True Crime All The Time - Murders That Created Laws

Episode Date: January 1, 2018

In this episode we're doing something a little different. We're discussing two different cases that resulted in laws being created to help protect children. Megan Kanka was murdered in 1994 by a repeat child sex offender who lived across the street from the Kanka family. Unfortunately, the family had no idea the type of person that was living so close to them and if they had they could have taken extra precautions. This senseless murder would lead to the creation of Megan's law.In 2005, Jessica Lunsford was murdered by another repeat child sex offender who again was living just across the street from the Lunsford family. Jessica's murder would prompt law makers to enact various versions of "Jessica's Law" around the country.Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss the details around these tragic murders and the laws that were enacted as a result of the tragedies.You can support the show by going to Patreon.com/truecrimeallthetimeVisit the show's website at www.truecrimeallthetime.comHelp support our new sponsor Daily Harvest. Our listeners can go to daily-harvest.com and use the promo code TCATT to get three free cups in your first box.And last but not least, we hope everyone has a very happy New Years. Be safe out there and keep your own time ticking!Credits:Writing/Research - Maggie DobschuetzSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to episode 59 of the True Crime All the Time podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my partner in true crime. Mike Gibson. Give me what's going on. Hey man. How you doing? Doing great. Christmas is behind us. Yeah. I had a great Christmas. How about you? Yeah, I did. You know, I had a pretty good Christmas until I got sick. You know, but that's all right. I'll be all right. You're powering through. I'll tough it out. That's the kind of man that you are. Yeah, I'm a tough guy. Got a power through. Power through.

All right. Let's start with some new Patreon supporters. We had Miranda Dupier, Lisa Lewis jumped out at our highest level, Haley Miller. Hey, Haley. Yep. Big social media fan. Mercedes, Michua Guerrero. Yeah, that's a mouthful.

I hope I did that one justice. I'm pretty sure not. I'm pretty sure I got that wrong. You're pretty good at messing up a few. Vicki Ferris, Nicole Grant, Katrina Hawkins. Cindy Davis jumped out at our highest level. Cindy. Lisa Moss.

Adam Barber. Hey, Adam. Angela Mullins. J.D. I like that. J.D. A lot of mystery there behind a J.D. Wonder if he has a big butt?

You wonder if he has a big butt? No. Big belt buckle. That just says J.D. Yeah. And he carries around a stick. I'd want a big belt buckle. It just said J.D.

If I was J.D. Yeah. A lot of guys named JD, you just don't want to mess with. And you know what? I'm assuming this is a guy. It could not be. It could just be a woman that wanted to... If I was her, I'd want a big belt buckle.

It said, JD. We had Aryan baitinger. I think you maybe got that wrong, but okay. Batinger. I don't know how hard that G is. Or I could have butchered the whole thing completely. Probably did. She sent me a message saying that she thought I probably would.

But I think she wanted me to because she didn't tell. Tell me how to say it. She's testing you. Yeah, she just wanted to see how I would do. Bethany A Bear, Kelly Ann, Joe Askinas jumped out at our highest level. And then we had Justin Weymire. Yeah, I appreciate all those folks. Yeah, I do too.

All the new folks that, you know, made the choice to support us. It's Christmas time. Yeah, tough time. Not the easiest time of year to. Extra cash is slim. Right, to donate to a podcast. So yeah, big, big shout out to everybody. And then if we go back into the Vault Gibbs, this week we selected Key Sardi.

And Key has been with us for a very long time. Very long time. Been supporting us at our highest level for all of that time. It's amazing. That is truly amazing. How much support that she's given us. So big shout out to Key. Unless she's like, I just realized I forgot to cancel that.

And now we just reminded her. Yeah. Yeah. Keep it going. Let's hope not. Let's hope not. And then on PayPal, we had Catherine Quigley gave a very sizable donation. Oh, wow. Yeah. As did Michelle Herbert, who donates kind of off and on on PayPal. She's been a huge supporter on PayPal. Yeah. And then we had Alex Howe donate through PayPal as well. Wow. That's amazing. So want to give a huge shout out to Maggie for her writing and research. And then got to talk about

unsolved because I'm really excited about this episode that's dropped right now at the same time that this one has. It has. We're talking about Texas mystery in the mansion. I mean, it's got all kinds of names to it. Murder in the mansion. Murder in the mansion. There's a couple people that end up dead.

Yeah. That's why we're doing it. That's tragic. Absolutely. There's a couple people that end up wounded, but it's who they point the finger at that that is so shocking. I don't know if it's shocking, but we're talking about a guy here that,

and this is in the 70s. Yeah, late 70s. Is worth what, Gibbs? Half, over half of a billion. $500 million. Yeah. Now, I don't know if it still holds true, but at the time,

this was the richest guy, I think, to go on trial. Yeah, it might. For this type of murder. I don't remember how wealthy that DuPont guy was. Oh, yeah, Foxcatcher. Fox Farms.

Fox Catcher Farms. I don't know. I don't know. But obviously this was 40-some years ago. That's a lot of money. And that was a lot of money. It was good to be in the oil business then. Yeah, how much would that be today?

Today? Beep-bo, people, people, people, boom. 1.2. 1.2 billion. Billion, yeah. With a B. That's right. Billionaire.

That's big-time money. Yeah. So check it out. After you listen to this, make sure you jump over. If you haven't already, check out the unsolved episode this week. It's going to, it's really good. All right, Gibbs.

That brings us to the subject of this week's episode. And we're doing something a little different than we've ever done before. We're actually telling two different stories in one episode. Two for one. So two for one. But they're themed. In both of these cases involve murders committed by known sex offenders at the time. And in the aftermath of these cases,

cases in each instance, there's a law that gets passed that is going to, you know, have something to do with the sex offender registry, with how they have to register, how the public is notified, those type of things. And these are famous cases, famous laws. You know, one is the first one we're going to talk about is Megan's law. And then the second one we're going to talk about is Jessica's law. And most people are familiar with that. But what we want to do is go and break down the actual case that led to those laws being passed. So we start out, we have to talk about a guy named Jesse Tamedaquoise. He's born April of 1961.

And there's going to be a lot of information that would come out suggesting that Jesse had a very rough childhood. Now, his mother was no saint. It was said by some people that she was now called. And I think she even admitted some of this as things progressed after the incident occurred. She was very promiscuous. And it was reported that she had 10 children fathered by seven different men. That's a lot of baby daddies. It is a lot of baby daddies.

So I'm using the word promiscuous, which I think applies in this situation. But that wouldn't be the end of the world. I mean, there are people that, you know, up having a lot of children and sometimes by multiple fathers. Oh, yeah, yeah. The problem with Jesse's mother is that she was a terrible mother to the point where she ended up surrendering seven of the children to either adoption or foster care because she was deemed to be unfit.

