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Hi friends, how are you today? I hope you're having a wonderful day so far. My name is Bailey Sarian and today's Monday, which means it's murder, mystery and makeup Monday. Today's story, you've probably heard, it's one of those like mysteries that just, I don't know. I don't know, there's so many, I don't know.
You know, we've all had one of those nights where you're mostly having a good time with your friends and then maybe when alcohol gets involved, it's kind of like, "Ew," two people start, you start getting into little petty fights over absolutely nothing because
somebody drink too much and it's just being annoying, you know? And it's like, no matter how much you love and respect your friends, sometimes it's inevitable that little conflicts will come up, you know? And sometimes tensions can just kind of build and boil up in unexpected and weird ways. I mean, worst case scenario, a night of bickering can ruin an evening and lead to like some tension afterwards. Or maybe like, you know,
you and your former friends part ways. But most of the time, these petty arguments aren't matters of like life and death. But according to like some people close to this case, what started as like one of those petty little fights is what led directly to the murder of Jaleah Davis. Have you heard about this one? Yeah. Around about 6:00 PM on Friday, November 18th, 2011,
Toby Davis says goodbye to her 20-year-old sister, Jaleah.
Jaleah was going out for the night with some friends and Toby was staying, she was staying home. Jaleah, Toby, her sister, and their mother Kim, they all lived in Marietta, Ohio. And it was said that this was like a very small Midwestern city, like the sort of place that, you know, it's just small. It like has a couple of school districts, a community college, they have their own water park, and they draw in tourists with like the promise of hiking.
hiking, yay, river tours, and like biking trails. But if you head just like a little outside of the city limits or like cross the Ohio River into West Virginia, then you'll find yourself in like one of those small towns. Like if you blink, you'll miss it. For example, there's a small town called Williamstown and it had like 3,000 people living there. And Williamstown, it just like sat...
just on the other side of the Ohio slash West Virginia border. It's the kind of community where like people stay in touch with their third grade best friends well into adulthood. And everyone just like knows everyone. You get it. Do you? I don't know. Like I've never...
been in a small town like that where everyone knows your business. In my mind, I always think it's gonna it would be like a lot of fun. But then everyone tells you it's awful because everyone knows your business. But it sounds kind of fun. Jaleah and her sister Toby, they were super close. I mean, they were only like 18 months apart in age. So they talked all the time. It was said that Jaleah wasn't super outgoing. She had a reputation for being more like on the
quiet side, but like when she opened up and stuff, overall she was very well liked. Her mother, Kim, said that Jaleah was like super sweet, just a really nice girl. And like her grandfather agreed that like everyone loved Jaleah. If you met her and you just loved her. At this time in her life, she was working at the retail store Hollister. You know, you remember.
Is Hollister still around? It is, right? Remember Hollister back in the day? It was so dark and the music was blasting and the perfume and you were like...
That's how they got you to buy stuff. You couldn't even see what you were buying. You're like, are these? Sure, I'll buy it. What a mess of a store. Anyway, she was working at Hollister. Long-term though, it said that she wanted to go into cosmetology. On November 18th, Jalaya, she was gonna go out to a party with one of her like newer friends. Her name was Kristen. So their friendship, it was kind of new. They just started hanging out like the summer before. So Jalaya goes over to Kristen's house that evening
'cause they're gonna go out, right? And I guess this evening when she gets there, they bake some cookies together and then they get ready to go out for the party. And you know, when you go over to your friend's house, you guys get ready. You're like, "Oh my God, I'm gonna wear purple eyeshadow." What are you gonna do, smokey eye love? So the party was at this guy's house. His name was Brian. Kristen knew this guy, Brian, but Jalaya, she had never met him before, but you know, she was down for whatever, like down to go to the party. All right. So around 9:30 PM,
They're ready and they head out to this guy, Brian's house. And this is when Jalaya pulls out her phone and she texts her mom. She just texts her mom like checking in like, "Hey mom, you know, just going out." And her mom texts her back saying like, "Be good and don't make me worry." So Jalaya, she continues texting her mother and sister for the rest of the night, but there was like nothing out of the ordinary in the text messages. I mean, to all appearances, she just,
was fine and having a good time. So Jaleah and Kristen stay at the party literally just for a few minutes and then they leave. They head over to like the local fast food joint to pick up their friend Katie who needed a ride. So they go out, they pick her up,
Bring her back to the party, the three of them. So they also meet up with another friend. His name is Freddie. He's like a friend of Jaleah's and he also knows the party's host, that Brian guy. I'm not exactly sure like when he meets up with the rest of the gang, but what we do know was that for a decent chunk of the night, it was Jaleah, Kristen, Freddie, and Katie all hanging together, like the four of them.
