Hi, I'm Jenkies. I'm your host Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. Listen, you guys, if you have been with us long enough, you've probably heard me talk about the gift of fear. That is the title of the book by Gavin DeBecker.
But the message is right there. Some call it a sixth sense. You might even call it full-body chills, depending on what it strikes you. But there is something intuitive in us that if we trust can tell us that we are in trouble. Now, it's not always an alarm.
Sometimes it's this quiet feeling warning you of someone's presence telling you that you're not alone. And that is the very feeling that woke up 19-year-old Rachel Hanson from sleep, one June night in 2022. The adrenaline coursing through her spiked when she opened her eyes to find someone standing over her bed staring at her. Rachel let out a scream and that sent the person running out of her room, then out of her apartment completely without ever uttering a word. And that should have been the worst thing that happened to Rachel in that Gilbert, Arizona apartment.
But it wasn't because the very next night when Rachel was asleep in bed, just after 2 AM, a dark figure entered her bedroom again, held up a gun, and shot her in the abdomen before fleeing. Was that first break-in unrelated? Or was it a warning? A bad omen of what was to come. To this day, no suspects have been named.
And if you read the heavily redacted 338-page-police file that the Gilbert Police Department released in 2024, you will learn a whole lot of nothing. But to leave it at that, it's not exactly the crime junkie nature. So our team did some investigating. Join us as we unravel the mystery of who killed Rachel Hanson.
When the person who shot Rachel Hanson fled her apartment around 2 AM on June 4, 2022, she was still alive. Rachel was bleeding from her abdomen in her upper back where the bullet had entered and exited. Rachel still moved, so she grabbed her phone and rushed to the apartment bathroom where she called 911. Rachel knows that she's in bad condition, so she wastes no time when the call connects. I've been shot, she tells them.
Someone broke in and shot me. In about 5 minutes, first responders are there at the scene, and they start working on her there before rushing her to the hospital. But the bullet that went through her just did too much damage, and after 3 hours in surgery, doctors couldn't save her. But here's the tragedy on top of the tragedy. When Rachel went to the hospital, and while she was in surgery, her family had no idea.
Our reporter Nicole Kagan spoke to Rachel's mom, Kim Hanson, and she said that no one came to notify the family until 7 AM after Rachel had died. No one called them when Rachel was found, or when she was in surgery at the hospital, which still bothers Kim to this day, knowing that her daughter was there all alone. But that is far from the only thing that bothers her. There would be plenty more heartbreak and disappointment coming, she just didn't know it yet. Because like so many people who never have to live the true crime story, when this all unfolded, Kim was under the impression that the criminal justice system worked, that all detectives knew how to do their jobs and that they did them well.
Well, that bubble would burst in a hard way, which brings me back to the crime scene. As far as scenes go, Rachel's was simple to process. According to the police file, aside from the blood on her mattress and in her bathroom and the bullet and shell casing, nothing seemed out of place. In fact, there was barely any furniture at all inside, just her box spring and mattress. The only thing really notable about the state of the apartment that I can tell from the police file is the smell, because apparently it reeks of marijuana.
And as officers began canvassing neighbors, they learned that this smell had been there for the last six months. And over that time, there were random people coming and going from the unit and loud arguments. And those who lived around unit 3133 assumed that drugs were being sold out of there and that the young woman who lived there clearly had a bad relationship with her boyfriend, which they would have gotten a front row to because when Nicole went to this apartment complex, not only are the units pretty close together, but like just walking the hallway, she could clearly hear people talking and watching TV inside their apartment. Hey, Risenwald. Yeah, but here's what's so strange.
On the night, Rachel died. They heard nothing. How? I mean, even if you were sleeping. I mean, I feel like you would hear a gunshot.
Like, that would totally wake you up, which, yeah, I mean, could have used a silencer on the gun? So that was my first thought, right? But I don't know if this killer was being mindful of noise because while there were no signs of forced entry to Rachel's front door, we actually know from pictures of the apartment that Kim took after it was cleared by police that someone kicked a crap out of Rachel's bedroom door. And this is one of those details that just like doesn't compute for me. Like, even if Rachel's bedroom door was locked, you can see from the picture, I don't know if you had those like in your old apartments where it's like you can like use a nail to like turn it.
So why go through the trouble of like kicking it in and making all that noise? And what's even we're still is that even with the door kicked in, apparently the neighbors still heard nothing. Like, I personally spoke to the neighbor who lived right across from Rachel and they said that they weren't even sleeping when this happened. They had just gotten back from bowling at like 1.30 or 2 o'clock in the morning. They're like fully away when the shot would have been fired, which means they would have been awake when the door was kicked in, if it happened then too.
And they were awake when Rachel would have called 911 and awake when police were showing up to the apartment and like talking to the people who are now across the hall. How did they hear nothing? Not just like the subject, like no hurried footsteps, no running away, nothing. No arguing. Yeah, they didn't see anything either.
And a shady person lingering I think would have stood out because despite whatever was going on for six months in unit 3133, this was a nice and safe area like a gated community in fact. Does it have any cameras then? Oh, it does. But kind of like the gatedness of this community, it feels like it was a little all for show. The leasing office told investigators that there were no operational cameras anywhere in the complex.
