Jesika Jones Part 1 with Detective Mike Weber
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True Story Media. Hello, it's Andrea, and we are bringing you this week's episode one day early in case you have a long drive ahead of you or just some extra downtime this week. Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate. And while I'm at it, thank you for all of your support. It is the fact that you keep tuning in that lets me keep doing this work, and I'm very grateful.

Today, we are sharing the first episode in our new Case Files miniseries about the Jessica Jones case out of Texas. This week, we're on with Detective Mike Weber, friend of the show and frequent contributor, and we will also be talking to the father in this case.

This is a harrowing story, but there is a lot to be learned from it. And as well as being hard at work on finishing up season five right now, we are in the process of planning our upcoming season of Case Files. So let us know if there's anything you'd like us to cover by sending us an email at hello at nobody should believe me dot com.

A reminder that we are also on YouTube these days, so if you'd like to see my face, you can check us out there. And as always, if you want more, you can subscribe on Apple or Patreon. You will get ad-free listening, and you will get every episode of Season 5 in the first week of January, right when it launches. Also, Dr. Bex and I do two bonus episodes a month over there on our After Hours subscriber-only show. This month, we are covering the Menendez Brothers song.

This is a story that has been back in the headlines recently and which actually has quite a bit in common with much of what we talk about here on the show. We also have a free tier on Patreon where you can listen to some sample episodes to see if you like it. So do go check that out. And if monetary support is not an option, rating and reviewing also helps a great deal. With that, enjoy the show and happy holidays.

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Thank you so much for being back here on the podcast. You are a longtime friend of the pod, and you are also my co-author on our upcoming book, The Mother Next Door, which is coming out next year. So we're doing- Finally, finally. Finally, yeah. We've been working on it for a while, a couple of years, but it's been a couple of long years. A lot has happened. So-

So we will surely be seeing you again soon. And today, so if you could just, could you just introduce yourself and tell us who you are and what you do?

Sure. I am Detective Mike Weber. I am a detective with the Tarrant County Sheriff's Office in Fort Worth, Texas, and I investigate crimes against children. Well, today we have a case that is really hot off the presses. I am so accustomed to looking at your cases that have been, you know, they're like 10 or 15 years old, and it really reminds me how long you've been at this because you have really become...

the Munchausen by proxy detective in this country. So what a move for you. I know that you have some complicated feelings about that, but nonetheless, here you are.

Here we are, and this case is extremely recent. This has all been happening over the last couple of years. So today we're here to talk about the Jessica Jones case. And so just tell us, Mike, this is another one that came out of Cook Children's, and just tell us how this case got started. How did this whole thing begin? Sure. Jessica Jones, about her four-year-old,

into Cook's Children's on several occasions. I got involved in this in June of 2022, but it started

In March or April of 2022, she had taken the child to the hospital numerous times. And they ordered blood tests when she came in, either in March or April. She was presenting her child as having a seizure disorder. And they became suspicious because it just didn't fit any pattern. All EEGs were normal. And they just had some concerns. So they did a blood test on the child and sent the blood test out in March of

By the time they got it back, mom had left the hospital with the child. She'd already been dismissed. And that one came back with Benadryl in the child's system. She came back in May. Same thing.

She came back again in June, and this time the doctors, knowing the previous history, and she gave a history of no Benadryl given to the child during both those previous hospitalizations. And in the hospitalization in June, she came in again. The neurologist in that hospitalization actually saw symptoms in the 4-year-old where she was shaking and couldn't stand up.

And she became suspicious because mom was

taking the child into the bathroom with her purse. Jessica was taking her purse in with her and then an hour later the symptoms would onset. So they did a 24-hour turnaround, this time on the blood test, and kept her inpatient until they got the results back. And the results came back with Benadryl in the blood system. And again, you know how with doctors, no one wants to think this abuse is happening, right? Even doctors the same way. They're taught to trust the parent. But on the third time,

It was extremely suspicious. And she also had an 11-year-old that she had presented for years, her whole life, basically, as being epileptic. Also, how old is this? How old is this mom and how many kids does she have? Oh, gosh. She's in her early 30s. And she has two by a previous husband, the oldest by father not involved.

And then she has twins with Derek Jones. So five kids. Okay. Okay. So she brings her four-year-old daughter in for a third hospitalization in a period of, it sounds like, a few months. And this time she's having some alarming symptoms. So what happens? Right. So they put her in a covert video recorded room. And she is in the room overnight. Right.

There was an EEG done and that is recorded with a camera in the room. And the EEG recording showed her taking the child into the bathroom. Just to clarify, because in fact, seizure disorders are, the reason I know this is because seizure disorders are one of the most common things that are presented with children in Munchausen by proxy case. But unless you're, unless you're actively having a seizure, it won't necessarily show activity regardless of whether you have a seizure disorder or not. So it is a bit difficult to pin down.

- Right. - But in this case, it sounds like she was actively having symptoms that her mother was attributing to a seizure. So it appeared that she was having an episode, but the EEG machine was not picking anything up. - Right, again, after she went into the bathroom an hour later, this child was shaking, could not stand, and was clearly having symptoms that the doctor, knowing that they just had the blood test come back,

felt that was suspicious for Benadryl poisoning. And at that point, they placed them in the covert video room. Okay. And they contacted me at that point. I spoke with Dr. Kaufman. And that's Dr. Jamie Kaufman, another friend of the show. She is the child abuse pediatrician at Cook Children's. Correct. You know, you have to balance on this between stopping the abuse permanently and

and risk to the child. And we made the decision, right or wrong, to leave the child in the video recorded room overnight with everyone know what was going on to try to see what else would happen. And sure enough, there were two episodes in the video room. One where mom said the child threw up. And Jessica later told me in a subsequent interview that the child threw up in the bed, which obviously never happened.

