RedHanded - The Murder of Rebecca Park - Part One: Cortney Bartholomew | #468

Episode Date: September 17, 2026

Families are complicated, but when Rebecca Park went missing while heavily pregnant with the child of her mother’s ex-boyfriend, it raised eyebrows. Rebecca disappeared on the 3rd November 2025 after going to visit her biological mother Cortney Batholomew. In the weeks and months that followed a web of lies, inheritance and manipulation bubbled to the surface through Facebook livestreams and cryptic interviews with police. Join us in part one of a two part series on the murder of Rebecca Park and her unborn child, as we try to untangle a generationally complex web of deceit.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

When 22-year-old Rebecca Park vanished, her family were terrified. She was 38 weeks pregnant. She could have literally gone into labour any day. And she had seemingly taken nothing with her. Some people reported that the last they had seen of Rebecca was on the 3rd of November 2025, as she climbed into a mysterious blacked-out sedan. But 21 days later, Rebecca Park's body was found dead. deep in a remote area of the Manistee National Forest.

And the baby boy she'd been carrying had been torn from her womb. In a case so nightmarish that it feels like the plot of a new French extremity horror movie, and yes, I have watched inside, but believe me, this is so much worse, because the culprit, the one who lured, a heavily pregnant Rebecca to her death, and sliced her open while she was still alive and conscious to steal her unborn baby is allegedly Rebecca Park's own mother. Yes, you heard that right. So prepare yourselves, because this really is one of the most twisted stories we're probably ever going to cover.

I'm Surruti. And I want to go home. You can't. You'll stuck it with me. I'm Hannah. And this is red-handed. When Rebecca Park was just a year old, she and her two siblings, a sister named Kimberly, and a brother whose name we don't know were taken into foster care.

They were placed with a woman named Stephanie Park, who eventually went on to adopt all three children and raise them as her own. The two girls, Rebecca and Kimberly, both got pregnant young, and they worried about how they were going to manage. So their adopted mother Stephanie stepped in. Adopting Rebecca's two boys and Kimberly's daughter, they all agreed that it was for the best, as this way the children would be raised in a loving home

and be cared for by Stephanie, an experienced mother, but Rebecca and Kimberly would still be able to see their kids every day. When Rebecca and her sister Kimberly turned 18, as much as they loved Stephanie, they wanted to find their birth mother. A woman named Courtney Bartholomew. Stephanie had spent their entire lives trying to keep them away from her.

As far as she was concerned, Courtney was bad news bet. Your heart just breaks throughout this entire story, obviously not just for Rebecca and everything we're going to get into, but for Stephanie Park, she does the right thing every fucking step of the way. She like takes in these like children from this incredibly fucking fucking toxic family as we're going to find out. And she loves them. She raises them in this lovely, loving home. And then obviously she tries to keep them away from Courtney Bartholomey while they're

minors, but she can't do anything when they become adults. She warns them. She warns them. She's no good. But there is always going to be, for better or worse, for a lot of people, this like internal drive that's going to make you want to try and find some fragment of like your biological family, just to understand, just to understand some questions that you as an adoptee may still have. So I can absolutely understand why that feeling is there, but it's just so, so bad. And from here on out, the story continues to just get more and more unconventional, shall we say. The cast of characters involved is far from desirable, and the poverty, drug use, neglect and abuse paint an incredibly grim picture

of deprivation and desperation. Boone Township in Wexford County, Michigan, where this story plays out is a very poor, very rural area, about 200 miles from Detroit. And if you look this case up, particularly if you head down into the comments section, there are a lot of people out there busy calling out the trailer trashiness of everyone involved. But I don't think that's very fair. As we have seen on red-handed, people from all walks of life are more than capable of carrying out the most heinous of crimes. And while yes, there are certainly a far larger proportion of people within the

vicinity of this crime with serious criminal offences than, you know, the usual situation, I think that's probably to do with the fact that they're probably all coalescing in this area because it's so much cheaper to live there and also somewhat out of the like eye of authorities in many cases because it is so rural and as we'll also go on to see many of the people who fought the hardest for justice for Rebecca and her baby were also from this community saying that this family did seem to have a certain strangeness to them starting with the messiness of their relationships When Rebecca was 21, she met a man named Richard Fela, who was in his 40s. The pair were introduced by Rebecca's birth mum, Courtney.

And what's even more odd than a woman setting up her 21-year-old daughter with a man in his 40s is that Richard and Courtney had themselves been in a relationship before. Yeah. It's like which is the only man there is to date in Wexford. County. Everybody's sleeping with Rich. Did you know that Elon Musk's dad married his own stepdaughter? Oh. Hmm.

There are so many people on the planet. Why are we doing this? According to most people, Richard Failor was a pretty chill guy, but he did have multiple drug offenses and also five. five convictions that had placed him on the sex offender's register. That's not chill. Like, even the... He's chill because he's on drugs all the time. When he was 20 years old,

Baylor had been convicted of sexual contact with a child aged between 13 and 15. Ben, in 2005, he was convicted of sexual conduct with an incapacitated victim, May 2015, for accosting a child for immoral purposes. in June 2015 for second-degree criminal sexual assault and then in September 2015 for criminal sexual conduct with a child again aged between 13 and 15.

Now look, Rich Failure, Bad Guy, Bad Guy. Very, very clear to see you from that rap sheet, bad guy. He's also very into drugs, very into making drugs, into selling drugs. Not a good bloke. But I will say he's like the least worst person in this case. Oh. Which is saying something.

