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A Web of Lies - The Murder of Erica Parsons · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I want you to sit back and just imagine a
• 0:03
  scenario for a minute. It is a profoundly chilling one.
• 0:06
  So I really need you to brace yourself for this.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, this one is heavy right out of the gate,
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  It really is.
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  Speaker 1: So think about the street you live on right now.
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  Think about the houses you know, the apartment doors, the
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  neighbors you wave to when you get the mail.
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  Speaker 2: Right your everyday environment exactly.
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  Speaker 1: Think about the kids you might see playing in a
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  front yard or I don't know, walking home from a
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  bus stop. Now, what if one of those children just vanished.
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  Speaker 2: And we don't mean like they got lost at the
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  grocery store for ten minutes, No.
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  Speaker 1: Not at all. I mean they disappeared entirely from the
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  face of the earth. And what if when that child vanished,
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  absolutely no one said a single.
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  Speaker 2: Word, nothing could scene silence.
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  Speaker 1: Right, not the parents who lived in the house with her,
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  not the neighbors right next door, not the local school system,
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  not the extended family.
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  Speaker 2: Just poof gone.
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  Speaker 1: Exactly what if that child was simply erased from the
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  daily fabric of existence and almost two entire years passed
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  before a single person walked into a police station to say,
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  you know, hey, something is wrong here.
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  Speaker 2: It is a scenario that I mean it completely. Short
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  circuits are fundamental understanding of human nature.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it breaks all the rules.
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  Speaker 2: It really does. It shatters our expectations of community responsibility
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  because when you and I are anyone listening think of
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  a missing child, our brains are hardwired to expect an immediate,
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  overwhelming panic.
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  Speaker 1: Oh. Absolutely, it's the amber alerts, right.
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  Speaker 2: We are conditioned by society to look for those amber
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  alerts flashing on the highway signs. We expect, you know,
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  neighborhood search parties organized within hours.
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  Speaker 1: The frantic parents on the local news pleading for help.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly, the flyers plastered on every available telephone poll law
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  enforcement mobilizing bloodhounds, bringing out the helicopters. The entire social
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  and legal infrastructure surrounding missing children is built on the
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  absolute necessity of urgency.
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  Speaker 1: And that is exactly the point. Urgency is the defining
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  characteristic of a missing child case.
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  Speaker 2: It has to be.
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  Speaker 1: But today we are looking at a dark, twisting labyrinth
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  of a case where that urgency just simply.
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  Speaker 2: Did not exist, Which is terrifying.
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  Speaker 1: It is, and why because the very people who were
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  entrusted to raise the alarm. The people whose biological and
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  legal duty it was to protect this child were the
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  exact ones orchestrating her disappearance.
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  Speaker 2: It's a complete betrayal.
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  Speaker 1: So in today's deep dive, we are taking on the tragic,
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  deeply unsettling, and frankly enraging case of Erica Parsons.
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  Speaker 2: And we are pulling our insights today exclusively from the
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  true criminal.
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  Speaker 1: Documentary, right the one titled A Web of Lies. And
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  let me assure you, as we get into this, you
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  will realize that title doesn't even begin to cover the
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  depth of the deception here.
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  Speaker 2: It really is an understatement, it totally is.
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  Speaker 1: Our mission for this deep dive is clear. We need
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  to dissect what can only be described as a catastrophic
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  systemic failure of community.
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  Speaker 2: A total breakdown, and.
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  Speaker 1: We are going to look straight into the dark side
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  ecology of how people can lie so brazenly to the
• 3:02
  world and honestly to themselves.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, let's unpack this. We need to set the scene.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, the date is July thirty, twenty thirteen. We are
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  in Rowan County, North.
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  Speaker 2: Carolina, a regular summer day.
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  Speaker 1: A young man named Jamie Parsons, accompanied by his uncle
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  Scott walks through the doors of a local police station.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: He is there to report that his thirteen year old sister,
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  Erica is missing, which.
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  Speaker 2: You know, if you were the intake officer sitting at
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  that desk, that sounds like the textbook beginning of a
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  standard missing person's investigation.
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  Speaker 1: Completely normal start.
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  Speaker 2: You have a concerned older brother, he's bringing in a
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  family member to provide support, and he's seeking the help
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  of the authorities.
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  Speaker 1: You just start grabbing the standard forms.
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  Speaker 2: Right exactly. You ask for a recent photograph, you ask
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  what she was wearing when she was last seen. You
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  start the clock.
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  Speaker 1: Right, You go through the standard operating procedure. But then
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  Jamie drops a detail that completely stops those investigators dead
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  in their tracks.
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  Speaker 2: This is the turning point.
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  Speaker 1: He sits there on the precinct and he admits to
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  the police that he hasn't actually seen his sister since
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  November of twenty eleven.
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  Speaker 2: Just let that sink in for a second.
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  Speaker 1: I know he is reporting her missing in July of
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  twenty thirteen. For everyone keeping track of the math out there,
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  that is a gap of one year and.
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  Speaker 2: Eight months, and that single horrifying detail is the pivot
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  point for everything that follows, it has to be. That
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  is the moment the entire paradigm of this investigation instantly shifts.
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  You have to understand how law enforcement approaches these cases right.
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  Speaker 1: Right, the golden window.
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  Speaker 2: Missing person cases, especially those involving miners, are categorized and
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  measured by hours, not weeks, not months.
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  Speaker 1: Hours because the trail goes cold so fast.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly, the first forty eight hours are considered the absolutely
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  critical window for a rescue operation. That is when you
• 4:50
  have the best chance.
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  Speaker 1: So when someone walks in and says it's been nearly.
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  Speaker 2: Two years, When someone casually states that a thirteen year
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  old girl has been missing for over six hundred days,
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  you are no longer launching a road mission. Yeah, the
• 5:01
  president is immediately irrevocably set. You are investigating a cover up.
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  Speaker 1: It changes the air in the room, doesn't it completely?
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  Speaker 2: The psychological profile of the case flips in an instant.
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  You are no longer looking for like a lost wanderer
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  or a runaway right. You are no longer looking for
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  a stranger abduction either. You are looking at a deeply entrenched,
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  long term deception that has been actively maintained within the
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  walls of a home.
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  Speaker 1: Because a delay of almost two years doesn't just happen
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  by accident.
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  Speaker 2: No, a delay of that magnitude doesn't happen because of
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  confusion or you know, a simple miscommunication.
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  Speaker 1: It's deliberate.
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  Speaker 2: It requires active daily maintenance by the people involved. It
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  requires lying to everyone who asks every single day for
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  over six hundred days.
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  Speaker 1: It sets this incredibly dark, ominous tone right from the jump,
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  because instantly, as an investigator, your primary question isn't just
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  where is Erica?
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  Speaker 2: It becomes much more sinister.
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  Speaker 1: It becomes who has been matisly hiding her absence and
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  what exactly are they trying to cover up?
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  Speaker 2: Which brings us directly to the parents.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, to understand the dynamics here, you really need to
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  understand the family.
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  Speaker 2: Structure, because it's a bit complicated.
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  Speaker 1: It is. Erica was adopted. She was born to a
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  woman named Carolyn, but shortly after she was born, Carolyn
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  made the difficult decision to give Erica up for adoption. Right,
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  Erica was legally adopted by Carolyn's aunt and uncle, Casey
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  and Sandy.
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  Speaker 2: Parsons, so she stayed in the family.
