Jackie Ray

Streaming now on Peacock.

We sell toilet tissue and local newspapers.

That is in order of quality.

From the crew that brought you the office, my name is Ned Sampson.

I am your new editor-in-chief.

Comes a new comedy series.

Have you read this paper?

Uh-huh.

It sucks.

But we are going to make it better.

Meet the underdog journalist.

I hope it's not too disruptive to have me shake everything up.

Don't be so self-defecating.

With major issues.

Oscar.

Oh, God.

Not again.

The paper.

Only on Peacock.

Streaming now.

Let's go!

Bravos, the real housewives of Salt Lake City are back.

Here we are, ladies.

I don't like it.

And they're taking things to the next level.

You know, some people just get on your nerves.

You questioned every single thing I have.

You're supposed to be my sister.

I am your sister.

No, you're not.

We have to be honest about this.

I'm afraid.

You should pay the clauses off.

No one sues the bottom.

They all go for the top.

Can I have the crazy pill that y'all took?

Apparently, you're already taking it.

The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, September 16th, on Bravo.

And streaming on Peacock.

They were a charismatic couple that seemed to be on the brink of the perfect life together.

He loved his wife.

He was crazy about her.

And he was the happiest I've ever seen him.

Until a harrowing discovery shatters their future.

911, what are you reporting?

I found a deceased person.

Ankles were still duct taped together, duct tape on each wrist.

Detectives soon have an unexpected suspect in their sights.

She's active in her church, did a lot of work for the community.

She helped people.

And a trove of long-buried family secrets suggests there's more to the murder than meets the eye.

Suspicions about an affair.

Any reason why he would be out of your guy's advice?

I really don't have any idea.

I can't think of a logical thing that makes sense.

He lost control.

It just got out of hand.

Detectives will soon discover that some family secrets can have deadly consequences.

That's really what did her.

That's what pushed her over the edge.

I had to pick it up, didn't I?

Stay to shine.

Why?

I just didn't understand it.

July 12th, 2012.

It's just after 8:30 p.m.

in Gig Harbor, Washington.

A local couple is walking their dog, Daisy, down a quiet, tree-lined road.

You know, it's kind of a rural street, you know, trees and shrubbery kind of along the both ends, a little marshland off the side of the road.

The dog went off into the brush a little bit, and they went to go see what the dog was after.

And that's when they discovered the body.

Just a few feet off the road, they see the body of an African-American male.

911, what are you reporting?

I found a deceased person.

They thought initially it was a hit and run.

Okay, and you believe that he may have been hit by a vehicle or something?

So I'm just speculating because he's laying in a low-lying swamp area.

First responders from the Pierce County Sheriff's Department rushed to the scene.

When I went out out into the brush and took a look at the body, the first thing that I saw once I did it, he had white duct tape around his wrists, around his ankles, and face, his nose and eyes area.

It was obviously some sort of a homicide.

It wasn't hit and run.

The patrol deputies had already secured the area.

I called for our forensics unit.

Pierce County law enforcement begins scouring the roadside for clues.

We located his wallet out in the brush right next to his body.

We found some identification in there.

The victim is identified as 33-year-old Leon Bockham.

Once we identified who he was, we were trying to find out whatever information we could get about him, set down some sort of a timeline in relation to how long he had been there.

As investigators peel back the layers to this mystery, they'll unmask a killer that no one in this tiny tourist town could have ever imagined.

Gig Harbor, this is not the kind of place where people expect bad things to happen.

Born in 1978, Leon Bockham grew up in a tight-knit family in the nearby city of Tacoma.

Leon was our first child and his sister was born 15 months later.

So they were pretty much raised like twins.

We spent a lot of time together.

I mean, every summer we were gone somewhere, then we went to camps, we went to Disneyland, we went to, you know, we'd go swimming, all kind of stuff.

He was very close with his sister, Rachel, but his grandmother was his rock.

It was a big part of what drove him, you know, was to make her proud.

Not only did Leon have an unyielding drive to succeed, he had the brains to back it up.

He was super intelligent.