And when Nicole went to the complex, now I do, this is like three plus years post homicide, but every time she went down to check the gate, it's just like wide open, cool. But building security aside, one of Rachel's neighbors did have a working ring camera. And this is the first frustrating roadblock in the highly redacted records that we got. Nearly all of what they learned from the ring camera footage is redacted. Some of the only information that is not says that a camera caught Rachel on June 3rd, like five hours before the shooting, so it'd have been like 9.15 p.m.
And she was with a long-haired man walking to the east on the first floor hall. Now she lived on the third floor, so this might have been when she like first gets there. Then a different investigator wrote in another report that at 9.33, quote, the two are seen walking away from her apartment and that Rachel is dressing what looks like a swimsuit. Now, when they come back, what other cameras they might have been seen on, I don't know, all redacted. But listen, we don't need to spiral and speculate too much, at least about who this long-haired man was, because once police finally do notify Rachel's family of her death, again, five hours after she was shot, they figure that out pretty quickly.
And police knock on Rachel's parents' door. Her dad taught answers. Her mom, Kim, was actually an Indiana visiting grandchildren. But officers figure out that the guy with long hair, that is probably Rachel's fiancee, Joe Met Bailey. And they learned something else critical.
Rachel had just moved back into that apartment. June 2nd was her very first night staying there. So she's not who everyone thought was selling drugs and fighting with her boyfriend. She has been there. No, no, no.
And that's also why the apartment was so empty. Her dad tells police that the apartment was in Rachel's name for a long time, but she had been like off the book, subletting it for the last six months. To who? She was in the moment. It wasn't someone that she was super close to, so it takes a minute to track that down, which is fine, because first things first, detectives want to talk to fiancee Joe Met.
Now the police report says that they bring Joe Met in the next day, which would have been Sunday, June 5th. But Rachel's mom told us that that's wrong, that they brought Joe Met right in after they talked to Todd. So this would have been like 8 a.m. on the 4th. And she's certain of it.
We tried to ask police to verify this, but a spokesperson for the department said that they could not provide clarifying information citing an active investigation, and Joe Met didn't respond to requests for comment. But either way, in this interview, which lasts about four hours, Joe Met is super- just dropped. But he readily admits to being with Rachel that night. He says that he stayed with her at the apartment until around midnight when he went home. And of course, we can't corroborate that, because we don't know what else was on the ring camera.
Yes, we can't. I assume police did, because they end up clearing him after what Kim described as like weeks of merciless interrogation. And Kim and Todd are on the same page as police, like they're not suspicious of Joe Met. Well, Kim told Nicole that they didn't have an ounce of doubt that Joe Met was innocent. I mean, day one, when like, you know, they were fresh and like the throes of things, Todd did sit him down and was basically like, look, look, me and the eyes, tell me the truth, man to man, did you kill my daughter?
And apparently Joe Met looks right at him. And without even wavering says no, I would never do that. And they believe him. Kim and Todd had gotten to know Joe Met really well since he proposed to Rachel earlier that year. Like they just couldn't see him doing something like this.
And Kim says that Joe Met was absolutely destroyed in the wake of Rachel's death. And for like six months afterwards, he couldn't eat. He had this like tremendous guilt. He couldn't hold down a job. And he actually lived with the handsons for a good portion of that time.
Did he and Rachel lived together? No, they did. But he did stay with her a lot. And actually between him and Kim, they're actually able to give police one of the most interesting leads in this whole case. Because they both knew about the intruder who'd come into Rachel's room and stood over her the night before she was killed.
Wait, did police not know about that right away? Well, no, because after it happened, Rachel didn't call the police about it. What? Yeah, so let me just tell you like the whole story that got pieced together because it is really strange. When the holiday shopping season rolls around, business owners are reminded of how rewarding and demanding it can be to run an online store.
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Now she had no idea what had been going on there while she was gone. So she was pretty shocked to find the place a mess, like super dirty and the smell of marijuana was so strong, like replaced the carpet strong. So she knew that before she began moving any of her stuff back in, she was going to need to do like a really deep clean of this place. So that's what she spent Thursday doing. She literally had next to nothing in the place, just her box spring and her mattress.
I mean, there wasn't even food in the kitchen. So that first night, she ends up staying with Jomet. She comes back the next day, does like more cleaning. And that second day is the first night she's like staying in her place. And that was the opening of this story.
She is just woken up by this feeling of someone there watching her in her room. But when she wakes up, the person runs. And afterward, Rachel didn't want to be alone. So she texts Jomet and asked him to come over. I don't get why she didn't want to call the police.
Because I don't think she actually believed that she was in danger. So her door had been locked. So for this person to get in, they had to have had a key. And because they didn't actually do anything, she kind of figured that it was someone who was maybe connected to her sublet or someone who had a key came in. And then when they saw that she was someone else, they realized they're mistaken.
Just like booked it. So she's like chocking this whole thing up to like a misunderstanding. But here's a weird little fact. I cannot like go up. This person didn't do anything, didn't take anything, not much to take, but they did leave something behind a jar of pickles, like sitting right there on the kitchen counter.
OK, I just know what I thought you were going to say. But jar of pickles was like very, very far down on the list. It's so odd. I mean, it's so weird that Rachel pointed out to her mom and Jomet. And I mean, the benign kiss of this is probably part of what made her think that this wasn't some like knife-wielding maniac and just like a friend coming to see the wrong person.