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  Speaker 1: Basically, yeah, Erica is being raised by her biological great
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  aunt and great.
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  Speaker 2: Uncle, and they already had a family of their own, right.
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  Speaker 1: Casey and Sandy already had other biological children in the home,
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  including Jamie, the older brother who just walked into the
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  police station to report her missing.
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  Speaker 2: So he grew up with.
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  Speaker 1: Her exactly Now. When the police get this report, their
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  very first move is inevitable.
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  Speaker 2: I have to go to the parents.
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  Speaker 1: They have to go straight to Casey and Sandy Parsons
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  and ask the most basic question.
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  Speaker 2: A parent can be asked, where is your daughter?
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  Speaker 1: Where has your thirteen year old daughter ben for the
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  last two years? But Jamie had already primed the police.
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  He didn't just report or missing.
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  Speaker 2: No, he dropped a massive bombshell.
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  Speaker 1: He leveled severe allegations that his parents, Casey and Sandy
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  were ruthlessly, physically and mentally abusive to Erica.
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  Speaker 2: And as you might predict in a high stakes confrontation
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  of this nature, Casey and Sandy do not fold, not
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  at all. They vehemently aggressively deny every single allegation of abuse.
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  They completely reject the narrative that Jamie is laid out
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  for law enforcement.
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  Speaker 1: They go on the offensive.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, Instead, they offer a counter narrative. They claim that
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  Janie is simply a disgruntled, rebellious son.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, classic deflection.
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  Speaker 2: They tell the police that they recently had to kick
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  Jamie out of the house after a massive fight he
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  had with his mother Casey, So.
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  Speaker 1: They're painting him as the problem.
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  Speaker 2: According to them, Jamie's just fabricating these horrific stories out
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  of pure spite, you know, to get on his parents
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  for throwing him out.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, if you are a cop, that's a very
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  convenient defense, right. Don't listen to him. He's just an
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  angry teenager making things up.
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  Speaker 2: It attempts to completely discredit the star witness right out
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  of the gate.
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  Speaker 1: But even if the police entertained that idea for a second,
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  Casey and Sandy still have a massive problem on their hands.
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  Speaker 2: The physical absence.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, they still have to explain the physical absence of
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  a thirteen year old girl from their home for twenty.
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  Speaker 2: Months, and the alibi they presented the authorities. I mean,
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  it's truly something to behold.
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  Speaker 1: It's wild. Casey and Sandy sit down with investigators and
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  tell them that back in late twenty eleven, they decided
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  to send Erica to live with her biological grandmother.
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  Speaker 2: The center away right.
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  Speaker 1: This grandmother is a woman named Irene Goodman who apparently
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  went by the nickname Nan, and she supposedly lived in Asheville,
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  North Carolina, Bashville. And Casey looks the cops dead in
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  the eye and says, oh, I keep in touch with Nan.
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  We communicate regularly via Facebook. Erica is perfectly fine.
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  Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is the construction of the lie itself.
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  We really need to dissect how people lie under immense pressure.
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  Speaker 1: It's never just a simple lie, is it.
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  Speaker 2: Rarely when manipulative individuals construct a falsehood for authorities, they
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  rarely invent something entirely out of thin air. They need
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  a foundation, exactly. They usually try to build a narrative
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  around elements they think authorities cannot easily verify, or they
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  try to ground the lie in a tiny kernel of truth.
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  Speaker 1: And in this case, there actually was a kernel of truth.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, Erica did have a biological grandmother named Irene Goodman.
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  Yes she went by.
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  Speaker 2: The nickname Nan, so that part was real.
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  Speaker 1: But this is exactly where the Parsons deception crosses the
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  line from a simple panic lie to something far more systemic.
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  Speaker 2: It becomes absurd.
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  Speaker 1: This is what the judge presiding over this case would
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  later brilliantly refer to as a poorly concocted, deliberate falsehood.
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  Speaker 2: Poorly concocted is right.
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  Speaker 1: Poorly concocted doesn't even begin to cover. I have to
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  jump in here with an analogy, because this blew my
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  mind when I was reviewing our sources.
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  Speaker 2: Let's hear it.
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  Speaker 1: It is like a high school student handing in a
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  forged doctor's note to get out of an exam, but
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  the note is from a hospital that burned to the
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  ground a decade ago.
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  Speaker 2: That is exactly what it's like.
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  Speaker 1: Did Casey and Sandy really genuinely think that a police
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  department wouldn't check on the grandmother? They must have, because
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  it took the authorities almost no time at all to
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  dig into this nan character. They run the name, and
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  what do they discover.
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  Speaker 2: A massive problem for the Parsons.
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  Speaker 1: Irene Goodman died in two thousand and five. Wow, let
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  me repeat that for you. She died in two thousand
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  and five, That is six whole years before Erica supposedly
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  packed her bags and went to live with her in
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  twenty eleven.
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  Speaker 2: Six years, six years.
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  Speaker 1: How do you build an alibi around a woman who
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  has been in the ground for over half a decade.
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  Speaker 2: It reveals a staggering, almost incomprehensible level of either blind
• 10:53
  panic or honestly deeply ingrained pathological arrogance.
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  Speaker 1: Arrogance is a good word for it, and.
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  Speaker 2: In analyzing family systems like the Parsons, it is often
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  a lethal combination of both. You have to consider their
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  daily reality. You mean, for years, Casey and Sandy were
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  the undisputed rulers of their own isolated kingdom.
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  Speaker 1: Oh I see.
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  Speaker 2: They were so accustomed to controlling the narrative within their
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  own closed family system, so used to their children accepting
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  whatever reality they dictated, that they severely underestimated external objective scrutiny.
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  Speaker 1: They thought they were untouchable.
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  Speaker 2: When you lie for years within the four walls of
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  your own home and face absolutely no consequences, you start
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  to believe your own fictions are impenetrable. You get sloppy,
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  You start to think you are smarter than everyone else,
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  including the police.
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  Speaker 1: But the police are sitting right there looking at a
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  death certificate from two thousand and five.
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  Speaker 2: A very real piece of paper.
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  Speaker 1: And when they inevitably confront Casey with the absolute fact
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  that Irene Goodman is dead. The lies don't.
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  Speaker 2: Stop, they double down.
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  Speaker 1: They don't break down and confess. The lies just mutate.
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  They evolve in real time.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: It's like watching a cornered animal.
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  Speaker 1: Casey starts frantically scrambling. She pivots and claims, well, the
• 12:05
  Facebook account where I was talking to her, it's deactivated.
• 12:08
  Now I can't show it to you.
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  Speaker 2: How convenient.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: And then she provides a phone number for this woman,
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  which the police call, and it is of course completely disconnected.
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  Speaker 2: Big shock there.
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  Speaker 1: But she doesn't stop there. She spins this incredibly bizarre,
• 12:20
  elaborate follow up story.
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  Speaker 2: This part is just crazy.
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  Speaker 1: She tells the police about a time she supposedly arranged
• 12:26
  to meet up with Erica and this grandmother at a
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  Waterburger restaurant, a water Burger, and Casey claims she went
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  to the restaurant, saw a girl she thought was Erica,
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  but then realized she had been tricked by an impostor,
• 12:40
  a fake Erica.
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  Speaker 2: A fake Erica.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, I have to push back on your theory
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  of arrogance here for a second. This feels like the sheer,
• 12:48
  unadulterated panic of someone drowning. I hear you does this
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  level of frantic, improvisational lying really point to arrogance or
• 12:56
  is it just someone who realizes the walls are closing
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  in and is throwing whatever they can at the wall
• 13:01
  to see what sticks.