As soon as he got into something, he wanted to know everything about it and he did whatever he could to learn it he's kind of had this presence about him where people it kind of just commanded respect

leon's confidence served him well in 2001 when 23 year old leon began dating 21 year old yumiko roberts miko is a very gorgeous woman and she just had this magnetic personality people just want to hang out with her and she attracted a lot of attention.

Leon was convinced he'd found his soulmate.

For Yumiko, a struggling single mother, Leon was just what she was looking for.

Any girl's going to want to be with a guy that they can feel safe around.

I think that's what initially drew her to him.

She was ready to settle down, you know, and he was ready to settle down.

She had already had a kid and, you know, just ready to start a family.

He was so proud.

He was like he had hit the jackpot, you know.

I could just see the look on his face.

As their love for each other grew, grew, Leon quickly took over the role of being second parent to Yumiko's son, a role that Yumiko's mother, Jackie Ray, had been filling for the past year.

You could just tell that Jackie and Enmiko were very, very close.

Jackie did everything for her.

She was very protective of her.

Having Jackie by her side was a blessing for Yumiko.

whose struggles as a single mother began when she was a teenager.

She went to college, University of Las Vegas.

She was there for about, I think, two years and then she got pregnant with her son and came home.

The boyfriend has left her and this is when Jackie steps in.

Jackie was basically raising that child until Leon got in the picture.

She's very giving.

She does a lot for like the people that she loves.

When Yumiko married Leon Bockham in 2008, Jackie supported her daughter every step of the way.

By 2012, Yumiko and Leon had two more children of their own.

Jackie did a lot of caretaking for the kids.

Like she would babysit the kids a lot.

You could tell that she loved her grandkids for sure.

Like she was always around, always giving them what they need.

Jackie's help at home with the kids allowed Yumiko to be a successful working mother.

She wanted to get out of the house, so she started working customer service for a cable company.

Yumiko had stayed home with the children and he had been the the sole breadwinner of the family.

And so when she was working, they were in a good financial spot.

But on the evening of July 12th, 2012, their picture-perfect family is ripped apart when Leon's body is found off a rural road in Gig Harbor, Washington.

When we found him there, it was obvious that he'd been there for a few hours.

My next step was to try to figure out who would want to do this.

A closer look at the body gives detectives more insight into their victim's final moments.

Leon had been shot once.

The entrance wound was in the upper back.

That led me to believe that he was shot during some sort of a scuffle.

Whether this was an intentional gunshot wound certainly wasn't an execution.

We knew that he had been dumped because we have drag marks through the brush.

There is little at the scene to indicate where Leon might have been killed or who might have killed him.

When it comes to collecting evidence, investigators find themselves grasping at straws.

We had found three styrofoam packing peanuts near his body.

We found a Dora the Explorer card.

We had collected all those as evidence.

Didn't know if it was just trash alongside the road or it might be related somehow to how Leon ended up here.

As investigators continue to work the scene, a patrol deputy knocks on the front door of the Bockham's residence in nearby Puyallup, Washington.

Leon's wife, Yumiko, answers.

She was told by the patrol deputy that Leon had died.

I had specifically asked them not to give her any information about how he died.

Coming up, Yumiko unearths some skeletons from the past, which leads detectives to a potential suspect.

She's being secretive with her phone, hiding the messages, and stuff like that.

There was quite a bit of conversation leading up to Leon's time of death.

He lost control, it just got out of hand.

On the evening of July 12th, 2012, 33-year-old Leon Bockham's body was found along a remote stretch of road in Gig Harbor, Washington.

Investigators are now at the scene trying to make sense of Leon's death.

We knew that he had been dumped because the duct tape on his wrists were broken.

It appeared to me that whoever had drug him out to the brush had drug him out by holding onto the duct tape around his wrists.

Upon hearing of her husband's death, Yumiko breaks down.

She becomes distraught.

She is very upset.

Once she collects herself, Yumiko notifies the rest of her family of her husband's death.

Yumiko called me.

She says they found a body and they believe that it's Leon's.

I said, what?

Then I immediately hung up the phone and I was bawling my eyes out.

My sister tells me they found Leon and he's dead.

They found his body and that's the last thing I remember.

I couldn't believe it.

I didn't understand what happened.