Yeah, I think there's moms that can handle it and moms that gang. I mean, we've got a listener that has. I believe eight, eight or ten. And she does a fantastic job. And then there's people out there that can barely handle one. That depends on a lot of factors. But you know you're not doing a good job when you get seven out of ten kids taken away. You're doing something wrong.

Yeah, that's not good. To be brought to some agency's attention where they're going to come out and take your kids away. Now, his father was a career criminal by the name of. Charles Hall. Now, Hall, Tamediquas, right? How do we get there? It's been reported over the years that Charles Hall one day just decided to take the last name Tamedaquoise after seeing it on a tombstone. He just saw the name, he liked it, and he said, you know what? I'm changing my name to Timmendoquaz. So let's go from writing four letters to... Hall. Yeah. Wow. To spelling that.

that out. Yeah. It's different. You don't hear it. No, it is different. I've never heard of it. Maybe he thought Hall was just so common. That is a pretty common name that he wanted to stand out. But he was a criminal too. So I don't know how much that had to do with it. It might have a little bit to do with it. Jesse's dad was a pretty bad guy too because and there is some debate about his childhood and and how much of this stuff happened. Some of it, I believe, has come out from his younger brother. But what's been alleged is that the father sodomized Jesse and his younger brother regularly on a very regular basis.

And that at one point in time, both boys witnessed their father rape a seven-year-old girl. I don't even know what to say. Now, if that happened, Like I said, there has been some debate about how much of this is true, how much abuse actually occurred in the home. If any of that is true, that is going to jack somebody up. It's also said that the dad tortured, killed their pets, and at one time, even made them eat one of their pet rabbits. Really? So it's not bad enough that you tortured pets.

you killed this little rabbit that, you know, these guys loved probably. Cooked them up and made them eat it. And then you made them eat it. Now, again, I'm not trying to sow seeds of sympathy for Jesse Tendikwa's because this guy is going to do some heinous, heinous stuff. And it's not very long. I mean, he, you know, he gets a criminal history when he pleads guilty to the attempted aggravated sexual assault of a five-year-old girl.

Again, speechless. Yeah, I don't even know how you even respond. Yeah. You know, this was a crime that happened in Piscataway, New Jersey. He was 18 years old at this time. He was an adult. And he was riding his bicycle by two little girls who were playing outside. And apparently he was on his way home at the time.

He rode up to the little girls, managed to convince them to go with him by saying that they were. we're going to go look for some ducks. You know, apparently there was like a wooded area. There was a stream pretty close by. And he said, you know, something to the effect of, I know there's some ducks down there. Do you want to see them? Something like that. So he leads these two little girls down embankment.

And one of the girls, she runs off. She must have sensed Gibbs that, you know, something's not right here. And she just, she bolts, she takes off. But unfortunately, the other little girl. girl is left there alone with this Jesse Tamediquas. And he would later say in a police statement that he knocked this little girl down and pulled down her pants. Now, he would say he would tell police that he only wanted to look at this little girl. But this little girl would say something different.

She would tell police that he smelled her, her private area. Strange. Very, very strange. Now, that other girl that had run away. And again, Kim, these girls are very young. So for, for this other girl to, you know, to run off, get to a neighbor's house and say that something's wrong. That's pretty impressive. Yeah, I think so.

At that age. At that age. And this is what, you know, lead police to get him. But he got what was essentially a slap on the wrist. right this is a broken record that you and I talk about a lot pisses me off an 18 year old doing something that he shouldn't be doing to a five year old he's supposed to attend counseling he never does that that's another common theme that we we talk about seems like so when it's all said and done Gibbs jesse timindicuas spends nine months in an adult correctional center now nine months is

nothing to sneeze at, nine months of your life. But it doesn't seem like a lot to me for what was essentially, it was a violation of a five-year-old girl. But he didn't have the right to touch her. Right. He did not have the right to do what he did. We're talking, this is 1979. This is not today. And it's one of the reasons why we're talking about this, right? Today, I think this would be handled much, much differently. Well, especially today. Today. Two day. And one of the reasons is because of these incidents like this that have led to these laws that we're going to talk about. And I think it's why it's so important. But he gets out of jail in 1981 and he moves into an apartment. And this apartment was located in a town called Dunedllen, which it was said

that this town was very close to where he had committed his crime. So he essentially did not stray very far from the area where he committed this first crime. So that's, kind of strange because back then, you know, he did this crime, this act, but he just moved right into apartment complex and nobody knew what he did. He could be living right next door to little Sally and Sally's mom doesn't know what kind of potential monster lives next door. And it's the whole reason why this case is important because it leads to Megan's law, which we're going to talk about. But playing on that Gibbs, what you were talking about, just to paint a picture of where he's living, there's a wooded area about a quarter mile from this,

this house, this apartment. There's a public pool, a tennis court. This is an area where a lot of children would play. Families, now granted, it's 1981. Families thought this was a nice, safe area, would allow their kids probably to be alone much more than they probably would today. But just Temeinaquois approaches two more small girls. They were playing together in that area, and he asked them if they wanted some fireworks because the Fourth of July was coming up. But he didn't happen upon these girls. You know, it would come out later that he had been waiting in this kind of, I don't know if it was a wooded area, but in this area for about an hour. Stalking.

He was a predator. Yeah, right. He was stalking. He was waiting for kids to show up. Now, one of these girls, again, was scared off immediately. Maybe with Stranger Danger out by 81? I don't know. Yeah, I don't remember.

I think that was an 80s thing. I just don't know if it was out by 81. But this girl, she was scared and she ran off and she went to get her mom. In a very similar situation. There was this, the second girl left alone. with this man. He was able to get her to walk with him for a little bit. But very quickly, in this wooded area off this trail, pulled her to the side and started choking her.

And what he would later say is that, you know, this girl turned blue from the choking and he thought she was dead. So he took off. He would also tell law enforcement that he was sexually aroused from. this attack. But because that first girl had run off to get help, this girl's mom came pretty quickly and found her still breathing, laying there in the woods, and she called the police. And they were there waiting on Jesse Timmendikwa's when he walked out of the woods and they arrested him. And he would tell the police that over the past year, since he had gotten out of jail, his sexual

interest in young girls had grown to like a fever pitch. Rapidly increased. Yeah, I mean, we know it was there before because he had committed this previous act, but now he is taking it to another level. And he's basically admitted to the police that he is sexually attracted to very young girls. He ended up pleading guilty to this assault and was given a six-year sentence at a place called the adult diagnostic and treatment center. It sounds like a place where you would go to

get counseling, get help, and I think it was offered to him, but he did not participate in any of the treatment program. They had some that were specifically designed for sexual offenders, and one of the therapists that was at this treatment center would later talk about Jesse saying that the guy was a whiner. All he did was sit around and wine, and he did was sit around and whine, and he spent most of his time sleeping. But it's while Jesse is at this treatment center that he meets two other sex offenders. And one of these men was named Brian Jenin. And Brian Jenin was in for the assault of an 11-year-old boy.