Oh, great. Let's just get straight off the start line with a multi-pedo and get worse from that. Yeah, and just be like this multipedo is not even the worst guy in the story. By far, he's not the worst guy in this story. So Rebecca and Rich lived with Rich Valer's dad just outside of Manton, Michigan, in two single wide trailers that had been joined together. And much like Courtney, nobody there seemed to be that bothered about the significant age gap between them either. But then again, it doesn't seem to have been the most functional of situations.

Drug use was rife and there were multiple adults living in these two small trailers, coming and going as they pleased, including at least one other person who was also a convicted sex offender. Soon after getting together, the relationship between Rich Fela and Rebecca became serious. They got engaged in 2025, and not long after, Rebecca discovered that she was pregnant. The couple was seemingly delighted. Which is why it made no sense when Rebecca suddenly vanished. On the 1st of November 2025, when Rebecca was 38 weeks pregnant, she and her sister Kimberly had gone to their birth mum, Courtney Botholomew's house

in nearby Boone Township for dinner. Courtney had told the girls that their maternal grandmother had recently passed, passed away and she had an inheritance to give them. They ate lasagna and then Courtney handed her two biological daughters to envelopes. But they were empty. Rebecca and Kimberly were confused. And Courtney explained that it had all been a test. She wanted to see if they were only visiting her for the money.

Because since they had reconnected four years ago, Kimberly and Rebecca hadn't spent all that much time with Courtney. As we'll find out, they didn't really like her husband, Bradley Bartholomey, very much, who, shocker, also has a record for sexual offences. I think Courtney was trying to lure Rebecca and Kimberly back in, back into her life, back into her, like, web of control with promises of money. I don't believe that she ever had any intentions of handing over the cash. She just used the inheritance as a way of stringing them along

and keeping them there, keeping them in her, like, periphery. Courtney told them, like Hannah said, I was just testing you, but don't worry. You've passed my test. I don't quite understand how they've passed the test because they're like, what the fuck, where's our money? But she says, you've passed the test, I'll give you the money in a few days, for real this time.

Just hold tight. Later that night, Courtney turned up at Rebecca and Rich's place with a load of old baby clothes that she had dug out for them and she and Rebecca made plans to go out for ice cream the next day. But things didn't quite work out because the following morning Rebecca ended up going to hospital thinking she was in labour. But as it turned out, she wasn't, so she was discharged. And the ice cream plans were shifted to the next day.

According to what Rich would later tell the police, Rebecca wasn't feeling great on the 3rd of November. She spent all day in bed. But when Courtney showed up at six, 6.45 p.m., Rebecca felt like she had to go. In 2010, a family of four in California goes missing. Investigators spend years looking for answers. Is this a family on the run?

Or is the truth far more sinister? From ABC Audio in 2020, this is What Happened to the Mix Days. Follow what happened to the mixed days for weekly episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Or if you can't wait, the entire series is streaming now, add free for subscribers to 2020 True Crime Plus. Find 2020 True Crime Plus on Apple Podcasts to start your free trial today. Early morning on a Manhattan sidewalk, a shooting caught on surveillance video. It was an assassination style killing, and everybody saw it.

Now, as Luigi Mangione prepares to stand trial for the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, which he denies, a new podcast series from ABC Audio and 2020 goes inside this captivating case. I'm ABC News legal analyst Brian Buckmeyer. Listen to burden of proof Luigi Mangione, wherever you get your podcasts. Rich figured that they'd be gone for maybe an hour or two at most. But he said he fell asleep and when he woke up, it was 1 a.m. And Rebecca still wasn't home. This wasn't immediately that shocking to Rich.

Sometimes if the trailer got too busy, Rebecca would go and crash at a friend's place. Rich tried calling her phone. But when she didn't answer, he just fell asleep again. But the next time he woke up, he had multiple texts from Courtney, telling him, call me, and your old lady took off with some dude in a black car. According to Courtney, she and Rebecca ran some errands together and then went to her house because Rebecca said she needed some tidepods. Courtney claimed that she went inside to grab them,

and when she came back out, Rebecca told her, someone's coming to pick me up so you don't need to drop me back home. Then, a dark car with tinted windows pulled up across the road. Rebecca got in and the car drove off. By the next morning, Tuesday the 4th of November, there was still no sign of Rebecca, and she also wasn't answering her phone. Rebecca actually had two phones,

so Rich used the one that was still at the house to track the location of the phone that she'd had on her when she vanished. And to his surprise, it was pinging near Courtney's home Rich sent this GPS location to Kimberley Rebecca's sister who sent it to Courtney Courtney and her husband Bradley went to investigate and they found Rebecca's phone

just 200 yards from their house it was on a dirt path leading to the Manistee National Park Courtney and Bradley's house actually sat right on the border of this 540,000 acre forest Had Rebecca dropped it as she got into that black car that Courtney said she saw her drive off in?

The next day on the 5th of November 2025, Rebecca's sister Kimberly went to the Wexford County Sheriff's Office. And given the fact that Rebecca was 38 weeks pregnant, the authorities took her disappearance incredibly seriously. Now, when Kimberly turns up there, she obviously reports that Rebecca's missing, she hands over Rebecca's phone that they have found outside of Courtney's house, and she also plays for the detectives voice messages that she's received

from her birth mother, Courtney. Now, I obviously don't have the recordings of these voice messages, but this is basically what's said. And look, something to prepare you guys for over the course of the next two weeks that we're going to be looking at this case, there is so much like baffling storytelling going on where people are just saying all sorts. of absolute bat-shit stuff that doesn't really make any sense. And they also just talk about people that you don't know who they are. There's no context. That is confusing.