I certainly didn't think murder.

Though it takes Yumiko longer to reach her own mother, Jackie Ray, who is vacationing with her husband, Lathaniel, 200 miles away at a place called Moses Lake.

Jackie's response is, I have got to get home immediately.

But there's a storm and there is no possible way that we can get home.

While stunned family members try to make sense of the unfolding tragedy, Detective Mark Murad arrives at the Bawkham's residence just before 3 a.m.

When we went to the house, we sat down with Amiko.

We talked to her about her whereabouts, whether they were having any relationship problems at the time.

Through her tears, Yumiko admits that while she loved Leon, in recent months, they'd hit a bit of a rough patch.

According to Yamiko, it all started when she went back to work.

She had been home for so long and hadn't been out, and now she's out, and she's getting all this attention.

She's a beautiful girl.

The way she dressed was very provocative, and Leon didn't like it.

Yamiko felt like Leon was a little,

you know, she felt like he was controlling.

So apparently, Leon installed a tracking app on Amiko's phone.

Something that would allow him to see her location on his phone.

And he had had that on her phone for some time.

Amiko was aware of it.

Yumiko says she tolerated Leon's jealousy because she was sure it would eventually subside.

However, a few weeks back on May 30th, things took a much darker turn.

They were having a discussion, and then it just kind of escalated.

It just got out of hand.

And he ended up putting his hands on her.

He had allegedly punched her in the eye.

She said that she had fractured her eye socket during that incident.

When Miko's mother, Jackie, found out what happened, she immediately notifies police.

When you have a domestic violence problem, the court automatically gives you a temporary no contact order.

Yumiko tells police that she and her husband were trying to put the incident behind them.

We're trying to work on it.

We're trying to repair it.

Hopefully, you know, we can get this restraint in order, you know, lifted.

He was staying at the house.

Not every day, you know, but he was staying at the house a lot.

Yumiko tells police that Leon had stayed at the house the night of July 10th.

The next morning, though, Leon's extreme jealousy returned.

She had dressed up too much to his liking to go to work.

There was an argument over how she was dressed, and she ended up just leaving, going to work.

When Yumiko's shift was over, she was still angry from the argument and decided it was time to put some real space between her and Leon.

While Leon was working the night shift, I afforded Amiko the opportunity to pack some clothes for herself and the kids and leave and go to the hotel up in Federal.

According to Miko, she checked out of the hotel that next morning and returned home with the children.

Yumiko tells police that she assumed that Leon had spent the night of July 11th at his grandmother's home in Tacoma.

There were times that he would stay with his grandmother because he had a fear that he might get caught with Amiko at the house in violation of that contact order.

But there's one detail that's troubling investigators.

When we were talking with her, not once through the entire interview did she ask where we found him or

how he died.

It's a detail that certainly raises a red flag for detectives.

It may be possible that Miko was lying.

Because in a murder investigation, you always look at the people closest to the victim.

When police visit Leon's grandmother, she tells detectives that Leon was supposed to stay with her the night of the 11th, following the fight with Yumiko.

She told us that Leon had called and said that he was going to spend the night.

When she got up in the morning, she saw that Leon wasn't there.

His white SUV wasn't out in the parking lot however leon's grandmother says that when she returned home later that day his white suv was in the parking lot but leon was still nowhere to be found somebody had to have brought that car back and parked it in the parking lot because

he was dead the revelation suggests one thing Leon Bockham probably didn't die at the hands of a stranger.

Whoever killed him obviously knows where his grandmother lives.

The following morning, investigators reach out to Leon's family, who provide them with even more details about the couple's Rocky last few months, including what had truly sparked Leon's rage the day he struck Yumiko in the face.

He had suspected that she was having an affair with somebody at work.

She's being secretive with her phone, text messages at certain hours, you know, hiding the messages and stuff like that.

He gotten a phone call from someone that worked there and said, Leon, you need to come and check on your wife because something's going on here that's not right.

So Leon shows up and talks to the guy.

And the guy basically says, I know she's your wife, but I don't care.

According to Leon's family, shortly after that confrontation, he found racy messages from the man on his wife's phone.

And that's when he lost it.

That's when he slapped her.

