Hidden True Crime - BEYOND THE VEIL: Chad Daybell's former neighbor breaks her silence. Is Eldon Clawson also Chad's victim?

Episode Date: March 6, 2024

Chad Daybell's former neighbor breaks he silence. The crimes that happened in her quiet Idaho town haunt her years later, along with the secrets she says are permeating through Madison and Fremont County. Bernadine tells Hidden True Crime host Lauren Matthias what she saw, and why she believes Chad Daybell has more victims. She discusses the suspicious death of neighbor Eldon Clawson and the concerns many share about his unexpected death just days after 7-year-old JJ Vallow was buried in Chad's yard. For those new to this twisted case about Doomsday beliefs leading to a murderous spree across states, and to better understand future episodes-we recommend our full Beyond the Veil season, but if you don't have that time, we have one episode summarizing everything you need to know. If there is one episode to listen to that will get you caught up on Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow, it’s our May 2nd, 2023 episode titled: "Beyond the Veil: The prequel -Chad daybell and Lori Vallow - the background story you’ve never heard." LAUREN MATTHIAS has worked as an anchor and reporter for ABC, NBC, and FOX News in Boise, Idaho and Salt Lake City, Utah. She spent a decade reporting on a diverse range of topics from high profile crimes to Presidential visits. Most recently, she reported for Salt Lake City’s ABC affiliate News4Utah. In 2015 she received the Idaho State Broadcaster’s Association Best Reporter award. She left the reporting world to produce the Hidden True Crime Podcast along with her husband Dr. John Matthias, a forensic psychologist. Your support helps us produce these podcasts/videos. We have some big plans to explore the true crime terrain in a way that no one else has attempted. HIDDEN: A TRUE CRIME PODCAST is: CRIMINAL PSYCHOLOGY REINVENTED. Join us on a journey into the darkest recesses of the human mind and the unconscious motivations that drive human behaviors in order to understand the world and ourselves. TO SUPPORT: https://www.patreon.com/hiddentruecrime https://paypal.me/hiddentruecrime Our Sponsors:* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Armoire and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.armoire.style* Check out Effecty and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.effecty.com* Check out Happy Mammoth and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://happymammoth.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/hidden-a-true-crime-podcast1836/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Quince uses premium materials like European linen, organic cotton, but they cut out the middleman. So everything is priced way lower than you'd expect. Refresh. your every day with luxury you can actually use. Head to quince.com slash hidden true crime for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's quince, quince, q-u-in-c-com slash hidden true crime for free shipping and 365 day of returns. Quince.com slash hidden true crime. As we gear up for Chad's trial this year, currently it's scheduled to start this April 24, we will be sharing all of our interviews. We will be sharing all of our interviews to make sure our hidden gems are fully caught up on this case. This interview for this episode was originally recorded in April 2022, but it has never been shared on our podcast

until now. Chad Daybell's former neighbor breaks her silence. The crimes that happened in her quiet Idaho town still haunt her years later, along with the secrets she says are permeating through Madison and Fremont County. Bernadine tells hidden true crime what she saw and why she believes Chad Daybell has more victims. She discusses the suspicious death of neighbor Eldon Closson and the concerns many share about his unexpected death just days after J.J. Valo was buried in Chad's yard. Hidden, a true crime podcast. A forensic psychologist and a journalist explore the hidden motives behind unthinkable crimes while examining our deepest fears along the way. I am with Bernadine. Bernadine was Chad and

Tammy Daybell's neighbor. And you no longer live in Rexburg, but you have a lot of thoughts and a lot of experience about that neighborhood, these beliefs. Why don't you share a little bit about who you are and how you're processing everything? And then we'll dig in. Thanks. Thanks, Lauren, for having me. You know, I lived where Chad's brother lives now.

So I lived right next door to Eldon. And at that time, somebody else lived in the home. Eldon Clausen, Chad's neighbor, he passed away. Yeah. And Chad and them hadn't moved there yet. Then I moved away and I moved back, and I lived on the same street as Chad. And so then my kids went to school with Chad's and Tammy's kids. Okay.

Wow. So I had seen Chad at school events. We never had a conversation. I'd seen Tammy at the library. You know, hi. Kind of knew each would recognize each other. But my big connection was with my kids and their kids. Okay.

Their kids well. I knew the youngest one, Mark, very well. He served his mission in South Africa. But my kids were good friends with their kids. They did drama together. My kids would go over there for bonfires. My third youngest and Leah, their daughter were mates together with, I think it was speech and debate. That they, you know, they were paired up.

Classmen, yeah, partners. Yeah, yeah. And so, but my youngest, he's on a mission now in your area. he was actually just transferred yesterday back to warm springs in Henderson. I was always looking for him, but yeah, we never met him. That's okay. So he and I were talking about this a few weeks ago, and he said, or a few months ago, and he said, the sickest part for him is that he sat at that fire pit.

The Bonfire pit. The kids, you know, yeah. And he says, you know, obviously that was free, I believe, anything happening. but it just made them sick, you know. And so as far as me, how am I doing that now with all of us? You know, we're in the truck. We drive, you know, 11 hours a day. So a lot of you're at work right now, taking a break.

Yeah. Was this a good time, Lauren? So I jumped on. And so we get to listen to a lot of this, you know. and my interest with it has been, I was baptized when I was nine years old. Okay. And where are you from originally? I'm originally from Rhodesia, which is now Zimbabwe.

Okay. And it kind of went through a Ukraine experience, a little, you know, the bombing, the Russians came in, did whatever, and we fled one night to South Africa. We lived on a beach. We were able to get an apartment. And the man that gave us the free apartment, Mormon and so three weeks later we were baptized into the church and it changed our lives very dramatically very very dramatically so for me as a little kid it was a a lifeline away from my dad's

drinking all the garbage that was going on in our lives it became a a lifeline for us you know for me as a kid and you're in south africa at this point yeah and then i moved over here when i 18 and went to Rick's College and then went to BYU and so a lot of those wandering Rick's College is now BYU Idaho they switch the name so you went to Rex yeah to school at right okay yeah and and so I've lived up there mostly and then I was in Utah for 10 years and then back up to Idaho again and that time I lived in Rexburg mostly Okay, that was a helpful explanation.