And next week, oh my God, you're going to have to like really eat your wheatibics before we get into it because they change their stories every two seconds. The police will be like, that doesn't make sense? They're like, oh, okay, doesn't it? How about this? Like, it is just, it's absolutely mind-blowing. So let's get into it. This is the first voicemail that, remember, Kimberly, Rebecca's sister,

is playing to the police and it's a voice message she has received from her birth mother, Courtney. Courtney says that a woman named Araya Clark had told her that two people had been sat in a car outside of the revival center in town looking for Narcan, which is like a nasal spray that can be used to treat ODs. And apparently these two people were overheard saying, quote, that pregnant woman who's missing got what she fucking deserved. And also, some older guy had been involved. Very, very specific, right? And apparently, Araya Clark had told this to Courtney Bartholomew,

and she had heard it from her dad, a man named Rusty, who had heard it from a friend of his. So this is already, like, three people removed. that we're now like telling the police about. And Courtney also says in this voicemail to her daughter, the only older guy your sister knows is that Stephen Billet. And he's a pervert. And I'm like, how old is Stephen Billet?

Because your daughter is fucking an older guy. Your daughter is in a relationship with an older guy. I don't know. It's all just very weird. And pervert. It's all very. And you are also married to a pervert? Pervert, who's also an older guy.

I don't know. It's very obvious from the start that Courtney Bartholomew is like, here you go. It's not like bread crumbing. She's just like throwing loaves of bread. She's throwing loaves of bread at people. She's just killing ducks like I know about a boy. Then there was another voicemail from Courtney that Kim played for the police. And in this one, she says, when Randy passed away, I heard that your sister was involved with it. If that's true, then it would give Randy's family a revoke. revenge motive or something. Oh, and Stephen Billet was also connected to Randy's family. I'd definitely be looking at them. If you're confused, don't worry, that's because it's not

entirely clear who Randy actually is. These voicemails seemed odd to detectives and us. This mum sure was throwing around a lot of vague suggestions and had already seemed casually resigned to the fact that something terrible had happened to her daughter. Yeah, she's immediately like, oh, well, you know, Randy, Randy's family might have killed her because she has something to do with his death. Like, she's been gone a couple of days. Yes, of course, it's very worrying because she's also heavily pregnant and no one has heard from her, which is very unusual. But I'm like, why are you already like, oh, some perverts got her or some perverts killed her or, you know, she's already very, like, gone very far. But she hasn't come down to the police station.

No, no, no. She's just sent voice messages about her concerns to her daughter. and then told her daughter to go down to the police station. And when investigators asked Kim, whether she trusted Courtney, she said, not really. But Kimberly told the police that they really needed to look at Rebecca's fiancé rich, because he didn't treat Rebecca very well. And as far as the cops could tell, Kimberly was sincerely worried about her sister, which is what makes some of the stuff that happens later with her. All the more weird. For now, the police brought both Stephen Billet and Rich Fahler in for interviews. But they couldn't find any evidence at all of any sort of contact between Rebecca and Billet,

so he was quickly discounted from the investigation. The interview with Rich, however, was very interesting. Naturally, as the fiancé of the missing woman, he was their prime suspect. But Rich insisted that the police should not trust anything that Courtney Bartholomew had to say. Apparently, when Rebecca had first announced that she was pregnant, Courtney had started sending her threatening messages. It was like Courtney was obsessed with Rich because the crux of these messages seemed to be that she wasn't happy about Rebecca having Rich's baby. Because remember, they were in a relationship before, before she got married to Bradley and introduced Rich to her own daughter. So with the police, pretty unclear about what was going on or who to trust because they're all just pointing fingers at each other.

they basically found themselves being pulled deeper and deeper into the twisted dynamics of this very odd family. So they moved fast. The very next day, authorities put in place a preservation order to protect all cell phone data during the time of Rebecca's disappearance in the area where she was last seen. They also secured what's known as a tower dump, which means that they managed to get their hands on all of the communications sent from all phones during the time and in the area that Rebecca vanished from. Now, this is a tool open to law enforcement on very, very rare occasions

where they can access all the communications that took place in a very specific area during a very small period of time. They can only get that if they can prove that there's probable cause that a crime occurred in that place at that time. Meanwhile, on Saturday, the 8th of November, a massive search and rescue mission of volunteers and police. was launched in and around the Manistine National Forest. They shifted their way through enormous sections of wooded areas,

but they found absolutely nothing. And every day that passed the fear around the safety of both Rebecca and her unborn baby ramped up further. Meanwhile, Courtney had been taking to social media to start pointing fingers. Now look, this in and of itself in this day and age is not that unusual. But there are so many lives, like YouTube lives, TikTok lives, all of these lives, that she jumped on, that Courtney really, really muddied the waters and inadvertently ended up drawing quite a lot of attention to herself. Because some of the things that she said on these lives did not align with her original statement to the police on the 5th of November, right after Rebecca vanished.

Like, she thinks that she is so in control of this situation. That's the feeling you get with Courtney Bartholome. She's like, I've told the police what I need to say. I've sent my little voice notes to Kimberly. She's gone and told the police all about my suspicions. So hopefully, you know, there are arrest all these perverts. I've thrown breadloaves at. And then she goes on these YouTube lives and TikTok lives.

