True Crime Campfire - Machiavelli in Manolos: Jill and Kent Easter

Episode Date: November 20, 2020

In his seminal work The Prince, philosopher and father of modern political science Nicolo Machiavelli wrote, “In the actions of all men, and especially of princes, where there is no court to appeal to, one looks to the end. So let the prince win and maintain his state: the means will always be judged honorable, and will be praised by everyone.” Many people have taken this to mean that Machiavelli was giving advice—that if you’re pursuing a goal, you should use whatever means necessary to achieve it. But I think if you read that line more closely, what he was really saying was that when a powerful person achieves a desirable end, people tend to decide after the fact that whatever he did to get there was a-okay. Seems more about perception than reality—which is almost scarier, if you think about it. Because whether this is true or not, people in positions of power often seem to think it is. Narcissists are prone to that kind of magical thinking—that whatever they try will turn out great, and everybody will stand up and applaud. For the baddies in today’s story, that didn’t work out so great. Sources:ABC's 20/20LA Times, Framed by Christopher Goffard: https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-framed/#chapter1Dr. Phil episodeFollow 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] 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. In his seminal work, The Prince, philosopher and father of modern political science, Niccolo Machiavelli wrote, in the actions of all men, and especially of princes, where there is no court to appeal to, one looks to the end. So let the prince win and maintain his state. The means will always be judged honorable and will be praised by everyone. Many people have taken this to mean that Machiavelli was giving advice, that if you're pursuing a goal, you should use whatever means necessary to achieve it. But I think if you read that line more closely, what he was really saying was that when a powerful person achieves a desirable end, people tend to decide after the fact

that whatever he did to get there was a-okay. Seems more about perception than reality, which is almost scarier if you think about it. Because whether this is true or not, people in positions of power often seem to think it is. Narcissists are prone to that kind of magical thinking, that whatever they try will turn out great and everybody will stand up and applaud. For the baddies in today's story, that didn't work out so great. This is Machiavelli and Manolo's, the story of Jill Easter. So, campers, we're in the comfortable, well-to-do town of Irvine, California. February 16, 2011.

Kelly Peters, a volunteer director for the after-school programs at Plaza Vista. at elementary school was taking the kids through their karate warm-ups, filling in for the regular instructor when another volunteer came in to tell her she was needed out in the hall. A police officer was looking for her. Kelly's stomach immediately dropped into her shoes as anybody's would, I think. She thought, oh my God, something must have happened to my husband, who was traveling at the time, but it wasn't that. Nobody was dead or in the hospital. Instead, Officer Charles Shaver told her he needed to search her car. Kelly was confused.

Officer Shaver said something about having gotten a call earlier that day about an erratic, possibly intoxicated driver in a PT cruiser, but she hadn't really caught it all. This was all so weird. But she was sure it was some kind of mistake, so she couldn't really think of any reason to say no. She had nothing to hide, so she said, sure, go ahead. Kelly Peters was that type of person, after all, the type to want to help.

She'd been a volunteer at Plaza Vista Elementary for six years. She was always the last person at the after-school program, waiting with the kids until their parents came to pick them up. The school had no shortage of helicopter parents. One wanted the math teacher fired because their little budding Stephen Hawking had gotten a bee. Another one of giant umbrellas installed in the playground, lest their delicate angel experience a touch too much sun. But Kelly loved it there. In her earlier life, she'd been a mortgage loan officer, hard charging, stressed out. But then she and her husband Bill had their little girl Sydney and

Kelly got out. Came a stay-at-home mom. Threw herself into the life of the school. And people loved her there. Teachers, parents, and kids especially. Apparently, she did a mean impression of Applejack from the My Little Pony TV show. Yeah, there's no quicker way to a kid's heart, right? Now she stood puzzled in the Plaza Vista parking lot while Officer Shaver rummaged through her car, a PT cruiser with a license plate frame that said only for the groovy. Uh-oh. Mm-hmm. Groovy?

Yep. That's a red flag. You just know you're going to find some drugs in a car with the word groovy on it somewhere. Oh, definitely. Definitely. Anybody who uses the word groovy is clearly a pot snorter. Mm-hmm. And as a matter of fact, drugs are exactly what they did find.

After a few moments of searching, Officer Shaver pulled. out a baggie full of weed, then a pipe, then two more baggies, each containing a handful of pills. Now, these would eventually turn out to be 11 percocet and 29 Vicodon. The weed baggie turned out to contain 17 grams. Altogether, this was enough for a felony charge. And as the officer laid it all out on the hood of her car, right in front of God and everybody, Kelly watched in total horror and total confusion. And then she fell apart. Just collapsed right there in the parking lot. She was panicky at the thought of her daughter coming out of the school and seeing it. She said, I swear to you, I swear, those aren't mine. No, campers. Obviously, cops hear

this all the time. Almost nobody gets confronted with a big bag of drugs from their glove compartment and says, oh, thanks, man, for finding my crack for me. I've been looking all over for that. People say, that's not mine. Almost every time. Even if it came out of their pocket, people will say, well, you see, officer, those aren't my pants. But Officer Shaver did get the feeling that Kelly was genuinely shocked at what he'd found. So he gave her a field sobriety test. She passed.

