True Crime Campfire - Deceived: The Murder of Samantha Fleming

Episode Date: May 26, 2023

Technology is amazing. It’s allowed humans to instantaneously transmit information over thousands of miles. Sometimes it’s a phone call to a sick relative in a different country, sometimes it’s a funny cat video sent to your friend at 4 am when you’re supposed to be asleep, and sometimes it connects two true crime nerds who live in different areas of the country who decide that they want to deglorify the monsters that live amongst us. It’s truly a marvel of human ingenuity and for most of us, it’s an integral part of our social lives. For some types of predator though, it’s a new kind of hunting ground. A way for them to gather information, to monitor and stalk their prey. Today, we’ll be telling you about one such predator--a devious manipulator who went to the most horrific lengths to keep her lies from seeing daylight. Join us for this chilling story of trickery, abduction and murder. Sources:Sky News: https://news.sky.com/story/woman-who-faked-pregnancy-guilty-of-killing-mother-and-stealing-her-baby-11396100NBC: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mom-daughter-accused-killing-woman-cutting-baby-womb-face-new-n1031566NBC: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/chilling-new-details-emerge-murder-chicago-woman-whose-baby-was-n1007066Kansas.com: https://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article116344433.htmlInvestigation Discovery's "Diabolical," episode "The Mother of All Lies"Oxygen's "Snapped," episode "Geraldine Jones"Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Technology is amazing. It's allowed humans to instantaneously transmit. information over thousands of miles. Sometimes it's a phone call to a sick relative in a different country. Sometimes it's a funny cat video sent to your friend at 4 a.m. when you're supposed to be asleep, and sometimes it connects two true crime nerds who live in different areas of the country

and decide they want to de-glorify the monsters that live among us. It's truly a marvel of human ingenuity, and for most of us, it's an integral part of our social lives. For some types of predator, though, it's a new kind of hunting ground, a way for them to gather information. to monitor and stalk their prey. Today, we'll be telling you about one such predator. This is Deceived, the murder of Samantha Fleming. So, campers, for this one, we're in Anderson, Indiana. April 6, 2015.

At around one in the afternoon, brand-new mom Samantha Fleming was trying to steal a little nap while her newborn daughter's Serenity was sleeping. So when the doorbell rang, Samantha's boyfriend Rainy leapt up to answer at hoping to avoid waking up his two girls. Little Serenity was only 17 days old,

and Samantha was still recovering from the C-section birth. Her feet were so swollen they hurt. She really needed the rest. The woman on the other side of the door was professionally dressed, carrying a binder, and she introduced herself as a worker for the Department of Child Services, DCS. I need to speak with Ms. Samantha Fleming, the woman said. It's about her court case. It's urgent. Now, as far as Rainey knew, Sam wasn't aware of any of this. He knew she'd been working her ass off lately to try and regain custody of her oldest son,

and she was always careful to keep up with her court dates. Samantha had lost custody of her son from a previous relationship when her partner physically abused her, and DCS decided that the environment wasn't safe for the little boy. This is a common practice for social services. People can forget this sometimes, but being exposed to abuse, even when the abuse isn't directed specifically at them, can do awful damage to a kid. Some experts consider that abuse in and of itself, just exposing a child to domestic violence, and I actually completely agree with that. So anyway, after she lost custody, Samantha had taken steps to get out of that relationship, and she'd taken all the classes that DCS had required her to take. Rainy knew that there was nothing more important to Sam than putting her family back

together, so he woke her up from her nap, and Samantha threw on some clothes and ran to the door to talk to the DCS lady. The lady told her that her social worker had forgotten to tell her that she had a hearing that day in Gary, Indiana. The hearing is basically just a formality, Miss Fleming, the DCS lady said. There's a really good chance you'll get your little boy back to but we're going to have to get you there right now. I'll drive you. Samantha was flustered like anybody would be. The social worker forgot to tell her she had a court date? For God's sake. But she was grateful that this lady from DCS had taken the time to drive all the way out here and tell her about it and pick her up too. As Samantha scrambled around to get

herself ready to go, the lady made another suggestion. Why don't you bring the baby, she said. It'll be good for the court to see how well cared for she is. Plus, it's going to be a few hours. That was true. The drive to Gary was about two and a half hours, and who knew how long it would take the judge to call her case. But Samantha was elated at the idea of finally being allowed to take her baby boy home again, so she packed a diaper bag, threw on some nicer clothes, and got little Serenity ready to go. Rainey helped her put the car seat in the DCS worker's maroon car. While he was doing that, he noticed something odd. The lady's license plates were expired. For some reason, it made his stomach lurch a little.