And she is just like finger, finger, finger, finger at everybody. And it just draws so much attention to her, but she doesn't. get it. She's nowhere. She is not even she's not a smart she thinks she is. She is like a few fucking sandwiches short of a picnic. That is for sure. Like, yeah, very, very strange. And in the clip we're about to play you guys now, I really feel like she is rather bizarrely seeming to provide a motive for why she could have done it. Let's have a listen. People are going to say what they're going to say no matter what you say. You can tell them the timeline. Everybody's, oh, I want.

the timeline timeline timeline I have said the same thing from the get go I want my daughter found I'm tired of hearing that you know oh well she's not doing anything okay I can't do anything but you know what I can answer a phone and I can message people and message to the detective and all that so I'm doing my part and I just asked the lady today for a search party that did the search party. I just ask her today because I've got word that a place needs to be searched, but it has to be hush hush because we have new information and I can't see what that is. I'm trying to put this to you so that you understand while people are so on edge here. At the same time that your daughter is due to give birth, you claimed that this

this post that came from the book of faces about a newborn being in the NICU is false. So in other words, somebody would have had to make a fake account to send that message to look like it was from you. So take that into consideration, okay? And then you've got plans to move to Texas at the same time. And you've got you taking IVF treatments. And so that's why the public has to move to Texas. this notion that somehow you had plans to steal this baby and run off to Texas. What

is your response to that? That is about the lowest thing I've ever heard. And my son, he's 14. He's always wanted a sibling, always wanted a sibling. And I have put off having a baby, well, I'm getting an age where I, if I'm going to have a baby, I'm going to have one, I'm going to have one. If not, then I'm not going to. I'm at that point right now. So having a baby is for my 14-year-old. He wants a sibling. He's been wanting one. And if I can do that before I get to that age, then we're going to try. And my husband wants one between us. On the Snapchat that she sent, which I'm sure you've read, she says that she is cleaning up a room with a flashlight. And I just thought, why?

And they don't have any lights. Because at night, Rich shuts off the lights at his dad's house. So she's got a tiptoe around to clean if she wants to clean. Rich ain't getting off his ass to clean. Trust me. He is not going to help her with anything. He's lazy. He's a drug addict.

my daughter would have had to do it all. And then on top of it, him beating her, come on. I've only left maybe twice since my daughter's been missing. Rich is running around with his baby mama, Ashley. And he's running around with Paige. And he's running around with Mr. Mercer. And he's running around with this person. He's not sitting home waiting for her to come back.

And I wonder why. With the information that I have, I know why he's not. So yeah, with all that like IVF chat, it really just feels like she's throwing up more reasons for people to be suspicious of her. It's like she's saying, I really want to have a baby. And like, also, do we really believe her that her 14 year old son is the one that desperately wants a sibling and that's why she's trying to have a child? Like, what 14 year old boy is like, yeah, I desperately want to have a baby in this house?

she's so she's so bizarre she's so bizarre but anyway what's clear in that other than the fact that I really feel like she's she's pointing the finger at herself it's that she's also pointing the finger at rich is that she's inadvertently pointing the finger at her is that she's also pointing the finger very much at rich and then the next day Courtney decides maybe maybe I need to solidify the ground here a little bit so she goes on her Facebook page and posts an audio recording titled My Alibi. Now, we don't know exactly who the man in this recording is, but this is what he had to say.

And it's basically just a man being like, she was with me all night, she gave me my medication, and I need my medication like every three hours during the night, so she couldn't possibly have left me. Otherwise, I'd be dead. But we don't even know who he fucking is. She gave me my meds at about 8.40. I don't remember a lot as I've just...

said, but she was there when I went to bed and she was also there when I woke up that the next day. I know that she never goes out on a belt when I'm sleeping just because she doesn't like to drive at night. It's so weird. Now obviously the police could also listen to all of these online interviews and it was certainly raising a lot of red flags for them. So on the 11th of November, Courtney was asked to come in again for an official interview. She wasn't keen, not in the slightest, saying, I've already spoken to you, surely that's enough. Which isn't the typical response you would expect from the mother of a missing person,

but Courtney had no choice. And we know exactly what she told the police in this interview, thanks to the probable cause affidavit that has been released. And once again, her story changed. changes. Courtney admitted that she and Rich had been involved before he met Rebecca, but she also told the police that Rebecca and Rich had briefly broken up the year before and during that time she and Rich had started hooking up again. It got quite serious and she actually decided that she was going to divorce her husband Bradley to be with Rich but then she found out that she

was pregnant and she didn't know who the father was. So Rebecca said she called off the whole divorce and Rich was absolutely furious. Apparently he even turned up at Courtney's house with a shotgun threatening to kill Bradley. Thankfully he didn't because Courtney says she managed to persuade him to leave. But Rich was just so heartbroken from having lost her that he got back together with her daughter Rebecca to try and cope and ended up getting her pregnant. Courtney, honestly, if you guys aren't watching this

and I assume by this point we've thrown up pictures of her, please just have a little Google. Have a little Google of Courtney Bartholomew and yeah, a lot of teeth going on, let's just say that. So yeah, this is her story that Rich is heartbroken, he goes back to Rebecca and Rebecca ends up getting pregnant. But Courtney claims that even after this, Rich still wasn't over her.

And that in February 2025, after the shotgun incident, Rich came back to her house and raped her. And this caused her to lose the baby that she was carrying. Courtney told police that she reported it at the time, but that nothing was done. But the police could find absolutely no record of any such report. And Courtney's story about her relationship with Rich would change countless more times, making her claims confusing and honestly quite hard to believe. Because yes, I am aware that Rich is a convicted sex offender. But it doesn't help Courtney's case that she flip-flops between

saying things like he assaulted her to then saying she hadn't seen or spoken to him in two years and then back again. Nothing really adds up. But then as you're going to see in these next two episodes, not much of what she set stacks up. She originally told police that she picked Rebecca up at 8pm on the night she vanished. But then later changed the timeline to 6.30pm, which matches with what Richard said. At first, she also told investigators that her and Rebecca first went to run errands and then to her house for the tidepods. There's no mention made of ice cream, presumably because.