With a jar of pickles. Anyways, that night when she texts Jomet, they decide that like at a minimum, they need to change the locks, right? Because even if this person didn't do anything, who knows how many other people might have cheese, right? So Jomet grabbed this spare deadbolt from his dad's house and installed it on her door that night situation handled. Wait, then how would an intruder be able to get into apartment the next night?
This is the part of the story that makes you just want to like reach back into the past. And like if we could change one thing, maybe everything would be different. So this night, Friday, June 3rd, we know her and Jomet are at the apartment together. And by the time Jomet leaves around midnight, Rachel was asleep. Now according to what he told Kim and his own mom who we talked to as well, Jomet woke Rachel up and he said, listen, I have to go, but when I leave, I need you to get up and lock the door behind me.
And it was like a deadbolt. You had to physically turn and lock the door. And Rachel agreed. But then when Jomet left, he said he didn't hear the door lock. So he actually went back inside and told Rachel again, like listen, you have to get up and lock the door behind me.
Are you going to get up? And she said yes. And so he left. But apparently he never heard the door lock. So if she fell back asleep, someone didn't even need a key.
They could have just walked right in. Yeah. But they wouldn't have known that. So this person was either planning on using an old key, which wouldn't have worked or breaking in. Yeah, I mean, I guess so.
And listen, like, I don't know what it means. Everything I just told you is about the extent of what you can learn from the police report. There are a lot of little snippets of information, but with all the redactions, it's almost impossible to piece together anything coherent. And when we reached out to Gilbert PD to try and get some clarity, they said that they, quote, continue to actively investigate Rachel's case and quote, but that was about it. And by the way, this isn't just like all we have to work with.
This is all that Rachel's own family has to work with. I mean, for the first two years, Kim was meeting with detectives every four months or so, but she rarely learned anything new. And she believed that investigators were working on her daughter's case because that's what they kept telling her they were doing. And she doesn't know how this works, right? Like she has to trust them.
But a lot of trust is lost by the winter of 2024 when Gilbert PD declares Rachel's case inactive. And that's right about the same time that the Hanson started working with a private investigator named Justin Yentes. He said that he kind of went into the meeting with them more to just like listen, see how he could advise them. But after a learning Rachel's story, Justin knew that he needed to help. So he took on the case pro bono and has been working it ever since.
And after talking with him and Rachel's mom and Joe Metz mom and others, it is safe to say that there is way more bubbling under the surface of this case than the police report would lead you to believe. Specifically, these conversations that we had revealed three investigative theories. None of them are perfect. They all have holes. But each also has the potential to be the answer as to what happened to Rachel and why.
But to understand each of them, we almost need to work backwards from the shooting and take them one by one, starting with the sub letter theory. Now, I'm starting with the sub letter theory because if you're looking at this case from the outside, it seems the most obvious. So let's remind you a year before the shooting, June 2021. That is when Rachel moved out of her childhood home and rented that one bedroom apartment at the Redstone at Santan Village complex in Gilbert. She was there for about six months when she got her dream job.
Basically, she was offered to live and work at a horse ranch less than 30 minutes away in clean, Creek, Arizona. And Rachel had been working with horses her entire life. Like this job would allow her to live in this little casino on the ranch with the horses literally right outside her window plus she could bring her own horse dash with her. But she just could not pass this up. But that meant that she had to find someone to sublet her apartment and like pretty quick.
So she posted an ad on Facebook marketplace and through that she connected with a woman named America and they basically just like worked out this deal. So they didn't know each other before this. According to Kim, no, Rachel and America only met like once or twice and then America moved in. And remember Rachel didn't quite go through the proper channels at her apartment complex to get permission to sublease. It was very like off the books, which her parents say they were not supportive of both of them tried to talk Rachel out of this arrangement.
But she assured them that she and America had met everything would be fine. So for six months, Rachel and America had a strictly business relationship. Rachel had no idea what she was up to at the apartment, but Rachel's neighbors had their guests. It's like I said before, they believed that there were drug sales happening out of the unit, but again, Rachel knew none of that. So it's not like she came to America out because of everything going on or because she was afraid she was in trouble or going to get in trouble or anything.
No, she ended up taking America out because she got fired from her job at the ranch. And so without her ranch job, she didn't have a place to live. Exactly, which meant that she had to tell America that she needed to like get out of the apartment ASAP. So everything moved kind of quick. America leaving, Rachel coming back.
And this is the basis for the subletor theory, which is that Rachel was the unintended target that whoever shot her was actually targeting America and didn't know that she had moved out to his prior. So in this area, are the intruder and the shooter the same person in this theory, that wouldn't really make sense for them to be the same person because the intruder would have realized that Rachel wasn't America on that first right. But I mean, we know from neighbors that like people would come and go from there. So like even if they weren't the same person, it doesn't mean that they weren't both there for America, if that makes sense. Yeah, but don't you think it's a weren't the same person that the first intruder would have come forward though?
Like inside like, Hey, like this happened. It wasn't me the second night necessarily. I mean, like a sad as it sounds, if that person's not the shooter, they could be afraid of being pinned as the perpetrator or like maybe they were there to buy drugs and they don't want to put themselves on police's radar for that, especially if and this is just a theory, but they especially don't want to be associated with anything drug related happening out of there. If there's any chance the shooter could have been targeting America for a related reason. Can you tell if police ever looked into the theory?