It's not on video ever happening. And then another episode that Jessica reported that the child was shaking, but that video was a little bit less clear on that because the lights were out, but we never saw the victim move. It was like 5 a.m. in the morning when she reported it and the victim appeared to be asleep the whole time. So...

With that additional evidence, I felt it was something that I could confront her with in an interview and maybe get some admissions. So with the evidence of you have a videotape where the symptoms are not happening, that she's reporting happening, is that what you're talking about? Well, yeah, correct. All of it, right? Oh, and the blood test for the benadryl. And the blood test and then her presenting symptoms that are not there. Yeah.

Yeah, and I'm interested in, you know, as you said, like, because I think this comes up a lot. And I think this is something that people don't have an understanding with, especially in these cases. You know, one place where this form of abuse is really different than other forms of abuse that might come to the hospital, right? Abusive head trauma or a child showing up with multiple fractures, right?

Then you have kind of a single incident that you're looking at. Essentially, it might be also a pattern of abuse, but it's a single incident that you're going to either investigate a parent for or not. Right. In this case, it's like if you report too early, you might not have enough evidence to actually make an intervention successful. And then it's obviously, though, you don't want further harm to be caused to the child. I mean, that's a really difficult position to be in.

It's always a balancing act in these cases. I encourage law enforcement and for law enforcement listening, if you have an induction case and they are still in the hospital, go to the hospital, confront the suspect at the hospital. That was going to happen no matter what evidence I had. That was going to happen the second day. I'd already made that decision. For

A number of reasons. I don't know if I want to give up everything on a podcast, but law enforcement, contact me. I'll let you know why. There are certain investigative reasons that I do that. I think there's the chance to lose evidence if you don't. I'll put it that way. Yeah, and certainly like induction cases where you're talking about something where someone is poisoning their child with medication, injecting things into their port, that kind of thing are –

some of the most likely to end up with a fatality. Right. And you could have evidence that the hospital lets you leave.

Okay, so you go to the hospital to confront this mom, Jessica, and what was that initial meeting like? So they had an empty hospital room that I could use and we had body cameras so I could record it. And they escorted her, whatever reason they gave her, and she agreed to come into the room. She agreed to talk to me. She was free to leave. She had clear access to the door. Again, cops out there don't block their pathway.

Told her she was not in custody. And unlike CPS in my state, I do not have to read them their rights if they're not in custody. By the way, that's crazy. We'll get in and talk about that later. But CPS has to read offenders a full page of rights, even though they're not police, even though their investigation is completely separate from ours. Anyway, so when she came in, I talked with her, asked for a complete medical history of all of her children, which took some time.

And, you know, after that and have, you know, having her tell me, no, yeah, she threw up and, you know, all these things. And no, I haven't given. She said she hadn't given her Benadryl. She hadn't given her Benadryl before the hospital coming to the hospital. She hadn't given her Benadryl in the hospital. And then I was able to start, you know, kind of laying out the evidence that I had, which led to her making admissions. So you are confronting her on this.

Here is what your child's blood tests have shown. Here is what this sort of history shows. And what did she, how did she explain that? She initially denied, right? And again, this is every offender interview in any type of child, sexual, child physical abuse case.

any other types that I've ever done. They present no different in an interview room. Another point to drive home to police. She initially lied and said, no, I didn't. I didn't do that. And then, you know, I roll out the evidence slowly to her and she says, well, okay, I gave her one. Okay, well, I gave her two. And as I just keep rolling out the information, she makes more and more admissions.

And so this is kind of, as you said, this is like a pattern that you see where it's like first denied, then kind of minimize. Oh, it was, I think something I've heard over and over again in these interviews is it was just one time. It was just one time. Yeah. And you know, that's, and that's, that's not even specific to child abuse. That's every criminal offender ever. Right. It was just the one. The time I got caught for was the only time I ever did that thing. Only time I ever did it. Right. Yeah. This is not a string of behaviors. Yeah. Yeah.

And also, I'm speaking specifically of denial. You know, deny the accusation. You get hit with some additional information. You make admissions, but you never tell the whole truth. That's every criminal offender pretty much in any criminal offense. Yeah. I mean, that sounds like a sort of human nature explanation to me, right? Like more than anything. But I think it's also important to point out that shows, that demonstrates really in spades that they know what they're doing is wrong when they're doing it. Right.

Right. Right. Because they're lying. Otherwise, they just say, she'd say, no, I poisoned my daughter with Benadryl because she needed it. Right. Right. So I think this is an important distinction to draw because we point out a lot that there can be initial red flags where an anxious mom who's over-medicalizing their child or anxious parent who's over-medicalizing their child is

They can have some initial red flags that could look like Munchausen by proxy abuse. But in fact, the minute that you get into an investigation, everything seems different. And that's one of the things, right? Like if you really, if you were having delusional beliefs that your child needed to be given this amount of Benadryl, then you would just...

It seems more likely that you would sort of just cop to the behavior and like explain why you were doing it. If you were bringing your child in over and over and over again, like it seems like it becomes really clear really fast when someone legitimately is worried that their child is sick and is doing something that they don't.

feel is the right thing rather than justifying behavior that they know is wrong and being intentionally deceptive because they are covering for what they know is bad behavior. Do I have that kind of right? Yes, it's very, I mean, it's very, very clear. That difference is stark.

Yeah. Yeah, no, and the neurologist had told me, just so I don't want people to think, oh, you're putting a mom in jail for one or two pills. The neurologist told me that the amount of Benadryl that it would take to cause the child to shake could have killed her. And we also had a case, a previous case involving Benadryl that was

Not medical child abuse, but when I was at the DA's office, we actually worked the case for another DA's office as special prosecutors because this lady ran a home daycare and she was the greatest home daycare ever, according to people. And a lot of judges and attorneys had their kids with her. And what she would do is the kids would get there and she would dose them with Benadryl and make them go to sleep. And she actually killed one of them.