it would have been too easy for the police to use CCTV and phone data to figure out if they had actually done that or not. Now, Courtney said that there were no errands or ice cream, that they just went straight to hers. Like I said, every time she speaks to the police or every time she goes on a live stream, her story changes. And this is why it's so hard to, like, believe anything she is saying. Courtney also told police officers that Rebecca and Rich were having serious problems. and that when she picked her up that evening,

a heavily pregnant Rebecca had looked tired and stressed. Apparently Rebecca told Courtney that Rich had been hassling her for money to fix his truck. Courtney claims that she told her daughter to leave him, but Rebecca was apparently too scared. Courtney even suggested to authorities that there may have been people trying to help Rebecca get away from Rich, again offering up a potential plausible reason

for why her daughter was missing. with no trace. But there's absolutely no evidence or any other witnesses to back up this story. During this interview, the police asked Courtney about a picture of a check for $1,800 that she had sent to Rebecca the day before she vanished. Courtney admitted to sending that picture, but she said she hadn't actually given it to Rebecca. She'd given her two grand in cash instead as a part of the promised inheritance payout. She is so full of fucking shit.

Like, okay, let's talk about this check and what's going on here. I don't think Courtney had any intention of ever giving Rebecca any money, check, cash, or otherwise. I think Courtney used a picture of that check as a way to lure Rebecca to her house on the day she vanished. Because remember, she comes over for dinner, she doesn't give her any real money, she just gives her the empty envelope. The next day she's like, let's go for ice cream.

And she's like, shit, Rebecca ends up. up in hospital, like, she's only like a centimeter or so dilated, but it's very obvious the baby is coming imminently. And then the next day she's like, I need to get Rebecca over here. Rebecca's like, I'm not feeling that great. Like, do we really need to go for ice cream? And I think she's like, here's a picture of a check for 1800. I'm going to give it to you, but I need to see you. Like it all feels like luring. It feels like she's pulling her in. She's trying to get her somewhere so she can do what she wants to do. That's what it feels like. Because the striking difference between a check and a stack of cash is in order to write a check, you don't have to have the cash.

They don't find out you don't have it until they take it to LeBank, which will take at least some minutes at the very least. And they have to leave where you are to do that. Absolutely. I think that's exactly. I think it's very obvious here when you look at this case at the end and look back on these moments. It's very important that we remember this stuff because this is what is giving that element of premeditation for me. She was planning on ambushing Rebecca that night. And I think the police may have thought the same because they actually outright asked Courtney at this point in this interview

just a couple of days after Rebecca's gone missing. They asked Courtney, did you kill Rebecca? To which Courtney simply replied, why the fuck would I do that? Because you're all over fucking social media talking about how much you want to have a bloody baby. And as for the likely lie about the two grand cash payment, it seems like a way for Courtney to explain away how Rebecca could still be out there somewhere surviving.

Without using her own bank accounts, which had remained untouched since she disappeared. The two grand cash helps paint the narrative that Rebecca had been wanting to flee for a while but waited around until she got that inheritance money in cold hard cash so she could escape. with Rich dropping her phone and leaving absolutely no fiscal trace of herself at all. And I think this also explains why she has to say that she didn't give her the check, but she gave her cash. If you gave her the check, then the police are going to be like, well, has the check been cashed? So then we're even more suspicious that she's alive because she hasn't got any money.

Right now, there's this plausibility, however mild, that Rebecca is still alive and using that two grand to survive. And I think that's what Courtney needs. So let's talk about some of these live streams that Courtney went on. Though as you're going to see as we go through this episode and next week's, it's not just her. Bradley and Kimberly also make many an appearance on these situations. Even Rich did one interview online, but then after that he just shuts up. He just is like, no, I'm not going to do this anymore.

But the others, not a chance. The majority of these interviews were done with a YouTube channel called Steph's Case Files. And look, I have to give like so, so, so, so, so much credit to Steph's case files because I don't know how she did it. I don't know how she got the level of access that she got. She got more access to these people than the fucking police did. Like she, the things that Steph managed to get out of them is quite staggering. So if you want to go and listen to all of these conversations in full, you have to go check out Steph's case files over on YouTube.

We're going to use like a couple of short clips from her work, but there is literally hours and hours and hours over on Steph's page and it is incredibly eye-opening. Courtney seems to make subtle and not so subtle digs at her missing daughter. Courtney says that as they sat in the car outside her house before she went in to get the tidepods, she asked Rebecca if she could organise a baby shower for her. But apparently Rebecca had said that she didn't want one because she was worried that CPS would turn up and take the baby away. Why? According to Courtney, this fear was because Rebecca was using drugs, but again, that's not something we can confirm.

It's just things that Courtney is saying, and it's all to disparate her daughter. You know, from saying in those voicemails that she thinks that Rebecca had something to do with some man Randy's murder, and then now saying, well, she was, you know, off her head on drugs and she was terrified that the CPS were going to take her kid away. It's all just like this defamation of Rebecca's character and whatever she can do to point the finger at anyone, including the victim herself in this case. Who is her daughter, by the way? And then Courtney comes out with the same old story

that Rebecca had told her that someone was coming to pick her up and then the dark car turned up. On one of these live streams, Courtney now identifies the vehicle as being a Chevy Impala. But when the police had asked her, Courtney had said she didn't know what make it was. She wasn't even sure what colour it was. I think the whole thing with Courtney is that she doesn't want to give too much information to the police because she's a bit worried about overexposing herself with them, at least at the start.

