Latest / Crime Night / The Fatal Shadow of Unit 3133

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The Fatal Shadow of Unit 3133 · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Imagine you are asleep in your own bed, like inside
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: your own apartment.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: Right, You're supposed safe space.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Exactly the one place in the world where you're supposed
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: to feel entirely secure.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: The date is June third, twenty twenty two. It's right
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: around two in the morning, and you just you wake
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: up suddenly, oh jeez, and there is a dark figure
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: standing over you, just staring down at you in the
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: pitch black.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, that is literally the absolute worst case scenario.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: It's a primal fear realized.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: It really is. So you scream, because of course you do.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: But the figure doesn't attack. They just turn and bolt.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: They run out of your bedroom, out the front door,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: and just vanish into the night, without making a single sound,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: not even a word, not a single word. So you
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: get up, your heart is obviously pounding. You check the door,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: the locks aren't broken. You check your valuables like, nothing
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: is missing.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Okay, so it's not a robbery, right.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: But when you walk into the kitchen, the intruder has
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: left exactly one bizarre item sitting right on the counteriam
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: sized jar of kosher dill pickles.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: A jar of pickles, which I mean that completely defies
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: any conventional logic of a home invasion. It's almost absurd.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: It is absurd, and well it sets the stage for
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: the mission of today's deep dive. We are looking into
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: the baffling and honestly still unsolved murder of nineteen year
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: old Rachel Hansen in Gilbert, Arizona.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: It's such a frustrating case to dig into, it.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Really is, and to untangle this web. We're drawing from
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: a very frustrating stack of sources today. We have a
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: heavily redacted three hundred and thirty eight page police file,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: the meticulous investigative notes from a private investigator, and these
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: really harrowing first hand accounts from the victim's own family, right.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Because we really want to understand how a crime scene
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: can make absolutely no physical sense exactly, and you know,
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: we really need to emphasize why that first break in
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: is so important. That terrifying incident with the pickle jar
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: wasn't just a random, weird occurrence. It really appears to
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: have been a rehearsal.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Wait, how so like a practice run?
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: Yes, because the very next night, June fourth, again, at
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: two in the morning, an intruder returns to Rachel's apartment,
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: but this time they aren't standing quietly in the dark.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Oh god, Yeah, they violently kick in Rachel's bedroom door,
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: raise a handgun and shoot her.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: It's just so awful it is.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: Rachel somehow manages to find her phone, drag herself to
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: the bathroom, and call nine one one. She actually tells
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: the dispatcher she's been shot.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: She made the call herself.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: She did, and first responders arrive within five minutes, but
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: the internal damage is just too severe. She dies in
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: surgery about three hours later.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this because literally nothing about the physical
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: evidence adds up here. Yeah, the police response is baffling
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: to the point of being infuriating, and the source material
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: lays out three wildly different theories about who actually pulled
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: the trigger. It's a lot to sort through, it is,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: But before we even get to the suspect list, I
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: really want to talk about the impossible physics of this
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: crime scene.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the physical environment of unit three one three three
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: is central to the mystery. Police arrive. The apartment is
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: incredibly stark. Rachel had literally just moved back in, so
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: it's basically empty. Just a mattress, right, just a mattress.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: A box spring, and this overpowering stench of marijuana baked
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: into the cargets from the previous tenant. But you know,
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: the truly baffling detail isn't inside the four walls of
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: the apartment, it's the environment surrounding it.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Right, We need to talk about the acoustics in this
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: building exactly.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: These apartment walls were famously paper thin, like tenants reported
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: that you could hear televisions and just normal indoor voice conversations.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Through them, just totally thin dry wall.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Right now, factor in the sequence of events. On the
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: night of the murder, an intruder enters the apartment. They
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: kick Rachel's bedroom door so hard it leaves a partial
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: shoe print, wow, and it busts the door entirely off
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: its hinges. Following that massive impact, they fire.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: A handgun, and then neighbors right across the hall, who,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: by the way, were wide awake because they had just
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: gotten home from late night bowling around one point zero
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: or two am. They told investigators they heard absolutely nothing.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: Nothing at all. No gunshot, no splintering wood, no hurried
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: footsteps running down the hallway.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's like living as a soundproof vacuum. Where
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: violence happens but makes absolutely no noise. It really is,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: And let's break down the mechanics of that, because it
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: drives me crazy. Even if we assume the killer used
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: a silencer on the gun, which suppresses airborne noise to
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: some degree, you cannot silence the physical impact of a
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: door being violently kicked in.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: No, absolutely not, because.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Impact noise travels differently than airborne noise. Right, A heavy
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: boot hitting a wooden door frame sends shock waves through
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: the structural joists of the building. You literally feel that
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: kind of noise in your floorboards as much as you
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: hear it.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: You do.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: So, how is it physically possible that nobody registered a thing?