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  Speaker 2: I completely understand why it looks like pure panic on
• 13:05
  the surface, but I believe it leans far more heavily
• 13:09
  toward pathological arrogance, specifically centered around Casey.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Really, even with the fake Erica's.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: Story, yes, because she is attempting to pivot in real
• 13:19
  time because she is drowning, as you said, Yeah, but
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  look at the nature of the pivot, It's very complex.
• 13:24
  Instead of admitting the lie, she invents an even more elaborate,
• 13:27
  cinematic conspiracy involving impostors at a fast food restaurant.
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  Speaker 1: That does take a lot of ego to think anyone
• 13:33
  would buy that.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: That takes massive ego. She fundamentally believes she can outalk
• 13:38
  the police. But here is the critical vulnerability in her strategy.
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  What's that investigators are highly trained to listen. They aren't
• 13:47
  just listening to the bizarre plot points of her story
• 13:50
  like the fake Erica. They are listening to how she speaks, oh,
• 13:54
  the freezing exactly. They're analyzing her subconscious communication, and there
• 14:00
  were crucial, undeniable linguistic clues in how both Casey and
• 14:04
  Sandy spoke to the media and to the police that
• 14:08
  unraveled their entire facade.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: This is the stuff that always gives me chills. The
• 14:11
  subconscious slips.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: Exactly when Casey and Sandy were interviewed by detectives and
• 14:16
  later when they brazenly went on national television.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: Which is still wild to me.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: Right, but trained investigators noticed a consistent glaring pattern. Casey
• 14:25
  and Sandy consistently referred to Eric in the past tense.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: Oh wow.
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  Speaker 2: They would say things like she was a quilt girl,
• 14:31
  or she.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: Liked to do this, using was instead of is.
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  Speaker 2: In stark heartbreaking contrast, when the police interviewed Carolyn, Erica's
• 14:40
  biological mother, who was completely in the dark, Carolyn spoke
• 14:43
  about Erica strictly in the present tense because.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: She didn't know right.
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  Speaker 2: Carolyn would say, Erica is a sweet girl. Carolyn was
• 14:53
  holding onto the desperate hope that her daughter was still
• 14:55
  alive out there.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Somewhere, but the Parsons knew she wasn't.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: The Parsons language trade their subconscious reality, their brains knew
• 15:03
  that Erica was never coming back, and their grammar reflected
• 15:06
  that finality, even as their mouths were spinning wild tales
• 15:10
  about fake teenagers at a water burger.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: That subtle slip of the tongue is horrifying. It's like
• 15:16
  their brains had already accepted the truth, already processed the
• 15:19
  permanence of what happened, even while their conscious minds were
• 15:22
  desperately trying to build this elaborate fortress of.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: Lies, a fortress made of sand.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: And speaking of this fortress, Casey and Sandy actually took
• 15:30
  their lies on the road. They didn't just lie to
• 15:32
  local detectives.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: No, they went national.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: They went on national television. They actually went on the
• 15:36
  Doctor phil Show to aggressively pedal this fake grandmother story
• 15:42
  to millions of people.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: Talk about arrogance.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: But while they are busy trying to manipulate the court
• 15:46
  of public opinion, the authorities are quietly doing.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: Their jobs gathering the real facts.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Exactly, they are following the actual evidence, because you can't
• 15:56
  fake physical reality. And as we know, this deep die
• 16:00
  is about to shift from a missing person's investigation into
• 16:03
  a full blown forensic excavation.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: We have to talk about the search.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: Warrans, We certainly do. Law enforcement recognized the severity of
• 16:11
  the situation almost immediately, roughly a month after Jamie first
• 16:15
  walked into that police station, local authorities brought in the FBI.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: Which escalates things considerably.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: And they began the methodical, painstaking process of systematically tearing
• 16:26
  through the Parsons property. They executed multiple search warrants looking
• 16:30
  for anything that could ground Jamie's horrific allegations of abuse
• 16:34
  in physical reality.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: And the things they found hidden in that house are
• 16:37
  straight out of a horror movie.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: It's so dark.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: From the main family home, investigators zeroed in on a
• 16:43
  specific closet. They actually cut out a section of the
• 16:47
  drywall from inside this closet because it had highly suspicious
• 16:51
  red stains on it. What they completely removed the baseboards
• 16:54
  from that same closet. They found a pair of jeans,
• 16:57
  also covered.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: In red stains, all inside this one cla.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: But then there's a detail in our sources that I
• 17:03
  just cannot stop thinking about. It is so deeply unsettling.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this part is bizarre.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: Among the item sees from the house, police found John
• 17:10
  Bine Ramsey magazines and a John Bine Ramsey book that
• 17:14
  had handwritten notes inside it, specifically about remodeling a house.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: Notes about remodeling a house inside a book about a
• 17:21
  murdered child.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: And it doesn't stop at the house. Later in the investigation,
• 17:24
  they execute a search warrant on a storage unit owned
• 17:27
  by Sandy Parsons.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: What did they find there?
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: Inside this storage unit they find a chaotic, grim collection
• 17:32
  of items, pieces of a dismantled vacuum cleaner, a videotape,
• 17:38
  some of Erica's old school records, a hammer, and teeth
• 17:43
  human teeth.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: When you look at an inventory list like that, you
• 17:46
  are no longer looking at a home. You are looking
• 17:48
  at a localized crime scene of extreme.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: Violence, a torture chamber.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Essentially, each of those items paints a grim picture. The
• 17:55
  hyper focus on the closet, taking the drywall, the baseboards,
• 18:00
  that directly corroborates the specific allegations of systemic abuse that
• 18:04
  we will delve into in just a moment.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: Right, the closet was a cell.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: It tells us that this specific confined space was the
• 18:10
  epicenter of trauma. But the John bna Ramsey materials, that
• 18:16
  is a detail that requires serious psychological deconstruction.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: I completely agree because John Bine Ramsey is arguably one
• 18:25
  of the most famous, most heavily publicized unsolved child murder
• 18:29
  cases in American history.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: Right, a child dies in her own home, the parents
• 18:32
  are under intense suspicion, and no one has ever brought
• 18:34
  to justice.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: It's the blueprint for getting away with it.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: What on earth does keeping magazines and a book about
• 18:40
  that specific unsolved child murders suggest about the mindset of
• 18:43
  Casey and Sandy Parsons.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: It's a terrifying question.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: I keep going back and forth on this. Was it inspiration?
• 18:49
  Were they reading these books like a manual, trying to
• 18:52
  figure out how to navigate police scrutiny and get away
• 18:55
  with it, treating it like a textbook? Or is it
• 18:58
  something darker? Is it some sort of a trophy, a
• 19:00
  way for them to privately revel in the idea of
• 19:04
  a murdered.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: Child in the realm of criminal psychology. Possessing material like that,
• 19:08
  especially with handwritten notes about house remodeling.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: Which implies altering the physical environment exactly.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: It suggests a deep, obsessive preoccupation with getting away with
• 19:19
  the unthinkable. It indicates that the concept of a child
• 19:22
  dying within the family home and the parents. Successfully evading
• 19:25
  the justice system was not a foreign concept to them.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: It was something they were actively studying.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: Perhaps fixating on it shows a level of premeditation, or
• 19:34
  at least a highly calculated post incident strategy.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: But while the physical evidence, the stained dry wall, the
• 19:41
  terrifying implications of the magazines was building a very strong,
• 19:45
  circumstantial picture of.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: Violence, there was a completely different trail of evidence that
• 19:49
  was quietly being gathered.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: And this trail, the one that would actually prove to
• 19:54
  be their immediate undoing, had absolutely nothing to do with bloodstains, closets,
• 19:59
  or hum mentieth.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: Well, I know exactly where you're going with this.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: It almost always comes down to the money, doesn't it.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: It's a tale as old as time and true crime.
