plea deal for manslaughter or
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a second degree murder here. He pleaded guilty to two
2:42
counts of first degree murder. He stood there and admitted
2:45
to the acts. He admitted to killing his sister and
2:48
her unborn child.
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Speaker 2: But and this is the massive but that is going
2:51
to take up a lot of our time today. The
2:53
legal battle isn't actually over, it's just shifting battlegrounds.
2:57
Speaker 1: Exactly. He admitted he did it. The whoduna is solved,
3:00
there's no mystery about who held the weapon. But his
3:02
defense team is arguing that while his hands committed the crime,
3:06
his mind shouldn't be held criminally responsible. We're looking down
3:10
the barrel of a bench trial scheduled for just a
3:12
few months from now, May twenty first, twenty twenty six.
3:15
That trial is going decide if this was an act
3:18
of cold blooded, calculated malice or the result of a
3:21
completely shattered mind.
3:22
Speaker 2: And that distinction is everything. It matters for the family, obviously,
3:26
who are caught in this nightmare, but it matters for
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the legal system, and it matters for how we as
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a society understand violence. Our mission today isn't just to
3:35
recount a horror show. We aren't here for the Gore.
3:38
Speaker 1: No, not at all.
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Speaker 2: We have stacks of reporting court documents from Dakota County
3:43
Medical Examiner reports, in psychiatric literature. We're going to use
3:46
them to examine the fragility of familial bonds, the terrifying
3:50
specific vulnerability of pregnant women, and that murky gray swamp
3:54
where morality meets mental health law.
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Speaker 1: So let's start where we always should. Let's start with
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the people. Because before she was a headline and before
4:01
she was a victim in a court document, Bethany Aunt
4:04
Israel was a person. She was thirty years.
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Speaker 2: Old, and by all accounts, she was a person who
4:09
radiated light. I know, we hear that a lot in eulogies,
4:13
Oh they lit up a room. But looking at the
4:15
source material, looking at the quotes from people who actually
4:17
knew her, it really seems true here. Bethany was born
4:21
in Minneapolis in September of nineteen ninety three. Okay, she
4:24
grew up in rose Mount, Minnesota. If you look at
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the way her friends and family describe her, you see
4:29
a pattern. Immediately. Words like cherished, warmth, and generosity come
4:34
up over and over again.
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Speaker 1: I was really struck by the details about her involvement
4:37
in the community. She wasn't just existing there, she was active.
4:41
She was a huge figure in the local volleyball scene.
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Speaker 2: I loved that detail too. It grounds her. It's physical.
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You can imagine her on the court, high fiving teammates,
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diving for the ball, being that supportive force. She was
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the person bringing the energy up. Three of her close
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friends spoke to the media and described her as as
5:00
a precious soul with a radiant spirit. That's beautiful. It
5:04
makes the loss feel so much heavier because she was
5:07
clearly someone who was deeply connected to the social fabric
5:11
around her.
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Speaker 1: She was a connector and she was starting a new chapter.
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She was married, her name had changed from Ball to Israel,
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and she was living in Bloomington. But the most poignant detail,
5:21
and the one that makes this crime so difficult to process,
5:25
is that she was an expectant mother.
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Speaker 2: She was seventeen or eighteen weeks pregnant. She was just
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getting to that stage where you start to show, where
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it becomes real to the outside world.
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Speaker 1: They had already named him, right.
5:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, they had a baby boy named Levy. So when
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we talk about this crime, we aren't talking about one
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life lost. The family calls it a double devastation. You
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have the parents, Mark and Judy Ball, losing their daughter
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and their grandson in a single night, and horrifically at
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the hands of their own son.
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Speaker 1: I want to pause on that pregnancy aspect for a
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second because I think culturally we have this assumption that
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pregnancy is a shield, pregnancy as a time when women
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are protected or at least treated with extra care by society.
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You see a pregnant woman, you hold the door, you
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offer a seat on the bus. But you found some
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data that completely flips that assumption on its head.
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Speaker 2: It is a tragic irony, and honestly, it's one of
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the most disturbing things I've learned in researching this deep dive.
