Case Files 09: Jesika Jones Part 4 with Detective Mike Weber

True Story Media. Hello, it's Andrea.
I hope everyone is enjoying their holidays. Shout out to my fellow school-age parents out there.
I hope you are surviving the madness. The Nobody Should Believe Me team has had our noses to the grindstone this week in order to bring you all eight episodes of season five on January 2nd.
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In the meantime, we have our final segment on the Jessica Jones case today. We're back on with our pal, Detective Mike Weber, who is going to walk us through what happened in court and the aftermath of this case.
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All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us again, mic.
So we are just rounding out our conversation today on the Jessica Jones case, which you walked us through in the first episode of this piece of the series. And then last time we spoke to Derek Jones, who is the father of the children in the case, or the father of a couple of the children in the case.
The sender ended up being a number of victims in this case, which was an interesting piece of it. So I thought we would just kind of pick up today with talking through, you know, Derek talked us through some of what happened in sort of the court proceedings.
But I wanted to get that from your perspective of, you know, how this sort of made its way through the system. You know, where we left off last time was March of 2023 when she had had her first bond violation.
So, can you kind of pick up the story there? Right. And the March 23, 2023 bond violation, it was technically a bond violation, but it was very bad.
I mean, she left, according to the boyfriend, after five minutes. I should have talked to the ex-wife then.
I would have gotten a lot more information of the new boyfriend, to be clear. But after that, things rocked along until March of 2024.
And in March of 2024, I didn't have to reach out to that boyfriend's ex-wife because she reached out to me. And she informed me that no, she's still living with him.
He didn't take your warning. I obviously warned him.
I told him in on her charges and everything. He chose to believe her and he left her around the kids.
And the ex-wife told me that she, Jessica Jones, was presenting nursing badges to schools when she went. She would go to the children's play.
She was always in contact with the kids. She was living with them at the house with the children.
And she had just recently found the article on her and freaked out. So was this case, when you said the article on her, was this case covered in like the Fort Worth Star-Telegram? Yes, her initial arrest was covered in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and maybe a couple other outlets.
But so she had seen the article, did the right thing as a parent and said, you're not going to be around my kids as long as that lady's in your house. She ended visitation against court orders.
but I told her, you know, if you need an attorney, if he files on you, have him contact me. I can testify this is the right thing to do.
And then I began working on a warrant for her arrest for bond violations. You know, I had a recorded interview with her.
She didn't have any communications, not a lot of communications with that about it. She had a couple.
Can we just back up for a second? Can you tell me, tell me about your conversation with the boyfriend in question? I mean, I'm trying to think about getting a call like that as a parent, I would be extremely alarmed. Like I would take that really seriously.

I mean, these are serious charges that she'd been arrested for.

And so at this point, she's awaiting trial.

Is that right?

That's correct.

And what she, in later conversations with that boyfriend in 2024, he believed her.

She told him that, oh, this is all just a big misunderstanding.

The charges are going to be dismissed. I'm going to get my kids back.
She had just basically lied to him about the whole thing. I believe she even told him that she was going up for a visitation to Fort Worth when she had no contact with these children.
And she was down near the Houston area, which is a good four, four and a half hour drive from Fort Worth. But that ex-wife also then said, oh, by the way, he has this new boyfriend has another baby mama and she's been around her kid.
And she's like, I think she may have text messages. Well, I contacted that lady and she not only had text messages, she had a picture of Jessica holding her child in a park.

Thankfully, it was only ever supervised.

She met him in a park.

She was there the whole time with them.

But she sent me text messages from Jessica.

She was still presenting her own children as sick in those text messages, sending photos of the victim in the hospital in those text messages, the four-year-old victim. I call her my main victim, the highest charge, the Benadryl poisoning that I was able to prove.
And she talked about wanting to be in the child's life, how she's going to have two moms. She was obviously trying to manipulate herself into the lives of these people to get access to their children.
Extremely familiar behavior for those who have ever dealt with pedophiles. This case really strikes me as being so similar to pedophilia behavior as far as grooming and trying to get in and trying to develop trust with adults to get access to their children.
And just really compulsive. Very compulsive.
Extremely compulsive. And, you know, a lot of that, I know Derek talks about, you know, no one had ever held her accountable for anything.
And I think that's another, I don't think she ever thought she was going to be held accountable for these actions at all. Okay.
So then in March of 2024, the mother of a couple of these children contacts you. Right.
And yeah, what happens next? So I get a warrant for her. Violating bond conditions is actually a criminal charge.
It's a misdemeanor, first time. So I get a warrant for her and I filed a warrant and I let the DA's office know, look, she's

violated.

