Park Predators - (BONUS) The Newlywed

Episode Date: September 8, 2020

Wedding bells had barely stopped ringing by the time 21-year-old Jordan Graham pushed her husband of only eight days off of a cliff in Glacier National Park. The couple’s hike was meant to bring their budding marriage closer together, but ended horrifically for Cody Johnson. The events and stories that would unfold after this lethal act changed the fabric of a small religious Montana community and became one of two only documented murders in modern history to occur inside the massive park. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://parkpredators.com/bonus-episode-the-newlywed/ Park Predators is an audiochuck production. Connect with us on social media:Instagram: @audiochuckTwitter: @audiochuckFacebook: /audiochuckllcTikTok: @audiochuck

Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and today's bonus episode is going to take us to Glacier National Park. Now, I've talked about this park before this season in the Hitchhiker episode. Something we didn't mention in that episode, though, is that Glacier National actually straddles the Continental Divide. Because of that, extreme weather can crop up at any time. Because of that, extreme weather can crop up at any time. Opposing Pacific and Arctic air currents collide here with such intensity that they create dramatic weather events in just minutes. One time, just outside of the park's eastern boundary in Browning, Montana, the temperature was noted as dropping 100 degrees in 24 hours.

And it's with that same drastic intensity that a newlywed couple's hike inside of the park went from soaring highs to deadly lows in July 2013. This is Park Predators. It's June 29, 2013, and 25-year-old Cody Johnson and 21-year-old Jordan Graham are sharing their first dance together as a married couple. That song you just heard was a custom-written and recorded tune that Jordan and one of her friends had spent months writing together. She wanted a special first dance song that they could remember for the rest of their lives. The lyrics make reference to the beautiful mountains and

skies of Montana that both the bride and groom called home, and it's the place where they fell in love. All of their friends from church and their families had gathered together on this special day to celebrate the couple. It had taken months to plan this moment. Jordan and Cody were young, but already they had plans for their lives. They'd bought a house in Kalispell, Montana, where their families lived, and they'd already moved a few things into it. Both of them were excited to settle in and start life together. The couple met and began dating in 2011. Jordan told a lot of her friends that she'd always wanted to meet a nice guy, get married, have kids, and be a stay-at-home mom. Cody told his friends that

for the longest time he just wanted to have a good church girl for a girlfriend, who eventually could become his wife, and Jordan fit that mold for sure. She'd been raised in church and was devoted to attending and volunteering in ministries at First Baptist in Kalispell. Their friends described Cody's affection for Jordan as almost worshipping the ground she walked on. He would give her anything, so after a year and a half of dating, he proposed. But like I just said, Jordan was 21, and she hadn't experienced a lot of life outside of town. She'd grown up there, and throughout her late teens, mostly just worked nannying jobs for families at her church.

She also volunteered in the daycare center there. So planning her wedding became a huge part of her life. She felt a lot of pressure that many young brides do to be original, have a great venue, good food, and everything go off without a hitch. She even worked some odd jobs around town for people in her church to earn extra money. She wanted to be able to pay outright for her and Cody's wedding. Now, Cody, on the other hand, wasn't from Montana. He was originally from San Jose, California, but moved to Kalispell with his mom in 2002. He worked at a company called Nomad, which is a well-known global communications business just outside of town.

When he started work there, he quickly made a lot of friends despite being the new guy in town. The drastic difference between the beaches of California and rural Montana didn't bother him. He really settled in well and enjoyed living and working in his new home. But on July 8, 2013, everything changed. Cody's co-workers at Nomad noticed he didn't show up for his scheduled shift. This wasn't like Cody. He never skipped out on work, and he'd just gotten married the week before, so not showing up and risking losing his job wasn't something he would do. They knew that he and Jordan weren't on their honeymoon. They decided to stay in town for the time being, so they knew he wasn't out of the area.