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So they stay at Brian's house until about 12:30 in the morning and then Jalaya, Kristen, Katie and Freddie, they leave to go to a bar called Nip and Q. Nip and Q? So the core four, they stay at Nip and Q until closing time, which is like 3:00 a.m. When the bar closes, somebody, we don't know who, it's assumed that it's Freddie, drives Jalaya back to Brian's house so she could pick up her car, which
When I was like reading this, I'm like, this sounds like a terrible idea. It sounds like they've been drinking all night, like they should not be driving, right? But he drives her back to Brian's house and it's a little unclear what happens next. But at 3:28 AM,
Jalaya, she calls her sister Toby and tells her or asks her like, "I need a ride home." Now accounts vary, but Jalaya asked her sister to either pick her up at Brian's house. And then some sources said that Jalaya asked her sister to pick her up at like a local gas station.
But either way, what we know is that like she was asking for a ride home. But during the call, Toby, her sister, hears Jaleah yell, "Give me my keys!" She hears this. She's like listening in and Jaleah saying, "Give me my keys!" And she's sounding a little upset. The two of them hang up and then about five minutes later, Jaleah calls her sister again.
And this time she's noticeably emotional. It was said that like she was crying and either cursing at or just like yelling about Kristen. And Toby's on the other line, just kind of like listening. But Jalaya is begging Toby to hurry, please pick her up. And then also changes her pickup location. She asked her to now pick up
pick her up at a rest stop in Williamstown, that like small town of 3000 people I mentioned earlier. Yeah, so she's like, "Can you pick me up here?" Toby is asking her, she's just like, "What is going on? "Like why, what's going on? "Tell, what's happening?" And Jaleah says like, "I'll tell you when you get here."
And they hang up. Then Toby gets a third call a little later on, but this call she does, she fails to pick up. It's been speculated that the call came through while Toby was on the line with Kristen, because she has Kristen's number. So she calls her up and she, Kristen, is like giving her directions to where Jaleah was.
Either way, Toby drives to the pickup location and when she gets there, she doesn't see Julia anywhere. So she calls her, she's not getting an answer. So Toby ends up calling Kristen and she's asking, you know,
what's going on, like trying to figure out where the hell is Jalaya. All Kristen says is that she and her friends dropped Jalaya off at that gas station and they left. And it's unclear why they took her here rather than to her car. I think it's because she was probably drunk and they didn't want her to drive. So they didn't want to drop her off at her car, but that's just like speculation.
Nobody really knows. But Kristen also notes that nobody wanted Jaleah to drive herself home given how much she had been drinking.
So she tells Toby like she hadn't seen Jaleah since they dropped her off. You know, like that's all she knows. According to Toby and Jaleah's mother, Kim, Toby ends up driving around Williamstown for a while, just trying to like, maybe she could spot where her sister's at, you know? So she's driving around and it's been roughly about one hour since she last spoke to Jaleah. And now Jaleah was not picking up any of
the calls that her sister was making. Now this is when her sister is getting that, you know, that gut feeling something ain't right, something ain't right, you know? So she's just driving around looking. So while she's driving around, she gets on the freeway and comes across like a horrible car accident. When she gets closer, she can actually see
It's her sister, Jaleah, lying in the street. So Toby obviously like pulls over. She's like freaking out for good reason. And she tries to run over the median to get to Jaleah, but a paramedic intercepts her because there were already first responders at the scene. She can see Jaleah and she could see that some of her hair is like stirring in the wind, but the rest was matted with blood. And it seemed that the top part of her head appeared to be missing.