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Pregnancy is actually a significant risk factor for violence.
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Speaker 1: Which is so counterintuitive.
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Speaker 2: Completely. Yeah, data from the CDC, the Centers for Disease
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Control and Prevention indicates that homicide is a leading cause
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of death for pregnant women in the United States.
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Speaker 1: Well in a leading cause, not complications, not medical issues, homicide, homicide.
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Speaker 2: It surpasses many obstetric causes. In fact, if you dig
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into the numbers, pregnant women are at a sixteen percent
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higher risk of homicide than non pregnant women of the
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same age. It's a terrifying statistic.
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Speaker 1: Why what is the mechanism there? Why does creating life
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attract so much death?
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Speaker 2: It's multifaceted. Usually when we discuss the statistic, we're looking
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at intimate partner violence. Domestic abuse often escalates during pregnancy
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because the abuser feels a loss of control. Uh, the
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partner's attention is shifting to the fetus. Resources are shifting,
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the dynamic is changing. The abuser is no longer the
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center of the universe. But as we see in Bethany's case,
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that threat doesn't just come from partners. It can come
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from other family members too. The vulnerability is physical. A
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pregnant woman is less able to defend herself or run,
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but it's also symbolic. Pregnancy changes the hierarchy of a family.
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It shifts rolls, and for someone with a tenuous grip
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on reality or a deep seated grievance, that shift can
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be a massive catalyst.
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Speaker 1: It's like a stress test on the family unit. And
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if there are cracks, that's when they split open.
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Speaker 2: Precisely, and in this case, the crack was in the
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mind of her brother.
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Speaker 1: Let's talk about him, Jack Joseph Ball. At the time
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of the crime in May twenty twenty four, he was
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twenty three years old. He's the younger brother.
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Speaker 2: Younger brother, yes, and looking at his profile before that night, honestly,
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on paper, there wasn't a massive neon sign pointing to
8:00
future murderer. He lived alone in a house in Lakeville, Minnesota,
8:04
near the border of Farmington. He didn't have a prior
8:06
criminal history mentioned in any of the reports. We have
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no rap sheet, no restraining orders, no history of violent assaults.
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That made the news.
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Speaker 1: He was described as troubled.
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Speaker 2: Though troubled is the worth he keeps coming up, but
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the details were sparse. He wasn't a known violent offender.
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He wasn't in and out of jail. He was just struggling,
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but struggling in private, and that is a key distinction.
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Speaker 1: Until investigators got inside that house in Lakefell, that's when
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the private struggle became public evidence. They found the journals,
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and this is where we have to try to understand
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the why, even if the why makes absolutely no sense
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to a rational brain.
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Speaker 2: The journals are the window into the pathology. Here. Jack
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Ball had written extensively. We are talking about a few
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scribbles on a nap and we're talking about pages of
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thoughts documenting his mindset. And these writings revealed a deep,
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simmering anger toward his sister. But it wasn't about money.
9:00
It wasn't about a childhood argument. It wasn't she stole
9:02
my toy or mom liked her best. It was specifically
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and obsessionally because she was pregnant.
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Speaker 1: The phrase that keeps coming up in the source material,
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and it honestly sends a chill down my spine every
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time I read it is that he believes she was
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no longer innocent.
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Speaker 2: No longer innocent. Let's unpack that because it is so loaded.
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Bethany was a married woman, she was thirty years old.
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In the eyes of society, religion, and law, her pregnancy
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was a joyous, legitimate event. It's what you do when
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you get married and want a family. It is the
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definition of normal. But inside jack Ball's mind, that event
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was viewed as a moral failing.
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Speaker 1: It sounds almost puritanical, but twisted into something violent, like
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he was holding her to a standard that doesn't exist
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in the modern world, or perhaps any world.
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Speaker 2: It suggests a rigid, delusional ideology. We see this in
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certain types of psychosis, where the sufferer develops hyper religious
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or hyper moralistic fixations. We don't know exactly where this
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belief system came from, whether it was religious extremism he
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consumed online or just a personal construct he built up
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in his isolation, but he viewed her pregnancy as a
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loss of purity. He viewed the biological act of procreation
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as a sin that stained her.