A couple of hours go by, and his bosses are calling him and calling him, and his friends are even trying to make contact, but there's no answer. They've also been calling his new wife, Jordan, but they can't get a hold of her either. More time goes by, and eventually it becomes mid-morning. Cody's mom calls Jordan again, and this time she picks up. She asks Jordan if she's seen Cody or heard from him, but Jordan says no. She says the last time that she saw her husband was the night before, and he left their house in a car with some friends. Jordan tells Cody's mom that she doesn't know who the guys were or where they went,

and she says Cody hasn't returned home. Around this same time, one of Cody's friends texts Jordan, and they ask if she heard from him on July 7th or 8th. Jordan responds with a text back that says, the last thing he said to me was that he was going for a drive with some friends that were visiting from Seattle. The situation doesn't feel good at this point to Cody's friends and family. No one can get a hold of him, and Jordan doesn't know who he's with. His friends and mom go to Kalispell Police Department and officially report him missing. But oddly, Jordan didn't join them.

Because of this, right away, the investigators and Cody's friends start to think something is up. They don't understand Jordan's uninterested behavior. I mean, the guy went for a drive the night before and never came back home. And it takes them calling her and police for her to think something might be up. But despite their suspicions right now, all they care about is finding Cody. And word gets out fast that he is nowhere to be found. Naturally, people and family keep asking Jordan if she knows where he is. And she responds to all of them with the same story. They'd gone to have dinner at a friend's house the evening before, and when they returned, he left their house in a car that had picked him

up and driven off with people inside. She doesn't have any missed calls or texts from him and wasn't familiar with his out-of-town friends who'd taken him driving. People closest to her, though, knew there had to be more to the story, and they started to doubt her version of events. And that's when they got a sickening feeling in their stomachs. You see, just two days after their wedding, Jordan started telling some of her girlfriends that she, quote, had a total meltdown and was having second thoughts about Cody, their marriage, and wondered, what the heck I just did this all for?

Three days before Cody went missing, Jordan had sent a text message to her best friend and matron of honor in her wedding. In that message, Jordan expressed that Cody was aggressive and had a serious temper. She said that she didn't expect this kind of behavior from her new husband, and it really upset her. She went on to tell another friend in text that she should be happy, but just wasn't. I couldn't find any reports that say whether or not Cody was aware of what

Jordan was telling her friends about their marriage. And there also wasn't anything in reports that showed that his family was aware of Jordan's claims. Claims that Cody had serious anger problems. During the first week of July, after they had gotten married, and while Jordan was expressing her regrets about the marriage, Cody was doing the exact opposite. He'd been telling his friends at work and church that he was finally happy to be married. He even spoke about an upcoming surprise that Jordan said she was planning for him on the

afternoon of July 7th. One of his friends, a guy named Eddie, had actually asked Cody to play golf with him on July 7th, but Cody declined, saying he couldn't make plans that day because his wife was planning some sort of surprise he didn't know about yet. Cody didn't say anything about him and Jordan having marital problems or that he was struggling with anger and aggression towards his wife. That same day, July 7th, Jordan texted one of her friends saying that she was planning to talk with her husband about his temper. She wrote a message saying, quote, if you don't hear from me at all again tonight, something happened. Later that night, Jordan texted that same friend saying she was, quote, freaking out. Now, none of this information made

sense to these friends before Cody went missing. But now that he was gone without a trace, Jordan's friends felt like something was seriously wrong. What she'd been telling people about Cody going for a drive with friends from out of town didn't match up with what she told them she planned to do on July 7th, which was to discuss Cody's alleged anger issues. Her friends told the investigators about these suspicions, and the officers, along with the FBI, went to talk with Jordan. When they get her in the interview room at the police station, Jordan tells police that on July 7th, she and Cody went to have dinner with friends and then drove home. While they're in the car, Cody got a phone call that seemed to upset him.