And this guy gives how he went about it was he joined the big brothers, big sisters. So he could be around young boys. That's like being a scout troop master or something like that. Yeah, I mean, it's, I mean, I don't want to paint any of these people, you know, with a broad brush. But you do hear a lot of stories around the scouts or these, again, I'm not putting down the scouts. A lot of people were in the scouts. I was in the scouts, man. Any situation where adults are unsupervised with kids, there's, there is some danger there.

Yeah. Well, I mean, people put a lot of trust in certain authority figures. Right. You've got two types of people, right? You have, you have the majority of people that are doing it because they want to be with their kids or kids are in the scouts or they just want to help out youngsters. There's a lot of those people. And that's by far the majority. But you have, you know, some bad people that see that as an opportunity. Absolutely. There's no doubt about it. Churches and camps and all kinds. Yeah. And. Anything like that, you know, like I said, majority, great. They're doing it out of the goodness of their heart and they want to help kids. But there is a small percentage of predators that see that as a perfect opportunity for them. Would you agree with that? I would.

Well, this Brian Jenin sure did because this is the idea that he had. He was obviously attracted to young boys. And he thought by joining the big brother. he would get a little brother, right? That's how that works. You're supposed to be mentoring and guiding and helping that person. I should mentor somebody. You should.

Be the mentor. You would be a great mentor. You could teach them calculation. Oh, yeah. How to say money, you know, money conversion. Money conversion, sure. You could teach them all about movies. Absolutely.

I mean, their knowledge would be warped. They would know like maybe one person. that was in it, half of the title. I wonder who my target audience would be for mentoring. Your target audience? Yeah. Maybe not. Don't answer that.

I'm trying to think. I wonder if anybody out there wants me to mentor them. One thing I do know is that you would be doing it for the right reasons. You'd be doing it out of the goodness of your heart. Absolutely. No doubt about that. Yeah. Now, how much somebody would learn from you?

That is a whole different subject. But you're going to be like that. I'm just saying, man. Book of knowledge. You have a lot to offer. Book of knowledge. It's not always 100% complete. Multiple.

That book has some missing pages. I got a lot of volumes out there. There's so many pages missing from that book. I don't know. Gotta get to the right volume to find out the rest. How it would go down. But this, Brian Jennan used this situation with the big brothers, big sisters to molest young boys. Now, the other man that Jesse Timmendikwaas met was a man by the name of Joseph Safelli. And he was in

for carnal abuse and sodomy of a five-year-old girl that occurred in 1976. He pled guilty to three different counts, including impairing the morals of a minor. So Jesse Timmendikwa's is in with some other bad. There's a bunch of bad guys in his treatment center. They're all sex offenders. I mean, I understand the purpose behind the treatment center, but I don't know. It's allowing people to hear how other people do things that they like to do. And that's what I got from this, right? They weren't involved in the treatment. I think they were just sitting around swapping nasty sick stories, getting off on that type of thing.

That's not a good situation at all. No, because it's going to force somebody always to take it to another level. Right. you're just fueling the fantasies or the, the, uh, the, uh, the frog demons that these guys already have. So Tameda Kwaas gets released in 1988. He gets a job and he moves in with this Brian Jenin later on in 91, 92. They're living in San Diego. From there, he would move in with Joseph Safeli.

So he gets out of this treatment center and for the next few years lives with two guys. he met there, two guys that did horrible things like he did, but Joseph Safeli lived across the street from the girl that was going to be Jesse Timmendikwa's next victim. And there were some people in that neighborhood that knew both of them were sex offender. But there were a lot of people that did not. One of the individuals that had no knowledge that these two sex offenders were living right across the street from her was a woman by the name of Maureen Kanka. And Maureen is the mother of Megan Kanka. And at this point in time, Megan was seven years old. She would later be described by a neighbor in an interview I saw Gibbs as an angel. I mean, people loved her. Everybody in this neighborhood

up and down, man, woman, child, they thought the world of Megan Kanka. You know, she loved the color pink. There was even a story that I read Gibbs where the postal worker who had that route to service the Kankas, that week, he remembered talking to Megan every single day. No, that's impressive, man. I mean, she just must have been just that such a friendly little girl. Well, she was very friendly, but she was also waiting on a letter. She was waiting on a letter from one of her friends.

And what is so sad about that story? And you can see the postal worker in this interview. I mean, he tears up talking about this because that letter, he would deliver that letter. But by the time it came and he delivered it, Megan Kanka is, she's going to be gone. And obviously, we're going to tell the story of that. But I just thought it was such an interesting fact. I mean, you've got a postal worker that was so touched by this little girl. I mean, I can't overstate it, Gibbs.

Everybody in this neighborhood would come out. And everybody that knew her, they just thought she was, she was amazing. Yeah. Sounds like it. At around 5.30 p.m. on July 29th, 1994, Megan Kanka was lured to this house across the street where Tamedaquas and Safeli were living. And the ruse that Jesse used was that he had a puppy and he asked Megan if she wanted to come over and play with this puppy. But what he ended up doing to this poor little girl, he took her into his bedroom. he attempted to sexually assault her,

but she screamed and she fought him very hard. And what Jesse would say later on was that he felt that he could not let Megan leave the house. Because if he did, his crime would be found out. We know Gibbs. He's already been convicted multiple times. Yeah, several. So he's at a point now where I believe that he feels like, he would go away for a long time if what he has just tried to do is found out, which it's going to be

if she runs out of the house and goes back to her family and tells him what happened. Right. And Jesse Tamedaquois is going to make the decision that he can't have that happen. So as they're having this fight, he takes a belt and wraps it around her throat and strangles Megan until she's unconscious. And during the struggle, she ends up hitting her. face on the dresser, bangs her head in the door, and she starts bleeding because of some injuries, right, that she's sustained during this fighting. And Jesse doesn't want her to bleed all

over the house. My assumption is he's worried about evidence or my else. I don't know what else it would be. I think so. Evidence. So what he does is he puts a plastic bag over her head. And once he has done that, he ends up raping this poor little girl. Now, Jesse would say that he thought Megan was dead, right? Suffocated from having this plastic bag over her head. So he ended up putting her body inside of a toy box. He carries this toy box out of the house and puts it in the in the back of his truck. But he would make a statement later on to police that at one point while he was doing this, He thought that he heard a noise from the box, almost like a cough. But he drives to a park, takes her body out of the toy box, and leaves her there in the middle of some really tall wheat.

