Okay, Brett, remember how growing up on Nancy Drew made us think that like every investigation had an answer? Yeah, like if you just followed the clues long enough, everything would start to make sense. Except for that's not real life. The more we've gone down the rabbit hole, the longer we've been crime junkies, we know that that's not always the case. Sometimes all we're left with is the unknown. And I love a mystery, especially one with theories to explore.
So of course, you know I'm obsessed with everything supernatural. I'm so obsessed. You used to host a show about it. Yeah, and I don't host anymore. I have passed the baton, but I still listen to that show every week. So Supernatural every week dives into real stories about unexplained phenomena, unknowns everywhere, and there are tons of theories to examine. Which honestly makes it the perfect podcast to
Stringboard night with your bestie. Yeah, so if you love exploring the unknown just as much as I do, then you're gonna love So Supernatural just as much as we do, too. You can and should listen to So Supernatural wherever you get your podcast. Hi, Crime Junkies. 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 a book by Gavin de Becker, but the message is right there.
Some call it a sixth sense. You might even call it full body chills, depending on when 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 nineteen-year-old Rachel Hansen from sleep one June night in 2022.
the adrenaline coursing through her spite 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 A.m., 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 three hundred and thirty-eight page police file that the Gilbert Police Department released in twenty twenty four, 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 Hansen.
When the person who shot Rachel Hansen fled her apartment around 2 a.m. on June 4th, 2022, she was still alive. Rachel was bleeding from her abdomen and her upper back where the bullet had entered and exited, but she could still move, 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 five 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 three 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 Hansen, and she said that no one came to notify the family until 7 a.m., 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 him. 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.
Now, 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 in sight, just her box spring and mattress. I mean 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 like reeks of marijuana.
And as officers began canvassing neighbors, they learned that this smell had been there for like 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 too, 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 apartments. Papers and walls. 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 they 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 the 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 like 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 weirder still is that even with the door kicked in, apparently the neighbors were
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 one thirty or two o'clock in the morning. They're like Fully awake 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 stuff I mentioned, but like no hurried footsteps, no, no running away, nothing. No argument. 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 ship. The leasing office told investigators that there were no operational
cameras anywhere in the complex. And when Nicole went to the complex, now mind you, 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 learn from the ring camera footage is redacted.
Some of the only information that is not says that a camera caught Rachel on June third, like five hours before the shooting. So it'd have been like 915 PM. 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 dressed in 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. When police knock on Rachel's parents' door, her dad Todd answers. Her mom, Kim, was actually in Indiana visiting grandchildren.
But officers figure out that the guy with long hair, that is probably Rachel's fiancé, Jomette Bailey. And they learn 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 hasn't been there. 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? Dad wasn't sure in the moment. It wasn't someone that she was like super close to. So it takes a minute to track that down, which is fine, because first things first, detectives want to talk to fiancé Jo 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 Jo Met right in after they talked to Todd. So this would have been like 8 a.m. on the fourth.
And she's certain of it. And 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 Jomet didn't respond to a request for comment. But either way, in this interview, which lasts about four hours, Jomet is super distraught, 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 cameras. Yeah, we can't, I assume police did because they end up clearing him after what Kim described as like weak. And Kim and Todd are on the same page as police. Like they're not suspicious of Jamette.
Well, Kim told Nicole that they didn't have an ounce of doubt that Jomette was innocent. I mean, day one, when like you know, they were fresh in like the throes of things, Todd did sit him down and was basically like look. Look me in the eyes, tell me the truth, man to man, did you kill my daughter? And apparently Jomette 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 Matt really well since he'd proposed to Rachel earlier that year. Like they just couldn't see him doing something like this. And Kim says that Jomet 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 Hansons for a good portion of that time. Did he and Rachel live together? No, they didn't, 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. Every true crime story has one thing in common.
Nothing is as it seems. And no podcast knows that better than Chameleon. I'm Josh Dean, and my podcast Chameleon explores hidden identities concealed by con artists and scams so mind blowing It'll have you questioning everything you know. If you're ready to uncover the biggest lies in history, listen to Chameleon wherever you get your podcasts. So Thursday, June 1st is the first day that Rachel gets access back to her apartment in like the last six months.