home. While they're in the car, Cody got a phone call that seemed to upset him. At 9 45 p.m., the two got home, and Jordan says that she needed to charge her phone because it was dying. She says she got into her car and drove by herself to get a phone charger. Apparently, she didn't have one at their house. She says while she's driving, Cody texts her he's going for a drive with some friends from out of town. She said when she was pulling back into their driveway, she saw a dark-colored car driving away and assumed Cody was inside. Police are listening to this story, and they're like, okay, so can we see the text from Cody? But Jordan says no, because her and Cody always delete their messages, so she doesn't have it anymore. That's a red flag, but authorities aren't sure what to make of her story, and they don't have enough evidence to arrest her,

so they let her go. Two more days go by, and the investigators are no closer to finding Cody. No tips have come in that he's been found or took off to another city with friends. It's at this point volunteer groups have started to come together. Mostly they're made up of his friends and church members. They wanted to search Kalispell and the surrounding mountains for any sign of him. Jordan joins one of these search parties and ends up going with a group who's headed to canvas areas inside of Glacier National Park. And the park is actually closer to Kalispell than you might think.

It's only about a 45-minute drive. When this group of searchers hits the road, it's July 11th, and they fan out across the area trying to find any trace of Cody. And it didn't take long before a park ranger at the camp store got a call. This person was reporting that a man's dead body had been found at the bottom of a cliff inside the park. When the ranger arrives to meet this caller, he is stunned. The person who had found the body was Jordan Graham. She takes the ranger to an overlook

near the parking lot of the Loop Trail, and sure enough, a few hundred feet below was a man's body. Jordan tells this ranger that she thought it was her missing husband, Cody, and according to reports, the ranger says that Jordan is acting surprised, visibly shaken, and in total disbelief. After seeing the body, the ranger radios for backup and tells them that they need a crime scene unit to get out there right away. While he's waiting, he mentions to Jordan that he thought it was unusual she had found the body. He said the only thing she said back to him was,

it was a place he wanted to see before he died, and he would come up here with friends to drive fast. His friends were visiting from out of state. with friends to drive fast. His friends were visiting from out of state. Unfortunately, law enforcement wasn't able to get out to the spot and recover Cody's body until the next day, July 12th. The terrain where he'd fallen was so difficult to get to that it required the National Park Service work overtime and bring in extra teams of people who could operate special equipment. This equipment included a helicopter with a unique lift that's designed to pick up bodies out of ravines. As these teams are working for hours to get to Cody,

they ultimately were able to locate him face down in a shallow creek at the bottom of the 300-foot cliff. That special helicopter was the only way they were able to pluck his remains out of where he was positioned. When they were able to get his body flat and viewable, the medical examiner noted that he was not wearing his wedding ring and his car keys weren't on him. They also found a piece of cloth not far from his body, and that cloth wasn't a piece of fabric that matched the clothing he was wearing. But now that they have his body police call off the missing person search and they begin a death

investigation. They're focused on figuring out how Cody got out to the cliff, when he died, and if anyone was with him. And the first thing they do to answer those questions is to start checking the surveillance cameras at the park. They go back a few days to the first week in July. And that's when they see something that changes the entire track of their investigation. When investigators pulled the surveillance video from the park's entrance dated July 7th, the last day Cody was seen alive, those video clips showed images of Cody and his wife Jordan entering the park. They were driving his car and parked it in the Loop Trail parking lot. Then they get out and go for a hike. Now, because Cody's body was found within the boundaries of

the park, that means the FBI was going to take over the investigation from this point. Armed with this video evidence, they immediately want to bring Jordan back in for questioning. They know that she lied to them the first time and has been lying to all of their friends about Cody going for a ride with these mystery guys from out of town. But while they're on their way to question Jordan, the authorities received information from one of her friends they felt they had to look into first. This friend tells investigators that she had a weird conversation with Jordan just a few days before Cody disappeared. They talked while working in the daycare center at their church.