Something just felt kind of strange about this, enough that he made a mental note of the license plate number. But it was nothing he could put a firm finger on, and they were all rushing around to make sure Sam didn't miss her hearing. There really wasn't time to stop and ponder what he was feeling, but he knew he was feeling on guard. I'll keep texting her all day, he thought, as he helped Sam into the car and waved goodbye. Keep me posted, he called through the passenger window. Let me know you're safe. He watched them drive away, still feeling a little uneasy. It's such a beautiful example of trusting your instincts, isn't it?

Rainey couldn't articulate why, but he knew something was up. He just knew it. Yeah, and bless him for getting that license number. That was so smart. For sure. Samantha also texted her mom, Sandy Signary, who was ecstatic that her daughter might be about to get her kid back. Samantha's sister Kaylee even drove to the courthouse and Gary to wait for her to arrive. In her texts from the road, Sam seemed excited and happy. The DCS worker seemed sure she was going to get her parental rights restored and that she'd be driving home with both her children later that day. As the afternoon wore on, however, the text messages trickled to a stop.

Rainy, Samantha's family, and her best friend all stopped hearing from her. When they texted her, she didn't text back. Finally, hours and several unanswered calls later, Sam texted them that she had awful news. Well, basically, the judge said I was unfit, she wrote. I'm so frustrated I can't even talk. Wait, what? Sam's mom, Sandy, was stunned. And as the text messages kept chiming, she noticed something strange. Sam tended to keep her texts pretty short, and she used a lot of chat speak, you know, using the letter you instead of the word, lots of LOL and JK, stuff like that. But these messages were all perfectly spelled with impeccable grammar. They didn't sound like Sam at all. Not only that, but her sister Kaylee, who was waiting at the courthouse,

never saw Sam show up, and when she checked the court dockets, there was nothing there with her sister's name on it. This sent everyone into a panic. They called the Gary police and spoke with a detective. He agreed that the situation was concerning and the family was right to be worried. But since there was no proof that Samantha had even been in Gary that day, they'd need to contact the Anderson Police Department instead, because that's where Samantha went missing. Rainie was freaked.

He couldn't shake that terrible feeling in his gut, so he did exactly that. He called the Anderson police who swiftly got to work doing nothing. I know campers, y'all are thinking, wow, it's pretty early in the episode for Katie to have a rate stroke. But boy, am I about to scream. The police, hearing that a woman and her child got into a car with a stranger and stopped responding to calls and texts, went, I don't know, dude, you sure she didn't just go out to buy milk? And despite where this story is headed, one of the detectives on the case has since doubled down on this choice. He said, direct quote, I swear to God, you're always trying to wait and see if the person shows back up, because there's really nothing else to go by at the time.

Oh, boy. Are you fucking kidding me? There's a ton to go by, my dude. a vulnerable woman and her brand new baby are missing according to her boyfriend and family and you're like, well, she might come back. Don't you think they could have, I don't know, called the courthouse to see if she showed up?

Aren't police always telling us that the first 48 hours in a missing person's case are the most critical? So tell me, which is true? You want to wait and see if the missing person shows back up or you want to get on the case as soon as possible. The whole case started off at a huge disadvantage because the detective couldn't be bothered to pick up a goddamn phone.

Yeah, um, you're going to be okay there? No. I know, it's frustrating. It's infuriating, but Sam's family and her boyfriend Rainey didn't have much of a choice but to do what they were told, so they waited for four days. Now, it was April 10th, and nobody had heard from Sam. Rainey called the police department again and let him know that Serenity and Samantha were still missing, and hallelujah, for some reason. this was enough for the police to finally take a missing woman and baby seriously.