Oh, my God. Yeah. So it's also important to point out to people this can be done a lot of different ways. This this form of abuse. Right. I mean, this is over the counter Benadryl.

She didn't have any nursing experience. We'll get into that later. No matter what she claimed. So, sorry, we're talking about the offender in this case, Jessica Jones. Yes, I'm sorry. Yes, yes. Back to Jessica Jones. Jessica had no nursing experience or anything, but it's over-the-counter Benadryl. Right. So I knew I was dealing with a serious bodily injury case. I knew this was going to be a first-degree felony. Right.

all that. And I'm still going through the interview with her. She starts to make admissions. She ups it to, instead of one or two, she eventually says three or four. Again, adult strength, 25 milligrams per pill. So 100 milligrams of Benadryl into a four-year-old. At some point,

And I switch gears with her and I tell her, we know this has happened. We just need to know why. Why do you do this? And that's when she tells me, I don't know. I'm an habitual liar. I'm tired of living life this way. I'm tired of hurting my family. I'm tired of hurting my kids medically. Wow. How unusual is that kind of statement in one of these interviews?

It is. It's only unusual because police rarely interview these offenders. These again, they present no different. You're liable to get admissions from these offenders as you are any other offenders. I know that probably goes against some literature, but that literature is written by psychologists, not by police officers, because we just don't.

Unfortunately, not a lot of us interview these offenders. Again, they don't present to me, and I've interviewed a lot of them, any different than anyone else. Now, I don't get confessions. Let me clarify. I don't get admissions. This is not a confession. This is an admission. She didn't admit her whole entire course of conduct. I don't get admissions from everyone I interview in any type of abuse situation. But the rate's about the same this for it is child sexual abuse, child physical abuse.

That's really interesting. So this is bringing up something really interesting for me. I had a long conversation with one of our colleagues from the OPSEC committee, Kathy Ayoub. And Kathy works at Harvard, so she's a professor, but her background is, again, in psychology. So that's the lens at which she looks through these things. And she actually has a background in both medical and psychology.

Okay, that's right, because she was a nurse, right? Yeah, okay. Or yeah, she was a child abuse nurse. Yeah, so she was a child abuse, she worked in the child abuse field as a nurse and also as a psychologist. So she has that dual background. She's incredibly knowledgeable. She's been researching this for a long time. And she sort of felt, you know, what she articulated to us was that she felt that these defenders were,

Did kind of fall into some of these different buckets and that there were offenders who might do this kind of behavior and maybe not to the point of induction, but like some of these other behaviors, you know, that they might do it once, that there might be some some version of this behavior that could happen again.

Not in a vacuum, but that there were some offenders like we all I think everyone falls in different beliefs throughout, you know, the group of us that work together about how treatable any of these offenders ever could possibly be. And I think Kathy leans a little bit more towards there. There is a small group.

And everyone that even thinks there's any possibility of treatment admits that it's going to be a very small number. But there are a small number that might, upon that confrontation, be able to change course, especially if it's not as severe of a situation where they didn't put their child in a life-threatening position. That there are some sort of small number of offenders that, upon confrontation, like in this situation, upon being held accountable –

might be able to improve. I mean, what's your opinion on that? And I mean, again, there's sort of a segment of these people that are ever going to end up in front of you, I think, is the other sort of factor here. Right. I mean, I'm mainly dealing with advanced offenders. And maybe for the offenders who are not as advanced, right, who are exaggerating, maybe mildly falsifying, that treatment may be helpful. When you get to the point of induction,

I don't think, and as when we get through this, as you'll see with Jessica Jones, those who induct, they're a lot like pedophiles. They don't stop. They keep going.

You know, the scary thing is what we don't know is if someone's falsifying. We don't know unless we catch it. We don't know if they're inducing or not. Right. It can be anywhere on that scale at any time. It can be all three at the same time. It's not necessarily a step letter where you go from exaggerating to falsifying to inducing. You can be doing all of it at once.

So you just, you have to deal with the facts of each case that come in. And, you know, number one, exaggerating, I'm not going to have a criminal charge. Someone who's just been lying about their kid's health on social media, for example, like, or, you know, playing it up at the doctor or, you know, for whatever reason, or just is a person that like, which I think like there's a lot of people who are like this and a lot of people and a lot of us, you know,

can sort of be somewhere on the spectrum of like,

needing a little more attention for being sick or really like sort of, you know, oversharing on social media or like there's sort of a spectrum of behaviors that fall within normal and like none of those people are going to end up in this situation. And I think that's important to point out because, you know, as we know, there is a lot of misinformation about this and in this sort of medical kidnapping narrative that we're unfortunately stuck in. Thanks to some of my colleagues on the media side,

But it makes it sound as though, oh, man, one Facebook post that's TMI about your kid and you're going to be hauled off to jail. Right. Like one, if you just if you question the doctors too much, if you are a stinker in a hospital situation and that doctor just wants to teach you a lesson, like you're going to end up in Mike Weber's office. Like, no, that's not I mean, it could not be further from the truth.

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She sort of ends this interview like with a kind of plea for almost sounds like a plea for mercy, right? Like I please help me. I want help. I don't want to be like this anymore. I don't want to hurt her anymore. She's not telling that you're correct, but she's not telling the whole truth. She's still minimizing. And, you know, as I got further into the investigation, talked to people around her, it became pretty clear that she was.