This friend says Jordan told her she'd received an anonymous email explaining what had happened to Cody. The email said that Cody had left with three friends on July 7th. They went hiking and Cody fell to his death. July 7th. They went hiking and Cody fell to his death. The writer of the email tells Jordan to call the search off for her husband because he was certainly gone. This friend not seeing the full picture the FBI was figured that's why Cody's body was found in the ravine. But what they didn't know is that the police had found out Jordan was a liar and that Cody had been with her in the park on July 7th. So this talk of an anonymous email was proof to them of even more lies from Jordan. Investigators start looking into this email right away,

thinking maybe they can use it against Jordan when they question her. So the FBI goes and examines Jordan's computer, specifically looking at her email accounts. Forensic techs were able to determine after combing through her online activity that there was in fact an email that had come to her. The email account was named Carmen Tony 607, and the message read like this. Hello Jordan, my name is Tony. There is no bother in looking for Cody anymore. He is gone. I saw your post on Twitter and I thought I would email you. He had come with some buddies and met up with me on Sunday night in Columbia Falls. He was saying he needed to be with buddies for a bit and take them for a joyride before they had to go.

So he said bye to me and they took off in a black car for a ride. Three of the other guys came back saying that they had gone for a ride in the woods somewhere and Cody got out of the car and went for a little hike and they are positive he fell and he is dead, Jordan. I don't know who the guys were but they took off so call off the missing person report. Cody is for sure gone. Tony. But surprise, surprise, when police dug into where these emails originated from, they found that Jordan was in fact the person who'd created this anonymous account, and she sent herself the message about Cody being dead.

They had proof that she used a Google web browser at her parents' house to create the anonymous message, and then she sent it to her personal account on her computer at home. Based on the timestamp, they knew the message was created and sent on July 10th, after Cody was reported missing, but just two days before Jordan miraculously discovered his body. So now the FBI has a lot to confront Jordan with. They have the video surveillance of her and Cody in the park together on July 7th, as well as this fake email. In the second interview with Jordan, she cracks and admits that she lied to them about Cody's death.

She also admitted to lying to other people, including their friends and family, about what had really happened to him. It's at this point Jordan changes her course from her original story to say that she and Cody had gotten into a heated argument on the 7th, and in order to cool off, they decided to travel to the park to hike the loop trail. She says that they ended up at an area where there were very steep rocks at an overlook and there was a stump nearby. They started fighting again about their marriage, and right in the

middle of it, Cody got really upset, thinking that she was going to run away. And that's when he grabbed her arm. Jordan tells investigators it was at that moment she thought Cody was going to pin her down and really hurt her, so her first instinct was to get him off. She says in her attempt to break free of him, she turned to get out of his grip and shoved him. When investigators pressed her for more details, she admitted that at one point she may have been able to just walk away, but because she was so angry, she just decided to push Cody with both hands. way, but because she was so angry, she just decided to push Cody with both hands. She did this to his back, and by doing so, he fell face first over the cliff.

Her story was sounding a bit murky to the investigators because it sounded like she was claiming self-defense. But a lot of the detectives didn't believe that. They felt for sure she had lied before in an attempt to cover up even being with Cody when he died. Now she was introducing an entirely new scenario as self-defense. It took them a few weeks to pull all of the elements and circumstances around Cody's death together. But when they laid it all out, they felt they had a case for murder. There were just too many things that pointed to Jordan premeditating taking Cody to the park that day. Interviews with friends about her having second thoughts about their marriage and being unhappy with Cody. All of that led investigators

and prosecutors to believe Jordan was a cold-blooded killer. On September 9th, two months after Cody's death, police charged Jordan with second-degree murder. The criminal complaint filed against her alleged second-degree murder because at the time, the case didn't have for sure elements of premeditation. Three days later at her first appearance in federal court, the judge decided that Jordan wasn't a flight risk, so he let her out on bond. But she had the requirement that she had to stay home on house arrest while she awaited trial. A few weeks later, prosecutors dropped a bombshell. They refiled charges against Jordan,

this time for first-degree murder. The prosecution said they'd uncovered new evidence that they felt proved Jordan had planned Cody's murder. In addition to upping the murder charge, they also filed a lesser included charge of second-degree murder and making false statements. This was likely a fail-safe in the event that the jury didn't convict her of first-degree murder. They could always find her guilty of second-degree murder, guaranteeing some kind of federal prison time. Now, this evidence that the prosecution said they found that pointed to premeditation was shocking. It was that piece of cloth found near Cody.