But before he leaves, he rapes her again. Wow. So sick dude. He's very sick. But go, I just go back to this. He thought she was dead. Then he heard a noise, which would make a reasonable person. think, you know, she's not dead. He doesn't even, he doesn't have the balls to even do the right

thing at that point, right? He's already gone down this bad path. Yeah, he's done his damage. He could have saved her life, but he wasn't about to. So he's violated her in unimaginable ways, left her to die, essentially. Now we go to Megan's family. You know, they're unbelievably worried. They can't find their daughter. They don't understand why she. she'd not come home, they end up calling the police. And a search ensues, you have the police, you have neighbors. And Jesse Tamedaquois was even part of the search. This son of a bitch, Gibbs, is handing out flyers with Megan's picture on him. Acting all concern. Yeah. Yeah. Inserting himself into the search and the, now I'm the good guy.

Yeah, I'm here to help. I'm here to help. This one's pissing me off, man. It's kind of like that creepoid dude that you had. Steve McDaniel? Yeah. Yeah. I knew what you were talking about. That's too fresh in your head still? No, it's the ESP that you and I have.

That's right. I know what you're going to say before you, or in the first couple of words, a lot of times I know what it is you're saying. Yeah. Why is that? I don't know, because at other times you could go on for three sentences and I still have no clue what the hell you're saying. I thought you're going to say because I'm a good communicator. And sometimes after a couple of words, I get it. I don't know.

Yeah. But this guy does, he's pissing me off, he's chapping my ass, whatever you want to call it. Oh, yeah. And Jesse would tell the police that he had seen Megan riding her bike around 2.30 p.m. But his story's going to come into question as police are talking to Megan's mother, Maureen, because her events differ. And, you know, some of her timeline and what she says would make it virtually impossible for him to have seen her at 2.30. So they go back to him with this information. And lo and behold,

he now says that he saw her Megan riding her bike in front of his house between 530 and 6. They're not believing a word he says. He's changing his story. I think they're on to him pretty quick here. And what the police do is they actually ask Joseph Safeli for permission to search the home. and he agrees. And Jesse's inside the house with police as they're searching. They're questioning him. And police would say that he was sweating, he was shaking. But he was sticking with this 530 to 6 time frame.

And now he's saying that he saw her while he was washing his boat. How the hell does this guy have a boat, Gibbs? Yeah, what's that about, man? I mean, he was working, he was mowing grass or something. He couldn't. Maybe is this like a little John boat? Well, maybe. It probably was, but still, this guy should not have a boat.

This guy shouldn't have shit, is what I'm saying. I don't like this guy if you're not cluing into my... Picking up on that. If you're not picking up on my, what I'm laying down here. And they even take him to the police station and interviewing him there. And again, you know, stories changing. It's not matching up with some of the facts that they already know. But they have to let him go.

You know, they really don't have enough to hold him, to. keep him in custody. But it's just the very next day that Jesse Tamediquas goes back to the police station and confesses telling police that Megan was dead and that he had left her body in a park in those weeds. And the reason why he did this is because he was basically made to by Joseph Safeli. Probably because Joseph was worried. He didn't want to be wrapped up.

into it. Yeah, you go clean or I'm going to tell. Because he had a record himself, right? He didn't want to be involved in any way in something that he apparently didn't do involving a child. Once you go to the big house, man, you don't want to go back. For various reasons. For, yeah. Something that we don't need to go into. But people know what we're talking about. They know what you're talking about. Everybody knows what you're talking about. I don't talk about it. You shouldn't. Something you don't talk about. in public. But he does.

He walks right in. He basically confesses to this murder. He leads police to the body of Megan Kanka. But when he gives his formal statement, his formal confession about the murder, he doesn't talk about any of the details of the rape, the multiple rapes that he committed against this girl. But when the autopsy is done, police showing me. the results and he had no choice, but to admit that he had violently raped this girl more than once.

And they could tell from the autopsy what had happened to her. And they had a lot of evidence against him. They had blood stains, hair, fiber samples. There was a bite mark on his hand that matched Megan's teeth. I mean, she had fought so hard she had bitten him. Good for her. damn right good for her. I mean, ultimately, it didn't, it didn't save her, but, you know, she fought like, yeah, she fought like hell. So in the end, Jesse Tamedaquaz is found guilty of kidnapping, four counts of aggravated sexual assault and felony murder.

He was sentenced to death. And even when he tried to appeal, his sentence was upheld, which is not surprising. They had a lot of evidence. They had his confession. You know, he's just appealing to appeal, I guess. This is something you do. This is something you do. He had a lot of time on his hands at this point.

He was on death row up until 2007. And that's when New Jersey abolished the death penalty. So his death sentence got commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole. All right. So that's enough about that stupid son of a bitch. We had to tell the story, but I really got pissed off during that one. You did. I mean, it's just, it's a horrible story.

But, you know, you have to. tell it because it leads into, you know, what comes after. Right. And it's after Megan's murder that her parents, Maureen and Richard Kanka, they gathered Gibbs more than 400,000 signatures. That's amazing. That is a lot of signatures. 400,000 people.

And these were people that they wanted to demand the right to be made aware of sexual predators living around them. And this part I found absolutely amazing that within a few months of Megan's murder, New Jersey signed into law Megan's law. And this was the first state law that mandated active community notification of registered sex offender. And that's why this law is so important. Right.

It's why we wanted to talk about it. It's why we had to tell this horrific case because the detail. around Jesse Tomenikwa's and what he had done before and the fact that, you know, he was living in these communities and nobody knew that he had committed these horrible crimes against children. I mean, the victim's own mother lived across the street and had no idea. Yes. Yeah. I can't even.

That two violent sexual offenders lived right across the street from her. And obviously, if she would have known, it would have changed. changed everything. You're not going to let your seven-year-old child bike around the neighborhood if you know you have that type of person within eyesight. Absolutely. No way. Yeah, yeah, you're going to pay greater attention to what's going on. Now, have a clip of Megan's parents talking about her, and I want to play that. She was a phenomenal kid. She was a happy little girl. She was a helpful little girl. She was a wonderful little girl.

I wanted to be dead for a couple years. I wanted to die, you know. So that's what I try to tell her. You can't sit idle, what she's been doing. It's been bad. For months, I was fixated on that room. And at one point, I finally joined. to the detective that was in charge of the case.