So going back to what you were saying, though, um, your LDS, you were talking to your son who is now on a mission and how it's so hard for him. And then you said, you're about to say the hardest thing for you before I interrupted to get your background a bit or what you've been processing on the road. As you say,

you travel for work. Is there is, um, the moment. Kool-Aid, LDS Kool-Aid, and there is the Chad Daybell Julie Rowe Kool-Aid. Okay. And I feel like when the two came together, it was like perfect ingredients to create this horrible bomb, you know?

Now, coming from Rhodesia and being on food rations and terrible things, war trauma in Rhodesia, okay? I am a natural, one of the things that I liked about the LDS Church was plan for disasters in your life, whether it be a political disaster or not having a job or whatever. So I've always been very self-sufficient. Even now, I have nine children and a lot of grandchildren. And so I'm always making sure, okay, if they don't have, I want to make sure that I have for them so that we're all safe. because I know what it's like to suddenly not have, okay, and be dependent on whoever and not be able to get by.

Yeah. And so that part of the church attracted me a lot because there wasn't anybody else. I was Methodist before, by the way, who really talked about that. That makes me. But, yeah, but I also, my mom got into the Julie Rose stuff. Sorry, noisy trucks. My mom got into the Julie Rose stuff. stuff and she brought me the books that I read probably the first maybe four or five pages and

I was just like man I'm sorry there's something wrong with this person you know like that was my but at the same time as I've listened to everything that you have and the other YouTubers I've talked about Julie Broe these things I recognize and the same thing with Lori Charter at Lori Daybell Valo, whatever her name is, is, you know, the end of time stuff, the stuff we told, there's a second coming, there's all these catastrophes and things coming. You know, there's a lot of these things that you recognize and go, okay, if you go to too much of this and too much of that, you're creating this a monster, you know? And that's what I see that they happen. And I just got the Julie Rowe book, her biography, and I read that. And when I was reading through her book, some of the things that were really intriguing to me were similarities.

Because she was an army brat. Okay? So a lot of traveling, a lot of whatever. I was also. And you read this really quickly. You read this recently, everyone, because what I love about Bernadine is just how curious she is. is and this crime and with people you knew and the religion you know has been something you've been really processing things with and trying to understand.

So I just wanted to explain why you're reading her book. So go ahead. Yeah, because I'm somebody who always has to try and understand. Now, why would somebody really do that? Okay. I don't understand why somebody would think that way. And then I have to try and understand. And the thing when I was reading her book,

Lauren, if you haven't read it, I'll mail mine to you. Thank you. Thank you. You know what? We had it because I did read part of it. And so I'm now searching for it because I realize I have a bigger interest in finishing it now. But if I can't find it, I'll let you know. So thank you.

Okay. Then we don't buy another. Yeah, I know. I know. When I was buying it online, I'm like, oh, okay. I'm just going to do it. But is, you know, there. things that I believe that when she talks about, she hints at sexual abuse as a child.

And I feel like there are things that come with that that allow you to kind of measure the temperature in a room if you want to speak. Okay. And I feel like for some people it's more than other people. And she calls herself a clairvoyant. I feel like whatever happened to her as a kid that she got into her head. so much. The voices that she hears, she calls them constant, right? And I look at the LDS side of it, and we talk about being led by the spirit, right? And then you combine those two things, and it's the spirit's telling me to do everything. Well, one of the things we know is to check

in, okay, is this a, we've been told to do something right or something wrong, you know, instead of interpret everything as right, you know. And so, you know, going through, Anyway, going through her book and hearing these parallels, okay, I understand this as a child. This happened to me. I just, I tried to read the book from a place of compassion rather than just coming right off and going, okay, this chick's nuts. Like I did with the first. You were trying to stand back. I do the same thing.

I try to stand back and really listen to understand. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I try to get rid of as much bias as I can before delving into something. Right. Right, right. But having lived in Rexburg and there's so much secrecy in Rexburg, there's some things would happen. A girl would be raped at school and at college and nobody would hear about it. Okay. And it combined it with the sort of thing like the culture, I don't want to call it a conspiracy culture, but this.

somebody's going to come after our food storage. Somebody's going to come after our, I don't want to say anti-government, because that's not exactly how they are in Rexburg, but a suspicion, okay? I feel like it's a perfect breeding ground for what happened with them. Okay.

To clarify Rexberg, because it is interesting to hear this take. I'm really interested in this. would you call it maybe like an us versus them mentality too a little bit when you say they're suspicious and think other people are going to do something? Yeah, I think so, you know. I think that there's a lot of that, you know, and I understand there's different groups and so on.

And I never got involved with the whole Julie Rowe. You know, I know that there were groups like they had a, I was actually. running the museum in Rexburg beneath the tabernacle where they had their meeting upstairs. That one big meeting. Yeah. Right. And that's why I've said, I know that building doesn't seat more than 900 people. And, but I didn't go to that, you know, yeah, but I knew people that went to it, you know, my mom got involved with emotion code. And this is one of the things I wanted to talk about because I, so in 2010, I hurt my back, could not get it fixed. And I met him. And I met him. man who did energy healing and he was a theta healer okay and theta healers that

Vianna Stuybal is the lady that started that wrote the books they they're Vianna V-I-N-N-A-S-T-I-B-A-L she started this Theta healing group and she was LDS and she'd left the church and what it is is the mind-body connection so whatever, say for instance, I get of a kidney infection, okay, and you go into beliefs, and you have a kidney infection because you're, excuse the word, ticked off, but use the different word, than somebody else, right? So if you resolve your issues, the kidney infection will go away. That's pretty much a very narrow, yeah, very basic summary. I took all her classes, and I became teacher for Theta Healing. Okay. Yeah, I was, I was fascinated with this. It made sense to me. I'm a

very much a nature person, you know, herbalist. And so my degree was an ethnobotany. So the whole natural side of things just really appealed to me. Okay. But I noticed a lot, and I actually stopped being involved with Theta Healing a few years later, because people started getting really, weird. And I just couldn't stand. It was a very egotistical environment. Like, I healed this person. I healed that person, kind of a mentality, and I didn't like it. Okay. I felt like anything that, that there, you know, scientifically I could say, okay, you could meditate yourself into a brainwave that would, which is theta, right? that you could do yourself good, but when you decided that you could heal other people,

that you were crossing a line, okay? And then, of course, I was also married to a doctor, so I had, and he was, like you said, a narcissist, not a good person. We've moved on from things, but good. Yeah. Yeah. And so I could also understand reading Julia's books, okay, the attraction to the energy, healing stuff. Okay. But along with this energy healing stuff is was a lot of and I don't know like my mom gave me the emotion code book but I never read it and but it sounded like there was some similarities to the theta healing stuff and at the time I warned my mom said you don't want to get involved with this. You know this this this is going down and this pathway that

there was a lot of assumption I thought of information like okay we know that the Middle Eastern people believe in what do you call it the past life stuff they have a different reincarnation but in in Theta healing as well they talked about having lived before okay having had these the past lives that if you had a feeling about something perhaps you were maybe you you like Indian food so maybe you lived in India in a past life or and I also I had a real hard time with that okay so was this in emotion code is this taught by this was then this is in Theta Healing this is taught by Viana yeah right right and so for me that didn't jive

