Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Dad Who Spiked Smoothies at Daughter's Sleepover Pays the Price

Episode Date: January 16, 2026

Michael Meyden is serving time in prison for drugging smoothies he made for his daughter's friends at a sleepover at their home in August 2023. The Oregon man admitted to the crime and was sentenced to 24 months in prison in 2024. The father of one of the girls sued Meyden and his wife for $2.4 million in November 2024. Now, that suit has been settled. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy looks at the fallout in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.Host:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest:Shari BotwinCRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

There's news in the case of a dad from Oregon who admitted to drugging smoothies at his daughter's sleepover. Michael Maiden is serving time in prison, but he had another legal battle to fight, and now that's over. I'll explain. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Angeonette Levy. The case of Michael Maiden out of Oregon was one that should make every parent's skin crawl. Maiden is in the last part of a two-year prison sentence after he admitted to spiking smoothies that he's served to his daughter's friends at a sleepover that he had arranged for them in the summer of 2023. These girls were like 12 years old at the time. And after he was sentenced, the father of one of the

victims filed a $2.4 million lawsuit on his daughter's behalf against Maiden and his wife. And there's news now about that lawsuit. Very big news. I'll get to that in just a moment. But first, just a recap of this case, what happened was beyond creepy. Maiden, an architect living in a $1 million home admitted to priming these girls by arranging activities for the sleepover. Maiden took the girls to get their nails done. He ordered pizza for them and then dictated everything they did once they returned to his home. A search warrant affidavit said that Maiden mixed mango smoothies for the four girls, each had a different colored straw, and then he insisted that the girls drink the entire smoothie.

But one of the girls, she knew that something was not right. She trusted her gut. She described cuddling with one of her friends as they tried to go to sleep and she said Maiden came to the basement a couple of times and removed her arm from around her friend. One time he actually put his finger under her nose to see if she was sound asleep. The girl texted her mom, please pick me up and say I had a family emergency. I don't feel safe. I might not respond, but please come get me. Please.

Please pick us up. Please, please. Now, when it was all said and done, the girls tested positive for a drug called Tamazzo. Tamazepam. Tamazepam is a drug used to treat insomnia. It even comes with warnings that it can cause life-threatening breathing problems or sedation. I spoke with Dr. Mark Lebo, a retired toxicologist with the FBI back in 2024 about the drug and this case. Yeah, it's very disturbing, actually, because we're not really sure what the intent was. Why was he trying to drug the young? What was the ultimate goal here? Was it to try to sexually assault them, or was it more of an experiment that he was doing to figure out

the right dose to knock something? Look, benzodiazepines in general, particularly Tamazepam, is not a medication that you typically would prescribe to a minor. So to take an adult dose, assuming an adult dose of benzodiazepine, and give it to a child where you know nothing about their medical condition. You know nothing about other medications that they may be prescribed and how those medications may interact with the tamazepam.

It's a risky venture that was taken here. Now, Michael Maiden, he is very fortunate that one of these girls didn't go into a coma or even worse. The girls spoke when Maiden was sentenced in June of 2024. He was sentenced to just 24 months in prison.

Three of my best friends. Knowing how I felt that night, I'm certain that it was not the first time Mr. Maiden drug me, but it is the first time that he was caught. I felt similar effects during past experiences, and now I know why. Mr. Maiden encouraged his daughter to have friends over for sleepovers. He wanted us at his house. He made creepy comments about a skinny dipping in their hot tub. He made comments about when we took showers and changed clothes.

He would touch my friends and I, without our consent, and I had to ask him to stop multiple times. but he also took away my best friend. I needed her most. I trust him because he was my best friend's dad, and he abused that trust. He used drugs that make you fall asleep and forget things. Huge drugs that could have killed us.

We had to spend almost six hours at the hospital doing blood tests and talking to police. And as a 12-year-old kid, that scared me. I've altered the girl's voice to protect her identity. That girl said that she even blamed herself for all of this. For the longest time, I've thought that maybe, Maybe it was my fault that this happened to me.