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 gonna 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 Jomette. 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 subletter. Someone who had a key came in. And then when they saw that she was someone else. They realize their mistake and just like booked it. So she's like chalking this whole thing up to like a misunderstanding. But here's a weird little fact I cannot let go of. 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 count. Okay, I didn't know what I thought you were going to say, but Jar of Pickles was like very, very far down on the list. It's it's so odd. I mean it's so weird that Rachel pointed it out to her mom and Joe Mette. And I mean the benignness 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 eat pickles. Anyway.
That night when she texts Joe Met, they decide that like at a minimum, they need to change the locks, right? Like cause even if this person didn't do anything, who knows how many other people might have keys, 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 our 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 Jomette are at the apartment together. And by the time Jomette 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's like, 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. So 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 locked.
So if she fell back asleep, uh, 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 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 P. D. to try and get some clarity, they said that they, quote, continue to actively investigate Rachel's case, end 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 Pady declares Rachel's case inactive.
That's right about the same time that the Hansens start 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 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 Met's 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 subletter theory. Now I'm starting with the subletter theory because if you're looking at this case from the outside, it seems the most obvious. So let's rewind to 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 thirty minutes away in Queen Creek, Arizona. And Rachel had been working with horses her entire life. Like this job would allow her to live in this little casita on the ranch with the horses literally right outside her window. Plus she could bring her own horse, Dash with her. Like 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 work 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 book. 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 guesses, like I said before. They believed that there were drug sales happening out of the unit. But again, Rachel knew none of this. So it's not like she kicked America out because of everything going on, or because she was afraid she was.
in trouble or gonna get in trouble or anything. No, she ended up kicking 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 kinda quick. America leaving, Rachel coming back.
And this is the basis for the subletter 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 two days prior. So in this theory, 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 night.
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 if they weren't the same person that the first intruder would have
come forward though, like and said, like, hey, like this happened, it wasn't me the second night. Not necessarily. I mean, like as 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 this 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 gonna 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 note 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 gonna 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 gonna go all the way back to Rachel's childhood. Specifically, a period of time that Kim refers to as the dark years. Every true crime story has one thing in common. Nothing is as it seems. And no podcast knows that better than Chameleon. I'm Josh Dean, and my podcast Chameleon explores hidden identities concealed by con artists and scams so mind blowing
It'll have you questioning everything you know. If you're ready to uncover the biggest lies in history, listen to Chameleon wherever you get your podcasts. 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 a hundred 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 deal. 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 gonna go to the store for some milk and then 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 blank. 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 Hansen 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. And Rachel ended up being diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder, which meant that like forming I'm sure you know this, forming healthy relationships with caregivers was like incredibly hard for her. And for a while, nothing seemed to break through. Until Rachel herself suggested something unexpected.
Oh, like equine therapy. Exactly. Like six year old Rachel likely didn't know that equine therapy was a thing. Right. But like Kim says she was just drawn to horses. Like she would ask to be around them constantly. So I mean Kim's like, why not? Yeah. 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. Horse girl. As as a horse girl, I'm sure you know. And listen, this passion stuck with her through middle school and high school. She ended up graduating early at just sixteen. She earned a full scholarship to Northern Arizona University.
And all the while in her free time she was still riding, still caring for, 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. College side hustle. No. So Rachel never ended up actually like going to college. She enrolled, she made the arrangements, right? She got that full scholarship.
But she was going to begin her freshman year and then like a week before moving, Kim says that Rachel had this like 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 a 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 Creek, 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 Kruggen, they didn't respond to us on advice of their attorney and they wouldn't speak to Kim and Todd's PI either.
But our reporter, Nicole, was able to reach their attorney. So what I'm gonna 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 gonna guess is with Amanda, like I only guessed this because her name was left unredacted one time. Like I don't know if that was a mistake, but in this interview, it says, quote, Rachel was not keeping up with the agreement regarding training the horses. End 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 riding, 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 to be able to ride it. Like It's like a process. Yeah. Yeah. Like it it takes a while before someone can get on a horse and like get on a horse and it be safe. Mm-hmm.
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 thirty 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. End 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 horses at 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 so this is right around May 24th, 2022. 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 twenty-seventh, so 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 to 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 Jomette 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, feeds, stuff like that.