It didn't make sense. Okay. Now, when I was reading Julie Rose book, she talks about like being a child and going into a building and, and enjoying or reading a book and enjoying the stories of Joan of Arc, for instance. Okay. Then later, when she gets involved in motion code, she,

I don't know if she comes out and says it or intimates that she was Joan of Arc. She has said, you know. Yeah. Right. And so you see this kind of metamorphosis of thinking based on these other life experiences. And that's why I'm saying I could understand looking at my path how I could have chosen that path and said this, this, this. You know, part of the emotion code and theta healing is that you can meditate to be able to see the future. You can access what they call the Akashik Records,

aka Ashti Akashik Records, and see what's going to happen. Okay. And so, you know, and then you go to the LDS side, but it doesn't jive with the LDS side. So I got to a place. I actually had left the church for quite a few years because of several reasons. And during this time, I did a lot of stuff.

for myself. What do I actually believe, you know, about all of this stuff? And for me, I decided that the emotion code and the theta healing stuff was taking me away from a piece that I couldn't get thinking that way. Okay. Right. Right. Yeah. And, and, and but at the same time, the scary, religious side for me to, was, and this wasn't any great spiritual experience. I have a child in Indiana. Reid has one moving to Miami. And so we decided to buy land in the heartland by trees because I love trees, which is Missouri.

So we had just bought our land and somebody on one of the groups said Laurie Vela was in Missouri. It's when the Missouri information brought and I was like, oh, hell no. Are you kidding? And Mark Means is there now. We're all going, everyone's going to Missouri.

I know. I'm going to go knock on his door and ask him if he has his food storage. But, you know, I was just like, I said to read, this just makes me sick. I'm just sick. This is horrible. Knock on Mark at his door and get the scoop and let us know. That's what you hear. Yeah.

Yeah. Right. Oh my gosh. So, you know, so it's very interesting to me watching this because I see, like, I loved listening to Anna. I loved listening to Anna. I loved listening to Girl on Fire because I see it's a very slippery slope. And it fills in blanks that maybe people don't have questions for. You know, it's like, well, you know, or like in Julie's case, I reading a lot of, she was rejected a lot as a child. A lot of moving, a lot of, she says a lot. I was bizarre. I was strange, you know. She talks about her first near-death experience. I think she was five or six years old when she had her tonsils out, you know.

And yeah, and she talks about when her husband, she first told her husband about her near-death experience when she was in a maybe early 30s, I think. And he said, well, I've lost my wife. This woman's gone away. You know, I posted one of the pages on that. Right. Yeah. You know, and the two-crime underground Lori Daybell Colton on Facebook group.

I did see this post. Yeah, and she was devastated that he didn't believe her. And, you know, over the last couple of years, it seems like every time she catches wind that somebody didn't believe her or is making fun of one of her sessions or whatever, she'll come out and she'll actually say, she'll defend herself like crazy. You can tell that's a real button.

for her not being believed and trying to prove that she's not a liar. Right. And not being rejected. I want to point out one story that I do remember from her book when I read it months ago that there was when she was a young child, she had a

in elementary school. She were talking I think elementary school crush she had she liked a boy. It might have been like fifth or sixth grade. So, you know, it was at the time where you start liking boys and she thought that she was his one and only and then they went to a roller skating rink and he was holding hands with another girl and it really affected her i mean so much so clearly it did she's

writing about it in her you know autobiography but then she said at that point she knew um she would never settle for like a guy who like had his eyes on another woman or something but it was this really profound moment so i just want to say i agree with you about the stories of of rejection now yeah yeah and control too you know and um i was also and i don't mind saying this because um i feel like it's an open conversation people can have i was also sexually abused as a child and um and so i in my own therapy i've learned a lot about control you know how important it is for a sex abuse victim to have control okay and um yeah and i Her story, it sounds like, like I say, she intimates that these things happen to her when she's a kid.

She's always very taken up with sexual crime and that kind of thing. But then as an adult, she's raped. Okay, before she gets married, she's dating a guy and she's raped. And she writes about this in this book. Yeah, devastating, right? And I think that when you're not going to be a guy, you don't deal with things properly, that control of men becomes survival, right? And retribution and way to deal with resentment and all that stuff.

So when I listen to like Girl on Fire and Anna and the husband thing, oh yeah, I can see how that would happen, you know? Right. That's a very interesting insight you have there into her. Yeah, yeah. But and I know that, you know, this is kind of away from the neighbor, the neighbor thing, the Chad and Eldon neighbor stuff. Eldon, again, a neighbor who helped Chad with insurance, life insurance, and died from a lung clot. Right.

Yeah. A pulmonary embolism. Yeah. Okay, go ahead. You know, and I'm just like, when I first, so I'm going to talk. about that a little bit. Eldon, when we, the first day we went out, looked at the land. Okay, this is the doctor. As the crispy chicken sandwich from 7-Eleven, people always call me loud. And I'm like,

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Hormone Harmony makes no compromises when it comes to quality and it shows. For a limited time, you can get 15% off your entire first order at happy mammoth.com. That's happy H-A-P-P-P-Y mammoth, M-A-M-M-A-M-M-T-H-M-M-M-H-M-M-M-H-M-M-R. Just use the code hidden true crime at happymammoth.com for 15% off today. We went out to look at the land. And you're looking at land where? And right next door to Eldon. Okay, they were two parcels of land.

They're both about six acres each. Okay. And so we went out to look at this land and Eldon and his wife came right over with another neighbor. Oh, they try to talk us out of buying that land. You know, they did not want us buying this land. We liked it. We ended up buying it. But it became a nightmare.