So they brought Rainy in for an interview, where he explained exactly what he witnessed on the day Sam and the baby went missing. He described the DCS worker as a black woman, probably between 25 and 35, dressed in a business casual suit. The police, up against a four-day delay, immediately went to work to find Samantha and her daughter. Now, there are sources that imply that the Anderson PD was looking for clear. lose for the four days after Rainey's initial call. But if that was the case, why did it take him

four days to interview him? I mean, wouldn't the boyfriend be the most likely suspect? They should have spoken to him that day. But instead, they waited until he called again. I just do not get it. It is so bizarre. But anyway, we're going to put a pin in that for a second and get a little bit of background on Samantha. She was the second child in a family with four kids born in Indianapolis in 1991. Same year as you, Katie, right? They had a happy childhood, and Samantha was close with her mom and her sister. But at 19, she started to feel a little restless. She moved out of her mom's house and kind of couch-surfed with friends for a while.

Not long after she left home, Samantha got pregnant and quickly realized she was in no place to provide for a child. So she had the little girl and ended up giving custody to her mom, Sandy. And over the next few years, Sam had a series of failed relationships. It was clear to Sandy that her daughter was trying to find herself. and she tried to support her as best she could while raising her granddaughter. At 21, Sam settled down a little when she met a guy named Stephen Fleming on a dating app. She fell for him fast and hard. They moved in together in a suburb outside of Gary, but their relationship was volatile.

Stephen had anger problems, and Sam kept trying to leave, but like so many people in toxic relationships, she just got sucked back in over and over again. At one point, during one of Sam and Stephen's off periods, Sam hooked up with another guy and got pregnant. When the father realized it, he pretty much noped out, just disappeared to the ether and left Sam on her own. Charming, dude, real nice. But Stephen wanted another chance with Samantha. He told her if she'd come back, he'd raise the baby as his own. So once again, she moved back in. Had the baby, hoped for the best, but within just a few months of the little boy's birth, the drama flared up again. According to Sam's best friend, one afternoon

Stephen saw Sam texting on her phone and for some reason this set him off. He snatched her phone away from her and threw it as hard as he could at the floor and the screen shattered obviously and then Stephen grabbed Sam and started tossing her around the room. When the cops arrived, they found signs of struggle all over the place, broken furniture, her broken phone, and they decided they needed to get that baby out of there to protect him. So little boy went to child protective services and Sam and Stephen were told that he's going to stay there until the they could prove that their home was safe for him. Sam and Stevens' response to this was to get married,

I guess because they thought it would show the state that they could be stable parents. But because they'd removed the little boy in the first place because of domestic violence, it had the opposite effect. Yeah, family court determined that the home still wasn't safe for the baby and refused to reinstate Samantha's parental rights. This must have been the final straw for Samantha. She filed for divorce and got the hell away from that awful relationship.

She moved 150 miles away, and by 2014, she was starting to get back on her feet. She met Rainy Stanley, and for the first time in her life, she was with somebody who was stable. Rainey worked as a manager at a fast food restaurant, and he seemed to really love and care about Sam. Even when Sam found out she was pregnant from a hookup that happened before they got together, Rainie was all in. He told her he didn't care if the kid wasn't biologically his. He wanted to be with Sam, and he wanted to help her raise this baby. With this newfound stability in her life, Sam was able to keep up with supervised visits with her son, follow her reintegration plan, and even visit more with her oldest daughter, who was still living with Grandma Sandy.

Sam and Rainey had been together for eight months when Baby Serenity arrived on the scene. Samantha was feeling like her life was finally back on track. She had a man who loved her, a brand new baby, and she was closing in on her goal of reunification with her son. That is until April 6, 2015, when that moment. Mysterious DCS worker showed up at her front door. Of course, the investigator's first suspect was Rainey himself, and they had to go about confirming his story. Also, I don't want to harp on it too much.