If Omiko is having an affair, that is definitely going to add to the suspicion that she had a hand in her husband's murder.

I had a pretty strong suspicion she was somehow involved.

Coming up, a new observation leads detectives down a different path.

He was found within a mile of her house.

That was a huge red flag.

And a new witness comes forward.

We received a call.

He wanted to give us information.

She's too upset, so she wants to talk in person.

It's your man, Nick Cannon, and I'm here to bring you my new podcast, Nick Cannon at Night.

I've heard y'all been needing some advice in the love department.

So who better to help than yours truly?

Nah, I'm serious.

Every week, I'm bringing out some of my celebrity friends and the best experts in the to answer your most intimate relationship questions.

Having problems with your man?

We got you.

Catching feelings for your sneaky link?

Let's make sure it's the real deal first.

Ready to bring toys into the bedroom?

Let's talk about it.

Consider this a non-judgment zone to ask your questions when it comes to sex and modern dating in relationships, friendships, situationships, and everything in between.

It's going to be sexy, freaky, messy, and you know what?

You'll just have to watch the show.

So don't be shy.

Join the conversation and head over to YouTube to watch Nick Cannon at night or subscribe on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

Want to watch episodes early and ad-free?

Join Wondery Plus right now.

How hard is it to kill a planet?

Maybe all it takes is a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere.

When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene.

Are we really safe?

Is our water safe?

You destroyed our town.

And crimes like that, they don't just happen.

We call things accidents.

There is no accident.

This was 100%

preventable.

They're the result of choices by people.

Ruthless oil tycoons, corrupt politicians, even organized crime.

These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet.

Stories of scams, murders, and cover-ups that are about us and the things we're doing to either protect the Earth or destroy it.

Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad-free right now by joining Wonder Plus in the Wonder app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Less than 48 hours after 33-year-old Leon Bockham's body was found dumped in a remote corner of Pierce County, Washington, investigators wonder if Leon's troubled marriage to his wife, Yumiko, may have been the catalyst behind the murder.

We had learned later Leon had had some suspicions about Amiko having an affair.

Yumiko adamantly denies any affair had taken place.

It just kind of escalated and just out of anger.

And, you know, not definitely not a good move, but he did hit her.

When investigators scour the domestic violence report related to the incident, The location on the report immediately piques their interest.

The address that he had been arrested at for the domestic violence was Jackie and Lathaniel's house, Zinlaws.

When the investigators look into the proximity of Jackie's residence to where the body is found, then it becomes interesting.

We thought that was a little suspicious that he was found just a mile from their house.

At that point, we wanted to talk to everybody that was involved in that domestic violence incident.

Investigators ask Yumiko's mother, Jackie Ray, and her husband, Lathaniel, to come down to the station.

They sit down with Jackie first.

We're investigating the death of Leon, and we kind of wanted to talk to you a little bit, help us try to resolve this.

Jackie tells detectives that in the aftermath of Leon's assault on Yumiko, she'd witnessed a side of her son-in-law that she'd never seen before.

It was kind of unreal.

I mean, pacing like a caged animal, back and forth, and yelling and screaming.

She didn't have a whole lot of nice things to say about Leon.

I wouldn't be happy if my daughter was involved in a relationship with somebody who was abusive towards her, so it was completely understandable.

Jackie says her opinions about Leon have been strongly influenced by her past experiences with abuse.

She had Amiko when she was a teenager.

She becomes dependent dependent on a man with a temper.

He eventually becomes abusive.

Jackie eventually found the courage to leave Yumiko's father.

Once she was on her own, Jackie worked hard to set a good example for her daughter, Yumiko.

She always instilled their grades were number one.

Like,

always go to school, like, work hard.

In 1993, Jackie went on a blind date with a forester named Lathaniel Ray.

The two hit it off immediately.

They're looking for companionship.

They're looking for somebody really to connect to.

And it happens.

Two years later, Jackie and Lathaniel married.

Like Jackie, it was Lathaniel's second trip down the aisle.

When they married, they just combined and it was one piccopy family.

Then they had a baby girl.

The baby brought the couple even closer together.