The one thing that she was completely honest about is that she was a habitual liar. Right. I mean, you know, that's, it's so reminiscent to me of the conversations that,

And there's a lot about this that reminded me about the Hope Yabar case because typically there's a lot about these cases that all remind me of each other, right? I mean, I think that has been the helpful thing about talking about so many of these cases side by side. You just do see such strong patterns in both the abuse itself and in the sort of, you know, behaviors that accompany it both in the area of with their children and also just kind of the rest of their life in terms of their career and their other relationships. But, you know, the...

the reason this podcast is called Nobody Should Believe Me is that that is the one true thing that I think Hope Ybarra ever said.

And it's like if someone tells you I'm a habitual liar, okay, well, they're telling you. Like then everything else that comes out of that person's mouth has to be in that context. And it's almost – there's almost an irony to a habitual liar being honest about being a habitual liar. But I think then it's like, okay, well, that is sort of that old adage, you know, if people who tell you who they are listen, right? Yeah.

Right. And it's like I tell police, in fact, you know, I talked to a detective in another state yesterday who has one of these cases. And I told him, he's like, yeah, she's a nurse. I'm like, well, get on the nursing website, verify that. Yeah. Right. Awful lot of fake nurses running around in these cases. Well, and I told him, you know, if she, no matter what she tells you, no matter how true it sounds...

You got to verify it. Basically, if she tells you the sky is blue, go outside and look up. 100%. Yeah, we used to say the same thing about my sister. Yeah, which means you had a lot of work in front of you in this case because you really have to then look back. And I mean, this is someone who has...

children over a pretty big age range sounds like at this point. So she had a four-year-old daughter and then twins that were younger than the four-year-old. Is that the age? No, no, no. The twins were four years old. Okay. So the four, the, oh, the twins. This is one of the four-year-old twins. This is one of the four-year-old twins.

So what happens next? So you interview her and then you're – the child is in the hospital while this is happening. So is there – what's going on on the CPS side? Yes, CPS has responded to the hospital. They wait.

until I interview her before they interview her. She talks to them also and then they do a removal and are going to place with dad if he's protective. Okay. And Jessica is ordered to leave the hospital. Now, I did not arrest her. I could have at the time. I had a felony basically almost on view.

I had a confession, but I had done the interview without Miranda and I wanted to let her walk out. And it's another good lesson. If you and I developed a little bit of a rapport with her. I also knew that she was I didn't know at this time. I got the sense that she was used to getting away with things and that maybe she did not understand the consequences of her actions.

So I wanted to have additional conversations with her and that would be better done out of custody, which I did. I had additional phone conversations with her. Okay. So you mentioned the child is – so there's an emergency removal and then they're –

is a dad in the picture in this case, and they were married at the time? Yes, they were married. And I guess it was a placement, right? But it was a safety plan that mom would not be around the kids and have no contact with the children. Gotcha. So with any of her children, right? Yes. With any child, basically. Okay. So then tell us about dad in this case. When did you speak to dad? What do we learn about dad during this whole initial piece of things? Yeah.

I spoke with dad several days later after CPS had interviewed dad. He appeared initially to be protective. And, you know, this is a lot. I mean, this is the woman you love. You thought your kids were very, very sick. Now you're being told they're not and that she caused it.

And to his credit, he protected his children. And as you know, that is not always the case. And it's usually more times than not that the dad falls in line right behind mom.

Derek did not. I give him a lot of credit for that because it's a pretty shocking thing to see. But, you know, we had some evidence on this case. And normally, am I going to tell a dad the evidence I have? No. But in these cases, and it's like I tell police, these cases are different. And so I shared some of the evidence that we had with Derek.

And what's the rationale for like a case, like maybe a child abuse case that's not this form of abuse where you wouldn't share evidence and then a case where, why do you share evidence with the other parent in these cases? If the parent appears to be protective, I share the evidence so that they will know that they're doing the right thing, right? So that they feel a little bit better about abandoning, basically cutting off their spouse from their children.

And I'm sure anyone listening, think about if this happened with your spouse, how are you going to react? You're going to be protected. You should be protective of your spouse, right? So that's why it's important to let them know because family court, CPS, they're just, you know, CPS in my state has no policies on this abuse. They provide no training to any other investigators on this abuse, no mandated training whatsoever.

And they're often are lost. They're obviously better on induction cases with proof like this case. This is not a hard case. Right. It's a little more straight. It's a lot more straightforward than the cases where you have to sort of draw this huge line through thousands of pages of medical records to help someone understand there's being harmed, harmed under the child. Right.

Yeah. Right. I mean, we have admissions. We have, you know, everything. Yeah. So just to kind of, yeah, like underscore this conversation that you're having,

Derek and we're going to speak to him as well. So we'll, we can ask him what this was like for him. But I think I, I just, yeah, I want to sort of underscore what, what you were saying about, um, you know, having a level of empathy for the dads that are confronted with this, because obviously not as not with a spouse, but like I, I have, I've been there and it is, uh,

Such a horrible thing to confront. And you also really can't underestimate the psychological damage that is done to a person who is living in the house with someone like this every single day, right? Because that person is wearing you down and –

gaslighting you constantly, right? Like you didn't, this isn't what you think. No, they really are sick. No, you didn't see what you thought you saw. You saw something that you didn't think you saw. You know, it's like, it's really does a number on you. So it's not, I mean, I have to assume that any spouse of an offender walking into the situation is already like,

sort of psychologically and emotionally compromised. It's not like this abuse is sort of compartmentalized into like these one or two strings of incident. It's like, it's so pervasive that

with the children. It's, you know, it's emotional, it's psychological, it's educational. It's, you know, in these, in some cases, physical. The cases that end up with you, obviously physical. And like their abuse of everyone else in their life. I mean, they're deceiving often, you know, their friends, their employers, their child's teacher, their spouse, you know, most of all, and their spouse is also being put in this unwitting collaborator role. So it's really like the

on the one hand, of course, I do not empathize with fathers who are not protective, right? And who do allow these offenders to continue their behavior and deny it and whatever. I do not empathize with that.

once they've been confronted with evidence, but I do empathize with how hard it is to come to this revelation, right? This is not an easy thing to accept, especially when you're compounded by, you know, that sort of like fatherly guilt that they haven't been protecting their children, that this was happening under their own roof, like under their own watch. I mean, I know I would feel that as a parent if I was confronted with abuse had been going on before,

by my spouse and I hadn't noticed it, like I would feel horrible. Right. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's what are they going to do? Are they going to go into denial or are they going to address the problem? Yeah. Yeah. It just depends on the, it depends on the individual. What were your first couple of conversations with, with Derek? Like, it sounds like you got a pretty strong vibe right away that he was going to behave in a protective way.