But when Rainey was in the interview room, the detective asks when Sam went missing, and Rainey tells him the six, and the cop has the audacity to seem shocked. Oh, my God. It's like, he tried to call y'all, okay? So don't you flipp and dare sit there and act like he was just, you know, twiddling his thumbs?

He tried. He was like, wow, really? It's like, yeah, dude. What do you mean? Unbelievable. The police ran the plate number that Rainey gave them and weren't able to link the person who had the plate number to either Sam or Rainey. And when they canvassed the apartment complex where Sam and Rainey lived, they found a

witness who had an intriguing story. They said they'd seen a woman who matched the description of the DCS lady that day, trying to get into the building. She brought the woman to the door of Sam's apartment, and as she walked away, she heard the woman's whole spiel about Sam's court date and how they had to get going right away to get there in time. This verified Rainy's story and pretty much cleared him as a suspect. Now they had to figure out who the mystery woman was. The investigator started by trying to get an idea of Sam's inner circle. They visited with Sandy

and Kaylee, who told them about the strange text messages they'd gotten from Sam's phone. Sam had told them that after the hearing, she'd be going to Ohio for a few days and that especially alarmed her mom, who pressured her daughter to please call her ASAP. Eventually, after not getting a direct answer from Sam via text and being unable to get her to answer her phone, Sandy asked her to tell her the password they used to use for stranger safety when she was a kid. Sam said, I don't remember. So Sandy said, okay, well, what was your nickname as a kid? And at that, the text stopped altogether. 36 hours after anyone had seen Sam or Serenity.

So creepy. Oh, this case just runs right down my spine and hits the greet button. So the detectives asked if Sandy knew anything about this caseworker from DCS. And Sandy said, well, she was new. In fact, the woman had called Sandy a couple of days before Sam and the baby went missing. She'd identified herself as Angela Grossman. I need Samantha's contact information, she'd say. said. She sounded perfectly polite and professional, and Sandy didn't think anything of it.

She'd gone ahead and given her Sam's number and hung up the phone. She'd forgotten all about it until now. When they checked, though, the investigators found that not only did Sam not have a court date on April 6th, she didn't have a new caseworker, either. And there was no Angela Grossman working for DCS. The phone number that Angela had used was blocked, which meant that the detectives would need to work on a subpoena to get the number unblocked by the cell phone carrier. Sandy and Kaylee also told the detectives about Sam's abusive relationship with her ex, Stephen Fleming. In the back of her mind, Sandy was worried that Sam might have gone back to him again. So they tracked down Stephen and Gary, and he immediately lawyered up, which is probably the smartest

thing he could do. His attorney told law enforcement that he definitely wanted to help, but he just didn't trust the cops. Yeah, I bet. While they were trying to arrange a meeting with Stephen, the cell phone company got their court order to unblock the number that this Angela Grossman had used to call Sandy. The number belonged to a woman named Geraldine Jones. So who the hell was Geraldine Jones? The detectives rushed over to her address in Gary to find out. And when Detective Scott Sanderson drove up, he saw a woman outside holding a baby that was around the same size and age as Serenity. As he approached the woman, he said, hey, what's your baby's name?

The woman looked up at him, startled. Sir, she said, I don't know. Uh, what? What do you mean? Detective Sanderson's jaw just hit the ground at this. He said, what the fuck do you mean you don't know what the baby's name is? The woman looked like she'd been going through hell. She said, I need to talk to you.

The woman holding the baby said her name was Tamiko Jones. She was Geraldine's older sister, and as Detective Sanderson quickly realized, she had one hell of a story to tell. Geraldine was born the youngest of three girls. She was whip smart, with a quick, easy sense of humor. She was also a natural-born liar. She wouldn't know the truth if she fell over it, lied about pretty much any and everything it took her fancy to lie about.

Her family knew she was a story-timore. tell her, as they put it, but nobody really called her out on it. They were just like, eh, that's how she is. Her other sister, April Jones, told investigation discovery that she saw the lies as an extension of Geraldine's need to control how other people perceived her, and of course as a way to get attention. Geraldine had a good career, first as a teacher and then a school principal. She came from a long line of educators, and going into education seemed like a no-brainer to her. According to one of her co-workers at the school, she was a wonderful teacher. The students loved her and so did the other teachers.