The owners basically gave Rachel's dad Todd their attorney's number and is 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 Joe Met, moving back to her apartment now that she had nowhere 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 intruder. And then after that we get the shooting. So I guess what's the theory? The owners. Targeted Rachel? Basically. And this this is what I'm saying, like it it's it's far fetched in my mind. Well yeah, especially when they were the ones
to call 911 about Rachel's like mental health incident. 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 to 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. I mean, are these women dangerous? Like I
I guess I'm like missing the jump here. So like from what we found, like they both have criminal records, but like mostly for driving infractions, nothing violent. Okay. 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 kinda 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. 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? And I think they would even want that. Yeah, and with the files being so redacted, it's just keeping Blizz and Amanda under public suspicion. Exactly.
Did the Hansons ever get dash back? I don't wanna like force the hole too hard. Yeah, no, they did. So Liz and Amanda's attorney said that the fee was paid and that the Hansons were able to get dash back, I think it was like a month after Rachel was killed. So this brings me to my third theory, the Gary Bailey theory, aka Jomet's dad. What? Every true crime story has one thing in common.
Nothing is as it seems. And no podcast knows that better than Chameleon. I'm Josh Dean, and my podcast Chameleon explores hidden identities concealed by con artists and scams so mind blowing It'll have you questioning everything you know. If you're ready to uncover the biggest lies in history, listen to Chameleon wherever you get your podcast.
Remember how I said Rachel and Jomette 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. Jomet was extremely close with his dad. And Nicole actually spoke with Jomet's mom, Ava, for this episode. And she said that Jomet didn't have many friends because he and Gary would just like do everything together, like to the point where Ava actually felt bad for her other son.
Now, things were fine at first when Rachel and Joe Mette got together, but their relationship progressed pretty fast. Like eight months after they met, they got engaged. And the closer Rachel and Jo 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 Jomette, 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, something 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 riding around his truck. So if something was going down, she knew this is where she would catch wind of it. Girl got more than just wind. 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. Literally, you can have everything. I just want the kid. But freakin' 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 like 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's 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 a Scary Gary and like avoiding him at all cost. 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.
Dude, you're the only one who looks bad in this video. Scary 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 Hansons 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, Jomette 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. On April 27th, 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 like fed up with Gary inserting himself into her relationship with Jomet. So according to Ava, Rachel texted Jomet an ultimatum. It is either your dad or it's me. The conversation spiraled. Jomette messaged back that he was tired of life and that he was experiencing suicidal thoughts, so Rachel panicked, tried calling him, but he like wasn't answering. wasn't even answering for his mom either, so Rachel drove to Gary's house to see if Jomette 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 Met was going to answer the phone for anyone, it was dad. It was his dad, right. But she asked Gary to call him and Gary's like, no, he refused. Why? Gary's like, well, I, you know, I don't like basically he said he didn't take the suicide threat seriously.
But like Rachel still was. So she blocked the driveway with the car she was driving, refused to let Gary leave 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 uh gave up and drove away right over the front lawn. Now, when this happened, Rachel called police, and then shortly after they arrived, Jomette was found. He's safe.
But Rachel understandably is like totally shaken up. 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 Jumette saying about all this? What 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. But what I do know from his mom, Ava, 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 declines, 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 Ava's to stay the night with Jomet. And Ava 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 first. June 1st, yes. And Ava said the next day, June 2nd. Pickle intruder. Yes. That day, one of her daughters told Gary about the rekindling, that they're like back together. Oh. 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. And he's there till 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. Mm-hmm. Wait, wait, like, why is he telling 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. Yeah. 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 gonna love this phrase, give testimony, and he allegedly said of the night before, quote. I called Jomet to come home because the Holy Spirit told me so, and it saved his life. End quote. So
So he called Jomet home because he had some kind of r revelation? That's what Jennifer's saying, yeah. I I still don't understand the reason for the call though. Like did he just say come home? And Jomette is just so loyal to his dad still that he leaves, no questions asked? Or was it something like, I know something bad's gonna happen, get home, and then Jo Met just left his fiance to fend for herself?
Like and if that's it, like this would have been after an intruder had been there the night before you changed the locks. Right, like when she's already scared and like Maybe need 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.