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Speaker 1: And the scary part about delusions like this is that
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you can't argue.
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Speaker 2: With them exactly. They are impervious to logic. That is
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the definition of a delusion, a fixed false belief that
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is maintained despite indisputable evidence to the contrary. You could
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have sat him down and said, but Jack, she's married.
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This is normal, everyone is happy. Look at the ultrasound,
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and it wouldn't have mattered in his reality. The rules
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had changed, she had crossed a line.
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Speaker 1: It's terrifying to think that a natural, happy life event,
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having a baby, was being twisted in his head into
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a justification for execution. And he sat on this. It
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wasn't a snap decision. It wasn't an argument that got
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out of hand. The journals proved premeditation, which is.
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Speaker 2: Why the grand jury eventually indicted him on first degree murder.
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He thought about this, He rationalized it, he planned it.
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That rigid delusion overrode the natural brotherly bond. It brings
11:01
up a concept we see in forensic psychology, often the
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idea that the perpetrator feels morally justified even if they
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know it's legally wrong. He believed he was correcting or wrong,
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or responding to a betrayal of innocence. Hence the title
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of our Deep Dies Today.
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Speaker 1: So we have the players, We have the twisted motive,
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simmering in the background, written in ink in those journals.
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Now let's go to the night it all fell apart
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May twenty three, twenty twenty four.
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Speaker 2: It started so normally, and that ordinariness is what makes
11:30
it haunt you. It was a Thursday evening. Jack invited
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Bethany over for dinner.
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Speaker 1: A dinner invite from your little brother. You got right.
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You think, oh, that's nice. He's reaching out. Maybe he's
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doing better, Maybe he wants to reconnect Exactly.
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Speaker 2: She arrived at his home in Lakeville around six pm.
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We have to assume she went there with love in
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her heart. She's pregnant, maybe she's excited to talk about
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the baby. Maybe she wants to see how he's doing
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living on his own. She walked through that door expecting
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pasta and conversation. She enters the house, probably taking off
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her shoes, maybe calling out a low.
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Speaker 1: But then the silence starts.
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Speaker 2: Right fast forward to eleven pm, five hours later, Bethany
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hasn't come home to Bloomington. She isn't answering her phone.
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Her husband is worried, her parents are worried. Her family
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knows this is out of character. She's responsible she's pregnant.
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She wouldn't just disappear or stay out late without a text.
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Speaker 1: So the panic starts to set in.
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Speaker 2: It does her mother, Judy decides she can't wait anymore.
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She drives over to the house and Lake felt a
12:26
check on her.
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Speaker 1: I cannot imagine being that mother, driving in the dark,
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calling the phone, getting voicemail over and over again. She
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pulls up to the house and what does she see.
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Speaker 2: She arrives just in time to see Jack tear out
12:38
of the house. He's fleeing that alone. Seeing your son
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running away into the night when he's supposed to be
12:44
having dinner with his sister must have sent a shockwave
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through her. She goes inside, probably calling Bethany's name, and
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she walks into a scene that the Dakota County Attorney
12:54
later said, words can't describe.
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Speaker 1: The sources mentioned blood, a lot of it.
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Speaker 2: Yes, it wasn't just a struggle. There were large amounts
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of blood in a kitchen, under the sink, on the cabinets.
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It was a chaotic, nightmare scene. She called nine one
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one immediately, but by then the violence had already been
13:12
inflicted and.
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Speaker 1: When the police arrived they found tools.
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Speaker 2: They did they found a saw, a hatchet, and large knives,
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and they found dismembered body parts scattered throughout the home.
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The medical examiner ruled a complex homicidal violence. This wasn't
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just a killing, It was a dismantling. Why.
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Speaker 1: I mean, I know we're asking why about a madman,
13:30
but does the dismemberment serve a purpose here? Was he
13:33
trying to hide the body or was it part of
13:35
the punishment?
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Speaker 2: That is a chilling question, and forensic psychologists debate this.