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: This raises an important question, right, It implies a deeply
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: unsettling lever of precision. We were dealing with an intruder
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: who was either impossibly lucky or someone who knew exactly
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: how to navigate the blind spots of that specific building.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: And there were a lot of blind spots.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: So many, And that forces us to look at the
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: illusion of security at this complex. It was heavily marketed
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: to residents as a safe gated community.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: Oh the security theater. I love this concept.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: It is entirely psychological total theater. When investigators pressed the
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: leasing office, management flat out admitted that none of the
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: complexes security cameras actually recorded anything.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Wait, really, none of them.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: None of them. They were just empty plastic domes on
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: the ceiling. Furthermore, the electronic gates were frequently broken or
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: just left wide open. Anyone could walk right off the
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: street and into the hallways.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: So if the killer knew the building was functionally wide open,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: maybe they also felt confident they knew exactly who was
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: inside the apartment.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: That's a very logical jump.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: And that geographical confidence leads directly into the first major
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: theory presented in the files the subletter.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: Right. To understand how this theory developed, we have to
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: look at Reade's living situation. Over the prior six months,
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: Rachel had landed what she considered her absolute dream job working.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: At a horse ranch, a total horse girl.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was a position that came with on
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: site housing. But since she didn't want to lose her
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: Gilbert apartment, she arranged an off the book sublet to
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: a woman we only know from the files as America,
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: and off the.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: Book sublets always create massive blind spots. For six months,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: the neighbors had front row seats to what the strongly
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: suspected was an active drug operation.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: Oh absolutely.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: They reported random people coming and going at all hours,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: loud arguments, and like you mentioned, the smell of weed
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: was so potent that Rachel had to deep clean the
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: carpets when she finally took the apartment back.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: And the timeline of taking the apartment back is what
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: really fuels this theory. Rachel only evicted America because she
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: lost that dream ranch job and suddenly needed a place
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: to live. Right, it was very abrupt, everything moved very fast.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Rachel officially moved her belongings back into unit three one
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: thirty three on June second. She was murdered in that
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: exact same unit on.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: June fourth, just forty eight hours later.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Right, So, the prevailing initial theory is a classic case
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: of mistaken identity.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: That makes sense on the surface.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: It does. The idea is that the killer was actually
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: targeting America, maybe over a drug debt or a cartel dispute,
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: and had no idea she had been evicted just two
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: days prior. They broke into the apartment expecting to find
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: a drug dealer and found Rachel instead.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: Wait, I have to push back on this logic though, Okay,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: go ahead. If this was just geographical mistaken identity, what
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: about the intruder from the first.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: Night the pickle jar incident.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the one who stood over her bed and left
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: the pickles. Wouldn't that person have looked down, realized it
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: was Rachel in the bed, and known America was gone.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: Well, that is the single biggest hole in the mistaken identity.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Theory, right. If you break into a dark apartment looking
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: to settle a violent drug debt and you realize the
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: completely wrong person is sleeping there, you leave, You don't
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: come back, You definitely don't. You certainly don't return the
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: very next night, kick down an interior door and start shooting.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah. When we analyze the psychology of drug related hits
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: or robberies, they're usually swift and transactional.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: The timeline of two consecutive break ins severely weakens the
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: mistake and identity angle. That first intrusion on June third
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: allowed the perpetrator to verify exactly who was in the bed.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: They saw her face, they did so.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: Returning the second night to commit a murder implies a
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: specific targeted intent if it wasn't a geographical mistake. It
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: had to be a personal target.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: And if the target was personal, we really have to
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: look at the people in Rachel's orbit, and to do
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: that we have to understand what she had just lost
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: in the weeks prior to her death. Yeah, you know,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: her dream job and with it, her sanctuary.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: We really need to contextualize Rachel's psychological state here. She
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: wasn't just a typical nineteen year old trying to figure
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: out a career path. She has survived a genuinely horrific
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: early childhood.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: The family refers to this as the dark years, right, Yes.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: They do. The files detail how she was abandoned by
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: her birth mother. She was left in the care of
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: a cocaine dealer who tragically died in their home while
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: she was at kindergarten.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: Which is just heartbreaking.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: It's awful. She was eventually adopted by the Hanson family
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: at age six, but the trauma left her with reactive
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: attachment disorder or RAD.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: And for anyone listening who might be unfamiliar, how does
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: RID actually manifest Well.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: RID fundamentally alters how a child forms bonds. It stems
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: from severe early neglect, making it incredibly difficult for the
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: person to feel safe, trust others or just regulate.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: Their emotions, like their nervous system is totally hijacked exactly.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: Their brain is essentially stuck in a constant threat response loop.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: But she found a way to bypass that trauma response
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: through horses. Like we said, she was a dedicated horse girl.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: Yes, completely devoted.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Equin therapy is actually incredibly effective for trauma survivors because