Later, Toby and Kim would learn that a truck driver actually reported seeing a body at the side of the road at 4:38 AM, about an hour after Toby and Jaleah's last phone conversation. But for now, Toby is just like overwhelmed by the sight of her sister's body just out in the street. And I guess at some point she ends up collapsing.
poor thing. At some point after this, she comes to, and then she ends up calling Kristen twice. Now this time she is demanding to know like what happened to Jalaya and what do you know?
So, you know, Kristen tells her the same story she said before. She said she doesn't know what happened after they dropped Jalaya off at the gas station. Because they dropped her off, then the gang all left. And that's all she knew. Then Tobias makes that awful phone call to her mother and inform her that Jalaya was dead.
Jeez, it just, it happened so quickly, right? Like she was just talking to her on the phone. None of it was making any sense. Toby has to make that awful phone call. She's telling her mom like she's dead, she's dead and just hysterical.
as anyone would be. But like her reaction doesn't really convey like the gruesomeness of the scene or the state of Jaleah's body when it was discovered. She thought just part of her head was missing, but Jaleah had been decapitated. Her right breast was missing. Her leg was broken. And not just like fractured or like a minor break, her leg had been snapped in half.
On top of that, she was also missing her shoes and she was nude from the waist up. Her bra, shirt, and like a white peacoat, they were hanging on a nearby guardrail, like not too far from her head. Now that part, like everyone was confused because it's not clear what happened. Her clothes seemed to be hanging there. Her shoes missing. They were never found, like never.
Where did those go, you know? So police are obviously at the scene and that's when they detect like Jalaya's brain matter was on the guardrail and near her clothes there was like a huge pool of blood and also acceleration marks on the street like a car had peeled out maybe after hitting her. As far as like her car or a car in general was completely missing from the scene.
Confusing. Investigators end up locating Jalaya's car a quarter of a mile from the scene. Huh? Yeah. And when they find her car, listen, it was actually still running. It had the headlights on and the car was locked from the inside. You know what that satisfying sound is? It's the sound of another sale on your Shopify store.
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He just scraped it all up, okay? So the right front passenger window was broken and there are fractures. There's a big fracture like on the windshield or in the windshield.
But there are no visible pools or like splatters of blood in the car, like at all. It was all on the outside. Understandably, Jaleah's family was devastated, not just by her death, but by the gruesomeness of it and all of like the unanswered questions. I mean, all they wanted to know was like, what the hell happened?
None of it was adding up or making sense. So over the course of the next few days, the police approached all of Jaliyah's friends from the party and also the bar. And they started to like piece together how her night went. Kristen said that she and Jaliyah had an alcohol fueled evening. They did shots at Brian's party. And Kristen said that Jaliyah consumed a ton of alcohol, like a whole bottle of vodka.
which would be like the equivalent of 16 shots. And she did this before they headed to Nip and Q. That's according to Kristen. However, like that testimony has been disputed
Because given Jalaya's height and weight, if she did drink a whole bottle of vodka in three hours, she should have had a blood alcohol level of 0.68. And 0.68 would be like life-threatening. You know, Jalaya would have been unconscious if she did drink that much.
So Kristen's account was just kind of, it was like, okay, sure. Instead, her autopsy showed a blood alcohol level of like 0.19, which is still like quite high. 0.19 is more than double the legal limit to drive in West Virginia. I mean, it's enough to be charged with an aggravated DUI if you got pulled over.
but it's considerably lower than like the 0.68 that she would have had based on Kristen's testimony, you know? Several witnesses at the party and at the bar said that Jaliyah actually seemed fairly sober. Like she wasn't slurring her words, she wasn't stumbling, she wasn't like a mess. But then there were others who told a very different story. With this whole case, it's like everyone who came forward had a different version.