The only aspect of her life where she seemed to fail was romance. She just couldn't seem to hold on to a relationship. And at 36, Geraldine was feeling desperate. Enter a guy called Randy Garrett. Randy was handsome and kind. He had a good career and he was a great dad to his two daughters. On paper, he was pretty much the perfect man. In real life, too, actually.

Nobody had a bad thing to say about him. He was a widower, and he went online looking for a little romantic companionship. Geraldine was all the way in, but unfortunately, that was too much for Randy. He wanted to take the relationship slowly, but our girl Geraldine was already hearing wedding bells. Randy called off the relationship after just a couple months. Ouch. Yeah. But not long after the breakup, Geraldine had some news for him.

She was pregnant, and she was keeping the baby. This shocked her sister April, who said she didn't think Geraldine had ever wanted to have kids. For her part, Geraldine told Oxygen that she did actually want to have a family. She said that spending so much time around other people's kids had made her want one of her own. Anyway, Randy stuck to his guns that he was done with the relationship, but, you know, he wasn't a monster either. He told Geraldine that he wasn't going to get back with her, but he would be a father to their child. That was when Geraldine dropped yet another bombshell. She was pregnant with twins.

Two babies for the price of one. Well, damn. Yeah, no kidding. As far as everyone around her was concerned, Geraldine had a normal pregnancy. She had a cute little belly, and she seemed really excited. Her sister April said that she was gaining weight in the other parts of her body, too. She joined a bunch of mommy groups and spent a lot of time online learning everything she could about pregnancy. I think what April actually said on, I believe,

leave it was oxygen. She said, if you like it, I love it, which is so cute. I love that. I love that phrase. In February of 2015, her sisters threw her a baby shower. They bought her a double stroller for the twins, car seats, and enough diapers to supply a neonatal ward for months. They even played one of those cute games where people cut a piece of ribbon and wrapped around her belly to try and see who can most accurately guess the size of her belly. Lord, of course you think is cute baby shower games are the only thing worse in the world than wedding shower games okay i went to one once where they made us play some nightmarish thing which is going to like haunt my dreams for the rest of my life where we had to pick out a diaper and if it had a tootsie roll poop in it we lost just

i'm good thanks no i'm just not one of life's baby shower people i'm sorry but no i'm sure it was cute fine it is amazing that you've never had kids So anyway, they had a shower and everybody was really excited for Geraldine, except Randy. See, he wanted to be involved in the process, but Geraldine wasn't letting him. She wouldn't let him go with her to a doctor's appointment. She wouldn't even tell him when they were or where. He wanted to help, but Geraldine had every excuse in the book for why he couldn't be there. He couldn't shake these suspicions to the point where now he wanted a DNA test done once the babies were born.

Yeah, that's a huge red flag. Like if somebody is like, oh, no, you can't go to my doctor's appointments. I was just watching something earlier about a 19-year-old girl who scammed everybody on the internet that she had pancreatic cancer and all this kind of stuff. And that was one of the red flags in her case that she would never let anybody go to her doctor's appointments with her. Even her mother. And it turns out she was con artist and she's told like thousands of dollars. It happens a lot where people will like allow others to drive them to like. There was that writer for Gray's Anatomy.

People were, like, driving her to the Mayo Clinic, and she'd walk around the hallway doing nothing because she didn't have fucking cancer. Yep. It was in April when disaster struck. On the 6th, one of Geraldine's friends called her sisters to let them know that Geraldine had driven herself to the hospital. The whole family was in a panic trying to find her,

but Geraldine told them she didn't want them there. Everybody tried calling her, but she wouldn't pick up the phone. They called and actually visited every hospital. in the area and couldn't find Geraldine. After days with no communication, I can't even imagine what that family was going through in those days. Finally, Geraldine answered the phone for her sister April. Please, she said, I have to go through this alone. April couldn't believe what she was hearing. She's like, go through what alone? What happened? Where have you been? Well, the news was devastating. Geraldine told April that on the day she went to the hospital,