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: horses mirror human emotions without any of the judgment or
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: complexity of human relationships. She loved it so much she
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: literally turned down a full college scholarship to take this job,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: living and working at a horse ranch in Queen Creek.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: The ranch was her grounding mechanism, but in May of
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, that environment turned completely toxic. The ranch owners,
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: Liz and Amanda began heavily pressuring Rachel. They insisted she
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: ride a young, untrained horse before it was really.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: Ready, which is so dangerous it is.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: Rachel expressed that she was terrified, but she felt she
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: had to do it to keep her housing and her job,
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: and predictably, the horse immediately threw her and.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: The tension just escalated from there. Didn't it rapidly. Rachel
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: was blamed for ten thousand dollars in damage to a
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: horse trailer. Ultimately, a major horse sale fell through and
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: the owners fired her. And I mean for a teenager
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: with reactive attachment disorder, this isn't just losing a paycheck.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: No, not at all.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: It is the complete collapse of her identity and her
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: safe space.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: Which triggered an immediate, severe mental health crisis. Rachel actually
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: drove to Sedona with a handgun, threatening self harm. Law
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: enforcement intervened and she was institutionalized for a short psychiatric hold.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: But while she's sitting in a treatment center, just trying
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: to stabilize, she gets hit with another blow. She finds
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: out these ranch owners are refusing to return her personal
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: horse dash.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: They literally held the horse hostage.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: Yes, they were holding the animal for a five thousand
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: dollars ransom, claiming she owed them for vet care and feed.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is how the public reacted when you
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: lay out those facts. It is so easy to see
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: why internet sleuths immediately latched onto this theory.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: Well, they went wild, they did.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: You have disgruntled former employers, a bitter falling out, a
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: mental health crisis and a literal, five thousand dollars extortion
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: plot over a beloved animal. It reads like the plot
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: of a thriller.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: It totally does, and the public ran with it, just
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: relentlessly harassing the ranch owners online, accusing them of hiring
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: someone to take Rachel out.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: But when we apply critical investigative thinking, the narrative falls
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: apart rapidly. How so, well, when Rachel was in crisis
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: in Sedona, the people who actually dialed nine one one
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: to get her life saving help were the ranch owners.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: Oh wow?
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Furthermore, from a strict law enforcement standpoint, police cleared
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: both women very quickly based on rock solid alibis for
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: the night of the murder.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? If the threat wasn't
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: coming from the drug dealing subletters past, and it wasn't
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: coming from the dramatic fallout at the horse Ranch, we
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: have to look at the only other source of massive
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: chaos in Rachel's life right before she died.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: And this introduces a figure who was actively aggressively sabotaging
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: her personal life, someone terrifyingly close to home.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about the fiance's father, Gary Bailey. Rachel was
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: engaged to a young man named j T and his
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: dad Gary Well. The files note that his own church
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: community literally dubbed him Scary.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: Gary, which tells you a lot. The psychological profile the
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: private investigator built on Gary is alarming. He was highly controlling,
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: particularly regarding his son JT. But something shifted right, Yes,
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: a massive behavioral shift happened recently when Gary's wife Aba
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: caught him having sexual affairs with his male employees.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: And she didn't just suspect it, like she caught it
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: on audio recordings she secretly made from his work truck.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: Exactly when Ava confronted him with the evidence and asked
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: for a divorce, Gary's personality fractured. The control he exerted
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: over his family evaporated, and he became erratic, angry, and
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: just aggressively vindictive.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: And he aimed a disproportionate amount of that vitriol right
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: at Rachel.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: He really did.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: The timeline of his aggression is critical. Here. On April
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: twenty seventh, so just a little over a month before
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: the murder, things reached a boiling point. Rachel was exhausted
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: by the family drama and gave JT an ultimatum regarding
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: his father's toxic.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: Behavior and how did JT respond.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: JT responded by threatening suicide and then completely stopped answering
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: his phone, so Rachel panics completely.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: She drives over to Gary's house to find JT and
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: make sure he is safe. When she arrives, Gary is
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: just sitting in his car in the driveway. Rachel begs
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: him to call JT. Gary refuses, flatly, telling her that
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: he doesn't take his own son's suicide threats seriously, which.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: Is so cold, and Rachel is so desperate she actually
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: blocks the driveway with her car to stop Gary from
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: leaving until they find JT.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: And Gary's response is purely violent.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: He throws his car in reverse, rams directly into Rachel's car,
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: gets out, and physically tries to drag her out of
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: the driver's seat. When she fights him off, he drives
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: his car over the front lawn just to escape.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: And the escalation doesn't stop there. Later that same day,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Gary sends Rachel a text message that is fully documented
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: by police. It reads, and I quote if I ever
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: see you in my house again, I will shoot you
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: in the head.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: I mean that is a documented written death threat.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: It is, which is.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: Why the events of June third, rolling into June fourth,
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: are so suspicious. JT is actually with Rachel inside her
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: apartment on the night of the murder, But at midnight,
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: JT he leaves.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Wait, he leaves the apartment just two hours before a
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: gunman kicks down the door. Why did he leave?