And though Jackie and Lathaniel worked long hours to make ends meet, the newly blended family of four seemed to be thriving.

Given her own troubled marriage to Yumiko's father years earlier, Jackie pleaded with her daughter to walk away from Leon.

Advice Yumiko apparently ignored.

She took him back.

Jackie claims that at first, Leon seemed to embrace his second chance, but over the past few weeks, his behavior had grown erratic again.

It was more

the last month or so than ever, but yeah, he needed to be okay and he would just be kind of crazy.

For Jackie, it all came down to one word, control.

He was jealous over nothing.

What about this friend that started all of us?

Is he a potential threat?

Maybe somebody who would do something like this.

I don't think so.

Detectives then turn their attention to the location of of Leon's body.

Any idea why we'd find him where he was?

Anybody can you out there?

According to Jackie, she and Lathaniel weren't even in town when Leon's body was discovered.

They had been camping with friends almost 200 miles away at Moses Lake since July 10th.

That's when Jackie disclosed that she and her husband didn't drive over together to go camping, that she had stayed home.

She talked about some errands she had to run.

Jackie tells detectives she planned to leave the morning of the 11th, but once again was delayed.

Miko calls Jackie and she says, Leon and I have had another fight.

Jackie is distraught and she says, that's it.

I'm fed up.

I'm getting you a hotel room.

Gather the kids and get out of there.

Jackie told us that she had driven up to Federal Way to pay for the room.

Jackie says she spent a second night at home and then drove up on the morning of the 12th to join Lathaniel and their friends at Moses Lake.

And that's where she was when Yumiko notified her about Leon's death.

I texted her and said there's a thunderstorm.

I'm going to wait until it passes.

When investigators interview Jackie's husband, Lathaniel Ray, he confirms the timeline of Jackie's statement and seems equally confused about how Leon's body ended up in Gig Harbor.

Any reason why he would be out of your guy's place?

I really don't have any idea.

I can't think of a logical thing that makes sense for him to be out there.

After speaking with Jackie and Lathaniel, investigators inform them that they're free to go.

But before detectives can corroborate their statements, they receive word that Leon's autopsy is complete.

I learned that Jackie was actually still in Pierce County during the timeframe that Leon had been killed.

The medical examiner estimates that Leon was initially shot sometime between the night of July 11th and early the morning of July 12th.

The fact that she was in town still, the fact that he was found within a mile of her house, that was a huge red flag.

As detectives are poring over the autopsy results, they receive a call that sheds new light on the case.

From Ron Pratt, who's a close friend of Leon's.

He wanted to give us information that would be helpful.

According to Ron, he had been on the phone with Leon the night police believe the shooting occurred.

Ron said that he had received a call from Leon on Wednesday and told him that he had been in an argument with Miko.

He's like, yo, like, you know, Miko's gone.

She left me.

I was like, you know, what happened?

He was like, yeah, I don't know.

He was like, she's just completely gone.

According to Leon, he hadn't been able to reach Yamiko all day, but that around 10.30 that evening, he received a call from his mother-in-law, Jackie.

Leon had told Ron that he had received a call from Jackie.

Yamiko, you know, wants to talk, but she's too upset to get on the phone, so she wants to talk in person.

So I'm headed out to her house.

I'm like, oh.

Because he had that tracking app on Amiko's phone.

He could verify that she was, in fact, there.

So that's the reason why he did go.

He got to Jackie's house.

It's like right before midnight or just after midnight.

Now I'm like, okay, you know, just give me a call tomorrow because, you know, I'm crashing.

I got to work in the morning.

So we got off the phone, and that was the last time we talked.

Ron was the person that was able to tell us that Leon, in fact, was going to Jackie's house.

And now we have the reason why he was there, and it made sense.

After talking with Ron on the phone, I was relatively sure Amiko

and Jackie

were at the house when Leon was killed, but I still had issue with the fact that it would have taken people of a lot bigger stature to be able to load him up into a vehicle, unload him, and actually drag him out into the woods.

Investigators subpoena Yumiko's cell phone records.

What they find would seem to verify Ron's story that Yumiko was at her mother's house on the night Leon was killed.