• 20:09
  You look at the history books al Capone, one of
• 20:12
  the most notorious gangsters in history, untouchable for all his violent.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: Crimes, and what finally takes him down.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Tax evasion, the mundane bureaucracy of money. Always the paperwork,
• 20:23
  and here, in the case of Erica Parsons, the loose
• 20:27
  thread that investigators pull to unravel this entire bloody sweater
• 20:31
  is a monthly check from the Department of Social Services precisely.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: This is where the mundane intersects with the monstrous. Because
• 20:38
  Erica had additional needs, the Parsons family was eligible for state.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: Assistance, which makes sense on paper, right they.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: Were receiving over six hundred dollars a month from the
• 20:47
  Department of Social Services to help care for her.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: Okay, so six hundred dollars a month might not sound
• 20:51
  like a fortune to some people, but over the course
• 20:53
  of the twenty months she was missing, that is over
• 20:56
  twelve thousand dollars. It adds up fast. Made a very simple,
• 21:01
  yet devastating discovery case, and Sandy Parsons had continued to
• 21:06
  cash those DSS checks every single month like clockwork, long
• 21:10
  after Erica vanished in November of twenty eleven.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: They were cashing checks for a ghost.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: They were literally committing fraud every single time they went
• 21:18
  to the bank accepting money to care for a child
• 21:21
  they knew was not there.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: And from a law enforcement perspective, that discovery gave the
• 21:25
  authorities immense tangible leverage.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Because it's an easy crime to prove.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture of legal strategy,
• 21:33
  this is a textbook maneuver Owso in cases where law
• 21:36
  enforcement is absolutely certain a homicide has occurred, but they
• 21:40
  do not yet have a body, and they don't have
• 21:42
  quite enough definitive physical evidence to secure a murder conviction
• 21:46
  in front of a jury.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: They need a backup plan.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: They will look for alternative routes. They will use whatever
• 21:51
  legal tools are readily available to them to disrupt the
• 21:54
  suspects lives and maintain control.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: So you were saying these federal fraud charges were weren't
• 22:00
  just about the money. They were essentially a strategic holding
• 22:03
  maneuver by the FBI and the local police.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: Absolutely without a doubt. By January of twenty fourteen, the
• 22:09
  authorities make their move. They swoop in, federal agents literally
• 22:13
  kick down the doors and arrest Casey and Sandy Parsons
• 22:17
  on an astonishing seventy six counts.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: Seventy six counts.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: We are talking about mail fraud, wire fraud, identity theft,
• 22:26
  theft of government funds, you name it. They threw the
• 22:29
  book at them.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: They wanted to make sure it stuck.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: The federal government was standing up in court and saying,
• 22:33
  you systematically stole medicaid, social security, and food and nutrition
• 22:37
  services for a dependent miner who is demonstrably not living
• 22:41
  under your.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Room, and that gave them control.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: This strategic aggressive move allowed law enforcement to achieve several
• 22:47
  critical goals at once. First, it put Casey and Sandy
• 22:50
  in the system under surveillance. It allowed a judge to
• 22:53
  mandate ankle monitors severely restricting their movements. It drained their
• 22:58
  resources saying for lawyers, and most importantly, it kept them
• 23:02
  under intense, unrelenting pressure, essentially locking them in a pressure cooker,
• 23:08
  while the FBI and the local sheriffs bought themselves the
• 23:11
  necessary time to continue building the much more complex murder case.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: Okay, so this strategic maneuver leads us directly to the
• 23:20
  fraud trial. And I have to be completely honest with you,
• 23:22
  this is one of the most harrowing, difficult parts of
• 23:25
  this entire story.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: To process is deeply disturbing.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: Because on paper, this is ostensibly a white collar trial.
• 23:32
  It is a trial about stolen government funds, tax fraud,
• 23:35
  and identity.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: Theft, boring financial crimes.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: But you have to think about the burden of proof
• 23:41
  to definitively prove that Casey and Sandy were fraudulently cashing
• 23:44
  state checks for a child who wasn't there. The prosecution
• 23:48
  essentially had to prove to the jury that Erico was gone.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: They had to prove she wasn't living in the house.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: And not just gone to a grandmother's house, but permanently
• 23:55
  removed from the home, and in doing so, to establish
• 23:58
  this timeline of apps, they brought members of the Parsons
• 24:02
  family to the witness stand.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: Which blew the case wide open.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: They brought up Jamie, the brother who initiated the police report.
• 24:09
  They brought up his siblings Brooke, Sadie, and Toby. They
• 24:13
  even brought up Casey's sister, aunt Robin. Oh what they
• 24:15
  said and the things these family members testified to under
• 24:19
  oath it instantly transformed this courtroom from a boring fraud
• 24:23
  case into the revelation of a literal, inescapable house of horrors.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: The testimony delivered by those siblings was staggering in its
• 24:31
  descriptions of cruelty.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: It was so far beyond neglect.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: What was described on that stand was not simply a
• 24:36
  case of parental neglect or even harsh discipline with a
• 24:40
  jury heard, was a chronicle of systematic, sadistic, calculated torture
• 24:46
  directed at one specific child.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: The details from the sources are incredibly hard to hear,
• 24:51
  but we have to face them because they are absolutely
• 24:53
  vital to understanding the reality of what Erica endured behind
• 24:57
  those closed doors.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: We can't look away from it.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: The siblings testified that Erica was routinely punitively locked in
• 25:04
  closets for hours, sometimes days at a time.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: The closet where the drywall was removed exactly.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: They testified that she was frequently banned from using the
• 25:12
  family bathroom, and if she had an accident in that
• 25:15
  closet out of pure biological desperation, she was severely beaten
• 25:19
  and punished for it.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: It's psychological and physical torture.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: She was systematically starved. The siblings were called seeing her
• 25:26
  forced to eat dog food.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: Off the floor, just humiliating her.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: They testified that she was so hungry she would eat
• 25:32
  out of the household trash, and that she was forced
• 25:35
  to drink water from a dog.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: Bowl, stripping her of her humanity.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: They described her being repeatedly beaten with belts. There was
• 25:42
  a horrifying detail where they described Sandy Parsons punching Erica
• 25:46
  on the top of her head so repeatedly and with
• 25:49
  such force that she developed a permanent bald spot.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: A grown man doing that to a child and Casey.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: Casey would deliberately take Erica's fingers, bend them backward, and
• 25:59
  snap them until they broke.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: And you have to understand the secondary layer of abuse here.
• 26:03
  What do you mean when she was inevitably injured from
• 26:06
  this torture, when her fingers were snapped, when bones were fractured,
• 26:10
  Casey and Sandy went to extreme calculated lengths to avoid
• 26:14
  the medical system entirely.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Right because doctors asked questions.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: The siblings testified about a time Erica's arm was clearly broken.