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: Because he received a phone call from his father, Gary,
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: telling him to come home immediately.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: You're kidding, No, And.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: The only reason investigators even know about this call is
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: because Gary later stood up in front of his church
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: congregation and bragged about it.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: He claimed the Holy Spirit spoke to him, telling him
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: to make that call, and that divine revelation saved his
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: son's life.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Oh how incredibly convenient the Holy Spirit tells you to
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: pull your son out of an apartment exactly two hours
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: before a targeted hit takes place.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: It's highly suspicious, extremely and I know.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: The PI notes mentioned that witnesses from that same church
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: claimed Gary had a history of bragging about knowing how
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: to hire untraceable hitman to make his problems disappear.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: Right, the implication being that Gary hired a professional to
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: eliminate Rachel. He viewed her as a threat to the
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: control he had over his son, and he made that
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: midnight call to ensure JT was safely out of the crossfire.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: But okay, here's where my brain just breaks on this theory.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: Okay, lay it out.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: If Gary hired a slick, untraceable professional hit man, why
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: would a professional bring a medium sized jar of kosher
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: dill pickles on a trial run the night before? It
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: makes no sense, right, And why would a seasoned killer
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: clumsily kick down an interior bedroom door the next night,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: leaving a partial shoeprint. None of that sounds like a
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: clean professional hit. That sounds incredibly chaotic. It sounds like
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: a total amateur.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: It's a massive behavioral contradiction. The physical evidence, the pickle, jar,
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: the kick door, the shoe print points to someone inexperienced,
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: operating on raw emotion, panic, or perhaps under the influence.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: Yet the execution of the crime, the lack of witnesses,
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: the evasion of security cameras, the complete disappearance into the
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: night points to someone highly capable and methodical. It's a
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: total paradox.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: And it's exactly the kind of paradox a rigorous, well
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: funded police investigation is designed to solve, isn't it you
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: would hope so, which brings us to the most frustrating
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: part of this entire deep dive. The system completely and
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: utterly failed Rachel Hansen.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: The systemic failures documented in these files are staggering. Let's
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: start with the immediate aftermath at the hospital. Rachel dies
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: after making the nine to one one call herself. Her parents,
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: who live barely thirty minutes away from the hospital, are
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: not notified of her shooting until five hours after she
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: passes away.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: That is just unacceptable. Imagine you are Rachel's family. You
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: find out your daughter has been murdered five hours, too
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: late to even say goodbye.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: It's a nightmare.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: And when you finally try to get answers from the police,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: they hand over a three hundred and thirty eight page
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: case file, but it is so heavily redacted it's essentially
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: a void.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: The redaction process is often a huge point of friction
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: in these cases. Under freedom of information laws, police departments
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: can claim exemptions for ongoing investigations. This legally allows them
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: to take a black marker to almost anything witness names, timelines,
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: forensic results, rendering the file functionally useless to the family
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: or outside investigators.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: But the most egregious failure isn't the paperwork. It's Gary Bailey. Yes,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: the man who sent Rachel a documented text message threatening
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: to shoot her in the head. The man who suspiciously
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: called his son away from the crime scene two hours
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: before the murder. He was never brought in for questioning. Never,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: not Once Rachel's mother actually confronted the chief of police
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: face to face about this. She demanded to know why
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: the prime suspect hadn't been interrogated, and the chief's response was,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: we left him a voicemail. We can't force somebody to talk.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: Just unbelievable.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: I'm not a lawyer, but isn't that literally what a
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: subpoena is for. How can a police chief just throw
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: his hands up over an unreturned voicemail and a murder investigation.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: It speaks to a profound lack of investigative pressure. When
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: law enforcement decides a case is too complex or lacks
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: immediate slam dunk evidence, apathy can set in very quickly,
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: and that apathy clearly extended to the physical crime scene itself,