We think so based on what Kim told Nicole, like she said that early on in the investigation, police took Rachel's devices. So they had access to everybody she had talked to and they told Kim that they were bringing in people for questioning every day as they went through Rachel's contacts and got warrants for her social media accounts, including Facebook, which Kim knows is how Rachel met America. Now, from what I can make out reading between the redactions, it looks like at least one individual who was involved in drug sales while America was living in Rachel's apartment was questioned. But that seemingly went nowhere. In fact, all we and Rachel's family know about America is her first name.
We don't even know what she looked like. I was just going to ask if she and Rachel like resembled each other at all. No idea. Justin the PI said that he's actively working to connect with America, but he wouldn't give us any more information about how. So at least in his eyes, this theory is still very much like on the table.
I feel like it seems so unlikely that two different people would enter the same apartment two nights in a row. I know. I know. And so it's more likely to be the same person. And if it's the same person, it can't be mistaken identity, which brings me to theory number two, the horse ranch theory.
Now, I want to know this is one of the theories that the public really ran with after Rachel's death, but to be like super upfront with everyone at this point, I think it's the least likely for reasons we'll get into. But I am going to lay it out because the context around it is really important in terms of understanding Rachel's mental state at the time of her death. So let me rewind to before the shooting in June, 2022, before Rachel ever even moved out of her childhood home in June, 2021, we're going to go all the way back to Rachel's childhood, specifically a period of time that Kim refers to as the dark years. The night sky may look endless, but its secrets could be closer than we think because in this universe, you're never truly alone.
I'm Yvette Gentile. And I'm her sister, Rasha Pecarero. Every Friday on So Supernatural, we investigate alien encounters, haunting tales of the unknown and cosmic mysteries that defy explanation. We need to discover what's out there. Listen to So Supernatural, wherever you get your podcast.
Kim and Todd brought Rachel into their family in February of 2009 when she was just six years old. They were experienced foster parents active in the system for about 18 years, and there were about 100 kids that passed through their home. Now, in 2009, they weren't actively looking to take in any more kids, so it was a surprise when Rachel's caseworker reached out. But it quickly became clear that this wasn't just like a routine call, this was a last resort, because Rachel was in a really bad situation, and she needed a new home like right then. You see, Rachel's bio mom had her while she was in rehab, and when she got out, she and Rachel went to live with a man that Rachel assumed was her father or grandfather.
But Kim says that this guy was actually an unrelated cocaine dealer. Now Rachel remembered very little from this time of her life, but she told Kim that one night her birth mom said that she was going to go to the store for some milk and that she just never came back. And from then on, it was just Rachel and this older guy. And it is like during this time that people seem to know nothing about these are the dark years, like even Rachel couldn't or wouldn't fill in the blanks, but she was little. All Kim knows is that one day Rachel came home from kindergarten to find the man that she lived with dead on the floor of the apartment, apparently an accident, and then five-year-old Rachel was promptly taken into a child crisis center in Phoenix and then placed into a foster home with a couple who promised that they would adopt her.
But six months later, they changed their minds. So that is when Rachel's caseworker called Kim. Now, when Rachel got to the Hanson house, she fit in perfectly. I mean, there were nine other little boys and girls and Rachel like fell right in the middle, which meant that there were always like other kids to play with. Plus she loved her new school, but the trauma from those dark years was like impossible to ignore.
Kim was being diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder, which meant that forming a healthy relationship with caregivers was incredibly hard for her. And for a while, nothing seemed to break through until Rachel herself suggested something unexpected. Horses. Oh, like equine therapy. Exactly.
Like six-year-old Rachel likely didn't know that equine therapy was a thing. Like Kim said she was just drawn to horses. She would ask to be around them constantly. So I mean, Kim was like, why not? And from the moment that they got Rachel, her first horse, there was like no going back.
She fell head over heels in love with being a horse owner and it helped her build confidence and just like blossom as a young girl. Of course you're all. And listen, this passion stuck with her through middle school and high school. She ended up graduating early at just 16. She earned a full scholarship to Northern Arizona University.
And all the while in her free time, she was still riding, still caring for her, still working with horses, first her own, and then she was being hired by others to care for theirs. And after graduating from high school, she decided to make these gigs official by like starting her own business with it. Like a college side hustle. No. So Rachel never ended up actually like going to college.
She enrolled. She made the arrangements right. She got the full scholarship. But she was going to begin her freshman year and then like a week before move in, Kim said that Rachel had this panic attack. Like being that far from home suddenly felt super overwhelming to her.
So instead of going to college, Rachel told her mom that she was ready to start her life now. Like she'd get her own place, focus on her business. Like if she wanted to degree, like she could go back and do that later. But I mean, it's also pretty rare to like know what you want to do that young. So when Rachel got the offer to live and work at the horse ranch in Queen Crete, clearly she couldn't turn it down.
This was her dream job and it only took her 30 minutes away from home. So how did things go sideways? It sounds like it happened gradually. So the owners of the ranch, Liz, Robinson and Amanda Krugan, they didn't respond to us on advice of their attorney and they wouldn't speak to Kim and Todd's PI either. Our reporter, Nicole was able to reach their attorney.