And she just kept insisting almost frantically that the drugs weren't hers, that someone must have planted them there. Shaver was really starting to believe her. Her behavior just screamed innocent person to him. He stowed the drugs away and took Kelly inside to question her in a private room. He took a DNA swab from her to check against the baggies from the car. Later, he'd also get some from her daughter, Sidney. This had all begun earlier that day, when the 911 Center had gotten a call from a concerned-sounding man.

He'd said, and this is from a... transcript of the actual 911 call. I was calling because my daughter is a student at Plaza Elementary School, and I'm concerned one of the parent volunteers may be under the influence or using drugs. I was, I just had to go over to the school, and I was, I saw a car driving very erratically. Damn, you think you could say a few more times, bro? Yeah, he said it a lot. He actually sounded really nervous, in my opinion.

Yeah, I think so, too. You can listen to this call online and tell us if you agree. The caller also reported seeing drugs in the PT Cruiser. He actually mentioned Kelly by name as the driver and gave them the license number of the car. He even described her only for the groovy license plate frame. The guy said he'd witnessed the incident at 115. Officer Shaver asked her if she was driving her car in the parking lot at that time, and she insisted she wasn't. She was already parked and inside the school by then.

He would later end up confirming this beyond any doubt after talking to the other people at the school. Shaver asked Kelly if he could search her apartment. This time, she hesitated for a minute. I mean, I don't blame her. Obviously, somebody's out to get her. Who's to say they couldn't have planted something in her house, too? But she ended up allowing it. And after a very thorough search, Shaver found nothing.

So after all that, Officer Shaver finally said, Ms. Peters, can you think of anybody who would want to do this to you? Kelly didn't hesitate. Yes, she said, I have an enemy. Damn, very dramatic. Do you have any enemies, Katie? I don't know if I do or not. I've had a couple in the past, but I think, you know, they've probably moved on by now.

They probably aren't like plotting my demise on a big conspiracy theorist. I all bored in their basement, like right now as we speak? See, I'm generally that person to other people. I hold grudges like it's my job. And I have a few, but one in particular is fresh on my mind. I don't know who she is, aside from the fact that she was a Karen that was mean to my mom. And if I see that Stefford wife looking bitch on the street, she's going to catch these hands. It has been years.

And she has no idea that there's a price on her head. And, ma'am, if you hear this, it's a threat. She knows who she is. Do you even know what she looks like? Or did your mom just tell you this story? I ask my mother for details. Is there a chance that you're just going to cost some completely random person because you've mistaken her for the person that did this?

Knowing the area at which this occurred, yes, that is a very good chance. I look forward to that. I'll post your bail money. Thank you. Kent and Jill Easter were straight out of Sanchez. central casting for the high-powered lawyer category. Jill, very blonde, beautiful in a real housewife sort of way, had been educated at Berkeley Law. Kent, the standard white guy Ken to Jill's Barbie, went to Stanford and to law school at UCLA. They met while they were both working in

corporate and securities law. Kent had a vanity plate on his car that said UCLA J.D.1, which even if he hadn't committed any of the crimes you're about to see him commit, should warrant prison time in my opinion. Just a little bit, at least 60 days in county, you know, just teach them some damn humility. Anywho, just like Kelly, Jill had quit working after she and Kent started having kids. They eventually had three, and now she was a stay-at-home mom. And she and Kent were gunning for Kelly Peters. Why?

Well, as Kelly now explained to Officer Shaver, a year earlier, exactly one year to the day, in fact, the Easter's six-year-old son had been the after-school program's tennis class. Can we just stop for a second, by the way, in Marvel at the pure, uncut, unadulterated, booginess of the story so far? Good God, it could not get any tweer if it made a career out of it. Kelly was volunteering that day, and it was her job to gather all the kids up to be picked up after the tennis class was over. And on this day, the Easter kid was dragging his feet a little and got left outside for five minutes or so. The tennis coach had found him and brought him in to join the others.

So again, we're talking minutes on a bustling elementary school campus in broad daylight in one of the safest cities in America. So it's not like he was dumped in a dark alley and abandoned there. But when Jill Easter arrived and found out her boy had been left unattended, she wigged the feck out. And Kelly felt bad and she apologized to the little boy and gave him a hug and he seemed fine, by the way. To Jill, she said something along the lines of, I'm so sorry, he was just a little bit. little bit slow lining up, and I didn't notice he wasn't there with the others. Jill was apoplectic. She kept obsessing about the fact that the tennis coach had found the boy and brought him to join the other kids, implying there was something weird or inappropriate about that.

Implying, it seemed that the coach had, like, touched her son or something. It was based on nothing. It was bizarre, and Kelly tried to reassure her. Like, no, you know, the coach wasn't doing anything unusual. This happens all the time. All the teachers end up walking kids across campus from time to time. And as Jill and her son walked away, Jill turned around and asked Kelly how she could sleep at night with the way she treated people. Kelly later told 2020, Jill was like, I'm going to get you. Cheezy, crazy lady chill. So obviously, this really upset Kelly as it would anybody. Like she'd gone inside and cried and everything, like I probably would too.