Maybe it's my fault that he drugged me. Maybe it's my fault my friends are suffering because of me. But then I suddenly began to realize, it's not my fault. It's his. And I or my friends should not feel any blame for any of this. Michael Maiden, look at me. You are horrible.

You are a rotten old man who did this to children. I don't know what your motive was, whether it was rape or anything, but for the longest time, you've made me scared of old men that probably think like you. I am disgusted by the look of your face and your actions and all of that you've done. I can't believe the low sentence you're getting for this. You are horrible, and I will always. always hate you for what you've done. Now, one of the mothers of the girls was also very angry. She said that 24-month prison sentence was a gift.

You assume she had nothing in her system. And if she did, the interaction of those benzodiazepines with the amount you gave her, she'd be dead. Dead. Dead children. You could have killed her. First off, I'm going to wish you Merry Christmas. There's always jokes or store sales about Christmas in July.

But for you, Christmas is here in June. You've been given a gift of a plea deal. This gift was given to you because you got lucky you didn't kill my child with the amount of to mass pam you gave her. And this gift was given not because you earned it or deserved it, but because the system so overworked and overwhelmed that it determined that 24 months was the best that it could do. Michael Maiden denied that he had any nefarious intentions when it came to the girls. Despite what has been said and conjected by everybody,

I deserve that speculation, but I have to tell everybody here. I was truly worried about them, and I just wanted to go to bed, and I wanted to go to bed knowing that they were in their bed. Two weeks after this happened, when I wasn't home, my son went to sleep over, and four of his friends snuck out, and were picked up by the Westland Police, and all their parents got a phone call, and three in the morning saying, come get your kid.

I think all of us probably snuck out when we were. that age. I know I did. But it's just not safe to do that anymore. And I really wanted this event to be something that they could enjoy and be safe. And to hear that that didn't happen absolutely destroys me. I mentioned earlier that months after Michael Maiden was sentenced, the father of one of the girls filed that $2.4 million lawsuit on her behalf. Well, now that lawsuit has apparently been resolved. I have confirmed that a notice was filed in late December, letting the court know that the suit has been resolved or settled. But the amount of that settlement has not been disclosed and likely will not be. So to discuss this settlement, I want to bring in

Sherry Botwin. She's a licensed therapist. And guess what? She is also an author. You've got to check out this book. It's entitled, Author of Stolen Childhoods, Thriving After Abuse. So I'm very excited to speak with her. Sherry, I'm sorry we have to talk about a topic such as kids being abused, but I want to get your thoughts on this. You know, this young girl, all of the kids actually involved in this sleepover that Michael Maiden is now serving time for are traumatized, but this lawsuit is settled. The initial lawsuit was filed for $2.4 million. It likely settled for less than that, I'm assuming. What are your thoughts on the suit settling? Are you surprised by that?

I don't know if I'm surprised that the suit settled, but I really wonder what the family feels about the settlement and if it's providing them with any feelings of closure or now they can really begin to focus on the healing. You know, I think the healing is a very important part of this. So how does one go about healing from something like this? It's such an awful type of crime because it's not even just about the fact that he put drugs in these teenagers and, I mean, they could have died. It's the loss of control, the loss of trust in people, the hypervigilance, the not being able to have access to all of the memory because of the type of drug that was put in their bodies.