So when I'm an outline is everything I know from Nicole's conversation with their attorney, her conversation with Kim and then the little we can glean from the police file. So it sounds like things at the ranch started out great. I mean, Rachel got the impression that the owners didn't necessarily know a whole lot about horses. But like she didn't mind like, this is her job. She loved to work and she was getting paid to do it.
Like this was amazing. But then things started going wrong. In an interview in the police file, which I'm going to guess is with Amanda. Like I only guess this because her name was left unreacted one time. Like I don't think I was in the state.
But in this interview, it says quote, Rachel was not keeping up with the agreement regarding training the horses and quote, what was the agreement? Nicole asked him and she gave us this example. So there was a young horse that Rachel was training for writing. And if you know anything about horses, you know that you can't just like hop on one once it's big enough and expect people to write like like a process. Yeah, long thing.
Yeah, like it takes a while before someone can get on a horse and like get on a horse and be safe. But Kim says that apparently the owners felt like Rachel was moving too slowly. They wanted her to get on this horse like ASAP. Now Rachel told her mom that she knew the horse wasn't ready, but she was afraid that if she refused, she would get in trouble. So she got on the horse and within like 30 seconds, the horse threw her off.
Now she wasn't injured, but that moment created a trust fracture basically between Rachel and the owners. And it feels like things just went downhill from there. Like there was this one time that Rachel quote caused approximately $10,000 worth of damage to a horse trailer and quote, there was another time that Rachel needed surgery on her finger after being kicked by a horse, which led to a disagreement with the owners about when she could safely return to work. But the final straw came in May of 2022. So Rachel had helped broker a sale like one of the horse that the ranch in exchange for three other horses, but only one horse arrived.
And so because this deal fell apart, layered on top of everything else, the owners fired Rachel. And this took a huge toll on Rachel's mental health. There's actually an incident outlined in the police report that says on May 27, this is three days later, Rachel took her handgun and drove up to Sedona. And she called the ranch owners, told them she was thinking about suicide. Thankfully they called 911 and police were able to get her before she did anything.
And they convinced her to check herself into Verde Valley Medical Center for treatment. And I want to add that it wasn't just the job that was weighing on Rachel. She and Jill met were having relationship troubles too. And to make everything worse, the day after Rachel was admitted for treatment, she learned that the owners of the ranch were refusing to return her horse dash until they received $5,000 that Rachel allegedly owed them for services rendered to Dash while she was living on the property, like things like vet care, feed, stuff like that. The owners basically gave Rachel's dad Todd their attorney's number and it's like, listen, work it out with him.
So hearing that her horse was essentially being held for ransom, Rachel decided she needed to like get out of this treatment center ASAP. Like she had to sort everything out, Dash's return, her relationship with Jill met, moving back to her apartment now that she had no where to live. So on June 1st, we're now like, right here, this is the first day she's back. She checks out. As we know, the next day we get the pickle and treat her.
And then after that we get the shooting. So I guess what's the theory that the owners targeted Rachel? And this other thing, it's far fetched in my mind. Yeah, especially when they were the ones to call 911 about Rachel's mental health incidents. I know, but for some reason, this is the one theory that got like a ton of traction online.
And even in the news, Liz and Amanda's attorney said that everybody was taking a Facebook and like dragging his clients names through the mud, accusing them of Rachel's murder. People started leaving them harassing messages and like calling investigators about them. Are these women dangerous? I guess I'm like missing the jump here. So like from what we found, they both have criminal records, but like mostly for driving infractions, nothing violent.
And Kim said that Rachel never felt like she was in danger at the ranch. It was actually Amanda and Liz who gave Rachel the handgun that she took to Sedona. They gave it to her for protection like earlier on. But because there was so much negativity swirling around the ranch owners with Dash and the job, everyone I think just kind of jumped to this conclusion. Now Liz and Amanda's attorney said that they both spoke to investigators within the first few days of the murder and they were cleared based on alibis.
And he also said that he thought the police files were over redacted, which I couldn't say. But in his case, if Liz and Amanda really were cleared right away, then I would think that there are lines that could actually like prove their innocence. Like in the file, like why wouldn't we? I think they would even want that. Because the files being so redacted, it's just keeping Liz and Amanda under public suspicion.
Exactly. Did the handsons ever get dashed back? I don't know like, of course not too high. Yeah, no they did. So Liz and Amanda's attorney said that the fee was paid and that the handsons were able to get dashed back by the ones like a month after Rachel was killed.
So this brings me to my third theory, the Gary Bailey theory, a.k.a. Joe Met's dad. What? The night's kind of look endless, but its secrets could be closer than we think. Because in this universe, you're never truly alone.
I'm Yvette Gen Dilei. And I'm her sister, Rasha Pecarero. Every Friday on So Supernatural, we investigate alien encounters, haunting tales of the unknown and cosmic mysteries that defy explanation. Ready to discover what's out there? Listen to So Supernatural, wherever you get your podcasts.
Remember how I said Rachel and Joe Met were having relationship trouble around the time she was fired? Yeah. Well, a lot of that tension centered around Gary, his dad. By all accounts, he and Rachel did not get along. Joe Met was extremely close with his dad.
And Nicole actually spoke with Joe Met's mom, Ava, for this episode. And she said that Joe Met didn't have many friends because he and Gary would just do everything together. But to the point where Ava actually felt bad for her other son. Now, things were fine at first when Rachel and Joe Met got together. But their relationship progressed pretty fast, like eight months after they met they got engaged.