Prosecutors said that was used to blindfold him before he fell. An FBI forensic scientist had tested the cloth and found human hairs consistent with Cody's embedded in it. The discovery of this evidence changed everything about Jordan's so-called self-defense claim. The prosecution said there was no way Cody fought with his wife while blindfolded and she shoved him off in self-defense. The cloth was their proof to argue that Jordan was a liar, a manipulator, and worst of all, a killer. Now, things got contentious in court regarding this blindfold theory.

Jordan's defense attorneys argued that they weren't told about this critical evidence until three weeks after it went out for testing, nearly ten weeks after it was collected from the crime scene. Because they didn't know about it, and neither did the grand jury, they requested it be thrown out and Jordan's trial be delayed. On top of that, Jordan's defense attorneys also slammed the FBI for how their agents conducted the two interviews with Jordan. The FBI didn't record the first hour and 20 minutes of Jordan's second interrogation. Her attorneys claimed that the FBI agents were feeding her information in the first hour or so and later would have her

repeat those facts, basically indicating she was the original source of this incriminating information. To add insult to injury, the defense attorney said that one of the agents inappropriately touched Jordan's knee during a portion of the interview that wasn't recorded. No charges were ever filed against that interrogator, and it's unknown if that claim's even true. But despite these allegations from the defense, a grand jury indicted Jordan for first-degree murder on October 3rd. This entire time, she maintained her innocence and pled not guilty to all of the charges. In the first week of December, Jordan went to trial with her defense attorneys claiming she wasn't guilty of premeditated murder.

She was just a scared young woman acting in self-defense. The big task for the jury, though, was having to decide if that was true. The trial was scheduled for two weeks, and more than 60 witnesses were expected to testify. United States federal prosecutors built their case on the narrative that Jordan had lured Cody to Glacier National Park. She promised him some big surprise she'd planned, but instead pushed him off that cliff. They contended she did this because she didn't want to be married anymore. Reuters reports that prosecutors planned to present evidence and testimony that Jordan had also talked about killing her mother and stepfather. That was like five weeks before her wedding.

The prosecution claimed that because Jordan had made these remarks, that demonstrated she had a history of expressing intent to commit evil and murder and would have been capable of acting on that same line of thought in killing Cody. They also said Jordan had made up stories that she'd been abused in previous relationships and she did this to earn people's sympathy. As witness after witness and expert after expert takes the stand, the evidence about Jordan's text messages and lies, plus her making the fake email account, was put on full display. And it did not look good for her.

One detail a lot of people got hung up on at trial was what had happened to Cody's wedding band. The band was made of tungsten, which is a pretty strong and durable metal. Experts from the jewelry store where Cody bought the ring testified it was unlikely it broke during the fall, but it was possible. Despite the metal being strong, it had elements of brittleness and could chip or break if it's impacting a hard surface. Neither prosecutors nor the defense could really explain what had happened to Cody's ring.

But they put one of the couple's friends on the stand who said Jordan was wearing it at church on July 7th, the day he disappeared. But Jordan had always told authorities that Cody was wearing his ring when she pushed him off the cliff. So this right here is a contradiction that doesn't really make sense and again makes Jordan look really bad. Another witness who had really damning testimony against Jordan was one of her former employers. This woman had let Jordan borrow her wedding gown for her ceremony. She said the police asked her to identify the dress from some photos taken at

Jordan's home. This woman positively identified a shawl from the gown, and it was mixed in bags of garbage at Jordan's house. After two days of testimony like this, a really uncommon twist happened mid-trial. It was something that would change the entire course of the case, and something that would shed light on what exactly was going on in the mind of Jordan Graham. Two days into her trial and a lot of damning testimony coming out, Jordan and her defense attorneys withdrew her not guilty plea and submitted a guilty plea to second degree murder. This was a huge change of heart. Prosecutors had presented Jordan with the plea deal after closing arguments but before the jury went to deliberate.