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Often dismemberment is a practical attempt to dispose of evidence.
13:44
You can't move a whole body, so you break it down.
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But in cases driven by this kind of delusional rage,
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it can also be an act of desecration. It can
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be a way to negate the person, or it can
13:54
be a sign of complete chaotic disorganization, a frantic attempt
13:58
to undo the reality of the body. Given the tools found,
14:02
it seems he had prepared for this, which points back
14:05
to that premeditation, But the scene itself was left in
14:08
a way that suggests he wasn't thinking clearly about getting
14:11
away with it. In the long term. It wasn't a
14:12
clean job, if that makes sense. It was messy and horrifying.
14:15
Speaker 1: Well, he certainly didn't get away with it. He fled
14:17
the scene, but he didn't go far. He went to
14:20
rose Mount, a neighboring town. And this is where the
14:22
story gets even more bizarre.
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Speaker 2: It does. While the police are descending on the Lakeville house,
14:27
setting up crime scene tape, dealing with the trauma of
14:30
what they found inside, a resident in Rosemount calls nine
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to one one. They have a ring doorbell camera or
14:36
a security system, and that camera captured a man, Jack Ball,
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walking up to their front.
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Speaker 1: Porch and he leaves something.
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Speaker 2: He placed what appeared to be a body part on
14:46
their front step.
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Speaker 1: He left a body part on a stranger's doorstep. Yes, okay,
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help me wrap my head around that. If you were
14:52
trying to hide a crime, you bury that, you burn that,
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you put it in a dumpster, You don't put it
14:57
on a welcome matt And.
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Speaker 2: This is a crucial detail for the upcoming trial. If
15:03
you are a prosecutor, you might argue this is an
15:06
attempt to terrorize. You might argue he wanted to shock
15:09
the community. But if you're a defense attorney arguing insanity,
15:13
this is your exhibit A. You point to this and say, look,
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this is not the behavior of a rational criminal trying
15:20
to evade capture. This is the behavior of someone in
15:23
the grips of a severe psychosis. It makes no logical
15:26
sense to leave evidence in plain sight like that unless
15:30
your reality is completely distorted. It speaks to a disorganized mind.
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Speaker 1: So the police converge on this Rose Mountain neighborhood and
15:36
they find him.
15:37
Speaker 2: They find him in a neighboring backyard, and the visual
15:40
is horrific. He is covered in blood from head to toe.
15:43
But not just Bethany's blood. He has a knife wound
15:46
to his own.
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Speaker 1: Throat, self inflicted.
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Speaker 2: Yes, he had slashed his own throat.
15:49
Speaker 1: Was this a suicide attempt?
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Speaker 2: It certainly looks like one. It suggests suicidal ideation, perhaps
15:54
a realization of what he had done, the horror breaking
15:57
through the delusion. Or maybe it was part of a
16:00
suicide plan that he couldn't quite finish. Or maybe the
16:04
delusion demanded his own sacrifice as well a blood atonement.
16:07
We don't know yet. He was taken to the hospital
16:10
for treatment immediately.
16:11
Speaker 1: Now here's the detail that stopped me in my tracks
16:13
when I was reading the source materials. He's covered in blood.
16:16
He's just butchered his sister, he slashed his own throat.
16:19
But when he gets to the hospital, he's making sense.
16:22
Speaker 2: This is the pivot point for the entire legal case.
16:25
Despite the carnage and the self harm, medical staff and
16:28
police noted that he was coherent. He knew what date
16:32
it was, He knew the name of the president. He
16:34
was oriented precisely in medical terms, oriented to person, place,
16:39
and time. To a lay person, that sounds like sanity.
16:42
If you know who the president is, you aren't crazy, right,
16:45
that's the assumption.
16:46
Speaker 1: If you can answer a trivia question, you're fine.
16:48
Speaker 2: But in the legal world, in the psychiatric world, it
16:51
is much much more complicated. You can know who the
16:54
president is and still believe your sister is a demon
16:56
who needs to be purged. You can notice Tuesday and
16:59
still he your voice is telling you to kill. However,
17:02
that coherence is a powerful weapon for the prosecution. It
17:06
suggests his cognitive faculties were intact. It suggests he wasn't
17:10
in a complete dissociated fugue state. It suggests he was present.