• 26:23
  Instead of taking her to an emergency room where a
• 26:25
  doctor or a nurse would undoubtedly recognize the signs of
• 26:28
  severe trauma and ask questions, Casey and Sandy sent the
• 26:32
  other children to the local walmart.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: They sent kids to buy supplies.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: They had them buy basic first aid supplies to construct
• 26:38
  a makeshift amateur cast at home. This shows a clear
• 26:42
  consciousness of guilt. They knew they'd be caught, they knew
• 26:44
  what they were doing was criminal, and they actively managed
• 26:46
  the cover up.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: Jamie's testimony about the last time he saw her as
• 26:50
  just haunting. He testified that right before she completely disappeared
• 26:54
  in November twenty eleven, Erica looked like a zombie.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: A zombie, those were his words.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: He described as having deeply sunken eyes, a grayish pallor
• 27:03
  to her skin. He said she had open oozing wounds
• 27:06
  that weren't healing, and that she was actively complaining that
• 27:09
  she couldn't breathe.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: She was dying in front of them.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: And what was Casey's maternal response to a child who
• 27:14
  couldn't breathe? She told her to get back in the corner.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: It's just evil.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: I have to pause here because I need to push
• 27:20
  back on something that I am deeply struggling with.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: Okay, what is it?
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: The bystander effect is a concept we talk about a lot,
• 27:27
  but in this context it becomes almost incomprehensible to me.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: It is hard to grasp.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Jamie, the brother who eventually went to the police, admitted
• 27:36
  on the stand under oath that he and his siblings
• 27:39
  actively participated in the abuse. Right He admitted that he
• 27:43
  was the one who once broke Erica's arm, and Aunt Robin,
• 27:47
  an adult who lived outside the home, testified that she
• 27:50
  knew things were so incredibly bad that she once took
• 27:53
  Erica in to live with her for a few months,
• 27:55
  specifically so Casey wouldn't.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: Kill her, so she knew it was life or death.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: So question to you is, how does an entire family system, siblings, ants,
• 28:05
  the whole network, become weaponized against one single child, And
• 28:10
  why on earth didn't the adults like Robin or the
• 28:12
  grandparents step in and stop this permanently before it was
• 28:16
  too late.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: It is a profound, deeply disturbing question, and it strikes
• 28:20
  at the core of how abusive family systems operate.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: It just feels like someone should have done something.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: What you are seeing here is the complete manifestation of
• 28:30
  a family system under the total tyrannical control of a
• 28:33
  sociopathic matriarch Casey. Casey was the undeniable mastermind, the psychological
• 28:39
  architect of this family's reality. In these types of closed systems,
• 28:43
  the abuser will often isolate one specific child to serve
• 28:47
  as the designated scapegoat.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: So they pick one target.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: Casey dehumanized Erica entirely, and in doing so, she effectively
• 28:55
  trained the other children in the home to view Erica
• 28:57
  not as a sister, not as an equal human being,
• 29:00
  but as a subhuman object.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: An object to take their anger out on an object.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: For their own displaced aggression. Children living in terrifying abuse
• 29:08
  of homes will very often align with the primary abuser
• 29:11
  as a desperate survival.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: Mechanism because they're scared of her two.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: It is a concept known as identification with the aggressor
• 29:17
  in their minds. If you are actively participating in the abuse,
• 29:20
  you are proving your loyalty to the tyrant, and therefore
• 29:23
  you are not the target of a tyrant's wrath.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: It is a horrific, perverted survival strategy.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, I can understand that dark, twisted logic for the
• 29:33
  children trapped inside the house. They're trying to survive their mother,
• 29:37
  But what about the adults, What about Aunt Robin or
• 29:39
  the people outside the immediate home who saw the bruises?
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: The adults outside the immediate dynamic represent a different, equally
• 29:48
  tragic sociological failure. It highlights what we call a diffusion
• 29:52
  of responsibility.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: Like assuming someone else will handle it exactly.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: People see signs Aunt Robin saw enough to intervene temporarily.
• 30:00
  Neighbors might see a bruise here, or notice Erica's crooked
• 30:04
  healing fingers there, But they convince themselves of a few things,
• 30:08
  such as, first, they tell themselves it's not their place
• 30:10
  to interfere in another family's discipline, the.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: Mind your own business mentality.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: Second, and perhaps more importantly, they allow themselves to accept
• 30:18
  the abuser's lies because it is easier than confronting the monster.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: It's the passive least resistance.
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: Casey was a highly skilled, pathologically adept manipulator. If someone
• 30:29
  asked about a bruise, she wouldn't panic. She would smoothly
• 30:33
  blame the injury on the other kids playing too rough,
• 30:35
  or she would invent a medical condition right like.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: Claiming she had early onset arthritis to explain the broken
• 30:40
  fingers exactly.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: And if you want to truly understand Casey's profound a
• 30:45
  capacity for manipulation, her ability to wear a mask of
• 30:47
  sanity for the outside world, we absolutely have to look
• 30:51
  at the surrogacy scam that was also exposed during this
• 30:54
  same Thraad trial.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Oh, this surrogacy scam. When I read this in our sources,
• 30:59
  I had to read it three times because it is
• 31:01
  just mind blowing that this was happening simultaneously.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: Almost unbelievable.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: So while Eric is missing and the persons are cashing
• 31:07
  fraudulent DSS checks. There is a woman named Amy.
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: Miller, an innocent woman in another state.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: Amy lives in another state and she desperately wants a child.
• 31:15
  She meets Casey on a surrogacy.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: Website, which is already risky, and.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: Amy agrees to pay Casey ten thousand dollars in installments
• 31:23
  for Casey to act as a surrogate mother.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: And the most chilling part of all of this what
• 31:29
  Amy Miller testified about her impression of Casey. She described
• 31:34
  Casey to the jury as wholesome, down to earth and
• 31:38
  very religious.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: Which perfectly, terrifyingly illustrates the sheer effectiveness of the mask
• 31:44
  Casey was capable of wearing.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: Think about the cognitive disonance.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: It's massive.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: Inside her home, she is snapping at child's fingers and
• 31:52
  forcing her to eat dog food. But she turns on
• 31:54
  a webcam or picks up a phone, and she seamlessly
• 31:57
  presents herself to this vulnerable, hope full, desperate woman as
• 32:01
  a loving, charitable, pious figure.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: She knew exactly what a good mother looked and sounded like,
• 32:07
  and she weaponized that performance to extract ten thousand dollars
• 32:10
  from a stranger.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: But the reality of how that scam played out is
• 32:13
  just pure, unadulterated evil.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: Casey takes the money from Amy Miller. She uses this
• 32:17
  woman's desperate hope to buy a new washer and dryer for.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: Her house, appliances. She traded a baby for appliances.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: And then when the time comes, Casey coldly, callously calls
• 32:28
  Amy Miller and tells her that the baby she was
• 32:30
  carrying had died. She even told this grieving woman to
• 32:34
  get a life.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: Just brutal.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: But here is the twist. The baby hadn't died. Casey
• 32:40
  gave birth to a healthy baby.
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: And what did Casey and Sandy try to do.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: They literally tried to turn around and sell the real
• 32:47
  living baby to Casey's own sister aunt Robin, for another
• 32:51
  ten thousand dollars.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: The audacity is staggering.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: Thankfully, Robin got suspicious, she managed to find Amy Miller online,
• 32:58
  the police got involved, and Amy event got her biological
• 33:01
  baby back.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: Thank goodness for that.
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: But putting the happy ending for Amy aside for a second,
• 33:05
  what does this elaborate, multi layered scam tell us about
• 33:08
  the inner workings of Casey's brain.