She's around kids.

You know, this is, y'all need to take it seriously. And what was the DA's response? They let her bond out and they never filed a motion for a bond revocation hearing.
This sounds so frustrating and so baffling, even as much as my expectations for how the courts are going to handle these cases is in hell already.

But I mean, I am wondering, you know, from your perspective, obviously, you've been in crimes against children for a long time and you have a lot of experience with this. I mean, is this specific to these kind of offenders or is like, if you were looking at something like an abusive head trauma arrest or something like a child sex abuse arrest, in most cases, those are male perpetrators.
I mean, would you see this same kind of lackadaisical approach to sort of like, well, we're not that concerned that they're like out and about with other kids? Or is there a marked difference here? Oh, no, there's a marked difference here. And it's not just with criminal prosecutors.
It's also with CPS attorneys. You know, the CPS attorneys on this case, they gave dad managing conservatorship, didn't terminate rights and never called me.
Like I say all the time, we're fighting that perception of motherhood. And this abuse from an understanding perspective, especially for attorneys, is about where child sexual abuse was in the 60s.
They don't get it. And I understand not getting it.
The thing I have a problem with is when you have administrative people at a DA's office who are hostile to learning about this abuse and want only their, instead of believing experts, they believe their own opinion. And to me, that's completely unacceptable.
Yeah. I mean, these are, because these are the people that the community is trusting to make these decisions.
I mean, I think that's something that people, and certainly I did not have any awareness of it before I was in the true crime space and talking to you and talking to other folks about how the system works, like how much decision making power really lies within the office of the DA or prosecuting attorney, depending on which you have, that it really is just this sort of like thumbs up, thumbs down situation and that there doesn't have to be a good reason like that. I think that's the thing that, you know, it's it is hard to hold that office accountable.
I mean, you can hold that office accountable at the ballot box if you, in fact, are far enough down the rabbit hole to even know that this is happening.

Or if you're lucky enough to have some local media and, you know, to be fair, you do have have some local media in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that has consistently done some really great reporting on these cases. But I think it's a situation that people are not alarmed enough about because what I see is really, you know, the mechanisms that we have to hold offices like the DA or prosecuting attorney accountable are being decimated, have been in the process of being decimated for like the last 20 years, because that really is a function of local media, right? Your local television, radio, newspapers, and those have been going steadily out of business.
Well, they're all owned by like three or four media companies. Right.
You know, I mean, you don't have any interest in actual local reporting anymore. Yeah, absolutely.
And I think it's just, you know, that should be really, really alarming to people that there are no real watchdogs. And I'm in an interesting space in true crime podcasting that is actually kind of one of the functions that folks in my space have started to fill is just being able to hold.
Yes. You know, but it's too, because, you know, I think there is something really incredible about local news.
It seems to me this case, you know, there are cases where the medical complexity is such that you can understand why someone taking a sort of, who doesn't understand the context, taking a look at the case, would think, okay, this is a complicated medical case, right? I think it's impossible for me or you to see those cases that way because the patterns are so strong that it just looks so, we just kind of see it for what it is right away, but that's because we're really highly educated on these patterns of abuse. This is not one of those cases that seems complicated at all.
It's like this woman poisoned her child, like end of sentence. Like you don't need to understand anything about the psychopathology.
You don't need to understand the motivations. You don't need all like the context.
I mean, you have expert medical record review, but you don't even need that in this case. It's just like it showed up on a blood test.
She gave it and there was like Benadryl in her purse. It's so straightforward.
And she confessed. Yeah.
And she confessed. It's like it's so straightforward in a way that these cases often are not.
And it's really disheartening that even with all of that, the DA did not appear to be taking this seriously. And that was also reflected in what Derek told us about his conversations with the DA and that they were from the jump really preparing him for failure.
Like it sounded like, I mean, they were telling him that, you know, he should be prepared for her to like get probation. You know, you're talking about how CPS didn't terminate her rights and didn't make those kinds of moves.
I mean, that's so frustrating. And when Derek told me that they had, in the first meeting, tried to sell probation to him, I immediately contacted the attorney handling the case and his boss and said, this is not a probation case.
And I'd had issues with that attorney on a previous case of this abuse. When you're having those conversations, what's their justification for making this? Is it just like, oh, it's too hard to win in court? Or like, I mean, what even? I don't get a justification from them.
They don't feel the need to justify anything to law enforcement. And I want to keep it specific to this.
I'm going to be very clear that it's specific to this case and specific to the people that we dealt with. There are good people at that office who will try these cases if given the time to do it.
Another issue is you have these cases assigned to an attorney who's got 50, 60, 70 cases on his caseload. This one should have been a lot easier, right? But there's a lot to these cases.
And when you talk with Don Ferguson, when she prepared for the sheriff's case, she took three months to do it. And that's what these cases require.
And they should not be just with a regular court team. They have attorneys at that office that pick and choose their cases.
They have three or four of them. And that's where this should be because they have the time to devote to them.
I don't think they even realize until they get into it. And a lot of times they won't even look at a case till two, three weeks before trial.
You can't do that on these cases. You simply can't.
You will lose every time. What happens is when they do that and they open it, then they find a reason to dismiss it.
Right? Yeah. So, and I, you know, that's, that's happened on very good cases of this abuse that were falsification cases that were much harder than this.
Yeah. I want to be very clear.
When you dismiss one of these cases for any attorneys listening and CPS hasn't done their job and that child's still in the home, you are sentencing that child to a childhood of abuse. That's what you are doing.
That is your responsibility. Own it.
Yeah. I do think a lot about sort of what goes on in the minds of the people who are looking at these cases and why they make the decisions