It's like it just was confusing. Others came forward and described Jalaya as wasted. So everyone is confused here because of the conflicting statements, right? Kristen also reported that when she and Jalaya got to Nip and Q, they ended up running into another one of their friends named Chris. Now follow me on this one. So this guy Chris,
He was Katie's ex-boyfriend. Remember part of the core four, ex-boyfriend.
And according to this Chris guy, they still had some like lingering feelings for each other. But at the bar, I guess, Jaleah had like gone up to Chris and she was talking with him and it was said that she danced with him. And because of this, it was creating some tension with the friends, you know? Like it was said that Jaleah was being overly flirty and it just, it wasn't cool 'cause it was Kay's ex and like, she's right here, what are you doing?
It was one of those like petty little fights. Now this wasn't the only potential source of tension between Jalaya and Kristen. Apparently Kristen worried that Jalaya was going to lose a wristlet she was wearing. Now this wristlet was like, I guess it was important to her or expensive because Kristen was like pressuring her Jalaya to hand it over so she could hold onto it for safe keeping because Jalaya was like drinking and she didn't want her to lose it. So Kristen was asking Jalaya like,
Let me hold onto it, let me hold onto it. And Jaleah was like, no. And getting really annoyed with Kristen for constantly asking her
to give her her wristlet. And I know it sounds dumb, but like, God, it reminds me of the early twenties when you would go out with your friends and you'd get, you drink too much and just be stupid. And this is, this is what it's reminded me of, right? It's just, you're being dumb. Everyone's being dumb. So Julia was like, no, like, leave me alone. Like get off my back. And it's causing tension. Everyone's getting a little annoyed here. So Julia was kind of getting annoyed with this whole wristlet situation and
But of course, like at some point during the night, the wristlet did in fact go missing and Jalaya seemed to blame Kristen for it. Like it was just a whole mess. So Kristen and Jalaya seemed like they were, you know, squabbling. It was severe enough that the bar's owner, security team, and even the DJ, they all later would tell the police that they noticed them two kind of bickering and having a little, "Mmm."
Everyone noticed it. So when it was time to leave the bar, that's when Kristen tells everyone Jaleah is in no shape to drive. She'd been drinking a lot. They didn't wanna drop her off at her car because she would probably drive and they didn't want her to. So that's when the gang, remember the core four, they just agreed to like drop Jaleah off at,
a gas station. Kristen said that she made Jaliyah promise her that she would call her sister to pick her up rather than drive home. Now this is where like they're just bad friends because you should just never like leave, you shouldn't leave your friend who's been drinking or whatever alone at the gas station. Like that was the wrong move for sure but they did it. They ended up leaving her there and after dropping her off the rest of them they go to McDonald's
Now there's surveillance footage that shows Freddie driving through the McDonald's drive-thru and there are two women in his car and it appears to be Katie and Kristen. But since there's just two passengers, it was safe to assume that Kristen was telling the truth about dropping her off and then going to McDonald's afterwards, you know, because Julia wasn't in the
According to Kristen, she couldn't say to investigators exactly like what time it was when they dropped Jalaya off, but it was safe to assume it was like around 3:30 in the morning. And this was like based on a couple of factors. When Jalaya had first called her sister, Toby, it was like 3:28 AM. And on this call, remember Toby had heard her sister say, "Give me my keys." When police asked Kristen
Kristen about Julia's death. They're like, what do you think happened? Kristen speculated that Julia must've tried to drive herself home when they dropped her off. She said that her friend Julia must've like been driving, lost control of her vehicle and like hit the guardrail.