That very much changes later. But I think online she feels that she needs to offer up something more solid and I think she's a bit more confident in like making wild claims and like being very definitive, being like, yes, it was a black Chevy Impala, which she never ever tells the police. And I think that's because from the very start, there was a lot of suspicion around Courtney Bartholomew. In fact, a group of local residents who were very worried about Rebecca and her baby had actually banded together to carry out their own investigations into her biological mother, Courtney, which is why when you're listening to these live streams, some of the viewers and the

people commentating and the people asking questions sounds so well informed on the case, and you're like, how do they fucking know this case so well? But it's because they're involved in this like citizen action group that are like hounding Courtney and Bradley Bartholomew. And look, we've said it many times before on this show, that kind of online mob campaign. And it also spills into real life. It's not just online. Like they're taking part in the active searches and things like that can sometimes end really, really badly and like not always be a great idea. But I have to say these people got some shit done in this case. There are even numerous videos of this group outside Courtney and Bradley's house questioning them on how all their stories

didn't quite much up. And this was Courtney's problem. The interview she did on social media didn't just make the police pay attention. It also attracted the scrutiny of this neighbourhood watch gang. And one of the key things that this group noticed was that a white Ford pickup truck that was always parked in front of the Bartholomew house and seemingly never used, suddenly moved right around the time Rebecca went missing. So they reported that to the police. Courtney claimed that they just moved it to get access to the front porch of the house. However, her husband Bradley, who was also questioned by police on the 11th. of November admitted that it was his truck and that they never used it because the license

plate was expired, but that they had moved it to get it cleaned up so that Courtney's son Bentley could use it when he started learning to drive. Bentley's 14 at the time. I'm like, is there a real big rush to get it cleaned up for 14-year-old Bentley to start learning how to drive a truck? I mean, they can drive super young in the States. Yeah, like I looked up. I think some states you can drive at 14. Okay, well here, 16 is when he can start driving. Now, obviously people can be like they live out in the middle of fucking nowhere. He probably could have started driving that truck much sooner on like the dirt paths around his parents' house.

And that's the story. That's the story that Bradley goes with. He's like, we were getting it ready for Bentley to drive. But yes, do I believe it? No, not really because the seats of the car, the seat coverings of this truck are also missing. Now, Bradley said, again, we just took the seat coverings. coverings off to get them cleaned up for, you know, 14-year-old Bentley to drive this truck. But the story around what happened to these seat covers will change multiple times, but we'll come back to this.

For now, let's stick to the interview. Bradley admitted that he didn't get on with Rebecca. Bradley also claimed that he hadn't been at the house the night Rebecca had come over and then vanished. He'd been at his own place instead, alone. His place actually seems to be a tent that he keeps pitched up out in the woods when he wants to get away from. his wife, one would put you. Yeah, it's not. I've seen places calling it like a wood cabin.

It's not. I've seen the interview with him and he's like, it's a tent. So when the police informed Bradley that his cell data didn't match up with his story because his phone was at the house that he shared with Courtney all evening, because remember, he's saying, I wasn't there, the evening that Rebecca got there and vanished. I was out in my tent out in the woods. But the police are like, then why is your cell phone at the house? house. And Bradley's like, oh, well, yeah, that's because I left it there. I left myself phone. Yeah, mindfulness. Just wanted to be one with nature. Exactly. I'm out in my tent in the middle of the

words. Why would I need my fucking phone for? I'm there for some me time. So yeah, he's like, I left my phone at the house with Courtney because he said Courtney's phone was about to be shut off and he wanted her to have a phone in case there was an emergency. And so that's why his phone was still at the house. The issue is that the police could see that both Courtney and Bradley's phones were near the Bartholomew property all evening and both of them were being used to send messages back and forth, including to each other. So why would Courtney have been messaging herself off two phones?

Nothing was really adding up and with time running out. On the 13th of November, the police put out a public appeal asking, Rebecca if she was out there somewhere, scared and hiding, please to get in touch. But any hope the police may have had that this was just a woman fleeing an unhappy home life were well and truly rocked when two days later they got a call from a woman named Candice Freeman.

Candice was Courtney's sister. And according to her, and this is just like, Everyone please remember everything I'm about to tell you because this is just mad. A week before Rebecca went missing, Courtney had text her sister, Candice, saying that she'd just had a baby boy. Candice was shocked. She didn't even know that Courtney was pregnant. Courtney said she'd been keeping it quiet, but the baby, whom she'd named Ashton Lee Bartholomew,

had been born early at just 28 weeks. and so he was in a NICU in Grand Rapids but that he was doing okay and he was going to be coming home the following week so a week later on the 3rd of November a Monday the day before Rebecca vanished Candice texted Courtney asking are you still bringing your son home today to which Courtney had replied

not yet he's had a backslide but still hoping this week But the next day, roughly three hours after Rebecca was last seen or heard from, at 1117pm, Courtney messaged Candice saying, my son passed away. Yeah, like, I can't impress upon everybody the importance of the timeline with which these messages are being sent. Literally the day before Rebecca vanishes, she's like, yeah, bringing him home, bringing him home. and then within hours of Rebecca vanishing, she's like, oh no, my son's passed away. Hmm, I wonder why that might be.

The following morning, Candace replied, asking what happened. And Courtney told her, I don't know what happened. I just know he wasn't getting any air. All I know is I watched my child die right in front of me. These messages were sent on the day Rebecca was reported missing by Kimberley, and the police came and spoke to the family. But Candace told police that it was weird that during these text messages Courtney hadn't mentioned anything about her daughter Rebecca being missing.