17:13
Speaker 1: So let's move into this legal labyrinth, because right now,
17:16
if you're listening, you might be confused. About where the
17:18
case stands. We're in this weird in between state. He
17:22
has pleaded guilty, but he hasn't been sentenced. Walk us
17:24
through what happened on January twenty first of this year,
17:28
twenty six.
17:29
Speaker 2: So initially he was charged with second degree murder back
17:31
in May twenty twenty four. That's standard while they gather evidence. Yea.
17:35
But because of the journals and the clear evidence of
17:37
planning the tools, the invitation of grand jury bumped that up.
17:40
They indicted him on first degree premeditated murder on January nine,
17:43
twenty twenty five. Then just a month ago or January
17:46
twenty first, twenty twenty six, Ball stood up and said guilty.
17:50
Speaker 1: Which usually ends a trial. You plead guilty, you go
17:52
to sentence saying, you go to prison.
17:54
Speaker 2: Game over usually, but Minnesota, like many states, allows for
17:59
a bifurcated trial process when a mental illness defense is used. Basically,
18:04
the trials split into two completely separate halves. Phase one
18:08
is the guilt phase. Did you do the act? By
18:10
pleading guilty? Jack Ball answered that question, yes, I did it.
18:15
We don't need a jury to look at the DNA
18:17
or the fingerprints. That fact is established.
18:19
Speaker 1: So we skip the hoodouna and goes straight to the
18:22
what was wrong with him exactly?
18:24
Speaker 2: Phase two is the mental illness phase. This is what
18:26
is scheduled for May twenty one, twenty twenty six. It
18:29
will be a bench trial, meaning a judge will decide,
18:32
not a jury.
18:33
Speaker 1: Why a bench trial wouldn't you want a jury? Juries
18:35
can be sympathetic.
18:36
Speaker 2: Sometimes defense attorneys prefer a judge for these highly technical
18:39
mental health cases. Juries can be emotional. They see the
18:42
photos of the crime scene, they see the grieving family,
18:44
and they just want to punish. They see a monster.
18:47
A judge is theoretically better at looking dispassionately at the
18:50
medical definitions and the statutes. A judge can parse the
18:53
difference between evil and insane.
18:55
Speaker 1: The question on the table is not guilty by reason
18:59
of mental disease or defect. I feel like we see
19:02
this on TV all the time, the insanity defense. But
19:06
it's really hard to win.
19:07
Speaker 2: Isn't it extremely hard? The success rate is less than
19:10
one percent in felony cases. It is not the get
19:13
out of jail free card people think it is. The
19:15
standard in Minnesota is very strict. It's based on the
19:19
imnoton rule, which is an old British legal standard from
19:21
the eighteen hundreds. The defense has to prove that at
19:24
the moment of the murder, Jack was so mentally ill
19:27
that he either didn't understand the nature of his act,
19:30
like he thought he was chopping wood not a person,
19:32
or rum and this is the big or or he
19:34
didn't understand that the act was wrong.
19:36
Speaker 1: But wait, he ran away, he hid in the backyard.
19:39
Doesn't fleeing prove you know you did something wrong.
19:41
Speaker 2: That is the exact argument the prosecution will make. We
19:44
call it consciousness of guilt. If you think you are
19:47
doing God's work and saving the world by killing a sinner?
19:50
Why run? Why hide? You run because you know the
19:54
police will arrest you. You know, society calls this murder.
19:58
The fact that he fled and the fact that he
20:00
coherent at the hospital are the biggest hurdles for his
20:03
defense team. It suggests he knew the consequences, So.
20:06
Speaker 1: Play Devil's advocate for me. If the flight proves he
20:09
knew it was illegal, what is the defense going to say?
20:12
How do they counter that?