It's such a complicated, multifaceted process. I know that these teenagers, they were 12 at the time. I don't know if they're maybe 14 now, but that's a whole other issue too because of their age, healing from something like this when you're a young teenager, that is something that takes place over the course of time because as teenagers get older and their brains begin to develop more, then they have to go back and look at what happened to them, but with almost like a new set of eyes and more insight an understanding and that can create a lot of PTSD, depression, anxiety. This is a lifelong trauma that I think that they're going to be dealing with for the rest of

their lives. I think they will be dealing with it for the rest of their lives. And I'm not sure how you get the trust back. I mean, looking at this case and many others, similar to it, it makes you know. ever want to let your children have a sleepover, first of all. I think parents have to be really careful. I think that's a lesson here that you have to be very careful when allowing your children to go to a sleepover at the homes of, you know, their friends. You have to really check out these parents and know who you're dealing with. Yeah. One of the, one of the aspects of the

story that stood out to me that I have focused on is the one young girl was talking in in your last clip about this, that she had like a gut instinct, that something, she knew something wasn't right. So when it comes to how do you rebuild trust in other people? How do we as parents let our teenagers or kids go off in the world and whether to sleep over, going to a party, going anywhere? How do you do that after you've been in a situation where you've been taken advantage of and really hurt in such a horrific way. The idea that there are people out in this world that will do really sick and demented things, but then also holding on to the idea that there are a lot of good people in the world too. So learning how to really navigate, figuring out how do you

deal with the fact that there's good people and bad people and how do you, as a teenager or in this situation, even the parents, how do you really listen to your gut and your insolving? so that moving forward, you're not held hostage by this trauma, but you're having to be almost on a state of alert and more aware of the places you're going or the people that you're going to be with. The part about this is so horrific. And thank goodness, these girls were not abused, you know, physically, sexually, like whatever, you know, contact did not, physical contact did not happen. However, And we don't know what was going to happen, but we know that they were drugged. And why anybody would ever think of doing, I mean, it's just so, it's so despicable that you would put these medications in smoothies and then you're, it's like you're plying these girls, like getting them, you know, their nails done, you know, getting them, you know, a meal, like at the spa day, like all this stuff.

you're priming them for something and then insisting they go to bed and then you keep coming down in a creepy fashion and checking on them. It just seems like he was certainly up to no God. And I think like they could not charge him with something more. But thank goodness the one girl had her wits about her and called, called mom, called the friend. You know, it was like get me out of here, get us out of here. I mean, thank God she trusted her gut. And, and, and, did what she needed to do. I mean, the whole thing is just so beyond words. What do you think of, you know, the drugging aspect of this? I mean, like the violation of trust. I mean, if you're, I would never be able to drink anything again. I don't think that somebody ever handed to me.

It's almost like you might not be able to get a drink again, but you may also never feel like you can go to sleep again, especially if you're sleeping in a home with other people or what if like for one of these teenagers when they get a little bit older and they start, dating and then they're thinking about, will it be safe to get in bed with another person, my partner? It's such a multi-layer type of trauma. And the thing I'm going to tell you is I work with a lot of survivors who have been drugged or have been drugged and assaulted. And many of them will say to me, the worst part for me was not the actual assault. It was being put in a situation where I couldn't fight back, where I didn't have any control over what was going on in my body,

where I don't even have access to memory so I can't even really talk about what happened to me because I don't really know what happened to me. So I feel like this particular perpetrator, criminal, he has the profile of someone who would be abusing children. And one of the things that the teenagers and that the young woman in this, lawsuit she has to come to terms with is what was his motive? Why was he drugging them? Was his intent to at some point assault them? And I think it's important to keep in mind, too, when you're put in a position where you're incapacitated, even if nobody lays a hand on you,

that is such a form of violation and it can feel like a personal and physical assault, even if nothing was actually done to you because you can't, you're not able to function. and you're not able to move and you're not able to stay awake. One of these girls said during the sentencing that her life had become a living hell. You know, one of the girls at the time weighed 70 pounds. I mean, these girls, they could have died. And I'm not overstating that. They could have died.

And then he, you know, tried to, he tried to end it all. that to me shows a horrific, you know, that shows a level of consciousness of guilt. How do you, what would your advice be to these girls? If you were counseling any of these girls, you know, specifically the one that filed the lawsuit, what would your advice to this young woman be? I don't know if it would be advice or what would I do in that situation. I would make as much space as she needed to really express and talk about all her feelings and the aftermath of what happened to her, what you're saying now, they could have died.