And the closer Rachel and Joe Met got, the more Gary had someone to compete for Joe Met's attention. And Rachel told her mom Kim that she felt like Gary was disturbed by the possibility of losing Joe Met. So he intentionally would try to cause conflict between them. And to make everything worse, right around the time Rachel and Joe Met were getting really serious, Ava filed for divorce from Gary. And that she'd been wanting to do for a long time.
And may I take you on a quick side quest? You never have to ask for permission, but of course. So Ava told us back in 2015, she had been suspicious Gary was cheating on her. So she put a recording device in his work truck every day for a month. He ran a landscaping business, spent a lot of time writing around his truck.
So if something was going down, she knew this is where she would catch window. Girl got more than just went. She got recordings of Gary on tape cheating on her with the men he employed. What? Yeah.
So she went to Gary with these recordings being like, I know what you've been doing. I want a divorce. Really, you can have everything. I just want the kids. But freaking Gary, he's like, oh, that's not me cheating.
I knew you were recording. So I staged all of this. I'm sorry. I know. We tried every possible way to reach Gary for this episode, but he never got back to us.
But I know from Ava that in response to her request for a divorce, Gary apparently said that he wanted to take Ava to court over it. So not wanting to lose her kids. Ava promised herself that she would stay with Gary until all the kids were adults, which brings us to September 2021. Ava was ready to end it. And she texted her Bishop to let him know.
But what she didn't know is that when she texted her Bishop, she made a group chat with Bishop and Gary. That's like constantly my worst nightmare. And when Gary received that text, dude lost it. Apparently he had this major personality shift and he started acting really strangely. Him and Ava started sleeping in different rooms and Ava said that she heard that Gary was badmouthing her all over town and at church.
Nicole actually spoke to one of these church members, her name is Jennifer Simmons. And she said that Gary's whole temperament changed so much like he was just angry all the time and constantly ranting that they started referring to him as scary Gary and like avoiding him at all costs. And things just escalated from there. In November 2021, there was this one day where Gary recorded himself barging into an apartment that Ava was staying at, saying like awful things about how she was cheating on him and that he was there to catch her having sex. Mind you, Ava was like fully clothed watching TV in her bedroom.
And she called the police after this. But not before Gary sent the video to their entire family and like people from church. A video of her watching TV. Yeah. Yeah.
You're the only one who looks bad in this video. Gary Gary. I know. So after this incident, that's when Ava got an order of protection against him. Then in December, there was an instance where the handsons actually had to kick Gary out of their home because of the way he was speaking about Ava at their dinner table.
That was like the first and only time that he was ever in their house. And right after that, Joe Matt proposed to Rachel, which apparently just like sent Gary off even more. He started conflating the two women in his head. Ava said that he started calling Ava Rachel and Rachel Ava. And according to what Kim said happened next, it sounds like things might have finally come to a head.
In April 27, 2022, this is like just over a month before Rachel would be murdered. Everything boiled over. So Rachel was at a point where she was fed up with Gary inserting himself into her relationship with Joe Matt. So according to Ava, Rachel texted Joe Matt and ultimatum, it is either your dad or it's me. The conversation spiraled.
Joe Matt messaged back that he was tired of life and that he was experiencing suicidal thoughts. So Rachel panicked, tried calling him, but he wasn't answering. He wasn't even answering for his mom either. So Rachel drove to Gary's house to see if Joe Matt was there. He wasn't, but Gary was.
He was actually in his car in the driveway. And at this point Rachel might have actually been happy to see him because she knew if Joe Matt was going to answer the phone for anyone, it was his dad. Right. But she asked Gary to call him and Gary's like, no, he refused. Why?
Gary's like, well, you know, I don't, like basically he said he didn't take this seriously. But like Rachel still was. So she blocked the driveway with the car she was driving refused to like Gary Lee until he would call his son. And what happens next happened fast. Gary put his car in reverse, backed into the car that Rachel was in, tried and failed to pull her out of it.
And then a gave up and drove away right over the front line. Now when this happened, Rachel called police and then shortly after they arrived, Joe Matt was found he's safe. But Rachel understandably is like totally shaken. Yeah. According to the police report, officers found her crying in front of Gary's house and she recounted the whole confrontation to them, including another chilling detail.
She said that day Gary sent her a text that read, if I ever see you in my house again, I will shoot you in the head. And she said that he had been threatening her for a while. Now no charges were filed after this. And then Rachel was killed. And what is Joe Matt saying about all this?
Like, who's side is he taking? He seemed to have been torn down the middle. Like I said, he never got back to us for this episode. What I do know from his mom, Eva, is that he and Rachel's relationship got so rocky after this that they actually called off their engagement. And then as you know, Rachel gets fired, her mental health declined.
She spends some time in that facility. But her first night out, remember, she goes to clean her apartment. But then rather than staying there or going to her parents, she actually went to Eva's to stay the night with Joe Matt. And Eva said they basically just like, she calls it like hitting the reset button. They talked everything out and got to a really good place.
So that's June 1st. Soon first. Yes. And Eva said the next day, June 2nd, pickle and trigger. Yes.
That day, one of her daughters told Gary about the rekindle. Like that they're like back together and Gary is pissed. Then there is a part of June 3rd that I haven't told you yet. So the night of the shooting, Joe Matt is with Rachel, right? Yeah.