She accepted, likely in the hopes that she would receive a lighter sentence instead of a harsher one that required a mandatory sentence if she got convicted of first-degree murder. Under U.S. sentencing guidelines, pleading guilty to second-degree murder would have still meant Jordan could be sentenced to life in prison, but it was more likely her attorneys would ask for less time and she could get it. After all, she had no criminal record and she was voluntarily agreeing to the plea deal. It was more likely that she'd be sentenced to anywhere from 19 to 25 years. But by taking the deal, Jordan had to give some explanation of her actions in court.

She told the judge that what she'd done was, quote, a reckless act, and she just pushed. She lamented that her marriage wasn't feeling like it should be. She pushed Cody and left and didn't report it to police because she was scared. She said she lied to the FBI because she was afraid they weren't going to give her a chance to explain things. She thought they were just going to put her in handcuffs, take her away, and say she committed the crime and planned to kill somebody. The Independent Record reported that when she was asked why she had the couple's car keys and both of their phones, she said she was just the one carrying the keys that day, not Cody,

and they'd both left their phones in the car just because. She explained to the judge that her ability to text friends after the fact about normal mundane things in life, like an upcoming dance at church, was just her way of trying to calm herself down and hope it would all go away. But the judge just doesn't let her get away with these explanations. He asks her to walk him through exactly what happened on the trail with Cody. She answered by saying the fight was just escalating more and more the further they went, and at one point she thought Cody was just going to pin her down. She wasn't thinking of where they were on the cliff being so close to the edge, and when she quickly pushed him, it was just

unfortunate timing and placement. She continued to claim that she didn't know that he would fall to his death. She said the argument had gotten so heated because she had expressed a lot of misgivings about their marriage and that's when Cody became so upset. She did admit though, just like she'd done with the FBI agents, that there was a point she could have walked away but had let her anger get the best of her. agents that there was a point she could have walked away but had let her anger get the best of her. Reporters for several local newspapers wrote that when Jordan admitted her guilt, Cody's mother Sherry had a physical and audible reaction, just crumpling in her seat and whispering the word yes. At Jordan's sentencing, a few of her friends and family members had written letters to the judge. Some of these letters supported Jordan, and some were vehemently against her.

I wanted to go through these letters with you to give you a better background of what the people who knew her thought about her and the crime. According to the Missoulian, a guy who'd known Jordan and her family for years penned a letter to the judge saying he always knew her to be a quiet girl who appeared shy on the surface but was actually cold and calculating underneath. He said she showed no emotion about Cody's death ever. Even at his funeral, he noticed that Jordan seemed unfazed, she didn't cry and was unemotional and was even on her phone for a lot of the service. Another one of the couple's friends wrote in their letter that Jordan was a quiet instigator since she was a child, and she would often encourage bad behavior in other people.

This person noticed that Jordan's behaviors after Cody and her got engaged grew more and more erratic, like she was out of control emotionally. engaged grew more and more erratic, like she was out of control emotionally. When it came down to it, people who knew her said that she had manipulative traits and could be a sociopath. Now a lot of letters from Jordan's family members contradicted these statements. A lot of them wrote letters to the judge asking for leniency when it came to how much prison time Jordan would get. These people painted her as essentially being an obedient, kind, and unassuming church girl. They used words like quiet, hard worker, someone who regularly attended church, and was even

a mentor to other young women. Her family members wrote that they didn't truly understand why Jordan had lied about what really happened to Cody Cody and why she concealed information from the police, but they didn't think whatever her reason was was deserving of a long-term prison sentence. The prosecution asked the judge to give Jordan the maximum amount of prison time, which was 50 years to life, but her attorneys asked for much less. And here's where yet another crazy twist happens. According to KGVO News Radio, on March 26, 2014, one day before her scheduled sentencing in federal court, Jordan had another complete change of heart, and her attorneys filed a motion to withdraw