Listen, the more conversations people at church had with Gary, the more suspicious they became of him. We haven't been able to corroborate this, but Jennifer said that many of the women in her ward called the police to report him acting strangely. So then 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 Ava, 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've left a phone message, they've 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, we reached out to him in all these different ways, and Gary has never responded to us. And we tried phone, mail, text, Nicole even stopped by his church in Gilbert, but we have not been able to make contact with him either.
If you have nothing to hide, why not clear your name? Especially because according to Ava, 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 Ava 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 Hitman.
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 is 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 come in? All I can put together is that maybe the first night was like.
A trial run or like a super inexperienced hitman. Like one that would use a silencer but then kick down a door. Yeah, like maybe I mean maybe the first one wasn't even like a hitman at all. Maybe the first one was someone Gary knew. Then like they go in, they realize they're not a hitman. Yeah, Rachel wakes up and they're like, Yep, yeah, in over my skis. But also brought pit calls. Dude, the pickles. 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 and Kim's like it's a medium sized standard jar of pickles. Kosher Dill, 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, uh this weird thing happened and also they left pickles. Yeah, here's this 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 open the door and the pickle jar is just like Sitting right there on the counter.
Kim and Todd at the time assumed that they must have like at least like fingerprinted it or something because like by then they'd told police the story of the person who came in the night before and left the pickles. Mm-hmm. So they're assuming police, you know Did the bare minimum. Yeah, did did their job. Right, like fingerprinted 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 they said, What pickle jar? You've 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 reporter Nicole combed through everything that we have from Gilbert PD: files, blurred body cam footage, and there are no mention of pickles at all. Except God bless this tenacious 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've got it here for you to see. Oh, watch the blood on the floor. Very empty. Guess when the store was closed. Alright. That's kinda weird. No weird thing to ask for. No pickles. No pickles. Now, here's the tricky part. I don't know the date of this video, and 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, speaking of other identifiable things, when the shooter kicked in Rachel's bedroom door, they left a pretty clear partial shoe print.
Like did police do anything with that? That means they left the door there sounding like they took it. So I don't know. And listen, this is my call out to all the sneaker heads. Like, come out and tell me if you recognize this pattern on the door. But you can see like all of this it 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 PI doesn't know what Gilbert P. D is up to, if 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. It's 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. We're actually gonna 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 four eight zero five zero three six five zero zero. Or if you prefer to remain anonymous, you can reach out to Silent Witness four eight zero nine four eight six three seven seven. 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 Crime Junkie Podcast. 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 work, I couldn't not pick this good story. I think you're gonna love it. Hello, Crime Junkie team. I have a bit of a story incoming, 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 Prophet 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 mean is that do I swear more? Ever since the Crime Junky 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'm in awe of something that you guys manage 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, case solving help they led to, all thanks to a determined and powerful woman who will not stop digging, has been leaving me awestruck for years now.
I am one of the lucky few people who already found a field they love, and I'm in college on my way to becoming a university professor, which has been my dream for a long time. But I find myself always thinking that, were it not for that, I would want to be just like Nina. A few other crime junkies said the same when I talked 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 starry eyed crime junkie. Has Nina seen this? I don't think so. Oh my god. I have to t I have to tell her. There is like it's so true. Like the I I was just telling someone last night, I was like, if you I'm sure people who've been with us are 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 we now we have whereas Nina was, she was our OG. Like boots on the ground. Yeah. Yeah. We've got like fifteen Nina's now. Yeah.
Yeah. Like Nicole. Like all the other people. Taylor and Taylor and everybody else. So um We got a great team, you guys. Yeah. I just love that. Always looking for more great people too. Audiochuck.com. Join the Nina I'm gonna do a audiochuck.com slash join the Nina effect. Ha ha ha. Crime Junkie is an Audio Chuck production. I think Chuck would approve. Hi everyone, Ashley Flowers here. If you're like me, diving into true crime is about more than just the details of a case.
It is also about giving a voice to the victims and understanding the lives behind the headlines. And this is what host Kylie Lowe does each week on her podcast, Dark Downy. Every Thursday, Kylie dives into New England's most gripping mystery. Uncovering stories in a way you won't hear anywhere else.
And she digs through archives, connects with families, and shines a light on the voices that deserve to be heard. From cold cases to moments of long-awaited justice, Dark Down East is the perfect blend of investigations and honoring the stories behind them. You can find Dark Down East now, wherever you're listening.