that they make that often seem baffling to me. I mean, you never know what exactly happened.
But nonetheless, you know, this case where it's like a second investigation and there is, you know, really, really serious harm to the child where you have a near death of a child. And it's, you know, just it's four hospitals in the area that have previously reported.
It's video evidence. It's, you know, an expert review from one of the best experts in the field.
It's just, you know, having looked at many of these cases, that is some of the strongest evidence that I've heard of in a case. And yet, they didn't go forward with charges.
And I guess like, my always sort of question, and this is a little bit of an existential question, I guess, but it's like, okay, the person who's sitting in that office who made that call, because it is, it's a person, you know, it's like, it's not like just some like, system that you throw things into. I mean, there are systemic issues.
We've talked about those too. But like, ultimately like it is, it's a person, you know, it's like, it's not like just some like system that you throw things into.
I mean, there are systemic issues. We've, we've talked about those too, but like, ultimately, like it is like a person that's sitting down there and making that decision.
And it's like, what do you think is going to happen to these children going forward? Like, do you not care? Do you not understand? Do you like, is it just like a piece of paper on your desk? Like, how do you work a job like that? I mean, I understand there must be a job that probably does in some ways numb you out to some of those things. And there probably is some like compassion fatigue in a job like that, I would imagine.
But like, you just sort of think like, how could you not even try when you know that a kid's life is at risk? It does not compute for me, Mike. It just does not.
It never will. And I wish I could get any of them to talk to me and like, you give me the justification.
I wish someone would give me the justification for why they make that decision. A lot of time, the justification is money and resources.
They don't have the resources to try a case. It's going to be this complicated to pay experts, to bring in a bunch of witnesses.
They don't know how, right? They don't have a template for it. It's never been done.
The thing is, it has been done in Tarrant County, which frustrates me. But in other jurisdictions, it hasn't been done.
I just did a training for the Alaska Child Advocacy Center statewide conference, and they have no criminal case law on this abuse. And attorneys are extremely hesitant to create criminal case law.
It takes someone who is very secure in their job, knows they're not going to be fired for losing the case, which is a real thing at my DA's office, has been since 2015. And in fairness to the new DA, you know, that culture was cultivated over eight years where you could be fired if you lost the case.
And they're having to go through and try to eradicate that culture. That's hard to do once that sets in with someone, right? So there's a lot of human nature involved in these cases.
Do I want to do this much work for a little outcome and maybe even a loss and spend this much money? Am I allocating the county's money correctly? And what they'd never consider in that equation is this child will be abused the entirety of their childhood if they make it out of their childhood and they're not killed. I'm a mom on the go in my 40s.
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So, okay, so you've taken us up to quite recent history here. So in spring of 2024.
Yeah, spring of 2024, April 2024. She bonds out.
Low bond. It's a class A misdemeanor.
I think she had to pay like $100, $200 to bond out. She has family members who are supportive and keep bombing her out.
She bonds out. And thankfully, she lives in a small community north of Dallas.
And a detective up there had helped me arrest her on the first bond violation. And so in July of 2024, I get a call from the detective of that small department who'd helped me on this case previous.
And she tells me, hey, I just got a CPS report that says Jessica has a new boyfriend and is around his child, his children. And so the CPS report was from that dad's ex-wife.
Thankfully, she was quite the investigative journalist herself. She met Jessica.
Something seemed off about her. So she started Googling her name.
She spells her first name J-E-S-I-K-A. And she started Googling it and realized that she found the Jessica Jones article.
Because at that time, she was going by Jessica James, the previous last name of her. She had met this guy on a dating app, had very quickly got in with him and his 12-year-old daughter.
She met him at a community pool with kids all over the place. So she's obviously not abiding by bond conditions again.
And she really quickly became attached to the 12-year-old, which I believe is her plan. You know, stayed at the boyfriend's house.
The boyfriend lived with his mother, who was an RN. Jessica told her she worked at JPS.