They were literally the neighbors from hell. They would, we had, I told you we were self-sufficient. So we'd butcher sheep and pigs and whatever, you know. We'd go out to, we had about three of those huge chest freezers and food would be missing, like a lot of food. And then we got talking to like the neighbor across the street. Her name was Tammy also and we're talking and she'd been sitting in a living room on a Sunday. And in Eldon walked in the front door, everybody's at church during those hours, right? And she was harm sick.

And he walked in the door and she's, you know, what are you doing? And he goes, oh, I was just, I can't remember what he came to check. He had a, he needed a shovel. He needed a, I need a shovel. And she's like, can you came in the house, you know? So anyway, that was, then neighbors started talking and putting the stories together. And I believe Patsy follows true crime underground also. Patsy Calloway.

She owns the land across the street from Eldon as well. so we were friends. And he was also taking from their freezer and the neighbors talking, many people were losing food and things. So they actually ended up giving him a calling in church on a Sunday that would keep him at church because he would help himself. But he did other creepy things too. Like I'd be out milking a cow and I'd get a feeling like somebody is watching me.

And I'd turn around, he'd be three feet away, just standing right there. Or another time, we lived in a one-room cabin, we were waiting to build a house, and I'd left the door open, and he had stepped in the door. He was in the doorway. I had my back to the door. So we had a lot of problems with Eldon. So one of the reasons we gave up the property, the one piece was bank-owned. The other piece were buying directly from the owner of the property,

because they were in a dispute with Eldon over the north fence on the property. And he had gone and moved it 40 feet, which was not a good thing for me. I, when the cops came out, yeah, when the cops came out, there were Fremont County cops. I called them terrorists. This is like maybe war trauma. No, but, you know, I mean, it was a very, very triggering. upsetting thing for me. And we could not resolve the fence thing with them. So what we did is we went to the owners and said we're walking away. And at that point, I think we paid them about five years with the

money for that property. So we lost a lot of money, you know, and moved back to Island Park and opened up a restaurant. And then after a couple of years, moved back down. Yeah, it's beautiful. There were Chad and Tammy were. I'll tell you one interesting thing. Tammy had Runa Ducks and I had Rone Ducks. I had 30 of them. And we had a canal that ran past our place and then it turned into a creek and went past her place, you know, like an offshoot. So the ducks would swim back and forth, my ducks and her ducks, these runner ducks on the canal. And I love that about her that she loved the runner ducks also because they're just different, you know. So you just had that connection. I know you weren't like the closest to friends, but did that kind of warm both of your hearts a bit as neighbors?

Yeah, it did. And, you know, and she, when I would run into her, like, at the school, because, you know, we had all these kids going to the same schools, right? And that they were friends, right. Yeah, yeah. Just kind, good lady, you know. I didn't even know Chad was a writer, you know. I didn't know that about him at all. But I wasn't like, that's when I was not active in the church anymore.

Okay. And yeah. And so I think I missed out on a lot of that stuff. and I'm grateful that I did because I, like I said, I can see how easily you could get swept in. And I will give you another tidbit. I have a son who's an officer, a deputy in a different town nearby. Okay. When all this stuff started falling apart in like March, when they arrested Laurie in Hawaii,

Hawaii. He said to me, March 2020. Right. And then into, I think it was that fall. It could have been that spring. I'm trying to remember when he told me, he was a school resource officer. He says people up and were leaving, like overnight, people were leaving. And he said that he would get a call and say, you know, this child hasn't been in class for a few days.

and then he'd go and have a look and they would have just up and left their house, you know. And so, yeah, and so he's, and he said to me, he goes, mom, he says, this involves so many people, possibly thousands of people. He says, and we wonder if there's more bodies than what they, these ones that they're focusing on. Where were people going? Why were they leaving? I think that they were spooked that Chad and Lord. because they were Chad and Laurie followers and part of the whole Eric Smith thing and the whole Julie Road thing.

The Christopher Parrott is actually in this town where my son lives and works, you know. And I think that is it, is it, is there, honey, or James and Nancy? Rigby. They live, it's in the rigby. Anyway, it's either Christopher Parrott or James and Nancy. Yeah. And these people were, he says it was like cockroaches shining a light on cockroaches. People were scattering, leaving.

Because so many people had moved up there to be around Chad. Whoa. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and, you know, any end. We know that Melanie Gibb and everyone was looking at land. They're in Rexper. Right.

You know, David. Yeah. Right. Right. And Anthony James moved up there. Yeah. And I'd heard through the. the telephone wire that people had talked about 10 cities and Rexberg being the only place standing.

And this is actually one of the reasons I moved away too is I felt like there's there was this, we're kind of better than a lot of places, like there's more wickedness and Lake for instance. So there's, you know, these are like the die hard true blues up here that are trying to do the right thing, you know, and I'm not saying all moments up there either, you know, but there was just a lot of, I think one of the things that bothered me is that a lot of people made adjustments for people, which is very Rexberg. Okay. You know, yeah. What do you mean by adjustments? Okay, I'll give you an example. I, my, there's a doctor in town, who's friends with my ex-husband who beat his wife, he almost killed her.

Her hair was, her name was Becky Larson. You can read the news story. I think he spent two months in jail. He's an author pod up there. And Mike Larson, he almost killed his wife. I was friends with him and Becky. When I saw Becky, I didn't know how she was still alive. He had beat her so badly.

He got away with it. He still practices medicine. Okay? Yeah. My husband, he went crazy in surgery one day, and he threatened. I had found out some horrible things, and we'd been married a week, and I wanted to call it quits. I was like, I can't do this. The things that he's been accused of are horrible.

So before work that morning, we talked about him about, I don't think I can do this. And he went into work to do surgery as an anesthesiologist. And he wrote a note, a suicide note, and put it in the drawer. A nurse found it. And they wanted to get him medical help. So he threatened to shoot them. He didn't have a gun with him. He threatened to shoot them in the OR.

So they put by a hospital on lockdown. Okay. This has got to bring back your war trauma too. My goodness. Oh, yeah. And so by the end, end of the day I was visiting a behavioral health hospital trying to figure out what the heck was going on, you know? And that was like shoved under the rug, you know?

I had a daughter who, he kept his, he kept his, he kept his life and just kept practicing after that, even though he had to keep colleagues. Right. Yep. He didn't, they didn't want him doing anesthesia at the hospital anymore, but he carried on practicing medicine. Okay. So he opened up a private practice. my daughter, she was 14, was sexually abused by the school counselor. We just actually finished, it took six years of. The police department lost her. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day.