I did, but, you know, being concerned about it, I asked him if he would be open to a conversation with someone who's been through this. Derek has told me this is extremely helpful for him. So I connected him with George Honeycutt and they had an hour and a half telephone conversation.

And and Derek said that really, really opened his eyes. And I mean, he was never not on board. But as you can imagine, he's kind of like, what the heck? And after talking to George, dead solid, never, never wavered and wanted her away from his children.

Yeah, that's amazing because, I mean, I can't think of a better person to put someone on the phone with than George. You know, he's – not only did he act in a really heroic way, in my opinion, but he also just has such a, like, clear grasp of this. And he has spent a lot of time, you know, with –

the, you know, with the advocacy side of this really learning so much more about it. So he's just a very, he's not only has yet, does he have that personal experience, which is incredibly powerful to talk to someone else who's been through what you're going through, especially when it's something this, you know, isolating and horrifying and world turning upside down, you know, sort of thing. I, you know, it also like George has a lot of knowledge. So I just, I can imagine why that was really helpful conversation. Yeah.

Yeah. And like I said, after that, Derek was great. Derek, you know, he told me that

who all other kids involved. He told me about her previous father. I can't remember if they were married or not, but he told me about the previous father of her kid. I don't want to use his name without his permission. He was great. I talked to him. He had reported Munchausen by proxy twice to CPS in Denton County. Really? Yes. One of them was ruled out and one of them was ruled unable to determine. Little investigation was done. And

And they actually sent questionnaires to doctors. And that's a huge no-no on these cases. Because if you send a questionnaire to a doctor, all you're going to get back is what's in the medical history. And the medical history is provided by Maul. What do you know about these previous investigations? Can you just kind of walk us through that? I reviewed them back at the time. I haven't reviewed them. But they were very, very initial. I know that he was concerned that she was medicating the kids when it wasn't needed.

was one of his major concerns that he reported. And because she would send medication to the house for his kids, and we'll get into all the kids, because they were all medicated by her. They all talked about being given Benadryl by her. All of her five kids? All of her five kids. Wow. Every single one. Holy cow. Yeah. And so he reported it twice to Denton County CPS. And look, it is not CPS investigators' fault.

when they are not given any proper guidance. I have talked to that administration five times, tried to get them to enact policies.

You know, send them Arizona's policies on this abuse. Nothing ever happens. And like we've talked about, it will take a very high profile child death on this abuse that is discovered that remains in the news cycle for a very, very, very long time before anything is done, before any changes happen. Large government agencies change at a snail's pace. All right. And it's like banging your head against the wall.

Right. I mean, and you mentioned Arizona because Arizona is actually one of the only states in the country that does have a specific designation for medical child abuse and that has some actual CPS procedures around it. So good job, Arizona, on that one. Spark something uncommon this holiday with just the right gift from Uncommon Goods.

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So you talk to Derek, the father, and the children are placed with him. So the children are safe. What happens next in terms of, and you have not arrested Jessica yet. So she is out. She's just at home, right? With this sort of the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on

Family court side, there's a separation order, but that's it for the time being. So what happens next with your investigation? I called Jessica back because Dr. Kaufman calls me and says, hey, we also found these two other drugs in the child's bloodstream.

And we had found those two bottles in Jessica's purse. Something I forgot to say earlier is that after my interview, I searched Jessica's purse and we found two packages of Benadryl in there, one full and one partially used. And obviously we collected that as evidence. So we also, in her purse, we found two bottles of medication that were prescribed to the oldest child, the 11-year-old.

And one of them was trazodone. I don't remember what the other one was, hydro something or another. And so, you know, the trazodone was empty. Okay. And just to tell people what trazodone is, I happen to know this one because I take this medication as an adult. I take this medication because it helps with sleep. So this is another one that would be like a sedative, could be used to feign symptoms, I would assume is the line I'm drawing there.

There are pretty big differences between what medication you can give a really small child and what medication you can give an older child. Like huge, huge differences. Even with something as simple as Tylenol, you give baby Tylenol until they're two. And, you know, then you say it's like they're they're really like if something's prescribed for an 11 year old, that's a huge difference than a four year old. Right. And yeah.

So both of those bottles we seized, the trazodone was empty. The other one had, was missing like 30 pills out of a nine, out of a nine account. I talked to Dr. Kaufman and she, you know, they had done another blood screen after removal, the day of removal. And sure enough, she had both of those medications in her system.

The victim did. So, you know, that added another charge. I filed on her for endangering the victim, endangering a child. It's a lower grade felony. It's not, you know, I had a serious bodily injury charge, but it was another charge put on her at the time. And I called her and I asked her, you know, and initially she had told me one to two pills of Benadryl. And I'd gone back and spoke with the doctors and they were like, that would not cause what we saw.