She was an RN, a trauma nurse. She's never been a nurse in her life.
She was extremely convincing in what she told him. She showed him pictures of the inside of JPS, showed him pictures of a trauma room with a bunch of blood, how she got them.
I don't know, probably online somewhere, had knowledge of the JPS hospital.

She never worked there.

So I get that report.

So I call dad. He's cooperative.
I tell him everything. He's like, I'm done with her.
She's done. I call him in for an interview.
And he tells me like really concerning stuff. Her sentencing hearing was set for August 9th.
Of course, she had told this father that her kids were with their dad currently for the summer month and that she would get him back on August 1st. And her oldest was going to go play in a softball tournament on August 1st and ask this dad, can I take your daughter with me when we leave? And obviously she has no access to her older daughter, right? So obviously that's concerning that she's going to, you know, abscond with this guy's daughter.
You know, even if you can't go, can she go? And then she tells the daughter and dad together, jokingly, right? According to her, well, according to them, she made it as a joke. Tells them, you know, if anything ever happens to your dad, I'll just kidnap you.
And that is extremely concerning. Yeah, ha, ha, ha, I guess.
Yeah, ha, ha, ha, right? Whenever, when she's already laid out a plan to kidnap her. So I, you know, I talked to both dad and the 12-year-old.
That day, I got a warrant for her arrest for violating bond conditions again, because it was a second time it was now bumped up to a third degree felony. And this is

language I should never have to put in a warrant, but I put it in there because I wanted someone held accountable if she bonded out again. And around the last paragraph of that warrant, I put in there that if she is allowed to bond out of jail again, she will be a continued threat to the children of Tarrant County, Texas.
And it just goes to show that if you're an attractive female in this abuse, I don't even think you have to be attractive at this point. It's very easy to get away with continuing this abuse.
Just sort of like a benign looking woman even, right? Like just, you just look like a normal lady. Like as long

as you don't look for some reason, you know, like Eileen Wuornos or something, then like, you know, like. You say in your podcast all the time, people believe their eyes.
And they do. And, you know, female beauty is also a powerful tool for women in a courtroom setting are in a criminal setting also.

Shouldn't be.