And she was unsettled by the fact that during this whole conversation with Jill, despite how, obviously furious she was, her facial expression hadn't changed. She kept the same creepy smile on her face the whole time. Yeah, that's so weird. Why would you smile? And the next day, Jill Easter had filed a complaint with the school. Somehow, the amount of time the kid had been outside had blossomed a bit, from five minutes to 19. And according to Jill, quote, she told me that she blames my son because he is slow and he often gets left behind because it's hard to wait for him. For the record, my son is very intelligent, mature and athletic and has successfully participated in many ace classes. He is receiving good grades and has earned many awards this year. He is not

mentally or physically slow by any standard. Okay, so apparently when Kelly told her that her son had been a little bit slow to line up, Jill took that to mean your son is mentally slow. which was not at all what Kelly meant or, in fact, what she said. It was ridiculous, but there it was. Jill was obsessed with that word, slow. Mommy's special boy could never have missed the cue. Of course not. Mommy's little hero is the bestest of the best six-year-olds.

Like, chill the fuck out, lady. He's a first grader. They're all basically the same. It's lucky if they can all tie their shoes, okay? He's not Andre fucking Agassi. Anyway, I'm dwelling on the fact that she called a six-year-old athletic. Like, what the fuck are you talking about? But I digress.

The director for the after-school program for the entire district had Kelly's back, though, said, quote, nothing happened. The boy had been left outside for closer to five to eight minutes. Mrs. Easter thought Kelly called her son intellectually slow, not pokey slow. These direct quotes, by the way, are from one of our sources on this case, a terrific multi-part article by Christopher Gofford of the L.A. Times called Framed, and y'all should definitely read it because it's got even more detail than we have time to give you. The really frustrating thing, too, was that Kelly actually thought the Easter's kid was just dynamite. She got along great with him. In fact, according to other teachers at the school, the kid adored Kelly, too. And some people thought that might have been part of why Jill got so bent out of shape about the whole thing.

Oh, interesting. So a little bit of jealousy maybe. Like, how dare my kid like you so much? Yeah, that seems very on brand for Jill. Sure does. And it was on now. I think Jill, in her most privileged fantasies, was expecting immediate results. Send letter, enjoy watching Kelly banished from school, walk away feeling like supermom. Treat self to spa day like you do every other day. And they go to Whole Foods. Oh, God, we hate her so much.

And when that didn't happen, it stuck right in her craw. During a phone call with the school principal, she made sure to mention very pointedly that she and her husband were attorneys. Which is obviously a bad move because as soon as you mention a lawsuit to somebody, they have to stop talking to you. You're not going to get anywhere with that. Just a bit of legal advice from true crime campfire. Jill also tried to rile up the other parents. When the principal reminded her that the school had rules about civility

and warned her about harassing Kelly, Jill said she was going to put a sign on her car detailing the whole story. Ooh, you have a sign. Okay, yeah, Jill, little tip, sugar puff. All a sign is going to do is make you, come off like that shouty guy on the street corner with the sandwich board that says on one side, Elvis is still alive and working as Russian double agent to put psychedelics on our drinking water, and on the other, just chemtrails.

So not wanting to bring trouble to the doorstep of her daughter's school, Kelly, offered to resign. But the principal told her not to. Yeah, I love how the school backed her up. I think, you know, they saw immediately what an entitled Biocch Jill was and how absurd she was being about the whole thing and just said, nope. And I think we need more of that. Because people are always so scared of rich, entitled assholes like this and we need to knock it the fuck off because all we're doing is encouraging him to be dicks. We're just enabling them to be entitled dicks. Absolutely. Jill's next move was to call the cops. But of course, they found that no crime had been committed. So hubby Kent,

a.k.a.a. the dormadiest doormat to ever door, to the rescue. He filed a civil suit. The claim, their sweet baby boy suffered false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Oh, for God's sake. According to the suit, the acts of defendant Peters alleged above were willful, wanton, malicious, and oppressive, and justify the awarding of exemplary and punitive damages. Oh, my God. Have the Easter's met a kid? You take your eye off of them for two seconds, and they fall in the gorilla enclosure, and then the entire country's helicopter parenting you on the internet. Like, chill the fuck out, perhaps.

Your kid isn't that special. Jesus Christ. Call me when he cures cancer. Fall in the gorilla enclosure. It's true, though. RIP Harambe. Oh. I know, campers, you'll be stunned to learn that this lawsuit went nowhere.

The school did change their procedures to require a headcount, and the Easter's got their after-school program money back. Which is totally appropriate. I mean, obviously, you don't want to leave kids standing outside by themselves. That's legit, and they clearly agreed with that and took reasonable action to fix it, which should have been enough. Yeah, that's exactly what you'd expect from a school. Soon after that, Kelly was elected PTA president.

She clearly hadn't fallen out of favor with the school in any way, which meant that the winning power couple had lost. And ooh, Jill don't like losing y'all. Okay, back to the present. It seemed very likely to Officer Shaver that the Easter's may have tried to frame Kelly Peters for possession of controlled substances out of some petty desire. for revenge, enter Detective Mark Andriozzi.

He met with Kelly and he could see right away that she was scared. She told him about Jill hissing, I will get you. Who does that? I will get you outside of like a cartoon movie. Who does that?