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Protect yourself now at ORA.com slash remove. Videoed interview twice in Rexburg. Yeah. So that's what I say, Rexberg. to me, I look at this and I'm like, interesting that the light is being shone on Rexberg for this Laurie and Chad thing where garbage has gone on there for so many years, you know? In other words, Chad and Lori are just the surface. Yep.

You know, it doesn't surprise me that people say, how could this happen? In Rexburg, easy. You know? In Rexburg, I can see how. easily this could happen. You know, as far as I have a very, very, very dear friend whose son was divorced, the mother committed suicide. Her oldest son had sexually abused the youngest daughter from when she was five years old for years. So he went to jail for a couple of years.

Instead of giving the father who had a straight record, good man, the son, because he was, the family knew the judge and blah blah blah blah the 14-year-old son was given to the sex his older brother who had sexually abused the five-year-old it's just up there i feel like law it's kind of like watching the mirtog thing where everybody knows everybody and so they get away with stuff the church will hide stuff this counselor who sexually abused my daughter all through school He was excommunicated from the church for a year, didn't ever serve jail time, didn't, you know, now there's been a financial settlement. Did he remain a school counselor or was that, is he done? No. They decided he wasn't going to be a school counselor anymore, so he went to a college in Idaho Falls and taught there. The community came up against my family and said, well, you know what? She was 15, 16, 17, 17, 18 years old.

this was consensual and we're calling it an affair. And still, she lives in Rexburg, you know. And that is kind of the mindset, you know, and it is just shocking to me. It is, it blows me away what gets shoved under the rug up there because it's just corrupt, you know. And so I'm not surprised. It's a pure, clean town where no crime ever happens. that's not. No. I'm sure it's less than Chicago, but you know, you know what I mean.

I'm sure it's less than some places, but I think that a lot of things are just shoved under the rug. I know you mean, though, right. I lived in a similar sort of town with the same feel. It wasn't there. And I do know what you mean when you say, you were kind of trying to say like everyone knows everyone and they don't abide by the law. Does anyone else find themselves saying, I feel way older than I actually am,

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like, well, that's not the way the state, you know, I was questioning, like, well, the state says A, B, C, D. It was actually, it was specifically about assessing sex offenders. And their response was, we do things our way here. You know, and I was saying, well, the state laws are this and, well, we do things our way here. So kind of like that, would you say? Would that be a similar? Yeah, I would. I would say it depends on how it's going to affect the church. And when you say, The church in Rexburg or the church as a whole? The church in Rexburg. Because I feel like there were a lot of people who knew exactly what was going on.

Stake president's wives, stake presidency, you know, people who, you know, the counselors, you know, normally there's like this hierarchy of leaders, right? There is no way people didn't know that a lot of this stuff was going on, especially with, Julie Roe was pretty public. Her and Eric Smith were pretty darn public on YouTube and everything about what they believed. Yeah, there were so many people. I think actually sometimes I just don't get interviews with people because as you point out, like the shame, the secrecy, don't want to be involved. The embarrassment.

The embarrassment. And Girl on Fire talked a lot about that. She said she was speaking because she hoped other people would come forward. rather than hide from this truth. Yeah. Yes. You know, and there's people that I do wish that would come forward. You know, they have their own stories.

But one, I was told that Eric Smith had actually gone to a woman at a get-together at somebody's house and said, you know, you're supposed to be my wife, you know. And her husband was like, what? You know, and she's like, that's it. We're leaving. You know, that was it. They cut them off. So there's a lot of these little, I don't know if they're apocryphal, if they're true, if they're, you know,

but the person that told me is pretty dang believable, you know, where I think there was so much of this nonsense going on. And they were creating, I think, a situation that they thought things were going to fall apart so quickly that they were going to be the last one standing with the truth. Kind of like Laurie did, let's go to Hawaii. Things are going to go nutsoid, and then we can just go back and, you know, we're not going to get old. Rexberg will just keep protecting us and it's the promised land and people trust us there. Yeah, I remember before the children were found how many people defended him online too, you know. Yeah. Also, I want to point out, though, something.

People will say, I know people and Chad would never do this. To that point, I want to say to anyone that says, oh, I can tell whether a person is good or not. No, you can't. And when you finally admit that, you'll be able to process things and evidence a lot better. You know, and even this like all the gag orders or whatever they're calling them where the documents are sealed, you know, I get why they're doing that. Fine. I get why they're telling us they're doing that. But then there's this part of me that goes, yep, that sounds like Fremont County in Rexburg because, you know what?

They've got to hide stuff. They've got to hide as much as they can. Right, you know. And I think that that kind of thing perpetuates the garbage, you know. My daughter, for instance, when she couldn't get anybody to listen to her about the sexual abuse, you know. She came up with these cards that she has an Instagram, and they are affirmation cards for sexual abuse survivors. And she, boy, she became as loud as she could, you know, and it made other people come out of the woodwork and talk about their trauma. And I think it's the same thing is if they would normalize like you do talking about this and people could see, you know what, we can talk about this.

Somebody else's opinion of Ricksburg is going to be totally different than mine, I'll guarantee it. Right. You know, but if then more people would feel like, okay, maybe I can speak. about this and my situation with this and like I sent you that book that my ex-husband wrote you know and um a near-death experience book written by your ex-husband yes so he we were scuba diving and he had a near-death experience and um and when he had just he had read all the julie rose stuff there was another woman um embraced by the light oh gosh what was her name Is that Sarah?

Anyway, no. I know Sarah Menon. Oh, anyway, the book is E.D. Her last name's E.D. E.D. I think. Anyway, he'd read, she'd written a couple of books. It seems like one book successful, and then they remember more and then write another one. Then they remember, you know, like this kind of a thing, the Julie Rose style, you know.

And he read all these, and then he wrote his book. And when he, and so I'm suspicious of near. death experience books. Okay. I don't believe, I don't just believe that some people have these experiences, but I do believe that if God's going to speak to you, that it's for you. It's not for you to tell everybody else. Right. It's a private, it's a private thing because so much, so many things are open to interpretation. I look at a war a totally different way than the average American does because of what I went through as a kid, right? So I can't expect Americans to have the same. oh my gosh, I'm going to stole food and I'm going to dig a pit and I'm going to hide it in there because if somebody comes and puts this on my property, I want to know that I, you know, I mean, like bizarre stuff.