Maybe then she tried to like flee the scene of the crime because maybe she was afraid that she was going to get like a DUI. But because she was wearing dark clothing and the streets that she was on was not well lit. So a passing driver must have like failed to see her and struck her on accident. Now, to be clear,
this account does not like match the evidence at the scene. But in Kristen's defense, she never claimed like this was an accurate account of Juliette's death. It was just her own speculation. Now Kristen said she got this theory because it's what she heard through the grapevine, which like makes it even more weird because who was saying like the grapevine? Who's saying that? Like, you know, everyone's talking and had theories and it's like, it was just, how did they all know?
Small town, maybe someone knew something. Well, the police, they end up making their own ruling about what happened, what they think happened. And their story is pretty different from Kristen's. But like her, they believe that this was nothing more than a horrible drunk driving induced accident.
They speculated that in addition to driving under the influence, Jalaya must have been distracted when she was driving. And they believed that she was distracted because in the car, the overhead light was on.
So they were like, maybe she was looking for something, you know, like, I don't know. But on top of that, it was also noted that she wasn't wearing a seatbelt. So her attention might have been split. She must have like smashed into a guardrail while going about 70 miles per hour. And the front passenger side collided with the rail hard enough to propel Jaleah out of her seat and
out of the car and even knock her shoes off. Now there was like a crack in the windshield. So they believed that like her head had bounced off the windshield. And then she had flew out the passenger side window, which like mentioned before was the only window that was broken in the accident.
Very bizarre, I know. So according to police, Jalaya flew out of the car headfirst, struck the guardrail and then died instantly. But they're saying that she was only partially thrown out of the car. So like her upper body was on the outside while her legs and lower torso were still inside the vehicle. This is what police believe.
Meanwhile, her car continued to pull forward, which was most likely dragging her body along the guardrail because like her remains kind of were on the rail. So they're believing like this is how it happened. So as she's being kind of dragged along, this is where it must have ripped off her clothes. And then also this is how she got decapitated. Eventually the rest of her body would be dragged out of the car and then left
on the road where she was later, what police believe, struck by at least two semi trucks. Now this account would explain like how in the hell her body ended up so mangled and how Jaleah exited the car without unlocking or opening the doors. Because remember when her car was found, it was running still.
But to a lot of people, there were like things that are still not adding up, which made it hard to accept this official story from police. Many are like, there's no way this makes no sense.
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blood, there'd be something or some hair, like something that would show like this actually happened, but there was no visible signs of like droplets of blood, pools of blood. There was nothing inside the vehicle. And all of the blood, again, they were like the stains were on the outside of the vehicle. There are pictures of her car and it's like most of the blood is on the back of her trunk.
Like the trunk of the car is where most of the blood was at. This is what I speculated, so whatever. But it looked like if she flew out the passenger side, she kind of must have gone to the roof and then the back of the car because that's where like the stains of blood were at.
you know, like she slid back. If she was partially pinned in the car while her body like pressed against the guardrail, you think, many would think that there would be a lot of physical evidence afterwards, but there just wasn't.
there wasn't. It's bizarre. Again when her car was found it was still idling and it was like again a quarter mile from her body so it's been speculated that it must her car must have just kept coasting down the street after the collision but the super weird part is that the car would have to keep it could have kept coasting but it had to coast uphill
and navigate two bends in the road, unmanned, to reach the location where it was found. So, you know, many were asking how the hell does a car like do that on its own? Plus, again, there were acceleration marks on the road near the pools of Jelena's blood. Many thought suggesting like someone may have hit the gas pedal after hitting her.
this would be impossible if the car was empty, acceleration marks, right? People just had questions. And beyond that, like Jillian's family said that the car was in surprisingly good shape when it was recovered.
and not nearly as damaged as they would think after striking a guardrail at 70 miles per hour. And the guardrail itself, remarkably unscathed. Like there were barely, there was like no marks. It was very bizarre. Now, to be fair, a lot of this speculation and these questions came from people
and their own speculations, you know? Like, and many of them don't really have expertise in collisions or traffic accident investigations. So, you know, it's like take these claims with a grain of salt, but it didn't make sense, right? Now, one of the strangest details was the fact that Jaliyah's bra, shirt, and coat were found hanging from the guardrail.