And Kelly pointed out that the drugs appeared on the anniversary of their first clash. But the Easters weren't her only suspects. There was also a dad at the school who lived across the who was well known to the cops. He was, let's call it, erratic. He was known to trapes around the school campus without checking in. He liked taking videos of kids in the crosswalk, weird. One time, not on Halloween, he picked up his son in a full Batman get up. Okay, that part's awesome,

we'll grant you, but he yelled at the staff, he harassed the crossing guards. The cops had been called multiple times on this guy, but, you know, they didn't have anything to arrest him for. So the investigators felt like this guy was actually a pretty good suspect, and he'd gone up against Kelly for the PTA presidency too. So maybe he figured getting caught with drugs would knock her out of the running and grease the wheels for, you know, President Batman. And of course, Detective Andriosi knew he couldn't totally rule out the possibility that the drugs really did belong to Kelly. But he didn't think so. The whole thing stunk to high heaven with the stinky whiff of a frame-up. For one thing, the caller who had told the

dispatcher, his name was V.J. Chandrishakar, started the call with an American accent, but then randomly sank into an Indian accent, off and on, throughout the rest of the call. And that wasn't the only weird thing. He also gave way too much information, like more than the dispatcher was asking for, which is always a bit of a red flag in a 911 call, as you crime obsessives probably already know. And the whole call sounded kind of rehearsed and scripted. So they traced the call to the business center at the Island Hotel, and Detective Andriosi pulled the hotel's surveillance footage from the time the call was made. He was kind of expecting to see Daddy Batman. But no, it wasn't the Caped Crusader after all. And it also wasn't an Indian guy. It was a tall, well-dressed white

man. When the detective showed the footage to the school principal, she identified him right away as Kent Easter, Jill Easter's husband. So the investigators put a tail on both of the Easter's, and quickly learned that Kent's office was right next door to the hotel. Fucking dumbass. Yeah, a little bit. They also noted that the Easter's house was just a mile from the Peter's apartment. They pulled the dynamic duo's phone records and found that on the night before the drugs were found, Jill's iPhone was pinging off a tower near their home, while Kent's Blackberry was

pinging off the one near the apartment complex where Kelly Peters and her husband lived. Well, well, well. Hello there, Kent. You twat. So on March 4th, 2011, the cops executed a simultaneous warrant on Kent's law office and the Easter home. They wanted to talk to Kent without letting him know what they'd already uncovered, and Kent was surprisingly willing to talk. Surprising because Kent is, if you recall, a lawyer. Bless his heart. Maybe not a very good one. So Kent's story was that a school volunteer had abandoned. his son and, quote, berated him for being slow. Now, he didn't mention Kelly by name and, in fact, pretended not to know who she was, which is hilarious given that he filed a lawsuit with her flipping name on it earlier in the year. Jesus, Murphy, Kent, do better, man. Jill doesn't need a ride or die if they're ride or die in question when the chips are down, just goes directly and enthusiastically to die.

Do better, man. As the conversation went on and they filled him in on the surveillance they'd been conducting on him for the past few days, Kent's body language took a sharp turn. He crossed his arms, started acting withdrawn, asked the detective if he was being recorded. The answer was yes. One of the detectives tried to convince Kent that his play dumb strategy probably wasn't the best idea. He was basically like, dude, why do you think we've been following? calling you around for the past few days. Not for nothing. They asked him about the morning of February 11th between 2 and 3 a.m. and he was vague. He said, oh, I'm usually at home. Sometimes I have to run and

get diapers, but I was probably at home. He seemed nervous now, and the detective laid it on thick. He said, I love this. I want you to use that big brain of yours. Mouth closed. Listen. At some point during this conversation, you're going to have to make a big boy decision. And that's going to be on you. In the age of computers and technology and cell phones, big brothers always watching. We're absolutely not the smartest guys in the shed, okay? But we can follow the dots from one to the next to the next. They told Kent about the records and how they were taking DNA.

At that, Kent finally, Finally, lawyered up. Better late than never, bud, I guess. In Kent's desk, at the law office, they found diet pills in an easy-dose baggie. The same kind of baggie they'd found full of weed and pills in Kelly Peters's car.

Huh. So they took those, obviously. They also took the Easter's phones, which I'm sure they figured out would be a treasure trove of incriminating dirt. In campers, at the Easter's house, they found the greatest part of this story.

Namely, Jill's self-published book called Holding House, written under her pen name, Ava Bjork. This masterpiece has a two-star rating on Amazon, y'all. I think that's probably generous, but yeah, it does. Take a moment to bask in the joy, dear listeners. We're right there with you. The synopsis on Amazon is a treat. Whitney, would you please? Oh, try and stop me. Ever dream about the perfect crime?

Sean Hauser and his friends have discovered it. Sean is a rising, mixed martial arts star with a troubled past and a major gambling problem. When his debts and his life spin out of control, two of his college friends offer him a solution. Act as the muscle in a foolproof international kidnapping. The crime is shockingly simple and 100% possible, no one will get hurt, and there's no way they can get caught. Sean and his friends can't wait to start living the good life. But when unforeseen events cause their dream crime to unravel into a nightmare,

the friends soon become the subjects of an international manhunt. Worse, Sean finds himself falling for their beautiful hostage. Can Sean redeem himself, even if it means risking his friendships, his freedom, and possibly his life? Oh, God, almighty. Jill's main character is a patient woman with a formidable intelligence.