We saw that Amiko's phone was actually hitting off a cell tower in the north end of the Gig Harbor area, which would put her phone in the area of her parents' house.

We had also learned from the phone records that Amiko had been communicating with the coworker she was having an affair with.

And there was quite a bit of conversation leading up to Leon's time of death.

Then it kind of went quiet for a while.

Is it possible that Yumiko's lover provided the manpower mother and daughter needed to move Leon's body?

We did go and talk with Amiko's coworker.

He did have an alibi that he was at a movie theater in Auburn, which is about an hour, hour and a half away from where Jackie and Lithania live.

It was out by Check Town.

Yumiko's lover's rock-solid alibi throws a wrench into investigators' theory, but it's not the only one.

We had the conflict of Amiko saying she was at the hotel in Federal Way, but yet her phone is at her mother's house.

I did send a couple detectives up to the Comfort Inn to pull surveillance video and also check for who had registered for that room.

Hotel staff confirmed that Yumiko was in fact at the hotel the night of the shooting.

If that's the case, then why was Yumiko's phone at her mother's house when she was at the hotel?

Why would Jackie have Miko's phone?

Miko's in a hotel out of the way.

Jackie's husband is in a campground.

If Jackie committed this crime, how could she have done it by herself?

Was she the one that actually had killed him?

I didn't think so.

So it kind of raised the question of who did.

Coming up, detectives get a break.

We had just been released from prison, literally weeks prior.

Pretty violent background.

And some alarming answers follow suit.

He has walked directly into a trap.

They confronted him, and he didn't surrender.

It's been nearly two weeks since Leon Bockham's murder, and police in Pierce County, Washington are convinced that his mother-in-law, 49-year-old Jackie Ray, is somehow involved.

I had a very strong suspicion she knew exactly what the story was, but we needed a little bit more time to put things together.

Detectives subpoena Jackie's phone records.

As they review her call log line by line, something catches their eye.

We saw that she had been texting with a phone number that we didn't know who that belonged to.

She was discussing with this person that Leon was on his way over, asking this person to hurry up and get over there.

And that person was responding back saying he was on his way.

Our next step was to find out who the subscriber was.

While they wait for the phone company to provide additional info about the number in question, investigators continue their search for additional evidence.

We applied for a search warrant for Jackie and Lathaniel's house, and the following day, we executed a search warrant on the house.

We searched the entire house.

We didn't find anything really remarkable.

Before they leave, detectives take a look in Jackie's van.

There was this cardboard box inside.

Inside that box were the same popcorn-shaped packing peanuts that we had located by Leon's body.

On the floorboard of her car, we also found a handful of Dora the Explorer cards.

While the discovery doesn't prove murder, it does connect Jackie to the crime scene.

A fact detectives waste no time imparting to her.

I could tell that she was really nervous.

I just kind of threw out at her that we had her text messages and we had talked with Leon's friend Ron and we knew that Leon was there at the house.

Jackie startled me at that point.

She looked at me and she said, I didn't pull the trigger.

So I knew she had involvement at that point.

I just needed to figure out who that person was who actually did pull the trigger.

We really didn't have enough to arrest her for murder at that point.

Thankfully, the phone company notifies them that they've identified the individual Jackie was texting, an ex-con named Lewis Barker.

Lewis Barker had just been released from prison, literally weeks prior to this.

We looked into his background.

He has a pretty violent background and has had several run-ins with the criminal justice system.

Armed with new evidence, investigators request another sit-down with Jackie.

She agrees, but only if the meeting can take place at her attorney's office.

Before investigators can question Jackie about her connection to Lewis Barker, she starts in on her son-in-law, Leon, all over again.

It was a constant,

almost every single day, she would call me and say,

I can't do this.

I can't sleep.

Jackie says in the days prior to Leon's murder, Yumiko had begun to fear for her life.

She was scared.

She goes, what am I going to do?

I can't do this.

I'm going to go crazy.

He's going to kill me.

Jackie says that Yumiko's fears came to a head when Leon allegedly brought up a painful chapter from Yumiko's past.

He was escalating to the point that he had said to her or brought up the subject of her father.

Your ex-husband.

My ex-husband was somewhat abusive.