You can't expect them to understand the reason you do things and everyone has different experiences in life. Right. Right. And so he wrote this book and I read probably the first half of it and I was just like, how can you have met Jesus and then done this? the, he was very physically abusive, okay? And then do the things that you do if you've been in the presence of God. You know, you look at the Chad and Laurie thing. It's like, okay, how could you be who you say you are, I had these experiences genuinely,

and then kill two children. And whoever knows how, we don't even know who else was, you know, you know, the Brendan and Alex and Laurie's Joe Ryan, because I think she killed him, you know, all this stuff. How can, how do you justify the whole Nephi thing, just absolute nonsense. I don't believe that you, I don't, you know, believe that that's justification. Do you know what I mean? That infamous, the infamous quote, Zulama wrote in a text to her friend Julie. not Julie Row.

I know who the other Julie is. That it was a Nephi and Laban ending. It's a really damning text because if you understand the story in the book of Mormon, Nephi kills Laban, beheads him because he has some records, some scriptures that his people need and the famous scriptures better for one man to perish than a nation dwindle and unbelief. So that is that story. So when she says it was a Nephi and Laban ending,

It's very clear that that ending ends with Nephi beheading Laban. Laban. Yeah, exactly. And as far as that, too, I feel like these groups like, okay, Theta healing and all that again, okay? They talk about the earth, the wind, fire, and water. Okay, those are elements that pagans and witches and I identify more as a witch than a Mormon, just so you know, that's a whole other conversation, not in. a dark weight. It's the herbalist side of me, right? But I feel like they, I just lost my train

of thought. Oh, the earth, wind and fire and stuff. They take all this stuff and I don't know if they're Googling things or somebody comes in and goes, you know what, I think we can make it stronger because we add this and this and this in or we add, you know, the, um, um, the weather thing in or the earthquakes or it just seemed it was so insulting for me to read that and have this connection with earth like i do yeah yeah and read that and go oh my gosh you over died bleached botox crazy person pretending that you know that you're doing something sacred you know what I mean? To me, and I know this makes me sound like a nutball too, you know.

But I mean, that's, I have little granddaughters who love to go and pick herbs with me and make creams and potions and things. You know, yeah. And to me, all that stuff is sacred. More sacred than a lot of things. But you're taking these things and saying, oh, yeah, I read this article on Google and now I'm going to, you. You know, I'm in charge of why, you know, we, I mean, Laurie took a gun. And now we can control the elements. Yeah.

And the narrative, you know, okay, well, you know, that went down because we did the right thing. We combined the right elements and now Charles is dead. Like, oh my gosh. No, Charles is dead because you're a wicked, evil, horrible person. You know, the children are dead. for no reason, then, and I do think, by the way that the way the kids died, and I called a lot of flak about this once, the way that they killed the kids, I think has to do with this whole elements thing. Okay. And also, because JJ, in the LDS church, if a child is, has developmental

problems, they used to say that, okay, well, you know, if you have a child, is, has developmental problems, they, they used to say that, okay, well, you know, if you have a child with Down syndrome, for instance, well, he was given that because he was so elect on the other side that he's given this thing in this life to protect him. Yeah. Did you ever hear that? I heard that they were elect in the past life. Right. Yeah.

Not necessarily the second part of that, but it sounds, it makes sense to me. Yeah. So when I look at JJ's death, I think, okay. okay, they would have seen him as an elect person now who became a zombie. I don't know how they fit that in. So they couldn't destroy his body the way they did Tiley's. Oh. That's a theory of mine.

Okay. Interesting. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah. And when you listen to the way Melanie and them talked about Tiley, you know, they, she was annoyed by JJ, but I don't think she was as disgusted by him as she was Tiley, you know. Yeah.

Yeah. You got a lot of editing, huh? How much of this? The opposite, Bernadine. Oh, you're sweet. Everything you're saying is fascinating. Yeah. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

This has been actually really enlightening for me, too. And here's the fence where Eldon would have walked. And here's the ditch. Let's go back to Eldon Klausen for a second. did he or his family and I want to state this as far as Eldon's family goes

Eldon's family is adamant that he died naturally that he wasn't involved in anything with Chad and some even say that it was maybe investigated

his death it was right around the time though it was when did he pass away Eldon? You know it wasn't it like September it was up to right after JJ died, wasn't it?

Right, yep. And the thing with Eldon is he was, he believed he was the water master. So on our land, we decided we were going to dig a pond. Oh my goodness, he about came unglued that we were stealing water. Now it was groundwater coming up from the water table or whatever. You know, the water table was high there because we're right on the river. Or if somebody in the neighborhood took water too early on the ditch, or it was constant with Eldon.

He was like, he was horrible with the water. And along Chad's fence, right where JJ was buried. Ditch? There was a ditch along that fence. And actually, Patsy and I talked about it quite a bit right by the fence. Eldon would have walked that ditch, and he noticed everything. They probably thought, hmm, we have nothing to hide. If we do it out in broad daylight, nobody will even know.

that they weren't counting on Eldon. Once I had all these little chicks in my yard, and I got a call from him that some of my chicks were dead. He had come over, and there was a box, and the heat lamp had fallen and killed a couple of the chicks in the box. He knew everything that was going on everywhere. It wasn't even on his property, and he knew what was going on, you know? He was a snooper.

He was somebody who got into everybody's everything. There is no way he didn't know that Eldon, that Chad, or Alex dug a hole there by the pond, because it's a little pond, and buried something there. Eldon would have known it. So if someone chose to murder Eldon, there's a motive. Oh, I think so. Absolutely. We're here just barely west of Chad's.

And there's where they found the kids. And here's the fence where Eldon would have walked. And here's the ditch. with the water in it. It hasn't all come in yet from the winter. And this is where the original memorial fence was

was right down here. And then, when it was so crudely taken down in the middle of the night, prices let us move it over here. And my niece came up with the cute, clever idea to come up with the rainbow

and Charlie and JJ colors. We freshened it up the flowers. Then I'll come over here and here's the ditch, a culvert. And she, Eldon would have walked, he could have walked right here on the road or even at times right next to that fence, right here, right here, right here, right here where they buried the kids out in the open, out in the open. And he was a fit person. He walked a lot. He had cattle. He was always walking. He was always walking. He was in good shape.