That's a quote. A femme fatal. She drinks wine and takes Xanax. When someone crosses her, she takes revenge using her big brain. Hmm, autobiographical, perhaps? Who can say? This brilliant beauty is trying to pull off

the perfect crime with her partner slash lover Joe. But Joe, curses damn hide, betrays her. So she goes nuclear. She steals his money, makes a fake call to the cops, and frames him for a visa violation. Beliegered by her Machiavellian machinations, poor Joe ends up taking his own life. And that is what happens when you mess with... Well, we don't know what the main character's name is,

because for some weird-ass reason, the synopsis doesn't mention it, or in fact, her. As you probably notice, but whatever. I'm actually wondering if the book we found on Amazon might be like a... different one than the one in the article that we read because we got those two descriptions from two different sources. So I'm thinking maybe she wrote two of these turkeys, which is really quite astonishing. I like to think that maybe she got so much heat for the first one that she just changed the plot. And use the same title? Yeah. Very possibly. The treatment for the book says, ever dream about the perfect crime? It's in this book. As you read, you'll be wondering why no one

has thought of it before. It's shockingly simple, twisted, and 100% possible. Once you read about it, you'll be tempted to pull it off. Hmm, a hundred percent possible. Well, you know, you could say that about a lot of things, but I'm not sure that's the best litmus test for whether something's a good idea or not. God, I, like speaking of things that are possible, I would love to read this book if I did not have to pay for it. Yeah, same. Maybe somebody's got a boo like copy we could read. Just kidding. Just kidding FBI or whatever agency deals with the pirating of self-published thriller slash romance novels on Amazon. And this shit gets better if you can believe it. On the morning that the cops were getting ready to serve the warrants, two of the undercover officers had seen a

handsome man approaching the Easter's house. He noticed the police right away, of course, and immediately scurried off, looking nervous and making a phone call on his cell. And shortly after, Jill came outside on the front stoop. She was wearing a little slinky negligee in holding her phone, and when she saw the cops, she scurried back on inside. So, huh, what could be going on here? So obviously this was too suspicious to let slide, and an investigator hustled after the guy and stopped him, you know, to ask, what you doing? So the man identified himself as Glenn Gomez, an off-duty firefighter married with kids from L.A. He'd been seeing Jill for two and a half years. And And as they would soon discover while perusing Jill's phone records.

I'm sorry, y'all. I'm just so happy right now. I'm just so happy to share this with you. As they would soon discover while perusing her phone records, she called him Mr. Delicious, Poppy, and Sex Ninja. Take a moment. I know. It's like Christmas.

For his part, Glenn called her sex goddess, baby girl, and Mrs. Delicious. Which, I mean, you know, I guess Mr. and Mrs. Delicious is cute. But the rest of those, okay, Glenn, my dude, she comes up with sex ninja for you and the best you can do is baby girl. Come on, man. Quit phoning it in. Jill deserves better. Okay, I do take umbrage with calling Mr. and Mrs. Delicious cute. It is an abomination, Whitney, and I'm sick of pretending otherwise.

Well, it rhymes. Mrs. Delicious. All right, you better watch your ass or your new nickname's going to be Ms. Delicious. I will block you on every platform. Speaking of phoning it in, by the way, the investigators thought that if anybody could get the truth out of Jill, it might just be lover boy Glenn. So they convinced him to wear a wire and talk to her about the case.

Yeah, it seems like he mostly just agreed to this because he had no idea what the hell was going on. Yeah, I make a lot of my decisions because I don't know what the hell is going on, so I can relate, Glenn. Yeah, they didn't tell him a time. ton about why they were investigating Jill. They just kind of ominously said she's going to ruin you. And I guess it was effective because he met up with Jill in a park. And she, this is super classy, brought two of her kids to this meeting and told them Glenn was the park ranger. Wow.

Wow. Holy shit woman. And he did the typical wire wearer routine, which is basically to tell her that the cops had come to talk to him about the case and he was freaked out and what should he say and blah, blah, blah. Unfortunately, though, Jill didn't really tell him anything. She tried pulling away, and he said, I just hope you are who I think you are. And dad did not go down well. She got all pissed off and indignant, and she said, I thought that if I ever had some trouble in my life or sadness, that I would have someone to stand beside me, and I don't. It's a hard lesson to learn. Aw, poor Jill. Let's all go get the microscopic violin, shall we? But that was fun for Kent to listen to later, by the way, right?

This poor bastard's making fake 911 calls for and skulking around in the dead of night, apparently all for nothing. Glenn kept asking her what the hell was going on and reassuring her that if she didn't do anything wrong, she was going to be fine. Jill said, I'm not going to be fine. Do you understand me? Don't just put your head in the sand. This is the moment. This is when I needed someone and you turned your back on me. And I will not survive this. What exactly did she want him to do here? Suit up and ride into the police station on his white horse to put a lance through all the detectives on the case. Yes, exactly. Mount a Mission Impossible style heist to break into the evidence room and steal back the baggies.

It's what Sean Hauser would do. Perhaps invent time travel, go back and stop her son from being left outside the school for hours. No, it was five minutes. It was just five to eight minutes. Remember. Did she want him to stop that poor kid from being left unattended for days for an entire lunar year? Is that what she wanted Glenn to do? Invent time travel? Come on, Jill. Acknowledge the man's limitations. He's not capable of bending physics. So after this wired and weird conversation, Mr. Delicious Sex Ninja saw the writing on the wall and dumped her. Jill's mature, measured response was to tell his wife about their affair, and she did it in typical Jill fashion. First, she showed up at Glenn's house with a stack of compromising pictures and receipts.