her guilty plea and go back to claiming innocence. They alleged that because the prosecution was still intending to seek the maximum sentence of life in prison for second-degree murder, that violated the plea deal that the state had struck. The trial judge quickly rejected this request, though. He was over it. He had just sat there a few months earlier and listened to Jordan willingly accept a guilty plea and confess her guilt. Plus, she'd already put Cody's friends and family through the heartbreaking ordeal of living their loss in two days' worth of trial. On March 27, 2014, the judge sentenced Jordan to 30 years in federal prison with no possibility of parole.

She was sent out of state to serve her time in a prison in Aliceville, Alabama, away from her family in Montana. She was also ordered to undergo mental health evaluations regularly and pay back over $16,000 to the government. That was the cost of the operation to recover Cody's body, which is a lot of money. In his final ruling on Jordan's case, the judge described her as very strange and that her only concern was for herself and that's why she never attempted to get Cody help. He said he didn't think Jordan had been entirely truthful with everything that she'd said.

He thought she provided irrational explanations for her actions and never once said she was actually sorry for killing Cody. He said, quote, she was a normal person, at least on the surface. But how does a normal person then kill her husband of eight days, then lie and mislead law enforcement? Later that year, one of Jordan's attorneys, Michael Donahoe, filed an appeal. In this, he stated that the prosecution had unfairly and vindictively prosecuted his client. He said they pulled a bait-and-switch tactic to win a guilty plea. He argued the state had withheld evidence in the timing of them revealing that cloth

found near Cody's body. Michael said the information about the cloth was submitted as an attachment to the government's motion. He argued that the cloth evidence was never presented as probable cause of a deliberate homicide when the grand jury first indicted Jordan. The appeal raised the argument against the trial judge's ruling that Jordan showed no remorse for her actions. Michael contended that there were several times Jordan had showed remorse, including when she publicly apologized to Cody's mom and their friends. Michael felt that the prosecution had punished Jordan by upping the murder charge.

He also brought up the point again that the FBI's interrogation of her had clear errors, and there was grounds for the argument that they'd used tactics to force incriminating information out of her. In 2016, the appellate judge denied Michael's arguments, but he again filed for appeal, but this time with the U.S. Supreme Court. In June, though, that court denied reviewing the case. denied reviewing the case. There's nothing about how this story ends that makes me feel great. I mean, in the end, a young woman who had her whole life ahead of her made some seriously bad decisions and is a convicted murderer. She's going to be in her early 50s before she gets out of federal prison, but she will get out. And if she is a sociopath who feels no emotion towards cold-blooded killing, then that should scare all of us. And even more heartbreaking is the fact that there's also a young man in the

story who thought he was about to start an amazing new journey in life. But instead, Cody was pushed to a horrific death by the hands of his bride. And then there's the small, religious, deeply connected Montana community, a community that's been left wondering if they missed signs of a sociopath, or maybe they could have done something, anything, to stop this. As I've gone through this research, probably one of the eeriest things of all that I stumbled across is Jordan and Cody's custom wedding song, the one that you heard at the beginning of the episode. The co-writer of this song spent countless hours with Jordan in a California studio putting it together. She told CNN she just can't get over the creepiness of the lyrics in light of

everything that's happened. And I'll share some of the lyrics in light of everything that's happened. And I'll share some of the lyrics with you. They go, Everyone wants a safe place to fall, and you're mine. You helped me to climb higher for a better view. You're my safe place to fall. You never let me go. Never Let Me Go. Park Predators is an AudioChuck original podcast. This series was executive produced by Ashley Flowers.

Research and writing by Delia D'Ambra, with writing assistance by Ashley Flowers. Sound design by David Flowers, with production assistance from Alyssa Gastola. You can find all of our source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?