His wife was an herbalist. We had several conversations about herbs, you know. So they were very, you know, into natural stuff, you know. And didn't he pass away outside, too? You know, I think she did find him outside. And

it was a pulmonary amyism, which does happen, you know, blood clots do happen, and it is a way that people die suddenly. I do want to confirm that. And with Alex, and possibly with, you You know, I know it. It is interesting.

It is interesting, right. It definitely raises suspicions. I know that Chad asked one neighbor after Lori was arrested to consider mortgaging their house to help Chad get Lori out. They did not. But that, to me, implies that he might have asked plenty of neighbors this. And as you point out, just about the Rexberg, Colour. and the secrecy and that was fascinating what your son said about thousands of people really being involved in this and people not speaking up because of shame. Would the Claussen perhaps be believers of Chad's, you know, fringe beliefs?

Oh, yeah. I know neighbors. Yeah, for sure. They did. And I know other neighbors on that street who did. like we're defending Chad up until the children were found were defending Chad and then were confronted at that point and didn't say anything they just you know no I don't want to my husband says you can give a name I'm like I don't want to do that that's their story you know but I yeah but um off the record I'll tell you something else that why I yeah but he was very very very very supported by a lot of people, a lot of neighbors. Okay. Yeah. I guess I'm just trying to figure out if perhaps the Claussons, you know, they don't want it to be investigated and they're, they're so adamant they've been angry about people like us who speculate.

Could there be a reason they don't want people talking? Could they have been? helping Chad unknowingly. I am not putting anything else on them. I do not think they murdered anyone. I don't think they committed a crime. I'm just trying to understand. Yeah. Do you think also the insurance, didn't Eldon sell Chad Tammy's insurance policy?

I've heard that, but I don't know about that for sure. You know, but I've also heard that part of Eldon's land was consideration for the tentity. Oh, Eldon's land was. Yeah, I've heard that as well. I don't know for sure. I don't know for sure, but I was told that

part of his land was under consideration for. What about Sean Little Bear's sweat lodge? That was another thing that was supposedly there. Did you know about that? Yeah, I don't know. I didn't know about that. I didn't ever see anything like that there. I used to go to a sweat lodge. in Arco but not not Sean Little Bears no I would have gone way closer if I

know that one you know because yeah so Eldon's land was considered a place for Tensity that's what I was told yes so we'd have to you know find out for sure but I was told that it was part of the Tensity okay it was the secrecy and culture in Rexburg you've brought a lot of site with your opinions. As you say, other people will have different experiences and different opinions of Rexberg, but I really value what you saw, especially as an outsider who moved there and has lived many places. I really value your opinion. I do know, with that being said, I do know, I do want to share that while so many neighbors, while so many neighbors were defending,

Chad, there was one woman who was being very vocal and telling people, this will not end well. It was Heather Daybell, that is Matt Daybell's wife. And they were in the same church congregation or ward as Chad. And she told the bishop very clearly, this will not end well. Right. This is not okay. And the bishop believed Chad. Right.

I don't think that goes to the whole protecting everyone at all costs and leaning towards. words men a little bit. As you say, you know, it seems as if men were believed more than women. Yeah. And I, and I, that's my opinion. That's my opinion. No, I, I absolutely agree with you. In fact, I was in that ward. Okay. When they, when, um, Eldon was tearing down the north fence, it was on Memorial Day weekend. a member of the bishopric who was a chad follower i found out later was helping elden tear down the fence wow and so and that was part of my whole because it just blew up you know i'm like what what do you think you're doing right so it's very i agree with you it's um it's i mean i think it's very very patriarchal up there I think that it's that way a lot in the church.

It's a very patriarchal thing, which is, I think, one of the reasons that the Julie Roe thing again is very interesting and the Laurie Vallow thing is you have this goddess figure. And I think they were almost vying actually for position a little bit to lead this new bunch, right? And only one person could win. So of course they're going to. So many people believed in this. So when Lori was the lead, it was real to many people. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

You know, and for a lot of women, I can see why they'd be attracted to that. Because finally, it's not the men in charge all the time. It's not the men deciding everything all the time. Because there's a lot of those groups that were coming up where the woman wanted the priesthood, you know. and I'd heard quite a bit about that in Rexburg before I had moved away was these little and that to me I don't get because it's not about wanting the priesthood for me it's like why do you feel like that's something you need to have feel to be constructive in your life in the LDS faith to explain what you're saying boys are given the erronic priesthood

at 12 and then they get the Malthasic priesthood. It's not something women receive. They did at the early days. Yeah. Right. But our consolation prize is we can have children, right? Right. That's right.

All their consolation prize is that, yeah, or their consolation is that they get the priesthood, which you can go one way or the other. They get the priesthood and we get to go into labor. Wonderful. That's right. You are a champion, by the way, I want to say, because having nine children, did you say?

Yes. Bless your soul. Yeah. Oh, you know what? I tell my kids all the time, you don't have to do this. So like, Mom, I can only have two. I'm like, good. But no, you bring up an interesting point, though.

Chad did tell Lori he was a, she was a goddess and she would lead the 144 and that she has the priesthood, has or will be given, has. And she gave blessings. I think has. But I do want to say this, though, because Chad was absolutely a misogynist. I don't think that was about empowering women. I think that was actually choosing a woman based on her looks. Oh, she's helped me. She's got dyed blonde hair and she's petite and she's fit.

And so thus, she is a goddess. You know, it wasn't based on anything about her being noble or, you know, being like Joan of Arc or anything. it was about sexual appeal. And a long-awaited make-out session took place in that lobby. This was manifest in the mortal world to James Elelena through the scientific phenomenon known as loinfire. Loin fire. I'm not sure what science they're...

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manager, spam call protection, dark web monitoring, and even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance, all backed by 24-7 U.S.-based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring, or just a VPN. Orra gives you all of it, together, at the same price competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today atora.com slash remove. Protect yourself now atora.orghum slash remove. Referring to there, but maybe like biblical science. It's a pretty basic, I think. Yeah, I wouldn't call him madly in love.

I'd call him madly in lust. Right. You know, and I, Reid and I, we have hours to talk in the truck. And some of our conversations, I think, oh, my gosh, we should have a YouTube because I think we'd have people rolling on the ground. Oh, my gosh, do it. It's like, okay, you know what? No.

Yeah, I'll send them to you. So, you know, you think about, okay, the way a Mormon boy is raised. Okay? So you may not masturbate. You may not look at porn. You know, you get good boy, good boy. You get to go on a mission. You know, we want to keep you this way.