Then she mailed a letter to this poor woman's job purportedly written by someone else, but actually written by Jill. Good God, woman. Meanwhile, the fine folks in the forensics department discovered that the Vicodin and the pipe had Jill's DNA all over him. Kent's DNA was on everything. Oh, man. Y'all. Y'all, I cannot deal with this. They're lawyers.

What absolute Bush League bullshit. What about the perfect crime, Jill? Where is it? What was it a patient woman with a formidable intellect? Christ. Like, I'm not saying that we would ever do this because it was reprehensible, but I do think we would get away with it if we did. I didn't think. I think I could manage that. Yes. Both Jill and Kent

lawyered up separately. The cops didn't have much to arrest them on at first. When they finally got permission to get into their phones, it took a while to iron out because of spousal privilege. For example, they found that the texts from the night the drugs were planted had all been deleted. Suspicious in and of itself, but not really evidence per se. Well, shit. Meanwhile, Kent was promoted to partner. And while the investigation carried on, poor Kelly was terrified and paranoid. She searched her car every day. She had the support of the school, but that was a cold comfort.

Her daughter was terrified. She kept sneaking into her mom's bed at night. Aw. Their pretty town wasn't as safe as they thought. Oh, poor kid. So when the file for this case landed on prosecutor Christopher Duff's desk, he was shocked at the amount of time and effort the investigators had put into it, despite no one having been done any physical harm. In fact, he credits officer

Shaver, the original responding officer who found the baggies in Kelly's car with taking the case so seriously. If anybody else had responded to that 911 call, things might have gone really differently. But Shaver used his head, and the result was a 20 detective investigation spanning a full year. And the prosecutor was pretty impressed with the job they'd done. Initially, the prosecutor's office had been reluctant to take on the case, but one stuff saw the file, he was like, hey, look, we got DNA, we got the cell phone pings. I put people away on less. Let's go for it. So giddy up. It was habeas gravis time.

And I love this, y'all. The Easter's lawyer had been assuring them that they wouldn't be hit with a surprise arrest. The charges would be filed. They'd be given bail and time to remand themselves. And they wouldn't get perp walked in handcuffs in front of God and everybody. Well, the thing about that was, though, the investigators, they didn't like that plan. so instead a squad car pulled Kent over while he was on his way to work and he got arrested right there in the middle of the morning rush with all the commuters zipping by and his car got towed they grab us Jill at home which is less fun but still pretty satisfying the power couple were charged with conspiring to plant drugs a felony they posted bail fairly quickly but it was still a bad bad day for Kent and Jill especially once the internet got hold of the story as I'm sure you can imagine

people understandably hated these two like poison and wasted no time shitting all over felon Barbie and her loyal Ken and Kent got fired from the law firm so made partner and fuffa fired prosecutor duff didn't have any interest in letting him or jill plead the charge down and a felony charge meant that kent would lose his law license in what at first glance looked like a surprising display of wifely loyalty jill tried to protect kent's license by saying she was the one who planted the drugs. Now, I say this was a display of loyalty. In reality, it was really part of a clever little plan. See, this wasn't a confession. It was just filed with the court. So basically, this was an effort to get the judge to try her and Kent separately. Then,

once she was tried and the evidence of Kent doing all the hard work got her acquitted, Jill could take the stand and admit to doing everything and be protected by double jeopardy. So this was, of course, a plot worthy of whatever her name is, the Xanax-popping perfect crime mastermining heroine of Jill's book. But fortunately, this was not the judge's first rodeo, and he decided Jill's claim wasn't credible, and it was really obvious what she was trying to pull. So she and the hubs would be tried together. Eventually, Jill pled guilty to a felony count of false imprisonment by fraud or deceit. She was sentenced to 120 days in jail and 100 hours. hours of community service. And under this plea, she'd be allowed to testify on behalf of her

husband. In November of 2013, almost three years after that fateful morning in February, Kent's trial began. His team's strategy was more or less to paint him as a doormat and a cuckold. His lawyer said, while Kent is a very good human being, he didn't have a backbone when it came to his wife. She were the pants in the family. She pushed him around. All right. When did wearing pants become synonymous with authority? Have you ever tried getting through a day in a pencil skirt? That shit takes skill, endurance, and an ass that won't quit. So don't talk to me about who wears a damn pants. And by the way, guess what? Women wear pants. We've worn them for like years now. Pete's sakes. Stupid sex is crap. It's so stupid. Kent took the stand.

in his own defense. He said his wife had been a single-minded force for revenge against Kelly Peters. The whole thing was her fault. Kent worked hard to pay the bills that Jill racked up. She was playing around with her boy toy while he was the sucker, working 200 billable hours every month. He'd stuck around because he was desperate to make his marriage work. Nobody in his family had ever gotten divorced, and he just couldn't face the failure. The shame. Well, Bless his heart. We should just let him go home, huh? Yeah. Well, unfortunately for Kent, this tragic tale was contradicted by his tone. He came across as an arrogant, unlikable, unrelatable, twat.

The defense did have plenty of evidence of Jill's instability. For example, they submitted an email from March of 2010 with the subject line, Need to Get Serious. And this thing read like a honey-do list for one of those reputation management teams celebrities use whenever they get caught like bone in a gerbil while shouting racial slurs or whatever it is celebrities like to do. Jill wanted a background checked on Kelly, a restraining order, and a lawsuit against Kelly, the school, the district, the board, and the foundation that funded the school.