20:13
Speaker 2: They are going to lean heavily on the why. They
20:16
will argue that the motive itself, she is no longer
20:19
innocent because she is pregnant. Is the product of a
20:21
diseased mind. No rational person thinks that way. They will
20:25
point to the dismemberment, the bizarre act of leaving the
20:28
body part on the porch, as signs of a complete
20:30
break from reality. They will argue that his knowledge of
20:33
right and wrong was distorted by his delusion. Sure, he
20:37
knew it was illegal in the eyes of the police,
20:39
but did his illness compel him to believe it was
20:41
morally necessary? Do you think he was following a higher
20:44
law that trumped state law?
20:45
Speaker 1: And they'll point to the knife wound in his throat.
20:48
Speaker 2: Yes, the self harm supports the idea of extreme mental
20:51
distress or psychosis. They might bring in diagnoses like schizophrenia
20:55
or bipolar disorder with psychotic features. Jack was twenty three.
20:59
That is the im age the absolute peak window for
21:02
the onset of these severe conditions in men. It fits
21:05
the clinical timeline perfectly.
21:07
Speaker 1: It's a tragedy all around. But I need to clear
21:10
up a misconception. If he is found not guilty by
21:13
reason of mental illness, he doesn't just walk free, right,
21:17
He doesn't just get to go home to Lakeville and
21:18
mow the lawn.
21:19
Speaker 2: Absolutely not. That is the biggest myth in criminal law.
21:22
If he wins that defense, he is committed to a
21:24
secure psychiatric facility. It's essentially a prison hospital. And here's
21:28
the kicker into prison. You have a sentence twenty five
21:31
years to life, you have a date you might get out.
21:33
In a psychiatric commitment, you are there until and if
21:36
you are ever deemed no longer a threat. Often people
21:39
spend more time in those facilities than they would have
21:41
in prison. Is an indefinite hold.
21:42
Speaker 1: He could die there, So May twenty first, twenty twenty six,
21:46
that is the date that decides if he goes to
21:48
a cell or a hospital.
21:49
Speaker 2: Correct. And for the family, it's just another day of
21:52
reliving the worst moment of their lives.
21:54
Speaker 1: I want to zoom out a bit because while this
21:56
story is uniquely horrific, the dismemberment the porch, it touches
22:01
on some broader themes that affect way too many people.
22:05
You mentioned earlier that familicide murder within the family is
22:08
shockingly common.
22:09
Speaker 2: It accounts for approximately twenty percent of all US homicides,
22:13
That is, one in five murders. When we hear murder,
22:17
we think stranger, in an alley. We should be thinking household,
22:21
and there are patterns. It's often rooted in controled jealousy
22:24
or as we see here, perceived moral failings. The perpetrator
22:28
appoints themselves the judge, jury, and executioner of a family
22:31
member they feel has stepped out a line.
22:33
Speaker 1: And the victims are so often women, and specifically pregnant women.
22:37
Speaker 2: That intersection of fomilicide and pregnancy is where the danger peaks.
22:41
The stress of a new baby, the focus on the mother.
22:43
It can trigger feelings of displacement or inadequacy in partners
22:47
or in this case, a sibling with a precarious mental state.
22:50
It's a very dangerous cocktail.
22:51
Speaker 1: There is also the legal aspect of the two counts
22:54
of murder. We talked about Bethany, but Jack was also
22:57
charged for killing Levy. Now we want to be clear
23:01
that the sources we reviewed touch on this from a
23:02
purely legal standpoint, and we're just reporting how the statute
23:06
works in Minnesota without taking any political stance on fetal
23:09
rts exactly.
23:11
Speaker 2: Minnesota has laws that specifically protect unborn children in homicide cases.
23:17
This is a contentious area in law and politics generally,
23:21
but in the context of homicide. The law is clear here.
23:24
If you kill a pregnant woman and the fetus dies,
23:27
that is two deaths.
23:28
Speaker 1: It's not just an aggravating factor. It's a separate life
23:31
in the eyes of the court.
23:32
Speaker 2: Correct and for the family, that legal recognition is likely
23:36
very important. It validates that they lost a grandson, not
23:38
just a potential. It acknowledges that there were two victims
23:41
that night. It acknowledges levy.