And I asked him, I said, can I go in the house? I need to go in the house. And he made arrangements for me to go in before they tore it down. And when I went up in that room, it was just like she described, exactly like she described. And I told him, I said, is that where she was lying right on the floor. And I would watch him leave for work. And as soon as he walked at the door, he'd look over.

that the door he'd look over at the house. Kids would leave for school. Look over at the house. About living here. And it was always there. And then when they knocked the house down, you know, it was so that we wouldn't have to look at that house anymore. It was still there.

I used to be able to go. I don't even go in the park anymore. And you can hear Gibbs in that clip, you know, the emotion. And that clip's 20 years after all this happened. It just doesn't go away. No, I don't think it could ever go away. It could. No, it can't.

But imagine having to leave your house every day and look over at the house where you know your baby girl was murdered. You can hear her talk about that. And what a, I guess, relief is the right word, it was when they finally demolished that house. Now, one of the interesting things about Megan's law is that it's very much intertwined with other laws that were made after. some of these other very high profile cases. I mean, we're talking about Adam Walsh, Jacob Wetterling, Polly Class. I mean, these are all names that people know of kids that were, you know, victimized and had some version, some law that was created after the crime that was committed against them happened. We talk about Megan's law. That was a state law, right? Just New Jersey.

Eventually, there was a federal version of Megan's law that followed. At the federal level, this law required anyone convicted of a sex crime to notify the local authorities any time they change their address or their employment once they had been released, right? From prison, mental health facility, whatever it was. But I really want to make the distinction here between the New Jersey state law that mandated community notification, right? So it actually said that the community had to be notified when a sex offender moved in or moved into a radius or whatever it was, whereas this federal version of Megan's law

basically just said that states were required to put the information out there. But it was up to the individual person to go searching for it to find it. Because I think that's an important distinction to make because what the federal law did is it basically gave the states their own discretion to establish criteria for their state for how they were going to disclose the information. So what you ended up having was different states having very different criteria around disclosure versus active notification. And again, some of this has changed over time. I think a lot of the states have gone to more of an active notification. I mean, you got a website that you pull up. I do, but that's still not active notification.

I have to seek that out. I don't know here in Ohio. I really don't know what the law is gives, but I've never had somebody come to my door and say, hey, I'm an active, I'm a registered sex offender and I'm required by law to notify you. Yeah, moving in next door to your girls. I don't see that going well at all. I don't see that going well, but I'm not sure. I don't know that we had that because I've never had it happen to me and nobody I know has ever said.

I've never had anybody knock on my door either. And you would because. The type of neighborhoods I live in? Yeah. But at a minimum, and you mentioned it Gibbs, right? There are websites that I can go out to, that people can go out to search, do within a radius and see. You know, I know the one that I go to, you can pull up their picture. You can see what they were, you know, in for.

Yeah, tier one, tier two. Yeah, it's pretty descriptive. So that is a good thing. I like to know if somebody's living right next door to me or the closest person is two miles away. Still not happy about it either way. But it makes a big difference. Oh, absolutely. Across the street next door versus.

Yeah. Dad, I'm going to spend the night at So and Sowe's house. And you can pull up that address and see what's living around there. or maybe so-and-so's parents. Yeah. Never know. It's a weird name, though, so-and-so. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm not crazy about that person anyway. Yeah. There was an assembly man who came out afterwards and said, quote, Megan Canka would be alive today if some of these bills regarding sex offenders had already been in place. And that's very possible. It's not certain. No.

But it's very possible that her mother would have known. who was living across the street would have taken more precaution because she had that information. Anything to give the sweet, innocent kids an advantage you should? Her family would go on to found the Megan Nicole Kanka Foundation, and this was designed to prevent crimes against children. On the mission page of the foundation, it states the hope and dream of the foundation is that no other child anywhere will suffer the same fate of Megan Kanka.

Right. So that's the first part, Gibbs. That's the story around how Megan's law came to be. Very well-known law. Very, yeah, very well. And a lot of people will know about it. Maybe not every single detail of the crime and how it, how all that transpired. I would say most places, you know, cities, when you buy a property, there's normally a

Megan Law disclaimer to. Part of a real estate transaction, if you know, you have to disclose. that person purchasing your property that someone's informed you? Oh, if you have active notification. But if you don't have, if you're not in a state with active notification, I could, I would imagine you would have plausible deniability. Even if you looked up on the websites and you knew. Yeah.

Technically, nobody ever came to your house and said, hey. Right. So to me, that's the, the first part is great. But there are, I think there are a lot of states that don't and have the active notification part on the books. I think there's some that don't. All right, so I think it's a great time to take a break. Yeah.

We've got a new sponsor that I'm really excited about. Daily Harvest. Daily Harvest delivers perfectly proportioned frozen superfoods, Gibbs, superfoods. Superfoods. Straight to your door. We're talking about smoothies, soups, breakfast bowls, Sunday. All good stuff. There's some good stuff, but this is healthier than your normal smooth.

But it's good. Yeah. You and I have both tried it. It's very good. Absolutely. You know, Daily Harvest focuses on. Healthy eating made easy. And it's really easy.

It doesn't get any easier than this. That cup and everything. It's already in a cup. Yeah. You take it out of the freezer. I mean, it's really a no-brainer. It's stress-free, especially when it comes to trying to get more fruits and vegetables in your diet. It's very convenient.

Delivery and prep. Super easy. Very straightforward. You actually store your daily harvest cups in the freezer until you're ready to make one. So it's not like some of these other ones where you have to make it within three or four days or something's going to go bad. Yeah. These last quite a long time. They do.

They last. You talked about how easy it was. All you have to do is add liquid. That could be water, coconut milk, almond milk, if you're feeling a little fancy like Gibbs. You blend it up. Almond milk, man. Or you heat it, depending on what you're making. Soups or smoothies.

Smoothies take about 30 seconds, soups, five minutes, and things like overnight oats and chia parfays. You can just take it out and it will be ready, like when you wake up. You just grab it. Start eating in the car. Well, I wouldn't do that. It's kind of dangerous. Take it to work. It's ready. Daily Harvest's produce is organic and unrefined and it looks as good as it tastes.

You can actually see all of the whole ingredients when you open the cup. Because keep in mind, you have to blend it. You can see the strawberries. You can see the cacao nibs. Cacao! Come on, we'll try. You can't say that? Cacao.

Yeah, there you go. Cacao. Chunks of mango, whole raspberries, pumpkin seeds. Daily harvest is the fastest, most convenient way to up your fruit and vegetable intake without having to put in the work that usually comes with eating fruits and vegetables. And for our listeners, all you have to do is go to daily dash harvest.com and enter the promo code T-Cat to get three items free in your first box. That's promo code T-Cat for three free daily harvest cups at daily dash harvest.com. And this actually goes great for me, Gibbs, in my 2018 New Year's resolution. Absolutely. Get a fresh start, man.