Her deadline for all this? Tomorrow. No big deal, right? Oh, sure. She signed off in all caps with 68 exclamation. points. Oh, okay. Why are we letting this no-one abuse our son and then trash our family? Why? Despite this, Kent insisted that he had no idea about the scheme. In fact, he claimed he and Jill had switched phones the night of the crime. Then Jill called and told him about Kelly's erratic

driving and said he should call the cops for her. So he put on a voice and used the name of his neighbor and called the cops. On cross, Duff asked Kent, you know, why the hell he stayed with this hose beast of a wife of his if she was so bad, and Kent said a bit priscilla, I thought, this is the mother of my three children

and my wife. Ugh. Okay, good answer. I guess. Then Duff switched gears. Why would Jill leave her iPhone home? She was carrying on an affair and Kent knew her password. Wouldn't she worry that he might wake up and go through her phone? Find all those spicy little

text with the sex ninja. Meanwhile, he is a lawyer using his phone for work calls at all hours, and he's just going to let her take it? When a client could call anytime? Seemed unlikely, but that was Kent's story, and he was sticking to it. The prosecution had prepared to deconstruct Jill's testimony on the stand, but instead the defense rested. Were they being overconfident? Did they think they didn't need her? In the closing arguments, the defense kept at the story of Kent's allegedly waning masculinity. They said Jill considered him to be expendable, which I actually believe is probably true, but it doesn't absolve him.

You see, this was actually a double-frame job, not just Kelly, but Kent. According to Kent, anyway. In Campers, the jury hung. 11 to 1. The holdout? A woman feeling sorry for Kent. Good gravy. So here they went again with trial number two.

Now, Jill did take the stand this time. Maybe the defense figured that what they really needed, to take Kent across the finish line to victory was for the jury to get a good hard gander at the real world screaming blonde woman from the smug cat meme in action. Never one to go with the flow and let things run smoothly,

Jill threw a wrench into the proceedings by claiming she was suffering from hearing loss. She turned down a sign language interpreter, instead demanding a teleprompter to show her the questions. The judge, who was highly suspicious of this whole move, rightly so in my opinion, I think it was a strategy to slow down the momentum some of the prosecutor's questions.

He was like, take the sign language interpreter or leave it. I do enjoy the fact that she showed no signs of hearing loss before or after this. Yeah. Just great, Jill. You crazy Xanax-infused slime ball. Xanax infused. At this point, the defense must have realized that if they brought Jill into this mess, she was just going to spew drama all over it, so they decided to send her home again.

Wise choice. The biggest obstacle for the prosecution was probably motive. Kelly Peters may have accidentally hurt the Easter boy's feelings or pissed off his mom, but was that really enough to launch an entire ridiculous soap opera plot of a crime? Well, yeah, according to Prosecutor Duff. In his closing, he said, There's a whole show, Orange County Housewives, where all the Housewives are crazy. This is the 21st century, where everyone thinks their son should be the star quarterback,

star shortstop, batting first, whatever it is. whatever happened, whatever their son said, got these two very upset and it escalated. And if I may add, I used to teach elementary school and then high school for a while before I started teaching at college level, and anybody who's ever been to a sports event at an elementary or high school knows this shit is true. Parents can act like absolute lunatics when it comes to their kids. And no offense to any parents listening, I'm sure you'd never do this, but sometimes just go on YouTube and search for parents' fight at Little League. game and you will see what I'm talking about. It is fucked how people act.

Duff's coup de grace was back in the phone data. Cell phone locations are identified by using nearby towers, data and text messages, and the data checks that the phone does every so often to check the battery, data, connectivity, etc. Duff saved this evidence for his closing argument, and it quickly became clear that it was hot stuff, and that it pointed to both Kent and Jill being culpable in the crime. Between the hours of 12 a.m. to 8 a.m., Jill's phone was bouncing off the tower near Kelly's apartment. That night, the Easter's children were being watched by a babysitter while the Easter's allegedly went out on a date. Their date-night activity, one of them planted the drugs while the other played lookout.

How romantic. It is, isn't it? The couple couldn't have swapped phones, as Kent claimed, because both phones were showing a location near the Peters' home. The defense felt blindsided by this dynamite information, and they were furious. They tried to protest the closing argument, but, hey, they'd had the same records that the prosecution did for years.

Nobody tried to hide it from them. They just didn't understand how important it was. So the judge was like, you're bad. Sorry, bros. Yeah. Two hours later, the jury came back with a guilty verdict. Because privilege and entitlement just ooze out of Kent's pores, he hadn't considered that he'd be taken into custody immediately. So he hadn't made any arrangements for his family.

So the judge, who I can only assume was rolling his eyes, gave him a day to get his shit together solely because, of his children. Jill's response, you should kill yourself so I can collect on your life insurance policy. Or hey, we'll go to Belize. Or hey, maybe I'll kill myself. Oh, my God. The next day, Kent saw that Jill had searched how to kill myself on Google. Girl, for God's sake, get some help already. Clearly you could use it, and I mean that in all sincerity. Like, no joke. Like, you need to get some help. That is not a measured response. It's a situation.