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: It proves absolutely, unequivocally that Casey Porse's was capable of
• 33:15
  incredibly elaborate, cold blooded, sociopathic financial schemes involving human life.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: They were just dollar signs to her.
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: To Casey, children were not human beings with souls or rights.
• 33:26
  They were merely commodities. They were inventory inventory.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: That's a chilling word for it.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: A child was a source of a six hundred dollars
• 33:33
  monthly check from the government, or a child was a
• 33:36
  quick ten thousand dollars pay day on the internet.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: It's all transactional.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: This complete lack of human empathy, this commodification of life,
• 33:43
  is essential to understanding how she could dispose of Erica.
• 33:47
  It also circles back to your previous question and helps
• 33:50
  explain the massive systemic failure in this case.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: You mean why the authorities didn't step in?
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: You asked how adults didn't step in, how authorities didn't
• 33:59
  save her. Well, we have to acknowledge that the Department
• 34:01
  of Social Services did investigate this family. They did way
• 34:05
  back in March of two thousand and two. DSS received
• 34:09
  a report and looked into allegations of abuse, specifically directed
• 34:13
  toward Erica and what happened and their official conclusion. They
• 34:17
  found nothing. They formally concluded that Erica didn't appear afraid
• 34:20
  of her parents, and they closed the file.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: Which, knowing what we know now, is just gut wrenching.
• 34:26
  It's heartbreaking to think that an agent of the state
• 34:28
  was inside that house, looking at that child and walked away.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: It's a massive failure.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: Put yourself in the shoes of those DSS workers in
• 34:36
  two thousand and two. You walk into a seemingly clean house,
• 34:41
  you see a polite mother who quotes scripture. It really
• 34:45
  forces you to ask yourself, would you have spotted the monster?
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: It is the hardest question for anyone in social work
• 34:52
  or law enforcement to face. But manipulative abusers like Casey
• 34:57
  are profoundly adept at presenting that exact, wholesome, down to
• 35:01
  earth facade to authority figures.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: They play the part.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: They don't act like movie villains when the social worker
• 35:06
  knocks on the door. They know exactly how to clean
• 35:08
  the house. They know how to aggressively rehearse the children
• 35:10
  on what to say and what not to say.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, the rehearsal don't tell them about the closet.
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: Exactly, and They know exactly how to fool the bureaucratic
• 35:17
  systems that are designed to protect the vulnerable. The DSS
• 35:21
  worker looked at the Parsons family in two thousand and
• 35:23
  two and saw exactly what Casey wanted them to see.
• 35:26
  A normal family, a religious, slightly overwhelmed family doing their
• 35:30
  best to care for an adopted child with special needs.
• 35:33
  They looked right at Casey, but they didn't see the
• 35:35
  monster behind the mask. The mask worked perfectly, so.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: The fraud trial eventually concludes. The horrific truth of the
• 35:43
  abuse has now been dragged out into the open for
• 35:46
  the entire world to see.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: Everything's public now.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: And both Casey and Sandy are convicted by a jury
• 35:51
  and sent to federal prison for their financial crimes. Casey
• 35:55
  gets one hundred and twenty months, Sandy gets ninety.
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: Six months significant time.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: Judge at their sentencing looks down from the bench and
• 36:03
  literally calls them morally bankrupt.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: It feels like a victory ride, It feels like it
• 36:08
  should be, but the glaring issue remains. Erica is still missing.
• 36:12
  There is no body, There is no physical proof of murder.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: They're locked up, but the main question is unanswered.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: The investigation hits a wall, and years go by until
• 36:21
  we get to May of twenty sixteen. For years, the
• 36:24
  police were stuck. But in May twenty sixteen, here's where
• 36:27
  it gets really interesting. From a psychological.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: Standpoint, the dynamics start to shift.
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: The dynamics of the family begin to fracture. Brook, the
• 36:34
  oldest daughter, the one who had been backing her parents,
• 36:36
  who had stayed loyal to the family narrative all this time,
• 36:40
  finally flips. She breaks ranks.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: She sits down with the FBI and corroborates every sickening
• 36:46
  detail of the extreme abuse that Jamie had testified about.
• 36:50
  The unified Front.
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: Is cracking, and that puts immense pressure on Sandy.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: And then a few months later, in September of twenty sixteen,
• 36:57
  the main armor finally shatters. Sandy Parsons, sitting in a
• 37:01
  federal prison cell serving his sentence for fraud, breaks down.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: What you are witnessing in that timeline is a classic,
• 37:10
  almost textbook psychological unraveling of a criminal enterprise. Oh so,
• 37:14
  for years, Casey and Sandy operated as a tightly knit
• 37:18
  unified front. There were an impenetrable criminal partnership because they
• 37:22
  reinforced each other's delusions.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: They kept each other's lives straight.
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: But prisons are fundamentally designed to isolate, and when you
• 37:28
  physically separate co constirators, especially in a dynamic where one
• 37:32
  partner is the dominant controlling force which is Casey, right,
• 37:35
  and the other is the subservient follower, Sandy, the psychological
• 37:39
  foundation begins to crumble.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: So you're saying Sandy was always the weak link in
• 37:43
  this chain, without a doubt. I'm struggling with Sandy's role here.
• 37:46
  On one hand, he breaks, he talks to the police,
• 37:48
  which feels like it could be a moment of conscience, right,
• 37:52
  you'd hope so. But on the other hand, as we're
• 37:54
  about to discuss, he actively participated in covering up his
• 37:58
  daughter's death. Was he genuinely a battered spouse under Casey's
• 38:02
  sociopathic control, or is this just the ultimate cowardice of
• 38:06
  a man realizing he's going down and trying to save
• 38:08
  his own skin by making a deal.
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: It is highly likely a combination, but leaning heavily towards
• 38:13
  self preservation. Casey was the engine of this family's pathology.
• 38:18
  She provided the momentum and the narrative. Joseyvouder isolated from
• 38:21
  her daily influence. Sitting in a cell, facing a long
• 38:24
  sentence and likely feeling the immense crushing weight of the
• 38:28
  FBI's relentless ongoing murder investigation, Sandy's resolve shattered.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: He folded.
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: He didn't have Casey there to tell him what reality
• 38:36
  was anymore, so he made a calculated choice. He struck
• 38:39
  a deal with the authorities to finally reveal what happened.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: To Erica, and what he reveals is a nightmare. He
• 38:45
  strikes his deal, and he leads law enforcement to a rural,
• 38:49
  deeply wooded area in Chesterfield.
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: County, South Carolina, middle of nowhere.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: He leads them to a shallow grave, and the story
• 38:56
  he tells authorities about how Erica ended up in that
• 38:59
  dirt in South Carolin is just vile. It defies a leaf,
• 39:02
  it really does. Remember Casey had claimed in earlier interrogations
• 39:06
  that Erica had behavioral issues. Sandy tells the police that
• 39:10
  after they found Erica deceased in the home, they didn't
• 39:13
  call nine one ones, of course not. Instead, they took
• 39:15
  a bottle of household bleach and they poured it directly
• 39:19
  over her body in an attempt to mask the smell
• 39:22
  of decomposition.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: They treated her like a mess on the floor.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: They then stuffed this child into a plastic storage toat.
• 39:28
  And then I can barely even wrap my head around
• 39:30
  the logistics of this little on the psychology, he says.
• 39:33
  They left her body in that plastic toat inside the house,
• 39:37
  and they went out to attend a holiday party.