her water had broken, and she tried pulling out the mucus plug, but instead of the mucus plug, she'd pulled the umbilical cord instead, effectively strangling one of the twins. The baby hadn't survived. She'd birthed the other twin, checked herself and the baby out of the hospital, and gone home to grieve her loss. April was like, wait, let us be there for you. You don't have to do this alone. Where are you? We've tried all the hospitals. The Geraldine freaked out and started screaming through the phone, refusing to tell her sister where she was. No, no, I just want to do this by myself. I mean, it's bizarre, but I guess people handle grief in different ways, right? April tried to tell herself that, that her sister would let her know when she was ready for

their support. And lo and behold, finally, after a few more days, Geraldine showed up at her dad's house with the baby in tow. She'd named her Bella, she said, and she was, of course, precious. The family was so happy to meet the little one. They were all over her before Geraldine could even get her out of the car seat, she was so cute. But the family noticed that Geraldine seemed off. She just didn't seem connected to the baby, like, at all, worried them. What they didn't know, of course, was that Geraldine had never been pregnant at all. Yeah, I know y'all probably already called that, like, 10 minutes ago. There was a pretty much a whole airport runway lined with red flags, and by the way, why is it that people who lie about being pregnant always seem to be having multiples?

Like, I don't know what it is, but, like, nine times out of ten, if you see these people, like, on Dr. Phil or something, they're having twins. Maybe it's because it's more dramatic or maybe to feel, like, extra, extra super special. Who knows? Yeah, that's probably exactly what it is, because, I mean, if there's anything better than being preggers, it's being preggers with twins, right? Might as well go for triplets if you're lying anyway. Come on, just go for the gold band. Go for Octomomom. I mean, whatever.

So, anyway, Geraldine was acting super weird. disconnected from the whole situation. She was just kind of in her own world. Eventually, she announced that she needed a break and asked her dad if he'd watch baby Bella while she went down to Texas to see her mom. I mean, of course he said, sure, look what she'd just been through. He could understand why she needed her mom, and April offered to drive her to the airport. Later, April told a reporter that it was the quietest, awkwardest drive of her life. Geraldine didn't say a word the whole time, just stared out the passenger her window, quiet as a tomb.

Something about Geraldine's demeanor was really bug in April. Even with the enormous guilt and grief she thought her sister must have been feeling, she still felt like something wasn't right. People do react to grief in a lot of different ways, but the people who know us best

can probably tell if it's genuine, right? So, April put on her detective hat and decided to investigate. She grabbed her sister, Tamiko, and baby Bella, and headed over to Geraldine's house. I'm obsessed with these sisters, by the way. Good for them. Absolutely.

When they got inside the house, the smell practically knocked them off their feet. It was the sickly sweet smell of something rotting, mixed with an epic amount of bleach. It was awful, but they kind of rode it off at first. I mean, Geraldine hadn't been home in a few days, and sometimes trash can get that really bad rotting meat smell if you don't take it out. April went from room to room trying to find any clues as to what was going on with Geraldine, while Tomiko stepped outside with the baby. And that's when Detective Sanderson rocked up on the scene, like,

hey, what's the baby's name? When Tamiko told him she had no idea, Sanderson took a second to recover from the shock. Then he said, I think that baby's name is Serenity. Tamiko sighed. Yeah, she said. You're probably right.

Sanderson went into the house and the smell hit him right away. Detectives know that smell. Once you've experienced it, you can't ever mistake it for anything else again. As he searched the place, he noticed cleaning supplies scattered all over the place. Somebody had been frantically trying to clean something up. And then, in one of the rooms, Sanderson caught sight of a big plastic tub, and sticking out of it was a pair of legs, wrapped in plastic and propped up against the wall. It was Samantha Fleming.

a new mom who was just starting to get her life on the rails, and now would never have the chance to see her babies grow up. This house was a crime scene. Now, where the heck was Geraldine Jones? Well, Detective Sanderson had called her the previous evening to leave a message regarding an open case he wanted to discuss with her. And as soon as she heard it, Geraldine told her mom that she was going to take a long nap. Don't wake me up, she said.