Back in court at the sentencing, the judge told Kent that he'd throw the book at him if he could, but the prisons were full. So Kent was sentenced to 180 days in the county jail, 100 hours of community service, and three years of probation. Yeah, the prisons are full. Why don't we swap old Kent for some 18-year-old kids serving some ridiculous sentence for weed possession? How about that? 180 days seems pretty piddly for the hell he helped put Kelly Peters and her family through,

though he also got his law license suspended, of course, and now he had a felony conviction on his record. And apparently, Kent had a bad time in jail. I know we're all shocked to hear that, right? At one point, two inmates who'd seen him on TV gave him a bloody nose. But he also made himself useful behind bars giving legal advice to other inmates.

Good for him. And prison altered his perspective, too. He'd always been a law and order kind of guy, he said, but now he realized the system was pretty broken, which might be one of the only things in the world that Kent and I agree on, because, you know, yeah, it really kind of is. By now, Kent and Jill's divorce, begun between Kent's first and second trials, had finalized, and Jill filed for custody of the kids. In the court paperwork, she said Kent was an angry, unstable alcoholic and a manipulator who threatened to take the kids if she didn't plead guilty. Guess the bloom is off the rose in that relationship, and I was really rooting for him. So sad.

After Kent got out of prison in the winter of 2014, he filed a motion accusing Jill of parental alienation. He also alleged that she wouldn't fork over his sleep apnea machine, rude, and refused to give him updates about their cat. Now that one would piss me off too. We got to keep tabs on our kitties, Jill, you flippin' monster. Tell him about his cat. He wants to know what Mr. Whiskers has been up to. Kent also said that Jill once pepper sprayed him and that she cheated on him so much during their marriage that he'd felt the need to get a DNA test to make sure he was really the bio-dad of one of their kids. Yikes. So, how did this Clash of the Titans end? Well, not so much with a bang, but a whimper. They ended up splitting custody, and Kent withdrew his accusations of abuse. In fact, he said,

and I quote, Jill Easter has never been violent towards me or physically harmed me in any way. She was only ever loving and caring. Interesting. Kelly Peters brought a civil suit against the Easter's, and Kent, who was defending himself because of flipping course he was, has still not admitted to any wrongdoing. In a deposition, he had the all-fired, goddamn nerve to say he believed what he had gone through was much worse than what Kelly and her family ever did. She was just exaggerating how bad it was for her. He was the one who spent time in prison and was now facing disbarment. Holy shit. Right?

well good to know you learned and grew there kent and at one point he called his own ex-wife who was now going by the name jill everhart to the stand and they had this memorable exchange so i'll be kent okay and katie you be jill okay i probably could have treated you a little better couldn't i have yes despite all of that you've still been kind to me and haven't sought revenge right no oh and not to be outdone by her husband's painfully toned comments about Kelly during his deposition, Jill took a moment to make sure everybody knew she was the real victim in all of this. She said, I think I am the person that went to the best law school in this room. To be honest with you, and I'm proud of that. Doesn't mean I'm spoiled or a bad person. I lost everything. I mean everything. I'm not a school terrorizer, as I have read about myself. Jill also denied planting the drugs in Kelly's car despite her guilty plea. For his part, Kent claimed that he had no money to give Kelly and her family, but there are good reasons not to buy that, primarily because there

was some evidence of shifting funds. More specifically, the fact that Kent transferred ownership of the family home to his father before the trial. Hmm, I wonder why he'd do that. The jury's response to all this was to award Kelly Peters $5.7 million. And of course, Kent appealed the decision, but the judge declined to re-evaluate the damages. He pointed out that Kent's disbarment wasn't permanent. He could reapply in five years. So he deserved to get hit in the solar plexus with whatever the state and Kelly Peters could throw at him. Yeah, I mean, these people were top of their classes.

Yep. They were fantastic, up-and-coming lawyers. They had the world at their feet. And instead of being grateful for all that and using their gifts, and privilege to give something back to the world, they used them to frame a school volunteer for the world's softest, slight. Yeah.

They nearly ruined a woman's life. Unfortunately for Kelly, they were bad at it. So bad that it apparently didn't occur to them to wear gloves so they didn't smear their DNA all over the evidence. So bad at it that they didn't apparently think to use burner phones for any of this stuff. Just, you know, y'all are lawyers. It was a pathetic display.

The judge in the lawsuit seemed to agree. He couldn't resist getting a little dig-in as he upheld the jury's judgment, said, it's just nuts. They're not exactly master criminals out of Bolt Hall at Berkeley and UCLA. Just another reminder campers that an Ivy League education

is only as good as the person getting it. So a fun little post script to this story, Kelly wrote a book and went on Dr. Phil to promote it and talk about, you know, the hell she went through, and for some reason that I cannot fathes other than pure narcissism and false optimism, Jill agreed to go on too.

In all her designer dress, Real Housewives of Irvine Glory, and Camper's, I'm telling you, her performance was a treat. And I highly encourage you to look it up on YouTube. There are clips, if not the full episode, because it will give you a larf. So that was a wild one, right, Campers?

You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your door. light your lights and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire and we want to send a shout out to a few of our newest patrons thank you so much to amelia ashley claire and james we appreciate you to the moon and back and if you're not yet a patron you're missing out patrons of our show get every episode ad free at least a day early sometimes more plus an extra episode a month and once you hit the five dollar and up categories you get even more cool stuff, like a free sticker, a rad enamel pin, virtual events with Katie and Whitney, and

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