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: Just left her in a box in the house.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: They socialized, they ate food, they mingled, and then the
• 39:43
  very next day they drove to South Carolina, buried her
• 39:47
  in a shallow grave, and threw the plastic toade away
• 39:50
  like it was nothing.
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: It is a sequence of events that demonstrates a chilling,
• 39:54
  almost incomprehensible detachment from basic human empathy, sociopathic to pour
• 40:00
  bleach over a child that you legally adopted and raised,
• 40:03
  to physically scuff her remains into a plastic storage bin,
• 40:07
  and then to calmly leave the house and go socialized
• 40:10
  at a festive holiday party.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: It's sick.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: It requires a total, profound dissociation from the reality and
• 40:16
  gravity of your actions. In that moment, they had completely
• 40:19
  reduced a human being, their daughter, to literal.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: Garden, a problem to be disposed of.
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: She was a problem to be managed a biological hazard
• 40:27
  to be masked with bleach and disposed of simply so
• 40:30
  it wouldn't ruin their evening plans. It is the absolute
• 40:33
  apex of dehumanization.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: They tried to use bleach to erase her story. They
• 40:37
  tried to use the dirt of a shallow grave to
• 40:39
  silence her permanently, but it couldn't. But the thing is
• 40:42
  they failed. The bleach didn't work. The lies didn't work,
• 40:46
  because in February of twenty seventeen, the official autopsy results
• 40:49
  on Erica's recovered remains come back. The undeniable truth and
• 40:53
  the physical evidence completely utterly defied every single lie Casey
• 40:58
  and Sandy had ever told. The bones were remembered everything.
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: The autopsy report is perhaps the most critical, unassailable piece
• 41:05
  of objective truth in this entire tragic case.
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: Science doesn't lie.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: The medical examiner ultimately ruled the cause of death as
• 41:12
  homicidal violence of undetermined means, which is common in cases
• 41:16
  with advanced de composition, right.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: Because there wasn't much left.
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: But it was the catalog of trauma, the story written
• 41:22
  in the skeletal remains that was truly devastating.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: It is a brutally hard list to read, but it
• 41:28
  is the truth of her life.
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: We have to acknowledge it.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: The medical examiner found that she was severely malnourished, She
• 41:34
  had a significant grow deficit for a teenager. She was
• 41:37
  missing teeth and others were found broken matches.
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: The teeth in the storage unit.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: Exactly, but it was the bone fractures that truly told
• 41:44
  the story of what she endured behind closed doors. The
• 41:48
  autopsy revealed fractures in various stages of healing in her
• 41:51
  upper right arm, her collarbone, her jaw, her nose, her
• 41:55
  shin bone, and seven of her ribs.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: Seven ribs, and the report.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: Noted that some of those ribs had been broken multiple
• 42:01
  times over a long period.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: When a forensic anthropologist examines skeletal remains and identifies fractures
• 42:08
  in various stagies of healing, they are not just looking
• 42:11
  at a bone.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: What are they looking at?
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: They are reading a chronological calendar of prolonged systematic physical abuse.
• 42:18
  When a bone breaks and begins to heal, it forms
• 42:21
  a callous. By examining the maturity of those callouses, scientists
• 42:25
  can determine that these injuries did not happen all at once.
• 42:28
  In some tragic.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: Accident like falling down the stairs exactly.
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: Bones do not lie. They do not spin elaborate stories
• 42:34
  about fake grandmothers in Asheville, and they do not invent
• 42:37
  tales early onset arthritis to explain away trauma.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: The bones tell the truth.
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: Every single healed and half healed break on that child's
• 42:44
  body perfectly corroborated the horrific testimony her siblings gave about
• 42:50
  the beatings in the torture.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: It matched Jamie's story perfectly.
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: It proved scientifically and definitively that this child was subjected
• 42:58
  to blunt force trauma repeatedly, continuously over a significant period
• 43:03
  of time.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: And crucially, the medical examiner noted in their final report
• 43:07
  that they could not exclude terminal blunt force injury, suffocation,
• 43:12
  or strangulation as the ultimate cause of her.
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: Death because of the state of the remains.
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: So finally, years after Jamie walked into that police station,
• 43:19
  the authorities are armed with the whole picture.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: They have everything they need.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: They have the recovered body, they have the devastating autopsy
• 43:26
  report detailing the history of torture, and they have the
• 43:29
  mountain of sworn testimony from the fraud trial. They finally
• 43:33
  make their.
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: Ultimate move, the murder charges.
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, both Casey and Sandy Parsons are formally
• 43:38
  indicted by a grand jury for first degree murder fell
• 43:41
  in ey, child abuse, concealment of death, and obstruction of justice.
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: It was a long time coming.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: It took a painfully long time and a detour through
• 43:49
  federal fraud Court, but the hammer finally.
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: Fell, and this brings us to the culmination of the
• 43:54
  legal process, the reckoning. In August of twenty nineteen, Faced
• 43:58
  with an insurmountable mountain of evidence, and rather than face
• 44:02
  a jury that would undoubtedly be shown the horrific forensic
• 44:05
  evidence and the photographs of the shallow grave, Casey Parsons
• 44:09
  makes a calculation.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: She takes a plea.
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: She pleads guilty to murder and child abuse, and the
• 44:14
  judge sentences her to life in prison with absolutely no
• 44:18
  possibility of parole. She will die in a cell.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: And during that sentencing she is given the chance to speak.
• 44:24
  She offers what I can only describe as the most hollow, pathetic,
• 44:28
  self serving apology imaginable.
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: That's surprising.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: She stands up in court and says, I didn't have
• 44:34
  a steady home I didn't have a steady job. I
• 44:36
  pushed family.
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: Members away, deflecting blame.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: She is standing there, pleading guilty to the prolonged torture
• 44:42
  and murder of a child, and she actually attempts to
• 44:45
  blame her actions on her financial circumstances and her housing.
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: Situation, as if that justifies torture.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: There is not a single shred of genuine accountability for
• 44:54
  the violence she inflicted.
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: It is entirely typical of severe narcissistic abusers. Even in
• 45:00
  the very moment they are legally admitting guilt, their psychology
• 45:04
  prevents them from accepting actual moral responsibility.
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: It can't do it.
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: They continuously attempt to recontextualize themselves as the ultimate victims
• 45:12
  of circumstance.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: It's always someone else's fault.
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: Casey could not or would not accept the profound cruelty
• 45:19
  originated from within her own character, so she deflected. She
• 45:23
  blamed her environment, her lack of a job, anything to
• 45:26
  avoid saying I am a monster who chose to do this.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: And then, four months after Casey has put away for life,
• 45:32
  Sandy gets his turn. He also pleads guilty, though to
• 45:35
  a lesser charge of second degree murder alongside the abuse
• 45:38
  charges great degree. He is sentenced to thirty three to
• 45:41
  forty three years in prison. Given his age, he will
• 45:43
  be eighty two years old before he is even legally
• 45:46
  eligible to apply for parole.
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: He's effectively serving a life sentence too.
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: But during his sentencing, his defense team tries a very
• 45:53
  specific strategy. They attempt to paint him as this manipulated,
• 45:58
  almost helpless victim.
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: Of his wife, the battered husband defense.
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: They argue that Casey completely controlled him, that he was
• 46:06
  inherently passive, and that his only real crime was just
• 46:09
  turning a blind eye.