Very bizarre, very bizarre. And it was in that order. So it was like her bra was on the bottom and the coat was on top of the bra. If police were accurate and like the railing ripped her clothing off,
then many are thinking like the coat should have been on the bottom because it would be first to come off, right? And then undergarments would be on top of that because that would be last. And it was just hanging there. Like it looked like someone like placed it in a way. Like it just didn't make sense.
And then finally, one of the biggest questions was like, where the hell did her shoes end up? They never found them. Where were her shoes? They don't know where the shoes went. And it was making me think like, I wonder if she took her shoes off at some point, like before she drove, maybe she left them at that gas station or something. I mean, who knows, but...
her shoes were missing, that's what we know for sure. So this was like the police's ruling, right? That she was driving drunk and this is what happened. But the Davis family, they rejected the police's official story and they've been fighting for better answers.
because it's like a lot of it doesn't make sense. So Jaleah's mom, her name is Kim, she runs the Justice for Jaleah Facebook page and that's where she shares information and pictures and just questioning everything, right? She really wants like them to reopen the case because she believes or the family believes it was a homicide. So Jaleah's family, I mean, they have their own theories as to
what happened. Okay, her mother Kim believes that, you know, maybe the friend Kristen had more to do like with Julia's death than she had let on. And she came to this conclusion pretty early on telling officers that this friend Kristen had a history of like violent fights with other girls. Also the family found it odd that
Right after everything went down, Kristen had secured a lawyer within 12 hours of Jaleah's death. And every, not everyone, but Jaleah's family found that, you know, it was like suspish. But to be fair, it's like, that is technically what you should do because, right? Like you should get a lawyer, but at the same time, it's, you can't win because some people were like, oh, that's weird that you got a lawyer.
What are you hiding, you know? Jalaya's mother thought this was super weird because Kristen was the only friend that had lawyered up. Nobody else did. On top of that, Kristen had waited three days before agreeing to do a police questioning. So everyone's like, "Hmm, not a great look, girl." Apparently her father told someone with the department that she didn't feel like talking.
Just yet she wasn't ready. Yeah. I mean, but however, none of this is like automatically damning. It's pretty unlikely that Kristen would have been able to find and hire a lawyer in a matter of hours on a Saturday. It's more likely that her family already had like an attorney on retainer or something like, you know,
And her hesitancy to agree to an interrogation might have something to do with her lawyer recommending that she wait, you know? But again, it was just kind of weird and not a great look. And people are just feeling some sort of way, like maybe Kristen knows more than she's leading on. Okay, so this whole story is weird, right? We can all agree. What was even more weird was that Kristen was seen with Jalaya's key chain just days after her death.
Now this was weird. This was very weird because this keychain was a gift from Julius' sister, Toby, and the Davis family. They all said like,
This keychain had a lot of sentimental value to Jaleah and there's no way like she would remove it from her keys and give it to Kristen. And like, why would she do that? Because the keychain was on her set of keys, her car keys that were still in the ignition when her body was found. So like there was no good reason for Kristen to have it. And everyone thought it was funny.
It's freaking weird, right? Like why does she have it? At some point afterwards, like Kristen's lawyer returned the key chain to Jaleah's family. But understandably, there was still like a lot of tension and a lot of questions. Now there have been tensions between Kristen and Jaleah's mom. It's been ongoing, but ultimately it's like hard to say who to believe here. Kim has her reasons to suspect Kristen while Kristen insists that she's innocent.
and there's no smoking gun to prove either person is correct in this situation. And to make matters even more complicated, additional witnesses have come forward to just make things more confusing, way more confusing. Okay, so there was another friend of Jaleah's, his name is Justin. So this Justin guy, he goes to police to like report some rumors that he had been hearing. Of course, authorities always have to take like unverified gossip with a grain of salt.