A lot of times when survivors are put in situations where their life is threatened, they can't even wrap their heads around that. I was talking to somebody who was raped over a year ago, and she's just now starting to talk about how she realized this because she was also drugged. I could have lost my life. So what I would do in that situation is I would say, say any thought, any feeling that you're having, it all makes sense. And kind of like coming to terms with different aspects of the trauma, what happened to

them, that's going to take place over the course of time. So when this one young girl saying how her life is a living hell, what she's telling us is that it's not like, oh, the event ended, I went to the hospital, and then everything, I just moved on with my life. What she's telling us is that the incident might have happened a year or two ago, but that she's still reliving or having to revisit or even just trying to process the enormity of this experience and how it has left her feeling. So it's really more about explaining to teenagers or survivors. This is a process that we are going to go very slowly. It's a process that's going to

take time. You're going to have a whole range of feelings and no matter what you feel all of it is normal and makes sense and just really let them find ways to work through and learn how to live with the fact that this was done to them. Sherry, what are your thoughts on the prison sentence that Michael Maiden received? He received a two-year prison sentence. He could have gotten a lot more time than that. I want to know what you think of that sentence. I mean, one of the questions I had when I read two years was, this is not like attempted murder or there's no charge here because you're doing something that could put someone else's life in danger.

You know, my first thought, I had a lot of words in my head that I won't say on air, but big thumbs down. It feels like an injustice to these teenagers. It feels like a slap on the wrist. And I'm also wondering, was he mandated to any type of. predator, perpetrator like therapy. He might not have again done anything to them sexually, but to me what it sounds like is he basically, he did assault them. He just did it in a really disgusting and sick way by putting these drugs in their bodies.

I think to myself, I don't know how the families and the teenagers are coming to terms with the fact that if he was sentenced to two years, isn't he going to be out in a year from now? It seems really awful to me. And just getting two years for drugging young girls, I'm flabbergasted by that. It just seems like it doesn't seem like enough time to me. Yeah, you know, one of the things I was thinking about when I was reading about the story, I'm thinking about the impact, right? I'm thinking about the medical trauma in and of itself. And so what happens when one of these teenagers need to go to surgery? What happens when they need to go to a doctor and the doctor? says, I'm going to prescribe this medicine. What I see in my practice a lot is that when people are drugged, they then will not feel like they can go to any type of medical appointments where there could be any type of medical or pharmaceutical intervention. I was working with one woman who's 32 and she was drug when she was 16. She was trying to have a procedure because she's trying to have a

baby. They couldn't put her under anesthesia because she started to have a panic attack. and she wasn't able to breathe. And what we learned in therapy after that happened was the idea of being put under was so triggering for her because she had been drugged as a teenager. That's the stuff I'm thinking about when I think about these teenagers, different life events. And as time goes on, how are they going to be able to do the things that they need to do to take care of themselves after something like this happened? It's confounding. And then also there's another victim here. the daughter of Michael Maiden, you know, I know she's not the primary concern here, but these were

her friends. And you know what? If I were sitting in therapy with her, I wouldn't literally, but I would want to wrap my arms around her and say, how do you come to terms with the fact that your own parent did that to your friends, that betrayal, that it's disgusting, the distrust. It sounds awful. And you know this. from covering stories. Sometimes when family members or somebody in the family is accused of whatever crime, somehow everybody in the family becomes a criminal. So I wonder for her, what are her peers saying? She's not the one that did anything. It's not her fault that her dad decided to do something so horrific. So that's a whole other trauma in itself. No doubt. It's horrific. And he's going to be

out of prison in June of 2026. That's not that far off. So we'll see what happens after he's released. Sherry Botwin, licensed therapist and author, thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it. Oh, thank you for having me. I reached out to the lawyer for the girl and her father. And he told me that right now they have no comment on this lawsuit, the settlement or the case. That's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Janette Levy. Thank you so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.