He was able to get out of that situation.

But he had remarried.

He had three children and was in the midst of a divorce.

He shot his wife and then he shot himself.

He knew how sensitive she was to that.

And

she really thought he was crazy enough to do that.

I thought he was crazy enough to do that.

Jackie says that's when she decided to reach out to an old friend of hers, Lewis Barker.

Jackie and Amiko were friends with Lewis and Lewis's wife.

They were close enough with each other that they knew that Lewis had just recently been released from prison.

He's from the neighborhood and just I've heard that he just kind of was always in and out of trouble, you know.

Jackie told us she had contacted Lewis Barker and she asked him if he would have Leon kill.

He wanted $10,000.

And did you agree to pay him $10,000?

I said I couldn't get it all at once.

And

I said, I can get you some,

maybe more than half.

And he said, that's okay.

We can.

work it out.

Jackie subsequently made a withdrawal from her bank account for $8,000 and made down payment.

Jackie says that on July 11th, she met Yumiko and Yumiko's children at the hotel in Fedway.

Jackie paid for the room.

Jackie told us she had taken Amiko's phone while she was at the hotel, brought it back to her house because she knew Leon had placed that tracking app on the phone.

Her plan was to call Leon to ask him to come out to the house to talk with Amiko.

I called him eventually and said, do you still want to talk?

And he said yes.

He specifically asked me, are you going to call the police?

And I said, if you're going to stay calm,

if you are going to leave, if I asked you to leave, I'm not going to call the police.

She knew that he would use the tracking app to verify whether she was there or not.

The original plan was to get Leon into that house, kidnap him, and take him somewhere else.

to murder him.

Once she was back in Gig Harbor, Jackie texted Lewis to let him know it was time.

She told us when Lewis showed up that there was another male there with him.

She didn't know him and she had never met him before.

He was white or maybe a lot Hispanic.

I remember a hat and I remember a gray sweatjacket or either a mark or just had a bun.

The three waited until Leon pulled into Jackie's driveway around 11.30 p.m.

Leon knocked on the door.

She opened the door invited him in once he entered in the living room that's when leon realized that there were two people there waiting for him

leon has realized he has walked directly into a trap they confronted him and he didn't surrender they had a gun and he lunged to fight back

jackie tells detectives she was too scared to watch what happened next she turned and walked out and went on to the back deck.

I heard yelling, scuffling.

I eventually heard a shot.

I heard Leon say, I'm sorry.

I won't bother her anymore.

I heard him moan.

I don't know how long it went on.

But then the bus comes in and says, I need a plastic bag or something too so that I don't get any blood in the car and I'm taking your car.

And I said, okay.

I gave him a cart.

tarp.

I gave him a keystone car.

With Leon clinging to life, Jackie, Lewis, and his accomplice used duct tape to bind Leon's wrists and ankles.

She watched as they packaged Leon up into the tarp and loaded him up into her car.

Jackie went back inside to clean up while Lewis and his partner dumped Leon's body in the marsh less than a mile away.

Then the two men returned to take care of one last detail.

They took Leon's escalade back to Tacoma and dropped it off.

She later withdrew some more money from her bank account to make final payment to him.

Before they conclude the interview, Jackie wants to make sure one thing is clear.

Jackie is adamant.

Miko knew nothing about this plan.

What finally pushed Jackie over the edge was that domestic violence incident.

She had a fear that her daughter would be killed.

She didn't see any other way for Amiko to get out of this relationship unless he was dead.

Jackie felt helpless, not knowing what to do, like helpless for her daughter, didn't know how to help her daughter, scared for her daughter.

Following her confession, we placed her under arrest for murder in the first degree.

Word of Jackie's arrest quickly reaches Leon's friends and family.

Rachel just calls out it one day and just she's excited on the other side of the phone.

And all she's saying is, they got her, they got her, they got her, they got Jackie.

Coming up, detectives enlist Jackie's help to finish their case.

Why did you kill me?

I guess.

And Jackie's defense team drops a bombshell.

Should have stood up and said, You liar.

Investigators in Gig Harbor, Washington have just arrested 49-year-old Jackie Ray for the murder of her son-in-law, Leon Bockham.