And Dr. Kaufman had told me that at least four adult strength Benadryls, 100 milligrams would cause it. And I asked her how many tablets she had given and she said one to two. I'm like, well, the doctors say it would have to be at least four. She's like, okay, well, I gave her four or five at a time, which, you know, that's still a minimization, right? She's only going with what the doctor said. She probably gave her, I would guess, between six and 10 at a time to cause the symptoms. And again,

That's between 150 milligrams and 10 times 25, so 250 milligrams. Yeah, I don't even know what taking that much Benadryl would do to an adult. I mean, that's, you know, like... That's a lot of Benadryl. Yeah, Benadryl is another one that they give you, like I... I'm tying everything back to my own experience today. But yeah, I mean, Benadryl is like something that if you can't take anything else and you, like, you know, when you're pregnant, breastfeeding, whatever, they give you, they recommend that for sleep. Again, if that's...

that little amount of Benadryl for an adult will make them fall asleep than six or seven for a four-year-old child. I mean, that's horrifying. The interesting thing about Benadryl overdose is it doesn't make a child fall asleep. It actually has the opposite reaction and it makes you shake.

Oh, interesting. Okay. Which is why she was using it. Which is why that, so that, because shaking looks like a seizure, right? That mimics seizure symptoms. Yep. So I had that phone call with her. She admitted giving, well, okay, I gave her one tablet of each. Okay, whatever. I'm charging you with that. So one tablet each of the other medications. Of the other medications. Yeah. Yeah. The trazodone and whatever the other one was.

Which, as I recall, was something it wasn't clonidine, but something similar to clonidine. So after that conversation with her and after we forensically interviewed the victim and who said that mom would give her pink, pink or purple pills. And I can't remember the count. I don't think she gave us a count. She just said she would give her pink, purple pills and then she would feel like she wanted to throw up.

And then we interviewed the 11 year old and the 11 year old. And these are forensic interviews where I'm not talking to him. There's a forensic interviewer trained to talk to children, talk to him. And the 11 year old talked about how mom would have her keep secrets from dad, how she was basically taking care of the four year olds during the day when Jessica would sleep all day and that she had seen Jessica give the children, the twins on multiple occasions and

Benadryl and the older child's Clonidine. And she described one instance where she saw him give them both of them and the twins slept for two days. Well, I mean, this sounds noticeable. When you spoke to Derek, was she explaining these things as illnesses? So he was assuming that his children...

Were very, very sick. And the only, only the young, only the twins were Derek's? Yes. Okay. The oldest had no father in her life, which we're going to get, we can get to a bit later. Derek had stepped up and was basically her father figure and continues to be her father figure. And the oldest had said she watched Jessica give them clonidine and Benadryl, saw them sleep for two days after that.

And it's a very traditional family, right? Derek works and Jessica stays at home with the kids. So he's relying on, again, the information coming from her about what's wrong with the children. Which, again, extremely typical in families of all kinds, not just in abuse cases. Yeah. And, you know, one of my frustrations with CPS attorneys is during this process, they basically made Derek managing conservatorship

and then backed out of the case instead of terminating rights on mom. - Ah, okay. - And that is, I know that's easier. I know they probably have their legal reasons for doing it, but they need to understand, Derek is a middle-class guy who's supporting three kids

And has to obviously rely on daycare. And now they have saddled him with a legal bill of terminating her rights, which can be $20,000 to $30,000. Whereas if CPS terminates, then obviously the state is paying for that. The state is paying for that. Yeah, he has to pay. Derek has to pay an attorney $20,000 to $30,000. Now, the conviction definitely helps and may cut that cost down some. But what if there's not a conviction? Right. Right.

Right. So, yeah. So it's really that's a really good point that there are because terminating rights is not something that a police that that's not something the law enforcement site does. Right. I mean, that's that's down to CPS and the family courts. That's correct. And that was custody and rights and that kind of thing. And I was never contacted by CPS attorneys on this case. I mean, and.

Boy, do we know a lot of dads who end up in protracted, financially ruinous court battles with these offenders. I mean, that is par for the course. So that's a really good piece for the CPS side.

To know. Okay. So the kids are at home with Derek and then these, the middle children, I assume are with their father, with her previous partner. And Derek also, yeah, Derek also has two kids with his first wife.

And, um, whenever they were at Derek's house, she also poisoned them with Benadryl also. Oh my God. And one of his kids said that she, at one point he took five Benadryl at a time. We don't know if it's adult strength or children's strength. Right. I mean, five is too many regardless, but, um. Exactly. Okay. So you're getting into your investigation and what do you start to find out about Benadryl?

Jessica, about sort of her history, about I assume you are subpoenaing some social media posts. Was there a lot of social media activity in this? What else do you learn about her? Yeah, correct. She had a Facebook account. The oldest child was a softball player. And so she had a lot of connections on the softball team. Family members had told me that she posted on that account about the child's health.

Jessica herself had volunteered to send me the post that she made during the hospital stay about her posting about the child's medical history. Again, law enforcement, I cannot stress this enough. I'd preserved that account before I ever went to the hospital and before I ever talked to her. I found her account on Facebook. I preserved it. Oh, so even before you shot like first thing, like preserve social media first thing. Yes. Yeah.

They will immediately delete the moment they're contacted by CPS. Yeah, of course. Of course. So, yeah, so that was already preserved. She sent me her posts, which were about the health of the child. And that gave me, again, probable cause. Anything she says about the health of that child is evidentiary in this case. And so that gave me probable cause to get a search warrant for a Facebook account. And I got it for four years of the twins' life from their birth.

I probably should have got it all the way back from the 11-year-old's birth, but at the time I applied for the warrant, I didn't know at that time the 11-year-old was a victim at that point. But even just four years of Facebook records was 79,000 pages. Wow. Yeah.

And so you may ask, how do you go through that? You use key terms, right? I use key term seizure, key term nurse. I started talking with some of the people that Derek connected me with, some of her softball moms. And she had told numerous of them that she was a nurse. She told some she was a trauma nurse. She told some that she was going for her nurse practitioners.