He's there to like midnight. Well, here's the interesting part. He wasn't planning to leave. He was actually sleeping shortly before he left. The only reason he left was because he got a call from his dad telling him to come home.
Wait, wait, wait, like, why is he telling him to come home in the middle of the night on the same night that Rachel got murdered? There is no explanation in the police records that you could see. But we found one somewhere else. So remember that woman, Jennifer, who went to church with Gary? The woman who gave us the scary Gary moniker.
Thank you, Jennifer. So she said that Gary told the whole congregation why he called on the morning of June 5th at church. Apparently, scary Gary showed up to church by himself, went up to the pulpit to, you're going to love this phrase, give testimony. And he allegedly said of the night before, quote, I called Joe Matt to come home because the Holy Spirit told me so and it saved his life, end quote. So so he called Joe Matt home because he had some kind of revelation?
That's what Jennifer said. I still don't understand the reason for the call though. Like, did he just say, come home? And Joe Matt is just so loyal to his dad's bill that he leaves, no questions asked? Or was it something like, I know it's like, that's going to happen, get home and then Joe Matt just left his fiance to fend for herself.
Like, in fact, it doesn't have been after an intruder had been there the night before. He just changed a lot. When she's already scared and like, maybe he needs someone there. Also, if it's really the Holy Spirit speaking to Gary, why didn't he mention anything about Rachel? Literally Jennifer said that she asked him that and he said, I only received revelation about my son, not her.
Yeah. Okay. So that means the police looked into him. I mean, he's actually mentioned on the second page of the police chronology report from the night of Rachel's death, which in the timeline is before Rachel even had been pronounced dead. An officer noted the death threats from Gary that Rachel had reported weeks before.
But get this according to Kim and Eva to this day, Gary has never been brought in for questioning. Now, Nicole asked like how they knew this and Kim said that she had asked the chief of police face to face why Gary was never interviewed. And he said, because we can't force somebody to talk. Have they tried? Kim said that the police told her that they left a phone message.
They tried to follow him. They've reached out in all these like different ways and he's just never responded much like, by the way, reached out to him. All these different ways and Gary has never responded to us. And we tried phone mail, text, and it will even stop by his church in Gilbert. But we have not been able to make contact with him either.
I mean, if you have nothing to hide, why not clear your name? Especially because according to Eva, Gary couldn't have been the one to pull the trigger. What do you mean? So she told us that Gary was home with their daughter the night of the shooting. All night, I don't know, but like, that's what Eva told us.
And listen, I don't think she has a reason to want to give this guy an alibi. So I don't think she's covering for him. In fact, basically in the same breath, she was saying he couldn't have pulled the trigger, but she was also telling us that Gary had a history of talking about hit men. And Jennifer from his church backs this up too. They both told us that he would go around basically telling people that if you ever want to like off someone, the best thing to do would be to hire someone who was really hard to track and like the case would just be impossible to solve.
Cool, cool. So let me just play this out for a sec. If Gary hired someone to kill Rachel, where does the intruder the night before coming? I can put together is that maybe the first night was like a trial run or like a super inexperienced hit men like one that would use a silencer, but then pick down a door. Yeah, like maybe maybe the first one wasn't even like a hit man at all.
Maybe the first one was someone Gary knew then like they go in. They're like, they're not a hit man. Yeah, Rachel wakes up and they're like, Oh, yeah, in over my skis, but also brought pickles to the pick. I am obsessed with the pickles. I was trying to look up like, was this a symbol like what could this mean?
Like I even made Nicole find out exactly what kind of pickles like it's a medium sized standard dark pickles, kosher delt in case you're wondering. Got it. And it didn't look like they had been opened. Wait, so Kim saw the pickles herself. Oh my God, I have to tell you about this part.
So I think this encapsulates so well. Why, Kim, Rachel's mom has lost so much faith in the investigation and those leading it. So Kim knew about the pickle jar because after that person came into Rachel's apartment, the first night, she's like, Hey, mom, the weird thing happened. Also, they left pickles. Yeah, here's a super weird detail.
Well, Kim said in the days after the shooting, when her and Todd were told by police that they could finally go get Rachel's things from the apartment, they opened the door and the pickle jars just like sitting right there on the counter. Police didn't collect it. I mean, Kim and Todd at the time assumed that they must have like at least like fingerprinted it or something because like by then they told police the story of the person who came in the night before and left the pickles. So they're assuming police, you know, did the bare minimum of their job right like finger printed it to see what strange person was in her place. Right.
So Kim just like took it home along with Rachel's clothing, which by the way was also left behind. And the jar sat in her garage for a while until she ultimately decided that it was time to throw it away. But Kim has come to regret that now because she told Nicole that in one recent conversation with police, she asked them about the pickle jar and they looked right at her and he said, what pickle jar you got to be kidding me. Nope. They said that they never saw a pickle jar.
What do you mean never saw one? There was nothing else in the apartment. It was literally just her bed and pickles, which this started to make us feel like maybe we were losing our minds or like the whole pickle thing got conflated with something else over the years. Like maybe people are mistaken. Like we just couldn't make sense of it.