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: To her madness, just looking the other way.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: They even brought in a psychologist, doctor Claudia Coleman, who
• 46:16
  evaluated Sandy and testified that he had severe trouble making
• 46:20
  independent decisions and felt actively threatened by Casey.
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: And this raises an important question about culpability agency and
• 46:27
  what we expect from adults in society.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: Right because he was an adult.
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: Yes, the psychological evaluations indicated that Sandy possessed a passive
• 46:35
  personality type and was likely dominated by Casey's forceful sociopathic will.
• 46:40
  But passivity in the face of the active daily torture
• 46:43
  and eventual murder of a child you are legally responsible
• 46:46
  for raising is not a legal defense.
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: It's just cowardice.
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: It is a profound, unforgivable moral failure. As the district
• 46:54
  attorney rightly pointed out to the judge during that hearing,
• 46:57
  Sandy Parsons was an adult in that room.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: He had choices.
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: He was not a helpless toddler trapped in the house.
• 47:03
  He was a grown, capable man who actively participated in
• 47:08
  the physical abuse, who actively poured bleach over a child's body,
• 47:12
  who actively dug a grave in the woods, and who
• 47:16
  actively walked into a bank to cash fraudulent checks month
• 47:20
  after month.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: He did all of those things himself.
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: He may not have been the master architect of the
• 47:24
  abuse that was Casey, but he was a fully conscious,
• 47:27
  willing co conspirator in the nightmare.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: And thankfully, the judge certainly didn't buy the helpless victim
• 47:33
  routine for a second. The judge looked at Sandy and
• 47:36
  told him he had a twisted mind, putting him in
• 47:38
  the exact same category of moral bankruptcy.
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: As his wife, as he should.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: But this discussion of sentencing brings up something that Carolyne
• 47:46
  Erica's biological mother said during the court proceedings, and her
• 47:50
  words really made me stop and reevaluate everything.
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: What did she say?
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: I want to ask you, is there really such a
• 47:55
  thing as closure in a case like this? Because Carolyn
• 47:58
  spoke out and her grief was so complex, she said
• 48:00
  she actually wanted Casey to get life in prison instead
• 48:02
  of the death penalty.
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: Because the death penalty is too quick.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: Exactly because she wanted Casey to suffer. She wanted her
• 48:09
  to wake up every single day in solitary confinement hearing
• 48:13
  other inmates whispering about her crimes, suffering a long drawn
• 48:17
  out existence.
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: She wanted her to feel the pain and.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: Beyond that, Carolyn expressed this unimaginable, crushing regret for giving
• 48:24
  Erica up for adoption in the first place. She told
• 48:27
  the court she did it specifically to give Erica a
• 48:30
  better life.
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: Oh that's heartbreaking.
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: Think about the tragic, unbearable irony of that, giving your
• 48:36
  child away because you think you aren't enough, trying to
• 48:38
  give them a better life, only to unknowingly ham them
• 48:42
  over to literal monsters.
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: It is a tragedy that defies comfort. And to answer
• 48:47
  your question, closure is very often a complete myth. In
• 48:51
  the aftermath of such a profound generational trauma.
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the word closure almost feels cheap.
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: What the legal system provides is finality. It provides a peer.
• 49:00
  At the end of the sentence, the state closes the file.
• 49:03
  The perpetrators are securely removed from society, unable to harm
• 49:07
  anyone else.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: That's the limit of what the law can do.
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: That is justice in the strict clinical eyes of the law.
• 49:14
  But for a motherlike Carolyn, who has to wake up
• 49:16
  every day and live with the agonizing what ifs, or
• 49:19
  for the siblings who are coerced and manipulated into participating
• 49:22
  in the torture of their own sister as children, there
• 49:25
  is no neat cinematic ending.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: It doesn't just go away because the gavel falls.
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: The psychological wounds the trauma inflicted by Casey and Sandy
• 49:32
  Parsons will echo through that family tree for generations. Carolyn's
• 49:37
  stated desire for Casey to suffer daily in a cell
• 49:40
  perfectly reflects the inherent inadequacy of our justice system to
• 49:43
  truly balance the scales of such immense, incomprehensible cruelty. A
• 49:49
  prison sentence does not undo the pain.
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: It leaves a very heavy lingering weight on the heart.
• 49:54
  But it also leaves us as a society with a stark,
• 49:57
  unavoidable reminder of why it matters to pay attention to
• 50:00
  the world around us.
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: We can't be blind to this.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: We open this deep dive by asking how a child
• 50:04
  just vanishes from a neighborhood without anyone noticing. The brutal
• 50:08
  answer is because people choose to look away.
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: They take the easy answer.
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: Because people choose to accept the easy lie, the fake grandmother,
• 50:17
  the sudden move over, the uncomfortable, messy truth. This isn't
• 50:21
  just a true crime story about two monsters who happen
• 50:24
  to live in North Carolina.
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: It's bigger than that.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: It is a blaring siren calling for community vigilance. It
• 50:30
  is a reminder to pay attention to the quiet, vulnerable
• 50:34
  people in our own neighborhoods, in our local schools, in
• 50:37
  our extended families. You have to speak up when you
• 50:40
  see something that makes your stomach not up. When a
• 50:43
  child seems too withdrawn, when a physical injury is explained
• 50:46
  away with a flimsy rehearsed excuse, When someone just disappears
• 50:49
  from the daily routine and the story doesn't add up.
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: You have to trust your gut, don't ignore that feeling.
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: Making an uncomfortable phone call to the authorities, asking a
• 50:58
  difficult question, pushing back against the easy answer we've seen
• 51:02
  today that it can literally be the difference between life
• 51:05
  and death.
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: And as we wrap up this intense analysis, the facts
• 51:08
  of this case compel us to look critically at the
• 51:11
  very systems we have built to protect.
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: The vulnerable, the systemic failures.
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: The Parsons were financially incentivized by the state to care
• 51:19
  for Erica. They were receiving six hundred dollars a month,
• 51:22
  month after month. The bureaucracy of that assistance continued blindly
• 51:27
  even when the child was gone.
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: They just kept printing the checks.
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: This forces us to ask a terrifying systemic question about
• 51:34
  how we manage foster care and special needs adoptions exactly.
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: And I want to leave you the listener with this
• 51:41
  final provocative thought to mullover as you go about your day.
• 51:44
  If the financial assistance provided by the state for adopting
• 51:47
  vulnerable children was suddenly removed entirely, how many of these
• 51:51
  hidden houses of horror would simply cease to exist.
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: It's a dark thought experiment.
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: Now, obviously that is a massive ethical dilemma because financial
• 51:59
  support is absolutely crucial for the countless, loving, wonderful families
• 52:03
  who open their homes to take in children with special needs.
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: They need that help to survive.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: They relyn on those funds to provide essential pair But
• 52:11
  how do we as a society balance supporting those genuinely
• 52:14
  good families while ensuring we are not inadvertently creating a
• 52:18
  profit motive for monsters like Casey and Sandy Parsons.
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: How do you weed out the abusers from the system.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: How do we stop children from becoming inventory. It is
• 52:27
  a terrifying line to walk, and it is something our
• 52:29
  social systems desperately need to reckon with if we are
• 52:32
  going to prevent another Erica Parsons from vanishing. In plain sight,
• 52:36
  it really is thank you for joining us on this
• 52:38
  intense deep dive. It has been a heavy one, but
• 52:41
  a deeply necessary one. Stay curious, trust your instincts, and
• 52:45
  please look out for one another.