In exchange for her cooperation with the investigation into Lewis Barker, Jackie is allowed to plead down to second-degree murder.

We had worked out a deal with her and her attorney that she would cooperate in a wiretap and have a conversation with Lewis Barker.

Jackie arranged to meet Lewis at the restaurant.

Kind of screwed up, didn't I?

You did.

He said, This doesn't ever haunt you.

I'm feeling a little haunted at the moment.

She's a little better and gone.

Okay.

Yes.

Lewis told her, you know, just to relax, that everything would be fine.

Can I ask a question?

You don't have to answer me.

You can't.

Why did you shoot him in the house?

I guess

Lewis replied back to Jackie that that wasn't his intention, but he didn't know that Leon was going to put up a fight.

That kind of sealed the deal for Lewis.

Lewis's statement is enough for a warrant.

On August 10th, he is placed under arrest.

Lewis was compliant for the most part during the arrest.

He invoked right away.

He wouldn't talk to us.

He wanted an attorney.

But that was kind of par for the course with somebody with his experience in the criminal justice system.

Moreover, Lewis refuses to identify his accomplice.

The best description we got is a white male in his mid-20s.

He's about medium build, average height.

At Jackie's sentencing hearing, Leon's family begs the judge to hand down the maximum sentence of 25 years.

That despite the alleged assault, he didn't deserve to die the way he did.

What he did was not worthy of him being murdered like a dog.

Next to take the stand is Jackie's daughter, the victim's wife, Yumiko.

People are waiting to find out.

Is she going to support her mother?

Or is she going to lash out and say, you took the father of my children.

You took my husband.

She told the judge that she was so fearful of her life

throughout their whole marriage and relationship.

She really was

trying to protect myself and my children.

I know that's your mother, but how can you stand there and defend someone

that did that

to the father of your kids?

Yumiko adamantly stands by her claims of long-term abuse from her husband, but Leon's family believes otherwise.

I should have stood up and said, you liar, and went to jail.

for contempt, then allow her to stand in court and say that and get away with it.

Jackie's defense also also claims that their client's abusive first marriage is further proof that a lenient sentence is in order.

Jackie says because she was a victim of domestic abuse, that was her defense.

Battered wife syndrome.

However, the judge doesn't buy it.

Jackie is sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Lewis Barker pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.

In November of 2013, he was sentenced to 34 years in prison.

Jackie doesn't deserve to be let out because she could have stopped it at any time.

She's older, and so even with that amount of time, her life is pretty much done anyway.

I would have liked to see

longer, you know, or to where she can't get out at all.

With Lewis, I was okay with it.

Leon's family gets some satisfaction in seeing Jackie behind bars, but they must live with the fact that his murder leaves behind a complicated legacy.

He couldn't defend himself.

All they could say just slander his name and drag him through the mud.

It was just horrible.

It was horrible hearing it.

It was horrible.

Who's dead today?

She was never afraid for herself and her children.

She did not live in fear, and her children never did.

Leon was a good provider.

He was a loving father, a loving husband.

I don't see any justification for what Jackie did.

Absolutely none.

I've never been able to find any.

The third individual involved in Leon's murder remains unidentified and at large.

The investigation is ongoing.

Jackie Ray is currently housed in the Washington Corrections Center for Women in Gig Harbor, Washington.

She speaks regularly with friends and family, including her daughter, Lumenko.

It's all a light-hearted nightmare on our podcast, Morbid.

We're your hosts, I'm Alina Urquhart, and I'm Ash Kelly.

And our show is part true crime, part spooky, and part comedy.

The stories we cover are well researched.

Of the 880 men who survived the attack, around 400 would eventually find their way to one another and merge into one larger group.

With a touch of humor.

Shout out to her.

Shout out to all my therapists out there.

There's been like eight of them.

A dash of sarcasm and just garnished a bit with a little bit of cursing.

That motherfer is not real.

And if you're a weirdo like us and and love to cozy up to a creepy tale of the paranormal, or you love to hop in the Way Back Machine and dissect the details of some of history's most notorious crimes, you should tune in to our podcast, Morbid.

Follow Morbid on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen to episodes early and ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.