I don't think it should be, but it is. And it's just fact of life.
I think it's worth noting because it's sort of something that everyone involved in these cases needs to correct for, right? Like no one is not subject to the culture we live in, the biases we may have, it doesn't make you a horrible misogynist or racist or whatever. It's just that we have to recognize that there are, you know, that all of the representations we've seen in the media for our whole lives, like these things all infect our brains, right? And it's not a personal failing that they infect our brains.
It's something that we need to recognize and correct for. And as you said, like, look at the evidence, look at what the story, the evidence is telling you, you know, and it is, it's like, I sympathize with this second dad, not so much the first dad that you were talking about in the bond conditions who, you know know, really sounds like he believed her hook, line and sinker.
But like, yeah, you meet someone on a dating app, they look normal, seem normal. At most, you know, a lot of times people report, oh, something seemed off.
But unless you've been around that person for a long time, and seen that pattern, they're not, you're not just going to like sitting in a room with them be like, ooh, that person's really creepy. Some of them, sure.
Like I think Brittany Phillips was a little bit on that, right? Because, you know, people are different. These defenders are different.
But I think like they have often the capacity to seem perfectly normal. So it's like, I think women are aware that we need to protect both ourselves and our children from men that we are just getting to know.
I think, and some women don't, you know, they're often like in these other forms of abuse where the men are perpetrators, you often see women who support those perpetrators and cover for those perpetrators. And that's not uncommon either.
But I think at least there is sort of a cultural recognition that boyfriends, stepfathers, you know, I mean, fathers too, but like, especially I think in those cases of like a new partner, bringing a new partner around your kids, that that's something that you need to be cautious about. I don't think men approach that the same way.
And I think oftentimes the opposite, in fact, happens where men who are single dads are sort of, you know, because we do put so much, and this is very relevant to this abuse and why it happens and why it gets ignored, we do put so much of the onus of parenting and caretaking on women that I think often single dads are almost like have a mom-shaped hole next to them and are kind of like looking for someone to be present in those kids lives and be there when you know they if they have custody half the time to be there to do that half the time I think you know and that's not you know anything necessarily like other than just a an observation about how parenting is and how gendered it is so I think Like, it's really, that's all just to say that it's a really terrifying setup for an opportunistic child predator like Jessica Jones, because that's an easy sell, you know, I mean, like that's, that it's especially if you're cute, you know, that's a really easy sell to just go find a new boyfriend that has kids because they're like, oh, look, here's this nice lady who's also going to help me take care of it. And that's something that I think, like, you know, also attracts men, right? To have like a nurturing, this nurturing nice lady that wants to help me take care of my kids.
Like that's not a, you know, that's not going to raise a red flag. She's also presenting herself as a nurse who are, you know, she's playing the nurturing role.
Right. It's like a whole archetype, right? Yes.
Well, and, and what that 12 year old also told me in that interview is that Jessica had medicated her multiple times. And that whenever she was medicated by Jessica, she felt weird.
And she didn't feel weird when she was medicated by dad or, or, or grandma. When you say medicated, like what was she being medicated for? Was she on some kind of regular medication? She had gone in for a tonsillitis.
Jessica had nothing to do with that. She was scheduled for that.
She had nothing to do with giving medical history for it or anything like that. She needed a tonsillitis.
I mean, tonsillectomy is like a super normal thing for a 12 year old to have. Right.
So she goes in and she has that and she was medicating her after that. And she asked that.
She needed a tonsillitis. I mean, tonsillectomy is like a super normal thing for a 12-year-old to have.
Right. So she goes in and she has that and she was medicating her after that.
And she asked dad if she could stay with her and take care of her after that. And yeah, so she indicated that she would feel weird and tired after Jessica medicated her.
And Jessica had access to all sorts of medicines. She went through and actually stole some of dad's medication.
It's my opinion. I think she has a pill problem herself.
That dad said, you know, one of the first things she did is go through and reorganize his medicine cabinet. And so I arrested her again.
I loudly let my opinion be known at the DA's office that she does not, they need to do something. Thankfully, at that point, the judge has had it with her, you know, because she'd already delayed her bond condition twice, claiming she had medical issues in herself, which she did not.
And I tell them she doesn't have that. Well, you know, we're just, you know.
So the judge at that point held her in jail. And I really want to thank the detective up in that small jurisdiction because they got the warrant.
And thankfully that dad said, hey, let's go eat lunch. And he took her to lunch at the barbecue joint right by the police station.
And the detective was waiting inside and arrested her. Wow.
And again, that was for the bond violation. And that was a third degree felony, two to 10 in Texas.
But the higher charge was much, much better. Right.
It seems like the important thing was to keep her off the streets, as it were, at that point. The very good thing about this case is the pre-sentencing investigator who was assigned.
I know Derek thought it was a cop. He's not a cop.
He is an impartial investigator of the court. So he is employed by the court.
He's actually a court probation officer. And I mean, he talked to everyone I suggested that he talked to.
He talked to Dr. Catherine Ayub.
He talked to the ladies down in South Texas whose kids she had been around. And he put all of this in the PSI report.
Without him, we don't get the sentence that we got on this case. It didn't have anything to do with the attorneys involved.
Wow. Okay.
So yeah, so she's then being held in custody. Correct.
And what ultimately happens in court with this case? Well, we arrest her in late July, and their sentencing is on August 9th. And during the sentencing, we had the last dad testify, and the 12-year-old testify, and the grandmother testified from that household.
We didn't have the others

from South Texas testify because they were included in the PSI, the pre-sentencing investigative report. And so they testified to everything.
The defense did not call a witness, and the defense asked for probation. Did she plead guilty? She pled guilty in January of 2024, and her bond violations happened after she

had actually pled guilty and was waiting sentencing.