Yeah. Eat better. Maybe start working out a little bit. We'll see how that part goes. Eating better is easier for me than working out. All right, Gibbs, now we have to talk about the events that led up to the creation of Jessica's law. And this involves Jessica Lunsford, who was a third grader at Homassasa Elementary School. And this was a little girl known to be very quiet, but she loved to play with her dog corky. She loved to sing karaoke. And again, like a lot of these girls that we talk, talk about, her kids in general, you know, people love to be around her. She was a good kid.

She was at church with her father on the night of February 24th, 2005. And then they came home and she gave her dad his usual good night hug before she went to bed. This is something that, you know, apparently she did every night. When her family woke up the next morning, they found out Jessica was not asleep in her bed. So her father and her grandparents, they start a frantic search for Jessica. But it would turn out that she wasn't very far away from her house or her family at all.

Jessica Lunsford was hidden away in a closet just across the street. So it's different but eerily similar to Megan's story. in that this involves somebody right across the street. Police are contacted and they do a search for sex offenders in the area. And one of the things that they find is a man named John Cooey. And they realize that Cooey is not living at the place of residence that he had given to police, as he was required to do.

He was living in his sister's three bedroom trailer, which was located just across the street from where Jessica lived with her dad and grandparent. So right away, he's a person of interest. Number one, he's a registered sex offender. And number two, he's not living where he says he's supposed to be living. He's living right across the street. So we're in Florida. So police are real interested in this John Cooey.

And they start tailing him in Homassas, Florida. and he leaves the state. He's heading to Georgia and they trail him all the way to Savannah, Georgia. And it's because of this that police are able to take him into custody. Because since he was a convicted sex offender, he had broken the law by leaving Florida

without telling the authorities that he was going to leave the state. And the reason why he was a convicted sex offender, he had served five. years in prison for a 1991 conviction related to lewd and lascivious conduct. And in that case, he confessed to luring a young girl with the promise to play hide and go seek. And he ended up masturbating in front of her. He exposed himself to her and he kissed her.

But again, that's 1991 Gibbs. He served five years in prison for that. And I'm not downplaying that. Right. What he did was horrible. I'm just going back to the instance we just talked about with Jesse, and I feel like he should have done more time for the things that he did. The disparity in, and again, we're talking about different states,

so you're going to have some disparity. It just, it always kind of, I guess, just takes me aback. It shouldn't by now, but it still seems to. Oh, it always does. But John Cooey ends up confessing to the murder and rape of Jessica Lunsford. And what he would say in his confession is that on the night of February 25th, 2005, he came home from a party. He was high on crack. He was drunk.

He'd been drinking both beer and whiskey. And he broke into Jessica's home around 3 a.m. Went to her bedroom. He woke Jessica up, told her not to yell, and then led her out of the house. and she walked out holding her stuffed dolphin in her arms. He led her across the street, took her up to his bedroom where he was staying at his sister's house, but he didn't go through the front door. He took her up on a ladder.

And then in his statement, he says he took her clothes off, he fondled her and then proceeded to rape her. Now, what Kui would say was that he was going to let her go free when he was done. But he got scared. And I think Gibbs, this is somewhat similar to the case that we just talked about. And I'm assuming, and I was getting trouble when I assume, but that assumption is that he had designs of letting her go, but thought if he did, the authorities were going to be knocking on his door. That realization had to have come to him at some point. Yeah.

And he got nervous and scared and thought, I'll just keep her. And that's what he did. Yeah. Right? He kept her hidden inside of a closet for the next few days. Yeah. Fetter eggs and grits and hamburger. Maybe just buying time trying to figure out what he was going to do.

I don't know. I'm not in his head. Well, the longer he keeps her, the worse off for him, it would have been. But I struggle imagining what this girl went through, you know, to be violated the way that she was. to be kept in, you know, the closet. And Kui would say that she would just sit in the closet and sing to herself. Maybe that's the only way she was, you know, coping with this, getting through this. Now, this comes from John Kui, right?

We got to keep that in mind. Because you got to think, Gibbs, there's other people living inside this house. Yeah, so they either knew or they didn't know. Is that the deduction that you're making? That's my deduction. They either knew. Columbo? No.

get what you're saying. They either knew and didn't do anything about it or they were somehow he was able to keep the whole thing hidden. But that's where the question of comes in. Was she really in the closet? You know, did he really keep her in the closet for that that period of time? But he would tell the police that Jessica knew that her family was trying to find her. And at one point, he even let her look out of the window where she could see, you know, the police across the street. And again, how horrible for her. It's unimaginable. But Kui would say that she never tried to escape, that she did sit in the closet, you quietly singing. And he would even say that she, he never let her out of the closet, even to use the bathroom. And again, horrible to think about. Oh, it is. She would had to, you know, go to the

bathroom on herself. But Kui would confess to raping Jessica again. And then several nights into this ordeal, he removed her from the closet, tied her up with a speaker cord, wrapped her in garbage bags, took her out of the house, and Gibbs, he buried her alive. I mean, again, words, right? You don't even know what to say because... It didn't even have the balls to not have her suffer anymore, right? He could have did something, which none of it was good. No, but he didn't have to bury her alive.

No, no matter which way he went, it wasn't going to be good, but to bury somebody alive. If you're going to do all that, won't you go ahead and do, you know. That's got to be one of the worst ways to go, right? Drowning, being buried alive. I think buried alive would be terrible, man.

Just running out of oxygen and knowing there's nothing you can do about it. You know, you talk about balls. These guys don't have any balls. They're just, they're cowardly pieces of shit. They are. But then he would tell the cops that he buried the dolphin with her, saying, I quote, I let her keep it. She wanted to take it with her.

Like he was doing this great thing by letting her keep this dolphin. Yeah. I did her big favor. So I'm not all bad. You know, right now someone's yelling at the podcast. They're just, they're feeling the frustration that you're feeling. I am. I am frustrated.

I can think of a few people that we talk to on social. media they're just right now they're just they're ticked because i already know the story but in talking about it i'm getting frustrated frustrated is not even the right word i'm getting i'm pissed i'm i'm fired up over this now cooey would say that at one point he tried he poured bleach over his bed because he thought that would help clean it up so they got this confession right slam dunk he's confessed to the crime and everything but the confession gets thrown out because a Apparently, Kui had asked for legal aid, legal representation before he was interrogated, but he was not given that.