She never had a class in nursing school ever. She'd never been a nurse. So it was full-on fabrication. Full-on fabrication. Another family member told me that she had told them that she had cancer, that she had leukemia. That Jessica herself had leukemia? Yes, that Jessica herself had leukemia. Yeah.

And people think this is wild. This is pretty standard in these cases, guys. - I was gonna say, this is like, I mean, Mary Welch had fake cancer, Hope had fake cancer. I mean, it's, yeah, it's starting to, it's really wild how they all start to sound a bit rote at the end of the day. You're like, oh yeah, the check, there it is. There's the fake cancer. There's the fake nursing license. Like, I just. - About half of my offenders have fake being a nurse and cancer.

Interestingly, I mean, nurses can commit this abuse. I've only had one nurse on this abuse. One actual nurse. Yeah. One actual nurse. Yeah. I mean, I think that I believe the thought behind that is that, again, we always as we always stress is the crime of opportunity piece. I think it used to be that pre-internet nurses were the ones who could commit it.

convincingly and so you saw a lot more of it with nurses and now it didn't take any effort they already had the information yeah now you just have to be a fake nurse with a internet connection to be able to come in so now you just need to know how to google you know the symptoms you need right which is really which is really terrifying in terms of the prospect of proliferation so

So you have a couple of follow-up conversations with Jessica and what any big, other big revelations in those conversations? The biggest ones was that she admitted to giving the kids the other drugs and that she upped, she upped it from one to two pills to four to six. So again, I,

That's important because it just shows that she's still minimizing, you know, she's still lying. She's admitting to only what you are confronting her that you have evidence on. She's only admitting to what she thinks I can prove, which is what you see in these cases a lot.

Right. I've only ever got one complete confession, I believe, from an offender. And that's because it was an NG tube case, a nasal gastric tube. So it was a lesser felony. It was a bodily injury, injury to a child, bodily injury felony in Texas, which was a third degree. I don't feel I've ever gotten a complete confession from anyone else. I've gotten admissions. Yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah, that were the main things that came from from her interview. And there was actually two phone interviews that I did subsequent. And those are the things that came from those phone interviews. OK. And so as you're then tasked with searching the seventy nine thousand pages of Facebook posts.

What are your big takeaways? So we find out about some fake nursing things. And at this point, I'm assuming you're also interviewing friends and family and doing those collateral interviews. So what's the big picture of Jessica? Yeah.

Well, she, on her Facebook post, she claimed to be a nurse. She wasn't. Multiple times to multiple people. She had already erased the leukemia post that someone had seen about herself. She also, a family member had told me they had seen a post about her presenting one of Derek's kids as having cancer. And that post had been deleted pretty quickly. So one of her stepchildren. Yeah.

Yes. But what was in there was her continually presenting the kids as being ill. And there was a point where she was told, your children do not have epilepsy. Believe in the last hospitalization. And the same day, she sends a message to one of her softball mom friends that both of the kids have epilepsy.

So, and again, for law enforcement, that's why those records are so good. It shows the intentional lying by the suspects in these cases. And it was just lie after lie after lie. I didn't have to go through those really hardcore because I had admissions. I picked and choose, you know, I choose cancer. I choose, I chose different keywords to search and was able to come up with what I needed, you know,

to verify just that she, yeah, she is a pathological liar, just like she says. Yeah. Just like she told you she was. So at what point do you move towards making an arrest? Yeah. The arrest, actually, I made that before I got the Facebook records, the first arrest. She was, so I got the Facebook records after that arrest. And

After the oldest child's interview, when she told me that she had witnessed Jessica give both children Benadryl and Clonidine and then sleep for two days,

That allowed me to then go back on the other twin, and I filed another case of endangering a child for that medication. And then I rearrested her again several, I think it was in September, I rearrested her again. So the case, your investigation starts in June, and then when is the first arrest and what happens to her? Does she bond out or where is she during this period? The first arrest was in mid to late July. She immediately bonds out. Family bonds her out. And then...

I continue my investigation. We forensically interviewed all of the children, all five, seven, seven. Okay. Always five biological plus two step kids, biological for two and two step kids. We've read, we've forensically interviewed all of them. Uh, obviously that took time, but, um, by September, the oldest, after she told me about the medication of the two twins by, by Jessica, uh,

the clonidine and the Benadryl that's when I got a warrant for the other twin and we arrested her in September 12, 2022 again, Jessica again

Okay, and then did she go to jail or did she bond out once more? Well, she went to jail but bonded out pretty quickly. Her family again bonded her out. The good thing about this was is we had a good arraignment judge on this. He had been a prosecutor and he actually assisted in helping write one of the first attempts at the law we tried to get passed. So he was familiar with this abuse and he applied –

of no contact with any child under 17. And that's a bond condition. So she violates that bond condition. That's actually a criminal offense. It's like violating... Oh, in and of itself. Okay. In and of itself. Violating bond condition, it's called violating a bond condition or a protective order. Okay. They're both in and of themselves criminal offenses instead of taxes. Got it. That becomes important later. Yeah, yeah. So you mentioned that...

Her family bonded her out. What was the family's stance? Were they defending her? Were they what? Why did they do that? What's your take? I mean, I don't know. I know that Derek has said that her her mom and her uncle were protective of her. OK, well, well, and I do know when we get later into this, like her last arrest. I know that when when that boyfriend showed up to pick her up.

because we used him to get her out of the house because she would always dodge, you know, she would dodge getting taken into custody. So we got him to take her to a barbecue joint she liked conveniently next door to the police department. And she was arrested there because she had a warrant. But when he went to get her out of the house, when you went to pick her up, her uncle's like, you know, this is a trap and they're going to arrest you. And you know what? They're family. They're supportive. I don't blame them for that. Well, we differ there.