So... She pled guilty in January of 2024, and her bond violations happened after she had actually pled guilty and was awaiting sentencing.
So she obviously had no respect for the court or for court rules, obviously showed that she could not rehabilitate herself. I mean, to be totally frank, like, why would she respect the court or the court rules when they're not even taking it seriously? It's like, nor did they have any respect for the law or the work of law enforcement or the lives of the children.
So it's like, why would she take it seriously when every sort of thing that's being telegraphed to her by the courts is that they're not taking it seriously? Right. She was allowed to move to South Texas.
She wasn't. She didn't have an ankle monitor.
I mean, keep in mind, this is a first degree felony. Same level of a felony as murder.
Any other case like this would not have been handled like this. That I can tell you if it was an abusive head trauma case.
And look, a lot of it is, is because attorneys are familiar with those cases and they know the risks. And on these cases, they're not.
And like I said, I'm fine with not knowing. But when you're hostile to learning, I have an issue with it.
And that office, that office's administration has made it very clear that they are hostile to learning. We are trying to work some things out.
We will see. You know, words, words, words and actions, right? More on that.
But y'all are on notice here on this podcast, that office, because we're watching. So yeah, so we have the hearing.
They testify. They don't need me to testify because they have, you know, everything's in the PSI.
I go to the court because with everything going wrong with this case, I want to make sure that they do the proper thing at the end. And they did.
They called everyone they needed to call. She didn't call anyone.
Our prosecution asked for 20 years, minimum, and their attorney asked for probation. And you said she didn't call any witnesses, but presumably her attorneys made a case for probation in court.
Like what is the justification for probation in something this serious? And in her case, it was because she only had one previous conviction for a misdemeanor DWI. So she didn't have an extensive criminal history.
Okay. So as long as you don't try and kill a child twice.
Well, it didn't work out for her because the judge, thankfully, had taken the time to read a 60, over 60 page PSI, a pre-sentencing investigative report. That's what the pre-sentencing investigator told me the report was.
And he said the longest one he'd written before that was like 12 pages. And the judge took the time to read it.
And in talking to her at the end, he called her a determined recidivist, which is absolutely on point. Said the PSI disturbed him and sentenced her to 60 years in prison.
Six zero years in prison. Wow.
And it is what we call a 3G offense in the state of Texas. So she should have to serve 30 years in prison.
Wow. And it is a, what we call a 3G offense in the state of Texas.
So she should

have to serve 30 years in prison. Now, there have been some paperwork mistakes and the DA's office

tells me they don't have a box to check for this. So a lot of times they'll have to call down to the

jail and clear up. Look, this is a 3G.
They're not eligible. Cause right.
The last time I checked,

this is a couple of days ago. She shows to be eligible for probation in 2031 or 2032.
She's not. That should be fixed.
I will make sure that is fixed. The thing is, Andrea, I'm getting really, really tired of having to, I mean, check everything on these cases to make sure people do the right thing.
Yeah. No, it's exhausting.
Well, and, you know, it's going to affect other cases. Anything you do takes time, and you only have so much time in the day to do your job.
There's only one Detective Mike Weber, unfortunately. Well, yeah, for four more months.
Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, I remember, you know, not in detail, but like we had talked about this case and been in communication about this case while this was going on.
And I remember you being, and understandably, since that's what the DA's office was telling Derek, that you were really worried that she was going to get probation in this case. And in fact- Yeah, because of the prosecutor handling the case.
Because he had done it before on the Christy Carroll case. You know, that language really strikes me from the judge's order on the Jessica Jones case, a determined recidivist.
Yeah. And aren't they all? I mean, have you ever, Mike, in your extensive experience and in our anecdotal experience with our committee colleagues, we have encountered many, many, many cases.
Have you ever heard of a case where a perpetrator stopped of their own volition? I have not. I have not either.
And in fact, what's more common that I have heard a lot of is that perpetrators continue on even past the time when their children are out of the house.