I think you might mention that. Meanwhile, online, things were going from odd to totally fucking bonkers. Courtney, Bradley and Kimberly all started doing these regular live streams. The shouting, the screaming, the madness. It's like some sort of non-stop online Jerry Springer episode. Kimberly and Courtney accuse Rich of being a child sex offender and of messaging a child that they knew. They both also alleged that he had been sending them sexually charged messages. Kimberly even said that Rich had propositioned her the day before Rebecca vanished

and that soon after he told her, quote, Rebecca's been taken care of. When people asked her what she thought he meant by that, she said that she just thought he meant that he'd broken up with her. And then they again accused her. accused Rebecca online of taking drugs and of cheating on Rich. Kimberly also said that she believed Rebecca was hiding somewhere, saying her sister was terrified of Rich and wanted to get away from him. And Kimberly claimed that Rebecca had form for disappearing, that she'd previously been in a relationship with a man named Travis,

and when she wanted out, she'd come to Kimberly's house to lay low for a few weeks. Courtney then claimed that Rebecca owed some drug dealer in prison a ton of money and that this guy had probably put a hit out on her. The next day she went back online and now suggested that Kimberly, her other daughter, could be involved. And she also said that Kimberly was a police informant. Let's have a listen.

Okay, fine. Okay, so I will start with the whole thing that I said about the hit. Uh-huh. Becca was there when Randy did what he did. And then she went to another guy, which is her second baby daddy. And he went to jail, and Becca didn't. While he was in jail, well, when they took him to prison, he put a hit on her. He was brutally murdered in prison and there is still hit on her.

When I asked, and true crime can say this, when I asked Kimberly about the rugs, she was very vague. She didn't want to talk about it, but she said that she was a CI and that there was a few things going on on Friday. day. I don't want to get into it too much, but she said that she was working for Worksford County. Hmm. Who was? Kimberly. Kimberly is an informant? Mm-hmm. I don't see. See, this is a thing with informants. Usually they don't come out and talk. Usually they don't speak. Exactly. That's what I told her. I said, if you were in a format, you wouldn't be telling me what you're telling me. And look, this revelation, this, this, like, this verbal diarrhea that we get from Courtney online is the first public chink in the alliance between Courtney and Kimberly. Up until now, the two of them have been very aligned in, like, what they're saying happened to Rebecca.

They're pointing the finger at Rich. They're pointing the finger at various, like, drug lords, whatever. You know, Rebecca brought it on herself. that kind of narrative. This is the first time that Courtney turns and starts pointing at Kimberly. Then on the 22nd of November 2025, Kimberly spoke to the police again. This time she had a shocking story to tell. After previously telling the police to focus on Rich, she now claimed that it was actually Courtney and her husband Bradley who had killed Rebecca. So the minute Courtney turns on her online and start saying that Kimberly is some sort of police informant slash also responsible for the murder of her sister Rebecca, Kimberly goes straight back down the police station. She's like, scrap everything I told you before. It's them and points a finger at Courtney and Bradley.

Like, honestly, it is just so mental. It's so mental. Can you imagine being a police officer working's case? She'd be like, what now? What today? What are we saying today? According to Kimberly, apparently Bradley had hit Rebecca over the head and she'd had a seizure and died. So he'd called a friend of his and together they disposed of Rebecca's body in a swamp somewhere. And they had then just confessed all of this to Kimberly as well.

So of course, the police interviewed Bradley and Courtney. Again, they're both flat out denied the accusations made by Kimberly. but Bradley did say that he thought Rebecca was indeed dead, not hiding somewhere. And he now claimed that it was probably Kimberly who had done something to her, adding that he'd actually suspected Kimberly all along, but that he had been trying to protect her. Bradley also admitted that he hadn't been out and his little tent in the woods without his phone. Alone the evening Rebecca had vanished.

He had been at home with his phone, just like his data, showed he was. So now knowing that Kimberly was pointing fingers of the two of them to police, on the 24th of November, Courtney went back on Steph's case files. And now she told everyone watching that she knew exactly who had been in that dark car that had picked Rebecca up the night she vanished. Why, it was Kimberly. Kimberly was the one driving that car. I'm baffed.

Then there was this live stream that we're going to play you a clip from. It was posted actually to Facebook. And it's of the Citizen Investigation Group that we told you about, confronting Courtney and Bradley outside of their house on the 24th of November 2025. Let's have a listen. I don't have my inhaler. Into your nose, out of your mouth. All right.

Here's the dillio. Me and my husband both tonight. You were supposed to have already gone. You were supposed to have already gone. Let her talk, let her talk. Are you lying? Better talk. Hello, Bradley.

Come on, you're getting a... Hey, come on. How are you, Brad? You know who I am. Indeed. Don't play me. There's the cop, please. Pull up the bullhorn.

Stay behind the white line. That's what I was saying. Stay behind that white line, y'all. Keep going. We want to hear your story. We're allowed to listen. If you want to talk, we can hear. We're listening. It's imitating me of hitting my daughter and hiding the body.

We know that. She's implicating my husband. We're in the car. We got another cop coming. That's not a cop. That's a jean. That was here earlier. How do you know it was her in the car? was her in the car. Hold that, hold that.

No. Where are you trying to go? Thank you. Didn't know who's in the car, though. Then why aren't you out? No, it's the day before. I would do it with a pregnant woman that needs to be found. We've talked to her. She's fine. No screaming at her. Courtney, if you knew this, why didn't you say this before? Why are you just saying it now? Now look, there is a lot going on in that.

clip and it is quite hard to follow because it's being recorded outside. There's a lot of people talking that dog is constantly barking. So let me just break down what's going on here. They're standing outside of Courtney and Bradley's house. The group are on the other side of the street and there's lots of like questions being shouted. And Courtney claims on this live stream that Kimberly had told her that it was her in the black car and that she had picked up Rebecca and driven her to catch a bus to Tennessee. Rebecca was apparently going to use the two grand that Courtney had given her to set up a new life for herself and get away from rich.