Why would you not take the one thing that might be evidence in an apartment where you have barely anything to work? Literally nothing. So our amazing report in Nicole called through everything that we have from Gilbert P.D. Files, blurred body cam footage and there are no mention of pickles at all. Except God bless the Stenatius little reporter.
There is one barely audible off-handed comment caught at the very end of one officer's police body cam as he's walking through Rachel's apartment. And I got it here for you to see. Watch the blood on the floor. Very empty. The door was closed.
Alright, what's going to work? Kind of weird thing to ask for. No pickles. No pickles. No pickles.
Now here's the tricky part. I don't know the date of this video. Gilbert P.D. wouldn't give us the date. But it must have been after the Hansons took the pickle jar home because Kim said that in the empty apartment it was like impossible to miss.
And yet we're here. Listen, I don't even know how important the pickle jar is to this investigation. But now we will never know. I mean at the very least it could have helped identify the first intruder. Yeah, and by the way he's become other identifiable things.
When the shooter kicked in Rachel's bedroom door they left a pretty clear partial chupret. Like did police do anything with that? That mean they left the door? There's not they took it. So I don't know.
It is my call out to all the sneaker heads like come out and tell me if you recognize this pattern on the door. You can see like all of this. Like this is what makes Kim worried that she'll never know who killed her daughter. Kim said Gilbert police told her that they have exhausted every lead. But even Justin the P.I. doesn't know what Gilbert P.D. is up to with anything.
And he is probably the closest with the department of anyone that we spoke to. According to him, if this case is going to be solved, it's because someone courageous is going to come forward with information. Which is why Kim wanted us to share Rachel's story with crime junkies. Coming up on four years, Kim's greatest fear is that Rachel's story will be forgotten. This is actually why she created Rachel's rescue, which is a dog and puppy rescue in her daughter's memory to keep Rachel's story alive.
Wrecking a link out to it in the show notes if you're in Arizona and looking for a new furry family member. Kim wants people to keep talking about Rachel to know her case and most importantly to speak up if they know something, anything about her murder. So if you have even the smallest bit of information that could help move Rachel's case in the right direction, there are lots of ways to come forward. You can reach out to the Gilbert police department at 480-503-6500. Or if you prefer to remain anonymous, you can reach out to Silent Witness 480-948-637-7.
The posted reward for information is now up to $20,000. And listen, if you feel more comfortable or have any trouble reaching out to Gilbert PD, you can reach out to Justin Yentes at Arizona Investigative Associates. He's at 602-252-2474. You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkie.com. And you can follow us on Instagram at CrimeJunkiePodcast.
We'll be back next week with a brand new episode. And stick around because we've got some good. Okay, Ashley, given how much of today's episode was built on one of our amazing reporter, Nicole's investigative word, I could not pick this good story. I think you're in love it. Hello, CrimeJunkie team.
I have a bit of a story coming, and this might classify better as fan mail, but I feel the need to share this with you. I've been listening to the podcast since the very early days. I remember when proper of the month and the good segments were introduced, and have never been able to press pause since then. Because of this, I have noticed the Nina effect. I don't know if I swear more.
Ever since the CrimeJunkie team expanded enough to be able to have reporters, making the calls and knocking on doors more than the production team could afford to in the early days. The production team. You. There has been a humongous shift in the amount and precision of information you guys are able to cover for each case. In my head, I call this the Nina effect.
Because every time I had asked something that you guys managed to find out, it is almost always preceded by the words, thanks to our reporter, Nina. Getting a bit personal, even though I now identify as non-binary, I was raised as a girl who always wanted to find out everything about everything. I loved writing and asking questions and was often discouraged from digging into things. Seeing the very real impact of Nina's work, both through the episodes and the real world, tastes all the help they led to, all thanks to a determined and powerful woman who will not stop digging, has been leading me awestruck for years now. I'm one of the lucky few people who already found a field they love, and I'm in college all my way to becoming a university professor, which has been my dream for a long time.
But I find myself always thinking that, not for that, I would want to be just like Nina. A few other crime junkies say the same when I talk to them about this. I just wanted to let you all know that aside from the wonderful stuff you do daily, and the insane amount of help you provided to so many over the years, you also inspire people who are halfway across the world to such a degree that sometimes they even question their chosen career track. Thank you, crime junkie team, and thank you Nina. Keep being yourselves and therefore awesome.
With love, a starring I did crime junkie. I didn't mean to see this. I don't think so. Oh my god, I just tell her. They're like, it's so true.
Like, I was just telling someone last night, I was like, if you, I'm sure people who've been with us, they're like, yeah, it's the same show. But if you listen to episode one, and now this is not the same show. No, no. And now we have, whereas Nina was, she was our OG. Like, we've got like 15 Nina's now.
Yeah. Like Nicole, and Taylor, and Taylor, and everybody else. So we got a great team, you guys. I just love it. I was looking for more great people too.
I'll just check on the new. I'll just check on the new. I'll just check on the new. I'll just check on the new. I'll just check on the new.
I'll just check on the new. I think Chuck would approve. When the nights grow longer, the shadows start to stir, and that can only mean one thing. Full Body Chills is back. The season, step inside, original tales, where every doorway leads somewhere darker, every stranger carries a secret, and nothing is ever quite what it seems.
Each story takes you somewhere new, but be careful. You never know what might follow you home. So gather round, listen close, and stream full Body Chills wherever you get your podcasts.