Like then something happens to a spouse or something happens to an older parent or something happens to someone else in their care or they turn it back on themselves. Like, this is such a compulsive behavior that whenever you are leaving a child in this situation, you are sentencing that child to a childhood and potentially a lifetime of horrific abuse.
And like, that is what you are doing every single time. And like, it's really quite a bleak option when you think about why these choices are made.
It's like, well, you either don't know or you don't care. And one of those can be fixed and the other cannot.
You know, so like, we would like to believe and I think we must believe we must continue to believe that it is the lack of education because I don't I mean, I don't believe that people really don't care what happens to children. I believe that most people actually do care what happens to children.
And with that said, if the system is crushing the spirits of those who are trying to advocate for this abuse by making it next to impossible, then that is going to burn out anyone who is trying to actually advocate for this. And so I think that is when you do talk about things like legislation, reforming CPS policies, that kind of thing, where you can just make, you can make it possible for those people who do want to do the right thing, right? It has to be both.
Right. And, you know, we're going back to the legislature again this time.
We are going to try to move Alyssa's law through. And I think Derek will be very instrumental in that.
I've had multiple attorneys tell me, you know, these cases are hard. The laws don't address them.
Well, you know what? Get behind a law that will. Change the laws.
Change the law. Yeah.
And like, I would hope and like to, you know, I know we do have attorneys that listen to the show. So to those attorneys that might find themselves in this position, you know, I understand like that there is, that it can be daunting to set precedent.
Also though, like, isn't that kind of what people who get in the law get in the law to do? Like there to be some of y'all that have that uh nice mike weber running run into the burning house on fire energy like bring a little that to court please don't you want to be part of a landmark case to help kids doesn't that sound like a nice thing for your resume come on lawyers get in there i use the laws that i can use and you know if prosecutors say these cases are too hard Well, then, get in there. I use the laws that I can use.

And, you know, if prosecutors say these cases are too hard, well, then go fix the law to make them not so hard.

Yeah. I mean, so, you know, so she gets this this very harsh sentence.
And I mean, this is I think this is the harshest sentence I have seen in a case, including the sentencing in the Lacey Spears case. Yes.
And the Kelly Turner Gantt case – she's the mother of Olivia Gantt – where those children died, and they got significantly less time than the site. Well, and here's the thing.
When you don't have a separation period, these cases become tougher to try, right? Every case does come down to the evidence. In Jessica Jones, the evidence was overwhelming and probation should have never been on the table.
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you know one of the things that i that i always want to to really focus on on the show is to talk about the effects on the people around the perpetrator. And in this case, I mean, honestly, in all cases, it's a large number of people.
That is, I think, something that is really specific to this abuse. because in Munchausen cases, there's this web of deception.
And it's like because the point is to pull people in, you just get this like wide swath of destruction. And and I always want to talk about like, you know, it's not an episode of Law and Order SVU where the, you know, gavel comes down and the sentencing happens in court and they haul that person off to jail.
And that's the end of the story, right? Because that is far from the end of the story for the people involved. And in fact, Derek Jones is facing some really difficult challenges now being in this position of being the father of two of the victims and also the father of the older child that is not his biological child, but that he is her dad and was also victimized by Jessica.
And he is just facing innumerable challenges on the sort of custody and parenting side. So can you talk a little bit about the situation that the courts have left him in? They gave him managing conservatorship.
They did not terminate rights. So now he has to pay an attorney to go back and terminate rights in family court.
How hard is that? It shouldn't be too hard with this, with the sentence and the conviction that she got, but it's going to cost him money. And, you know, he's not a rich man.
And that's another thing that really frustrates me on this case when CPS attorneys don't do their job. They are leaving these dads in financial ruin just to try to protect their kids.
And I don't see an excuse for it in this case. You have an induction, you have a confession, and you have evidence in blood and purse.

In that type of situation, you should move for termination. The state should do their job and not put that responsibility on a dad who is middle class, you know, and is facing huge legal bills.
Now, the other part of this is he is adopting the older child, the 13-year-old. There's nothing really the CPS attorneys could do about that.
He's going to face a huge legal expense on that end. Adoptions are not cheap.
And they first have to terminate mom's rights on that child before he can adopt her.

Yeah, I mean, it's really heartbreaking. And I think it's shocking.
It will be shocking to listeners that you could have a parent who's being sent to prison and their rights are not being terminated. And in fact, you know, there are many cases that I've heard of where parents have done some prison time and then got out and got custody of their children back.
So, I mean, that is that is a thing that can happen. It should not happen in these cases.
I'm not saying that, you know, there's any situation where a parent should go to prison and not get rights to their children back. I don't think those two things are always incompatible.
But I think certainly in cases of this abuse, if a parent's convicted for it, I don't think that person can ever provide a safe home for children. And that should just be off the table.
And I think it's, I think it will surprise people to know that someone could go to prison for be sentenced to 60 years in prison and not automatically have their rights terminated. It's it's a sort of really a piece of stunning cognitive dissonance there.