Apparently a man named Josh was going to help Rebecca get a flat and start again. Who's Josh? Well, Josh is the husband of a family friend who did indeed live in Tennessee. And the family friend was actually a woman named Mel. So the group are rightly asking, if Courtney you knew that Rebecca was headed down south to stay with friends, of yours and you and Kimberly knew this and you knew that Kimberly was the one in the car and she was only picking Rebecca up to drive her to a bus stop to go to Tennessee, then why didn't you ever

check in with them? Why didn't you ever check in with Rebecca? Check if she was okay. You know where she is. And why are you also going on all of these YouTube lives accusing all sorts of people of killing Rebecca? Why have you gone to the police to report her missing and open an investigation into a woman that's trying to flee an abusive relationship? Why have you done any of those things? Well, Courtney kind of ignores a lot of that and only really responds to the fact that, and this isn't in the clip, but we find out subsequently, that the reason that Courtney says she didn't reach out to her friend Mel, who was the one who was living in Tennessee, who Rebecca has supposedly gone to live with to start her new life, is that Mel was offering $15,000 as reward money for tips into Rebecca's disappearance, because Mel actually cares about Rebecca. And apparently Courtney had asked Mel to take that money down, which again, why would Mel put that money up if she knew she was in Tennessee? If Rebecca's in Tennessee, why is Mel putting up $15,000 offering fucking reward money for tips in exchange for information about where she's gone? Doesn't make any sense.

Doesn't matter. Let's keep going. Basically, Courtney had fallen out with Mel because she had told Mel, I want you to take that $15,000 reward money down. Why? Surely that's going to help your daughter be found, which is what you say is the most important thing in the way. Well, according to Courtney, it's because she didn't want all of the wackos out there phoning in fake tips and confusing the police to try and get their hands on that money. And she can also just send them a picture of a check. It works just as well. Exactly.

So yes, after Courtney tells this story on a live stream on Steph's case files on YouTube, Mel herself got on the live and refuted the claims that they had brought Rebecca to Tennessee to help her start a new life, saying, Quote, ain't nobody here got backer. I'm exhausted. This case is exhausting. It is such a mess. Everybody lies constantly. And even people that don't seem to gain anything by lying, just lie. And we know what they're saying because it's all over fucking Facebook.

So, of course, the police were confused, just like the rest of us. They suspected all three of them, Bradley, Courtney and Kimberly of being involved. But they still had absolutely no clue if Rebecca was even dead. Though Courtney certainly seemed to know something. Because let's just go back to that Facebook live stream for a second, the one where that citizen group is standing outside of her house yelling at her. Let's just listen to a short clip towards the end of that interaction. Listen, they're meeting at Ellen's Corners.

There's a large search party at Ellen's Corners. Ellen's corners at 10 a.m. tomorrow morning. They will have side by sides. They will have four-wheelers. It's right here behind my house. Oh, you're saying she's behind the house. No, like you go down this road and then you go down. She's talking about there's a search party meeting tomorrow there.

Okay, we need to make them come here. Okay, so we're right back at it. We need the search here is what you're saying. We need the search here's right. Okay. So they're going to meet there at 10 and they'll come over here so you'll be ready at 11. As you just heard there, Courtney tells the group to come and search behind her house the next day. Because apparently Kimberly had been asking them, so her and Bradley about the woodland trails back there. before Rebecca went missing, like asking how busy they were, asking how many people walked them, etc.

So again, further confusion. That clip comes directly off the back of the clip where Courtney said that she knew that Kimberly was the one in the dark car and that Kimberly had picked up Rebecca to drive her to go get a bus to go to Tennessee to start her life over again. And then immediately after saying that, she says, but yeah, you guys are doing a search group tomorrow. Tell the search group to come here and check behind my house. We'll find her there. Because guess who was asking me about all of the woodland and the trails behind my house? Guess what? It was Kimberly. So if we find her out there tomorrow, it's because Kimberly put her out there. Like, but then Kimberly also drove her to get a fucking bus to Tennessee. Like, it doesn't make any sense.

And this isn't just like us. I can't tell this story in a clearer way. This is the problem. Like I've been spending so long writing the script and I'm like, I can't tell the story in a clear away because a clear away doesn't exist without me. we just not telling you the story? Oh, I believe you. The very next day, guess what? A member of the Citizen Investigation Group found a body in them, their woods. Less than three miles behind Courtney and Bradley Bartholomew's house. Just like Courtney had suggested the night before that they would.

But remember, it's only because Kimberly asked about the trails behind the house. Remember who asked about the trails? Don't remember who told you she was going to be out there the night before you found her body out there. The remains belonged to Courtney's own biological daughter. 22-year-old Rebecca Park. And horrifically, it looked like Rebecca had been torn open at the abdomen, and her baby was gone. So I think we should we should park it there.

you guys, come back next week because I, my brain can't handle it. My brain won't be able to handle any more of this, just this mess of a case. It is so complicated and I'm not going to lie to you. Next week it's going to get even more complicated. So come back then for the second and concluding part of our look into the absolutely horrific murder of Rebecca part, where we will get into the absolutely nightmarish autopsy because it's, it's, ugh, disgusting and also the grim truth about what happened to Rebecca's baby. And also more lies, more story twists and more finger pointing,

as well as, of course, the psychology of fetal abductions. Because they occur, they happen. You know, we've talked about at least one before on red-handed. But we are going to talk about why this case in particular is so different. If you guys have watched the recent Netflix documentary, Maternal Instinct, we spoke about it over and under the dube when it came out. That's kind of your classic fetal abduction. This one is very, very different.

So we'll get into all of that in next week's episode, so we'll see you then.