So this confession was ruled inadmissible by a judge. The police would find Jessica's body on March 19th, 2005. That's quite a bit, just under a month since she was abducted. and her body was actually under the front porch of his sister's trailer where he was living. Yeah, buried in a hole that's only two and a half by two feet. Two and a half by two feet. Such a small hole, man, just puts it even think about it. It's just the whole thing is very strange.

And again, we're not saying this is how you should do it, but you commit this heinous act and then you bury someone right on your, where you're living in this very, very shallow, small hole. Now, he covered the hole with leaves, but the whole thing is just kind of a mystery to me, Gibbs, as to why someone would think, first of all, someone would think any of this is a good idea,

but that part's already done, right? Yeah. He's committed to act. Why would he just do it right there? I don't get that one. I don't understand it either. The autopsy on this one bugs me as well. Well, because like we said, it was a, it was quite a bit of time before she was found.

So there was quite a bit of decomposition. But what they could tell from this autopsy, and I think this is the part you're getting at Gibbs, it's almost, it's kind of chilling, was that they could tell that she had poked through the garbage bags. Yeah, her little fingers, man. Two of her fingers had poked through the garbage bags before she suffocated. Trying to get air. And the medical examiner would come out and state that her death probably would have happened in about three to five minutes. I'm assuming from the time she was completely covered.

And couldn't get any more air. Couldn't get it, you know, from lack of oxygen. But until that point, she had to suffer. Well, she suffered since the time he took her. She did, yeah. She suffered. But she had a suffer in that, you know, wrapped up like that before she couldn't even get any more air. And then she had to wait three to five minutes longer.

That's just... So they couldn't use this confession that they had obtained in the trial. But they had other evidence. You know, obviously they had recovered Jessica. And the court did allow some very incriminating statements that John Cui had made to investigators and to a guard at the jail. So they couldn't use the actual confession. But apparently he had been blabbing to other people about what he had done as well.

And that they could use. They're normally idiots and they like the boasts. So when the trial started in March of 2007, it was said that there was some very, very graphic evidence that had to be introduced. One of these pieces of evidence was a photo that showed Jessica's hands, showed her wrists that had a thin bruise where her hands had been tied together. Other evidence included a bloodstained mattress, the black trash bag she was buried in.

They had the shovels that were used to dig the grave. And they had her stuffed purple dolphin that when they found her was tucked between her arms and her chest. And that's just, that's just sad. And that is, that image is very upsetting. It certainly is. I mean, it's upsetting to us. It was very upsetting to jurors because they had to see all these pictures. They had to hear in very graphic detail about all these horrible things that happened.

And just to put it into perspective, where they found Jessica was about 150 yards from her home. So it's about a football field and a half. Yeah. Can you just imagine? Finding out later. That's how close your kid was. And you had no idea. No, no idea.

Yeah. And as the police are on the stand, right, they're giving this. graphic testimony talking about how hard it was finding her body, what state it was in when they found it. It was said that John Cooey was doodling on a piece of paper. And what it turned out to be was, or what it appeared to be anyway, was a person in a hole. And then another doodle was a person smiling with a knot tying their hands above their head. This is not a guy that is Morseful to be drawing that kind of stuff. Kind of cocky, actually.

This is a sick MFer. So it took the jury about four hours to deliberate, and they found Kui guilty of first-degree murder, burglary, sexual assault, and kidnapping. And it was said that he showed absolutely no reaction when the verdict was read. And for the murder of Jessica Marie Lunsford, this court sentences you, John Evander Kui, to death.

The state of Florida never got the chance to execute Kui. He died Wednesday. natural causes at a hospital. A Department of Corrections spokeswoman says Cui had been ill for some time. The 51-year-old was sentenced to death in 2007 for kidnapping 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford from her bedroom in 2005 and raping and murdering her. Cooey told investigators he kept Jessica in a closet in his mobile home for several days before bearing her alive in a shallow grave in the yard outside of his trailer. Cui lived nearby. Deputies made four visits to his trailer, but never asked to go inside. The third grader's body was found about

three weeks after she disappeared in Cooey's yard, about 150 yards from her own home. Cooey was already a convicted sex offender when he committed the crime. And I wanted to wait until we played that clip Gibbs to talk about it, but you hear it in the clip. The police visited the house a number of times, never asked to go inside. Now, they may have not been allowed to. you know, unless, unless they had a warrant, but they could have asked. Could have asked, but they didn't have probable cause. You know, I don't know how they could have got in without, you know, him offering them to come in. But like we said, it wasn't his house or his trailer or whatever it was.

You know, his sister and other family members not knowing anything was going on if they did, which I assume was the case, they may have let police in. So I thought that was an interesting fact, but I wanted to wait until she said it. So John Cooey died in prison, and I know everybody's wiping a tear away. Not. Not. But from this, Jessica's law was passed in Florida in 2005, and this law was designed to protect potential victims and reduce a sexual offender's ability to reoffend. And some of the key provisions of this law was classifying lewd and lascivious molestation.

on a person under the age of 12 as a felony and giving it a mandatory minimum, 25-year sentence in prison. Now, to go along with this, it's also lifetime electric monitoring of adults convicted of those crimes. Lifetime electronic monitoring. Can you imagine? I hate it wearing that little thing, man, for different reasons. I know.

It's rough, isn't it? It's rough. But we just talked about it earlier in the episode, and we've talked about it on others of how there's a lot of things that we feel like people do and they get a slap on the wrist. They don't do a whole lot of time. We're talking about minimum here, 25 years. Yeah, I like it, man. For lewd and lascivious molestation. And we're going to talk about, I'm going to talk about in a minute about there are some detractors of this law, people that have issues with it. And I think one of them is the definition of that. Well, it's always going to be the

problem is sometimes it will overstretch the purpose of the law. Yeah, the law in it's in and of itself is designed to do a good thing. Now, along with, I just want to throw this in there, gives, because along with that electronic monitoring comes the fact that when they get out, if they get out, that person is on probation for the rest of their life. That's coupled with the electronic monitoring. So since Jessica's law passed in the state of Florida, other states have introduced their own form of Jessica's law. And there was an attempt at a federal version of Jessica's law proposed in 2005.

It was called the Jessica Lunsford Act, but it never passed Congress. So basically what you have is a bunch of different states having their own version of Florida's Jessica's law. And this is where, you know, I mentioned the detractors. And there are around some of these states' versions that have been passed over the years. Because some of the states have enacted, you know,

very serious punishments. I mean, Florida had minimum 25 years. That, that is a long time. That's, that's, yeah. But along with that, some of the states have instituted what they've called like a zero tolerance policy. Now on its face, all of that is good, right?