And then, in her mom's guest bedroom, she took 144 sleeping pills and lay down. I don't think she expected to get back up again. She knew the game was up. But Geraldine's mom, as moms tend to do, since that something was wrong. She checked on her and immediately called an ambulance. Doctors were able to stabilize Geraldine pretty quickly,

and the Indiana detectives caught the first flight to Texas for an interview at the local jail. Geraldine refused to talk to them. That day, and for the whole rest of the investigation. Apparently, she had nothing she wanted to say, but her silence didn't protect her. She was charged with kidnapping and murder, and pled not guilty. The investigator's theory was that when Randy Garrett tried to end their relationship, Geraldine panicked. She lied to him about being pregnant with his twins to try to hold on to him.

She might have done it impulsively at first, not really thinking ahead. But she kept the lie going, and as time went on, it got more and more elaborate. it. She started wearing false pregnancy bellies and pretending to go to doctor's appointments. Her employer even had records of her leaving for regular appointments all throughout her pregnancy. Her sisters noticed her actually gaining weight in her face and hands and hips and she seemed genuinely excited. Under all that excitement though, Geraldine was in a panic, frantically trawling the internet for pregnant women who'd be delivering around the same time as her fake due date. She needed a mother who was giving birth to a black or mixed-race baby girl, and as the months wore on, she was keeping tabs on a few different women, a few potential targets.

Samantha Fleming was perfect. She posted publicly about how excited she was to be welcoming a baby girl. She gave bump dates and posted ultrasound pictures. She posted about her fight to regain custody of her son. She posted about reconnecting with her oldest daughter and about her new lease on life. Geraldine could see Stephen Fleming's furious posts about raising another man's child, how the little boy wasn't even the same race as him, how he accused Samantha of cheating. She could see where Samantha had moved back to Anderson. When the baby was born, she could see that she was mixed race. And that's when Geraldine decided to make her move.

How cruel is that that for weeks or months, Geraldine was watching, waiting, knowing exactly what she was going to do to this woman who didn't even know she. She existed. Ugh. Gives me the chills. On the day of the murder, Geraldine dressed in a nice suit, grabbed a binder, and drove to Anderson. Remember, she insisted that Samantha bring baby Serenity

along to the fake court date, you know, to show the court how well cared for she was. And as she drove, she told Samantha she was sure the courts were going to see what a good mom she was and that her little boy was going to be so happy to see her. And then, as they got close to Gary, Geraldine asked Samantha if she'd mind making a quick stop. I just have to stop by my house and pick up some paperwork for your case, she said.

Sam, of course, said that was fine, and when they got to the house, Geraldine told her to go ahead and come in with her. It might take a minute to find the papers they needed, and Geraldine wouldn't want her to have to wait in the car. Now, we don't know exactly what happened between the two women inside that house. What we do know is that Samantha Fleming suffered several stab wounds to her back and chest. The prosecution's theory is that Geraldine attacked Sam while her back was turned and that she never saw it coming. And now, with Samantha out of the way, Geraldine had what she wanted. A baby. A chance to be with Randy.

I think she got so caught up in the lie that she completely forgot that Randy wanted a DNA test. Oh, 100%. Either she thought she could lie or fake the results or she thought he'd just be so enamored with the baby that it wouldn't matter. or maybe she'd actually decided that having a baby would be worth it, even if Randy didn't stick around. I don't know, but I do know that people with the kind of tendencies that Geraldine seems to have do tend to have that kind of magical thinking where they just convince themselves that everything's going to be fine and they'll just conveniently forget stuff like that. So that's the trait we seek a lot in cases like this. But yeah, I mean, if she had thought for a second,

he's already said he wants a paternity test. So this wasn't going to work. But it seems clear to me that the reality of the situation caught up with her pretty fast. Right. And scarily, this is a pretty common type of crime. The number one cause of death in pregnant people is homicide. Every time we say that, it turns my stomach. Yeah. Most times the murder is perpetrated by the spouse, but sometimes we get murderers who want the baby.