But Justin insists that like this speculation was common knowledge within his social circle. So according to Justin, the night that Jalaya had died, Jalaya was in the car with Freddie, Kristen, and another person named Nicole.
This is according to Justin. And Justin is like the only person who ever mentioned this other person, Nicole. At some point, Justin said that Kristen and Julia started to fight about something involving a house key. And then the car had some mechanical issue on the freeway, right when the house key argument was getting like super heated. So they pull over and Justin said that Kristen and Freddie became violent towards Julia. I guess first Freddie dragged Julia out of the car
Then Kristen physically attacked Jaleah and like smashed her head into the guardrail. Then someone got behind the wheel. Justin said he wasn't sure who, but someone did. And that's what happened. But this unidentified driver was able to start the vehicle back up. Then
then speed forward and run Julia over, which killed her. And according to this guy, Freddie, Kristen and Nicole decided to flee the crime scene. So first they left the car and drive and let it like coast away from Julia's body. Then they took off somehow like on foot.
whatever. Justin, when he was saying all this, he wasn't clear on how they escaped with no vehicle, but he speculated that they probably hitchhiked or called someone and got a ride another way, you know? So if any of this was true, it would explain how Julia's body ended up so mangled while leaving minimal damage on the guardrail. And on top of that, it would make sense why her blood was like on the outside of the car, right? Like, because, right? It kind of, it made sense.
But of course this was just gossip and it's not clear even where it came from. There's no proof, you know? So it seems like the police, they really didn't take Justin's story very seriously. But then in February, 2012,
About three months after Jalaya's death, another witness comes forward. And this time she's not just repeating rumors. She tells police that she actually saw the lead up to Jalaya's homicide. Bold claims. This woman, her name was Ember. I know, interesting name, Ember. But she files a police report saying that she was at Nip and Q and saw Jalaya get into a fight in the parking lot. And she got into a fight with like these two men and a woman.
So according to Ember, after the confrontation, Jalaya drove away in her car and then the people that she was fighting with, they ended up getting into their own vehicle and they followed her and chased her. She said that the people following her were like driving really aggressively, trying to push Jalaya off the road and eventually they succeeded. According to Ember, after Jalaya was driven off the road, I guess that's when she physically got out of the car and that's all she knew.
Police had this girl, Amber, take a polygraph test to see if she was telling the truth or not. And she actually fails. Which on its own, it doesn't mean much because I feel like we all know that lie detector tests, they are not very reliable. I don't even know why they still do them right.
But once she gets to polygraph results, Ember confesses that she made up the whole story. Yeah, not just once, but she made it up like multiple times.
Now, thank God, like she actually got charged with filing a false police report and she was sentenced to six months in prison and a $500 fine. This is literally the only conviction and the only criminal charge that was ever filed in relation to Jalaya's death. Even with new rumors and tips, police are still confident that she lost her life in a tragic accident and nothing more.
That said, the sheriff's department had said that they might reopen Jaleah's file if anyone can present any compelling information or give them a reason to do so. As of yet, it doesn't seem that anyone has managed to come forward and give like some concrete...
evidence, you know, for them to reopen it. Now there is like one question that's still unanswered. And if we could solve this part of the mystery, it would help break open the larger question of whether Jalaya was murdered or not. Or like, was she alone when she died? If Jalaya was in the car with someone else, it would give that other person the means, motive and opportunity to hit Jalaya and like drive away.
If she was on her own, the police's story of a single car accident is really the only credible explanation for how she was ejected from the car. And given the amount of damage to the passenger side of the vehicle, it's very unlikely anyone could have been in the crash without sustaining injuries, like a passenger or something.
And at the very least, if someone was with her, they'd have cuts, bruises, stuff that would be visible when police were going around questioning everybody. On top of that, it's believed that Jaleah was alone in the car because on the passenger seat were some of Jaleah's personal items, like some of her clothes, as if she was gonna stay the night, you know, and needed a change of clothing. It seemed like her makeup bag was there as well. And...