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: which leads us.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Back to the most surreal detail of this entire case.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: The phantom pickles.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the phantom pickles. When police finally cleared the crime
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: scene and released the apartment back to the family, Rachel's mother, Kim,
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: went in to collect her daughter's belongings. Right, and sitting
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: right there on the kitchen counter untouched was the jar
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: of pickles from the first break in.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: Kim assumed the police had obviously dusted it for fingerprints, right.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, it was literally the only thing the intruder
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: left behind in a practically empty apartment.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: It's the most obvious piece of evidence.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: It's like trying to solve a puzzle and throwing away
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: the only edge piece you have. So assuming they had
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: processed it, Kim took the jar home. It sat in
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: her garage for a while until she eventually just threw
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: it out.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: But when she later asked investigators if they ever pulled
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: any viable prints off the glass, the police looked at
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: her blankly. They said, what pickle jar?
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Wait, they completely missed it.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: They claimed they never saw it and it was never
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: logged into evidence.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: They completely missed it. And we know for a fact
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: they missed it because the private and investigator combed through
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: hours of blurred police bodycam footage from the scene at
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: the very end of one video, as an officer is
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: walking through the kitchen scanning the counter as you can
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: actually hear him mutter under his breath, no pickles.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, it is
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: a chilling reminder of how real life differs from true
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: crime fiction. Yea, cases don't always go cold because there's
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: a brilliant criminal mastermind pulling the strings and outsmarting the detectives.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: They go cold because of human error and systemic apathy. Exactly,
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: they go cold because of missed microclues, a partial shoeprint
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: left on a door that isn't matched to a suspect,
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: or a grocery item bizarrely out of place that gets
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: left behind. They go cold because the system fails to
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: apply basic legal pressure to obvious persons of interest.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: It is absolutely maddening. You know, put yourself in the
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: shoes of Rachel's parents. Rachel overcame a genuinely horrific childhood
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: to build a life. She loved. She was fiercely independent,
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: She loved her She was actively trying to build a
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: future despite the trauma she carried.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: She was really trying.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: She was and it was all snatched away in a
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: crime scene that defies basic logic. Now, the only people
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: championing her case are her family and a pro bono
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: private investigator, Justin Yentis, who is fighting tooth and nail
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: just to get unredacted files.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: As we look at the totality of these sources, I
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: want to leave you with a lingering thought about the
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: world we live in today. Think about the concept of
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: digital and physical footprints. Okay, we live in a modern era,
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: completely saturated with ring cameras on every porch, cell phone
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: powers pinging our locations every second, digital communications tracking our thoughts,
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: and you know, paper thin apartment walls where neighbors hear everything.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: We are constantly told by society that everything we do
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: leaves a trace.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: We're told it's impossible to disappear.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: Exactly, so, how does an armed intruder walk into a
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: modern apartment building, violently kick down a door with enough
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: force to splinter the frame, fire a hand, and then
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: vanished entirely into thin air without a single neighbor hearing
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: a sound or a single camera catching their face.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: It's terrifying.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: Perhaps the terrifying truth isn't that this killer was an
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: untraceable brilliant mastermind. Perhaps the truth is that we are
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: far less surveiled and our environments are far less protected
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: than modern society leads us to believe.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: That is a terrifying thought to sit with, and it's
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: exactly why you need to keep thinking critically about the
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: media and the narratives surrounding these unsolved mysteries. It's so
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: easy to get caught up in the wild cinematic theories
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: that cartel hitmen, the dramatic ranch owners, the bizarre clues.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: But behind every heavily redacted police file there is a
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: real life like Rachel's, just waiting for an answer, And
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: sometimes that answer is hiding behind a door no one
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: bothered to knock on, or a jar left sitting on
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: a counter. We'll leave it there for today. Take care,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: and we'll catch you on the next deep dive.