Ugh, God, it's so creepy. And yeah, it actually happens way more than you would think. In 2016, a woman named Yassinia Selma, shot. and killed Laura Abarka before kidnapping Laura's six-day-old baby. Yeah, Yusenia had told her family that she was pregnant, but she'd actually gone through a miscarriage and hadn't told anybody. Yosenaia knew Laura because they'd worked together a few years before. Actually, months prior, Yosinia tried to kidnap a different woman

and her two kids in a ransom attempt, which is just bonkers. Yosena was sentenced to 55 years in prison. The baby, thank God, wasn't hurt. This next one is really sad. In 2019 in Chicago, 46-year-old Clarissa Figueroa's son died of natural causes, and he was an adult at the time. She became obsessed with raising another son. She told her family she was pregnant for months. Clarissa and her 24-year-old daughter Desiree posted an ad for baby stuff in a Facebook group,

and they got a response from a woman named Marlene Achoa Lopez, who agreed to meet after their house. When she got there, Clarissa and Desiree allegedly strangled her with an electrical cord and tried to cut the baby out of her womb with a butcher knife. God, wow, that's awful. It's horrible. Both Marlon and her son, Yadiel, passed away. That case is still ongoing. In each of these cases, the common denominator is a lie.

A lie that had gotten so big and out of control that the liar decided that somebody else's life was the price of making sure no one found out. that the only thing standing in the way of them in a happy life is the mother protecting their baby. And for someone like Geraldine Jones, it's a price she'd willingly pay. Yeah, I can't imagine keeping up a lie like that for months and months. It's just nuts to me. Can you imagine how miserable you'd be, how on edge you'd be, just all day, every day? Can you imagine how good it would feel to finally come clean and tell the truth? So anyway, back to Geraldine. Yeah, the prosecutors on the case consulted with Samantha's family, and they agreed to offer a plea deal. And with a death penalty on the table, Geraldine accepted.

She pled guilty to volunteer a manslaughter in exchange for a 30-year sentence. She'll be nearly 70 by the time she's out. Geraldine did an interview with The Oxygen Show snapped, where she offers up her side of the story. It's horseshit, obviously, but the interesting thing is, it's very clear from the clip that she's an intelligent, charming person. She told oxygen that Samantha had actually offered to sell her the baby and told her to pretend to be a DCS worker when she came and picked them up so that Sam could lie to her family about losing custody. I mean, come on.

No. When they got to Geraldine's house, though, Samantha told her she changed her mind and they got in a fight and Samantha just kind of died. So sort of kind of heat of passion, sort of kind of self-defense. All nonsense. Yeah. Great story, Geraldine. enjoy prison and shut up forever now.

This case is a perfect example of how lies can have minds of their own, how one person's selfishness and ambition can blow up a freaking five-mile radius and beyond. Geraldine woke up every day for almost a year and prepared to lie to everyone she knew. She fabricated appointments, bought pregnancy bellies, planned parties, let people buy her baby stuff. Meanwhile, she was scouring social media to find a baby she could pass off as her own. We don't know when she decided that murder was the answer to her problems, but we know that she spent a lot of time stalking Samantha Fleming in order to create a plan that would get her what she wanted.

I don't know about you, Campers, but I think I'll go check my privacy settings one more time. Oh, hell yes. Let's all do that. So that was a wild one, right, campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Brittany, Deb, Julie, Angela, Jackie, Elizabeth, and Declan.

Oh, I love that name, Declan. I'm in the UK. I bet he's in the UK. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you are missing out. Patrons of our show get every episode ad-free, at least a day early, sometimes even two, plus an extra episode a month. And once you hit the $5 and up categories, you get even more cool stuff. A free sticker at $5, a rad enamel pin while supplies last at 10, virtual events with Katie and me, and we're always looking for new stuff to do for you. So if you can, come join us at patreon.com slash true crime campfire. And for great TCC merch, visit the true crime campfire store at spreadshirt.com.