That to investigators suggested that like no one was sitting there. It was just her. Typically in a crash like this, police wouldn't have to rely on any like guesswork.
Many cars have what's called a passenger presence detection system or PPDS. And this is like a device that can determine if anyone is in a particular seat during a drive. And that's how the car, quote unquote, decides which airbags to deploy in the event of an accident. The car also has a supplemental restraint system or SRS.
And that can detect how much weight is on a seat and determine if the person is actually using their seatbelt. So usually like this is the information police will have to determine if someone was with them, right?
But when Jalaya's car crashed, the passenger airbag did not go off and both the driver and passenger seatbelts were unbuckled. Additionally, the driver and passenger side both failed to activate that device that makes your seatbelt tighten if you tug it too hard. So to investigators, this all suggested that the car system as a whole
failed to detect anyone with Jalea. However, when mechanics examined her vehicle, they found an error code that suggested the PPDS was malfunctioning at the time of the crash. I know, where are the odds, huh? Like they need that information. Of course it was malfunctioning.
And it had been for nearly like a full day prior to the collision. This unfortunately timed error meant that it was impossible for investigators to say for sure if like anyone else was in the car. Police felt that they still didn't have any concrete reason to reverse their ruling that Julia's death again was an accident. So that may not be the only reason why the police didn't want to look too closely into this case. You see,
Three of Jelena's companions that night were children or grandchildren of current or former police officers. So many were believing that the investigators might be incentivized to rule the death as an accident, even if the evidence pointed, you know,
towards homicide, to protect the children. And given all like the swirling questions that still persist about Julia's death, a lot of amateur and online sleuths have presented their own theories about what happened. And many have like accused Kristen of getting away with murder, finding her whole story to be suspect. More importantly,
There isn't any hard physical evidence to even suggest that Kristen had anything to do with the crash. Like really. Personally I don't think she had anything to do with it. Just that's a personal opinion. I don't know. I don't know actually. I don't know. I don't know. All the speculation is just circumstantial. So if Jalaya was murdered the culprit could be
Someone else entirely, who knows? Still the accusations have seriously ruined Kristen's life. Her attorney says that she deals with constant harassment and she's like, she has to move somewhere where no one will know her. It's just a whole mess. In the end, it can be tricky to say like what the answer is. If the police's account is true and Julia really died in a horrible accident, then the fairest next step would be to find a way to let
to let go and allow her to rest in peace, you know? But if Julia was murdered, then it makes sense to continue to apply pressure until her case is reopened. At this time, really, it's impossible to know which explanation is true. And it might be one of those things that
we'll never know unless someone comes forward with new evidence. So this whole story is just really confusing. There's so many things that don't make sense. And at the end, Julia's family just wants answers and you know, just hope that they get that. It's just sad.
can't imagine losing your daughter and not having any answers right? So many questions. Her mom Kim still runs the Facebook page still like she posts stuff like pictures of the vehicle just questioning everything really trying to get the case reopened because a lot of it doesn't make sense. The fact that her clothes were hanging on the railing the guard rail thing none of it her car being
way down there, people just have questions, right? Julia's family believes that something happened that night, something that like changed her plans. They don't know what, but they know or they believe someone else was involved with Julia's death. Well, that is the mystery around Julia Davis' death.
story really. Many believe that there was someone else involved, but there's also a good amount of people who believe that it truly was just like she was driving drunk and that's what caused it, you know? It's been about 12 years and there's still
questions, you know? Be safe out there and don't leave your friends alone places if they've been drinking. Yes, I think that is the biggest tip here. If you are hanging out with your friends and one of them is being kind of like, you know, maybe you're mad at them or whatever, you still, you should never just drop them off somewhere and leave them there, right? Take care of one another and look out for one another. All right? Promise? Great. I hope you have a good day. Make good choices. And I'll be seeing you guys later. Goodbye.