So if you go on a mission, you're going to be good and clean and nice and be a virgin when you get married. Both of you preferably. All right. So there's going to be very limited sexual experience. And then you hit midlife crisis. And you have some men that go, and women, I'm sure, who go, you know, what else is out there? Okay. And so this hot blonde, although, I mean, I understand that some people think that Laurie is hot, you know.

He was loaded and hot-in-loaded. Or his love story. Yeah. He's a hot blonde. Yep. Right, you know. And it's like, and they'll listen to you and they'll believe the stuff that your wife might, I don't know what Tammy thought about his stuff. but from what I've heard on your show and stuff,

maybe she wasn't as enamored with Chad as Laurie was enamored with his stuff, right? In that case, being a Chad, you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, you're going to have sex this way? You bet, oh, this is different. This is, I've got this great body. The whole way she was saying, you know, you have to have sex three times a day.

She said somewhere to something, you know. It's like, oh, my goodness, is this like fueling a man's dream midlife crisis or what, you know? Right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And it was, it was a fantasy, like the cheerleader, you know, the most perfect body. That's the way, what he said in those texts to her. Their love story was about lust, you know?

Right. Yeah. That famous text novel that he wrote her. It wasn't about who she was on the inside. It was about lust. mentioned her intelligence once, but it was very lustful, right? You are a goddess because you are hot and your body is the perfect dimensions. You said that Rexberg is secret and things get swept under the rug and people cover for people. I have been consistently and constantly

fascinated with the fact that they did not perform an autopsy on a 49-year-old woman and just quickly called it natural and especially because there were concerns going on in Arizona at that time, much had already happened. The children were missing. There was word of cult activity. It wasn't like this was the first thing. And someone quickly decided, natural, let's go. I just want your opinions on that. Do you think that this was just genuinely, oh, okay, or do you think someone was covering for someone? I mean, what was that? To the funeral home and I'm not aware if Brenda went to the funeral home with. I don't believe so.

I can look in the activity and see when they, you know, when the, when she cleared versus, because I know that my deputy went to the funeral home. So I'm not exactly sure, but I can look at that. Usually I can look at, I don't think that there was a police report done. You know what? So I know Brenda die from Island Park. Okay. I had restaurants in Island Park.

And I know other people that have gone through the program and become my college professor was actually the coroner in Rexburg. So when Brenda became the coroner for Fremont County, I was surprised because other than being an EMT, I thought a coroner did a whole lot more than that, right? And so when I look at the way that, you know, people are crying at a funeral, it's a, you know, not at a funeral at a next to the bed with the dead body and Chad saying this and that I can see them just saying, oh yeah, she just died of natural causes and sweeping. It's just a convenient thing. Somebody who isn't a trained coroner, like some of the people that I've listened to, I don't know if they were on your show or something. somebody else's. The things that they normally do as a coroner, there was not that level of training for the Fremont County coroner. So you don't think it was anything nefarious. It was just sort of.

No. Yeah. I think that I don't know how much in Island Park, the culture up there was not the same as the Rexberg culture. The food storage thing, you know, it's a very different place, Island Park than down in the valley down the and so i don't think it was brenda hiding things um because of what chad and lorry had been up to i think it was just dumb you know okay okay thanks for sharing that yeah because her husband was actually our bishop up there they're a good family yeah okay thank you for sharing that information and knowledge about her the children Tammy's children I'm going to call them Tammy's children. What were they like?

Did you enjoy them? They're clearly in your children's lives a lot. Yeah, like I said, Mark was the one that I had more interaction with than the others. The others were kind of, you know, I'd go stop in at an event and chat with Leah for a minute because she was standing next to my son, you know? Or I didn't, yeah. But, and so it was more the things that were my kids were saying, but Mark was. what a sweet, gentle kid, you know? And he was on his mission, you know, when his mom died.

And Gabriel, my youngest, the one who's on a mission right now, you know, he was in contact with Mark. I'd reached out to Mark and I hadn't heard anything back. And I thought, well, you know, when you're on a mission, there's only certain people that you can communicate with. But he was communicating with Gabriel. And it was hard and he was confused. he decided to stay out when he came back.

I know that the last I talked to Gabriel, I know he's moved on. He actually went to Alaska for a while just to try and get away from everything that was going on, you know. And yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And I listened to the kids interview and I'm like, it's annoying. But I can see what else are they supposed to do until it's proved.

to them that their dad isn't that way, I can see why they would choose what they did, you know? Right. I think Emma and Goth drank more of the Kool-Aid than the others, frankly. But, yeah. I have talked to one person who used to work with Mark, and I do want to share that that person said he was an incredibly hard worker. Yeah. I'm not surprised. Yeah, that was what they saw in him.

So he must have also gone that from TAN. because she was an incredibly hard worker. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And how happy I am to hear that he's doing well and that he was able to get away. And thank you. I've always felt really bad for him.

As you said, he was on his mission. And then he had to come home early from his mission because of COVID. I hope all of these children will be able to heal. Elden would have walked. He could have walked right here on the road or even at times right next. to that fence right here, right here, right here, right here where they buried the kids out in the

open, out in the open, and broad daylight. It probably thought, hmm, we have nothing to hide. If we did out in broad daylight, nobody will even know. But they weren't counting on Eldon. I contacted Eldon Klassen's family before publishing this interview. I am told that information about Eldon stated in this interview by the former neighbor is fault. Shirley Classen requested I reach out to the Fremont County Sheriff's Office as they are aware of everything involved in Eldon's death and would be the best source of accurate information. Shirley tells me that Fremont County has told her they see no connection

between Eldon's death and Chad Daybell. And I do have on good authority that law enforcement sees no connection between the Chad Daybell case and the sudden death of Eldon. When I reached out to the Fremont County Sheriff's Office, they told me at this time they are not making a statement. Lauren Matthias, Hidden True Crime. Hello, Hidden Jems. It's Lauren with Hidden a True Crime podcast. As a TV reporter, I learned the art of visual storytelling.

So if you're like me, you enjoy listening, but also viewing. You can actually head to our YouTube channel, Hidden True Crime, to watch these interviews. Hit the subscribe button for surprise lives and breaking news. And for exclusive content, things Dr. John and I only dare say behind a paywall, become a Patreon member at patreon.com slash hidden true crime. You'll find bonus episodes, early releases, and insider info. Thank you for your endless support. Let's be honest.

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