23:43
Speaker 1: And then there is the mental health stigma. This is
23:45
the hardest needle to thread because we have a monster,
23:47
someone who butchered as pregnant sister, but we also potentially
23:51
have a sick young man who fell through the cracks.
23:53
Speaker 2: That is the tension we live with. The National Alliance
23:56
on Mental Illness tells us that untreated severe mental illness
24:00
contributes to a small percentage of violent crimes. Most people
24:03
with mental illness are victims, not perpetrators. I want to
24:06
be very clear about that. We don't want to demonize
24:09
everyone with a diagnosis, but when it does happen, it
24:12
is catastrophic. It forces us to ask, could this have
24:15
been prevented if jack Ball had received treatment earlier, if
24:18
his troubled nature had been addressed with intervention, would Bethany
24:22
and Levy be alive.
24:23
Speaker 1: But privacy laws and the subtle nature of early symptoms
24:26
often make intervention impossible until it's too late. You can't
24:30
force someone into treatment easily.
24:32
Speaker 2: Exactly unless they are an immediate threat to themselves or others.
24:35
In that moment, families are often powerless. They watch the decline,
24:39
they see the withdrawal, they see the strange journals, but
24:41
they can't do anything, and that leaves the family in
24:44
an impossible position. They're grieving the victim, but they also
24:49
love the perpetrator. He is their son. They've lost their
24:51
daughter to their son. How do you process that. You
24:54
can't just hate the killer because you raised him, You
24:57
tucked him in. You hold the memory of the boy
25:00
alongside the reality of the man.
25:02
Speaker 1: It's the ultimate betrayal of the family unit. This safe
25:05
harbor becomes the storm.
25:07
Speaker 2: Betrayal is the right word. Innocence was betrayed in every sense.
25:11
Bethany's innocence, the baby's innocence, and the innocent assumption that
25:14
a brother would never hurt a sister.
25:16
Speaker 1: As we wrap up, I want to circle back to
25:18
what you said at the beginning. This isn't over. No.
25:20
Speaker 2: The guilty plea in January provided some legal clarity. He
25:23
admitted the acts, but the moral and psychiatric clarity is
25:27
still missing. We're waiting for May. The experts will battle
25:30
it out over MRIs and psychological evaluations. They will argue
25:34
over neurons and synapses.
25:36
Speaker 1: But none of that brings Bethany back.
25:38
Speaker 2: No, and it doesn't undo the horror of that night
25:41
in May twenty twenty four.
25:43
Speaker 1: It leaves you with a heavy feeling. You look at
25:45
a case like this and you want a simple villain,
25:47
You want a bad guy you can just hate. But
25:50
instead you have a broken young man, a devastated family,
25:54
and a delusion that makes no sense to anyone but him.
25:56
Speaker 2: It forces us to look at the fragility of the
25:58
human mind. How a switch can flip, and a brother
26:02
can look at his pregnant sister and see something no
26:04
longer innocent. It's terrifying because it is so irrational. We
26:08
like to think we are rational creatures, but biology tells
26:11
us we are just chemical signals. And when those signals cross, And.
26:15
Speaker 1: That's the thought I'm left with for all of you listening.
26:17
If Jack Ball truly believed in the core of his
26:20
being that he was doing the right thing because of delusion.
26:23
Does that make him innocent of the crime or does
26:26
it make him just as dangerous? But in a way
26:28
we can't predict or control.
26:30
Speaker 2: And for the parents, Mark and Judy, how do they
26:33
ever reconcile the face of the monster who held that
26:36
hatchet with the face of the little boy they raised.
26:39
I don't think there is an answer to that. I don't
26:40
think there ever will be.
26:41
Speaker 1: A haunting reality for sure, we will be watching closely
26:45
as the trial unfolds in May. Thank you for taking
26:48
this deep dive with us into the darkness and hopefully
26:51
into a better understanding of these complex stragedies. Thank you,
26:54
take care of yourself and hold your loved ones close.
26:57
We'll see you next time.