Well, I wish they were all like certain families. Sounds like maybe the uncle has been reading some Mike Hickson Bog literature. I just, I didn't like to pass up an opportunity to pick on him. So, okay. So she's arrested twice, goes back home twice. And so what, like, what is going on with sort of the CPS investigation? What's going on with the medical record review? Like, how do those sort of take us through how the court proceedings grind along here? Yeah.

Right. So as anyone who's familiar with the criminal justice system knows, it is not a fast system. It works slowly. And especially, you know, 2022, we're coming out of COVID. They haven't really tried cases in two years. You have a huge backlog of things going on. We basically grind along CPS reasons to believe for physical abuse. And again, the child is all all children are separated from her. She has bond conditions of no contact with any child under 17.

And her other two kids are with her dad. The three kids stay with Derek, including her oldest.

who's 11. And, you know, at that point I forwarded my case to the DA's office. I kind of wrap up my investigation, um, where there was a ton of other stuff, you know, that, that we had to go through just interviewing multiple people, interviewing all of the softball moms, interviewing multiple family members of Jessica, several of which gave pretty, really good evidence, um,

Don't want to say who, but members of her own family knew that she was a habitual liar and had concerns. And again, I think this is actually pretty common, right? Where like the people might have like one or two true believers, but then, you know, it sounds like you're sort of talking to everyone in Jessica's life. And by and large, people are saying, yeah.

Yeah, corroborating just this like overall picture of her as a habitual liar. Right. Now, a lot of them, you know, obviously the softball moms had no idea. One of them was a nurse and she was, you know, Jessica completely took her in. You know, she actually medicated her.

the oldest when she stayed at it. And that obviously you can imagine as a nurse how much that bothered her that she'd actually medicated a kid that didn't need to be medicated. Of course, yeah. A nurse would be more equipped to understand kind of the severity of this. Right, exactly. And talk to all of those people, get statements from them, written or recorded. You know, talk to family members.

And then we just, you know, we kind of go along and we wait. The next thing that happened. So she's been arrested and she's awaiting trial. She's awaiting trial. She's out on bond. She's awaiting trial. And then in March of 2023, I get a call from Derek. He's like, hey, she's on social media. She got a new boyfriend and he's got three kids and he's down in South Texas.

Now, she was not required to have an ankle monitor. I feel she should have been. You know, it's the criminal justice system. I think they see a pretty female and they think, what threat could she be? Right. And they don't understand that.

this abuse at all at the next level. At least that's been, and I'm dealing from personal experience. I'm sure there are people out there that do. I think that's a really common theme. And I think you're right because I think like,

When people think of, like, who should be on an ankle monitor, I think they think, like, sort of high-profile case where someone's a flight risk or, like, a man who, like, shot someone or, like, beat someone up. I think those are the – when you sort of think of, like, who is a threat to their community and –

Obviously, we understand where but I think there is like a real roadblock to people thinking that especially like, yeah, I mean, Jessica is cute and white and relatively young. And it's like looking at a woman like that. I just don't think that's anybody's idea of or I don't think that's a lot of people's idea of a criminal. I won't say anybody because I think two of us are on this call. Yeah.

And as we know, I mean, female violence often looks a lot different than male violence. And I don't think the system is good at all at recognizing it. It is important to point out, injury to a child, serious bodily injury, which is what she was charged with, her highest charge, is the same degree as murder in the state of Texas. It's a first degree felony. Wow.

So anyone at that level should be on an ankle monitor. Right. So it's like, would you let someone who'd been arrested for a violent murder just like kick it at home with no supervision? Like, no, probably not. And she and she had, you know, she got this new boyfriend. She was allowed to move to South Texas, not out of state, but way, way, way far from DFW.

And live down there with him. Yeah, it really seems like you shouldn't be allowed to move. A lot of times you've got to have permission to leave. My understanding is, I don't know if it's a lot of times, but sometimes you have to have permission to even leave the county.

So for whatever reason, she's allowed to go down there. Derek calls me. He's like, hey, you know, I've still have people who are friends with her on social media. They say she's got a new boyfriend down there and he has kids. So at this point, is Derek's not in touch with her at all directly? No. OK. And weirdly, the kids, he had three children and they all had the same first letter name as all three of her kids had that were living with Derek.

The new boyfriend's three kids all had unique names that, again, with the same first letter as Jessica's kids. And Jessica's kids all had unique names. So it was just kind of a creepy coincidence. I contacted the boyfriend.

He's like, yeah, I just found out about from my ex-wife. No, she's never been around my kids. I brought him over as a surprise one time and she left. She got weird and left after five minutes. So I really didn't have a good bond violation at that point in time. I should have got his, you know, the mistakes I make. I should have got his ex-wife's number.

and talk to her um what whether he would have given me her name he probably would not have i don't i don't believe at that time because he was still kind of believing jessica yeah i would i would think sort of like ex-wives and stepmoms they seem to play a big role in these it's like that's always a talk to that i mean like i think if you're trying to get information talk to the women like i can tell you that just uh you know from having been on this earth for that long but um and

And, you know, you're talking about like sports moms. I mean, those are the people who are going to know the things, right? The people that have the information. I didn't know at the time. I don't know every law in the state of Texas. I should have looked it up, but I didn't. I didn't know at the time that a bond violation was a criminal offense. I'm technically she was with the kids for five minutes. It's a terrible criminal offense, but it's a criminal offense. I could have arrested her then, but I didn't.

And then that's in March of 2023. Okay. So there is a lot more to say about this case. This is a crazy story. We are going to be picking up next time with our conversation with Derek Jones, the dad in this case. And then we will circle back around and talk to Detective Weber after that. So stay tuned. Nobody Should Believe Me Case Files is produced and hosted by me, Andrea Dunlop.

Our editor is Greta Stromquist and our senior producer is Mariah Gossett. Administrative support from Nola Karmouche.

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