I'm for all of that. Yeah. But I think you mentioned it. It's kind of in how you define some of these things, right? Lude and lascivious. And so, you know, there are some stories out there that are kind of frightening about, you know,

some drunk guy on his way home from the bar, stops to take a leak in a park. and lo and behold, there's kids there. Yeah. It's overstretching what the law was meant to do. I would say it is that that's how it really happened. But in a zero tolerance environment, there is no, I mean, if that's considered lewd and lascivious and you're convicted of that, you're going away.

And that's just one example that I read, but, you know, and I don't know how true that is, but it was interesting if that, if that's the case. because you can see where maybe this law or laws in some of the states get applied in ways that maybe they weren't really designed for. Now, some of the other things that people talk about is that in instances involving family, family members, you know, the law may lead to people not wanting to come forward if they know somebody's going to get 25 years or a life sentence or, you know, that's some of the stuff that was out there too. I don't know how accurate that is. But the issue I think I found the most interesting was there are some states where if a sex offender gets paroled, there are very strict limitations on where that person can live. And there should be. I'm not saying there shouldn't be.

Yeah, I mean, distance from schools and playgrounds. The problem that comes in is in some of these very congested areas that we have now, it was basically. Basically, there were states where people couldn't live in any town because they were, there was nowhere you could live that wasn't within however many yards of a school. Yeah. Or a playground or something. So you actually have people like living out in the woods because there is no other place they can legally live. Right. Now, if they did something heinous, I don't give a rat's ass.

Live in the woods. I don't care. But if you were taking a leak and did 15 years and then have to come out and live in the woods, again, you know, it's all about how the actual thing went down, right? Was it really a crime? Was it an accident or a mistake? Yeah, I remember some states that went pretty extreme with some drug laws too, which was a problem, right? It read one way, but they would enforce it that if you just had a little bit of cocaine, cane or maybe even weed on you, you had to serve the maximum. It was like 20, 25 years.

It's in response to something, right, the drug epidemic. And you put something in place that you think is designed to be a good thing, right? We want to get these drugs off the street. We want to, we don't want our kids exposed to this drug trade. Right. But then you apply it to where, you know, this 20-year-old kid's got, you know, a little bag of weed and he's got to do 10, 15 years or whatever it is. Right. He's got just a little bit of Coke. And I'm not saying Coke's great or whatever, but.

No, but I don't, I don't think you do hard time because you've got a. Right. You're treating him like he's Pablo Escobar. Exactly. You know, some big drug kingpin when he went out to party one weekend and got some Coke. Right. Exactly. I think it's a good analogy.

The laws are designed to help. They're designed to protect people. But it always comes down to application. Right. And how you apply it. It's just the zero tolerance thing, I think, gets into a little, into an area where it can be sometimes misapplied or used too harshly. Yeah. Yep.

It is a law named after a young former Gaston County resident who was kidnapped and raped in Florida. It's one that her father fought for, a law that gets tough on child predators. People in Gaston County remember Jessica Lunsford because while she was murdered in Florida, she grew up, went to school here in Gaston County. So it meant a lot for her father and for the townspeople to have the governor come here and sign the bill that bears her name. Governor Mike Easley signed the new law that sets a minimum mandatory of 25 years behind bars for convicted child sexual offenders

and forces them to wear GPS tracking devices when they are released. The likelihood of curing a child predator is very, very slim. And it is important that we know where they are. So that law passed in North Carolina, very similar sounds like, to Florida, right? Minimum 25, GPS tracking for life.

If used correctly, I love it, man. Yeah. I mean, and used in the right circumstance where somebody victimizes a child, I have no problem with it. You know how I feel about crimes against children. I know how you feel about them too. So I don't want anybody to take what we're saying the wrong way about what some of the detractors of the laws have said. Right, Gibbs. So, you know, two heartbreaking cases that ultimately led to what you'd have to say is something positive.

Yeah, some good laws. Laws designed to protect other children. Yeah. To allow parents to know what kind of people they're living around. Yeah, I think they're really important. Now, there are two very different laws. Yes, they are. You know, the one about the notification is one thing.

Jessica's law and some of the versions and states really put some teeth behind sentencing for, you know, these convicted, child sex offender. And in the future, you and I, in these cases, won't be saying, oh, how did that person get out within six months? Exactly. They're going to do a minimum of 25 years

in some of these states. We only got one voicemail, Gibbs. We need more voicemails then. I think it was, you know, the holidays, people were busy. Call that number on the website. Hey, Mike, hey Gibby. This is Andrea calling from Indiana.

I listen to you. you guys all the time. I am a huge fan. You have gotten me through many, many weeks of work. I work 10 to 12 hour days inspecting medical products at a company called Cook. And you make the days go by so quick and y'all just keep it up and keep your own time ticking. All right, Andrea, thank you so much for the voicemail. We appreciate it. Absolutely. All right. Tough episode. Always is when we're talking about children. Yeah. But I think it was an important episode, Gibbs, because of what transpired.

That's some good awareness. You know, as a result of these tragic events. Now, the issue that I have, and I was thinking about this while I was researching the case, is I think what is sad is that it takes something like this, like some of these horrific murders, to make people think of what we should do. Yeah. You know, we're being, obviously it's reactive. It is.

You'd love to see where we're being a little more proactive, but. Yeah, but it also takes, I mean, think of what these parents, what they went through, yet they still had the drive, determination to push this forward. And, you know, there's nothing easy about getting any type of bill passed. And they kept with it and kept with it and, you know, kept on knocking on people's doors. I mean, gosh, the first one, almost a half a million signatures, really? You know how hard that is? That's a lot of work.

It is a lot of work. And we didn't talk much about Jessica's dad just because, you know, the episode was going a little long, but he did a lot of work too. Yeah, I mean, it's all incredible. Can't stop, don't stop. Keep going, moving forward. Get what you want, you know, and it's what they had to do. And it kind of reminds me of the episode we did pretty early on Gibbs about Lauren

land of Ozo. Yeah, and how they all worked hard. Her family is fighting. I still talk to her mom, Bianca, every now and then. You know, they're fighting very hard to pass something that would help somebody in the future. You know, in that case, if you remember it, she was 13 years old, and the issue was around how old she was. Right. You know, if she would have been, I think, 10, then the sentence could be longer. And it just meant you and I talked to it. It just didn't make any sense. It didn't make any sense.

10, 11, 12, 13. Why the gap difference? It's still, you're talking about a child. Right. You know, if you murder a child, it shouldn't matter if they're 10 or they're 13. Right. A sentence should be very severe.

Sorry, I got back on my rant there for a minute. All right. That is it for another episode of true crime all the time. So for Mike and Gibby. Stay safe and keep your own time ticking.