Yeah, it's a separate process.

It should not be hard, but it's going to cost money.

Yeah, well, God, I mean, and I just want to, I think I just want to end this conversation with, you know, we talk a lot about this sort of gendered aspect of this crime. And that is a very particular thing about this crime, right? The high instance is 96% female offenders and how sort of baked in these concepts of, you know, these very highly gendered concepts of, you know, what a mother is, what a female offender looks like.
Do female offenders even exist? This whole sort of, you know, mess and morass of this. And I think, you know, in talking to George Honeycutt, who also I know talked to Derek Jones during this case, you know, when I followed up with him a couple of months ago, and he was sort of really reflecting on, you know, his situation, and he was a very young dad, and he was in the military.
And so there was a lot of reasons why that, that their parenting situation ended up being sort of gendered in the extreme, right, with a stay at home, like military wife, in, the offender in that case, Elizabeth. And, you know, he really shared some interesting sort of just insights on like, you know, that he really, you know, was prioritizing doing all this stuff at home and, you know, really being involved and being present.
And I really think that that's kind of an interesting like takeaway. And I think on the sort of level of how we can support families on a community aspect, it's really like recognizing that the dads in these cases, like Derek, do the right thing at great financial, emotional expense to themselves often.
and then are in a very difficult position of raising very traumatized children and that that's something that as a community we should really be rallying around those dads and really you know just showing up for those fathers and those children that are in this situation because this just has,

you know, it is a much better situation for those children that their mother is not present, that their mother is not able to continue to harm them and abuse them. And it is a deeply difficult thing for a family to lose a parent in that way.
And those dads deserve all of the recognition and all of the support in the world. Absolutely.
And it's just dads who try to do the right thing in this abuse are treated so terribly, so consistently by family and criminal courts. And, you know, there's a lot of dads who don't try to do the right thing in this abuse.
And again, a lot of that's education. You know, the last two articles in the juvenile family court journal, um, on this abuse were in 1990.
So they don't have any education on what this is. And all they see is a dad complaining of this and want to just dismiss it as a custody issue a lot of times,

if dad is being protective and trying to protect his kids. And I tell him all the time in training, you investigate it until you don't need to investigate it anymore.
Can this be used as a custody issue by a dad? Yeah, it'd be probably the worst thing ever to use in a custody case. Just to say, like, I, I have heard of cases where this came up.
And it's like, when it's someone trying to use it, because of course, there are people who it's like, it's like any crazy thing you can think that people will do in like a high conflict custody, like they will do right. Like, I mean, it's like, you will find a couple that is messy enough to have done that somewhere.
And like, those cases, like, it was so obvious that that was not what was going on. It was like, no one else in the like, the times I've heard where it was just like a dad throwing that out.
And I think in one of the cases, it was like, as a response to like a legitimate accusation of abuse on the dad's part. Like it was so obviously nonsense.
It was just the dad saying it or just the dad and his attorney. It wasn't like the doctors and like every other person.
I mean, I think that's what like I always want to like communicate to people because there is so much disinformation about this form of abuse is like, yes, it may be hard to prove in court, but it's not hard to recognize that it is happening because it is not subtle. Well, whether that's a case that can hold up in court or there's enough evidence or like that's a whole separate consideration than the idea of it being like some kind of Hail Mary in a custody battle.
Like if that is what it is, it will be very, very, very obvious that that's what it is. Because there won't be any evidence that this abuse is happening.
That's correct. One other thing I wanted to say, you know, from the Jessica Jones case, there's a lot of learning lessons to it, but you've got to be willing to learn.
And the DA's office says they are, you know, words and actions. When you've gone 10 years on this abuse and you're regressing instead of progressing, I have my doubts.
I have hope. I always have hope I'll work with anyone anywhere on this.
But like I said, when you have someone in the administration that is specifically very hostile to learning on this abuse, it makes it hard.

It makes it hard for people underneath that person to do their job. Yeah.
Okay. Well, thank you so much, Mike, for coming on and sharing, as always, your incredible expertise on this topic and this case.
and we are just wishing all the best to Derek and his kids

and all the other people

that were impacted by this case.

Yes, and thank you so much for having me.

Nobody Should Believe Me Case Files

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