Holdout Juror Revelations, Siders Family Web of Abuse, and Clancy Copycat Case, with Chris Stewart

and in another lifetime I was a police officer. I am very pleased to be joined today

“by my co-hosted my friend Ashley Merchant. She's a criminal lawyer from Atlanta, Georgia.”

Ashley, good day to you, my friend. Good to see you, Phil. Let's go over what we've got on the

docket today. First up, we're going to have new statements from the Lindsey Clancy

jurors. What we've learned about that one lone holdout juror, and we're going to answer some of the outstanding questions about the case. That's right. We also have a major ruling now in the Citer's family. This is what we're calling the Ohio House of Horrors Case. We'll get into Gary Seniors' competency evaluation and the disturbing web of charges, including some new ones that the family now faces. Catechphillic were really missing stuff in that

case. But later on, we've got Chris Stewart, who is the host of On the Case on the Law and Crime Network. He's going to join us to discuss developing Corey Walsh case and also the tragic story of a Virginia five year old sailor Hayes and why her parents are now facing charges related to

her death. But first up, Phil, let's get started with all of this new information about this

holdout juror in the Lindsey Clancy case. All right. There's a lot too to get into there. I barely know where to start, actually. But I guess I'll start with NBC Boston 10, who is doing a deep dive into the holdout juror. They say their investigators are uncovering new details about the lone holdout juror. They are saying that they have repeatedly tried to contact him at his home where his landlord is currently trying to evict him, parenthetically, I should say. They also

report that back in September of 2021, this holdout juror in the Lindsey Clancy case faced a criminal charge for domestic violence for allegedly assaulting his wife. And this was in the

Brockton district court. They're basically saying that the jurors 13 year old nephew called 911

after he said his uncle grabs his wife by the throat, allegedly threw her into a dresser. The report says the juror's mom repeatedly screamed, quote, "your evil as police arrested him." There was apparently a domestic violence restraining order and that was still in place, actually, at the time the jury was deliberating in the Clancy case. And so one of the questions I want to get to, we'll put a pin in this and come back to it. But our producer in a

Tosh is asking, "Can you have this kind of criminal record and still be a juror in a case?" I want to get to that. But also, actually, we've got one of the jurors is making a media tour. We have juror Paula Devlin. She's appeared on CBS a number of times. In fact, that's where I want to start with our videos for today. She was on CBS and she told Gayle King that the jury, including, I guess, her struggled with some of the evidence in the case that Lensy Clancy exhibited

“ordered versus disordered thinking. Let's start with Sott too. Did the jury struggle with that?”

That how she was able to seemingly be so coherent, but at the same time, be having a psychotic breakdown? Yes, you all discussed that. Yes, yes. And I think that was one of the things that the whole doubt juror really, that was one of his main points. Was what? He couldn't wrap his head around. Yeah, that she could do this one at a time and then do all the steps that she did to go commit suicide. Yeah, Phil, I think a lot of people have had a problem with that. I mean, that is the biggest problem

for the defense's case is that Lensy Clancy did have ordered thinking and how she could actually carry out those steps in this awful crime. I think a lot of people are also asking, how did this happen with the jury selection? How did this juror did on the holdout juror, for example, and how did maybe some of the other jurors get on if they had some criminal histories?

“I think a lot of folks don't really understand jury selection because it's not the most exciting”

aspects of the case. And so typically, if they do broadcast jury selection, it's not really watched, very often, and a lot of times it's not broadcast. So I won't go over just really how that happens, and it's really a process of deselection. It's not a process of selection. So, you know, it's a misnomer when we say jury selection. It's deselection. You're not handpicking the perfect juror. If you love a juror, they're going to get cut by the other side. That's going to

happen every single time. What you're really doing is you're trying to knock out the worst ones, and you only have a certain amount of strikes and a certain amount of time. So I think that's really important for people to understand. And also, you know, there's a lot of questions about how did this one juror? This whole doubt juror, how did he get on? When he's got a pending,

him. So I want to talk about jury-actual questionnaires. What we do know in this case is there was a jury questionnaire. And if he had answered those questions fully, those things would have come

to light. The problem is, a lot of times jurors don't really understand what they're being asked,

and often jurors don't even fill out those questions. I know. Let me, let me just chime in real quick for a second. It doesn't that then, if the juror, because the standard juror question there, you know, asked specifically if they've been arrested charged with a crime or served with a court order. If the person leaves it blank, first off, isn't that the crime isn't a contemptuous of court, and also wouldn't it be incumbent upon the lawyers to follow up? Okay, so you look,

just want to make sure, you know, you guys answered this questionnaire this way. Is there anything about the questionnaire that you didn't understand? Is there anything about it that maybe needs to be corrected? I feel like if a juror gets onto a jury after having misled either by an affirmative

“lie or an omission. If they misled the parties and the court, I think that's something that the”

court definitely has some interest in exploring further. But that ultimately, in my view,

is a failure of the lawyers in addition, if that's a juror who should never have made it on that

jury. You know, I think a lot of people think it's a failure of the lawyers, and it is ultimately, because they're the ones asking the question. The problem is people really assume that we have unlimited amounts of questions, and we just don't, you know, judges have really been clamping down on how much we're able to get into what year, how long it takes, and what topics were even allowed to ask. I know judges have been limiting us substantially saying you only have so much time,

you can only ask these pre-approved questions, and you've got to understand, you know, you've got a limited amount of time, and you've got a pool of strangers, and a judge cutting you off and telling you to hurry up, and a lot of times it's these follow-up questions that don't really get asked.

“But one point that you made about a juror who doesn't actually answer the question,”

that's always a red flag to me. If you are not answering a questionnaire, that's the first thing

that the court has actually asked you to do, and if you can't even be bothered to fill out that questionnaire, that immediately is a problem to me, and I always make it a point of asking those jurors extra questions, because first of all, it's not on their questionnaire, but second of all, they're probably not taking the process extremely seriously, and that always very much worries me about jurors. And that's one of the issues in this case was, you know, where the jurors actually

following the judge's instructions, or where they disregarding the judge's instructions, and I'm talking about jurors who voted to a quit, as well as the holdout juror. This has been an ongoing question, like, were they, what were they actually voting on, were they following the judge's instructions, or were they basing it on something else? For example, this same juror, Paula Devlin, she goes on CBS mornings on Saturday, actually, and she said that basically the 11 jurors who

voted to a quit Lindsey Clancy said that they were doing it to make it maybe better for other women. Let's go ahead and run sought free. We knew that this was a turning point, and this would be something that could change something, to make it better for other women in the future, for other families. You know, justice for those children is this never happening again. The only part of that that I agree with is justice is this never happening again, but beyond that that is terrifying,

because you're always worried, and usually you're worried about jurors finding guilt because they want to make a statement about maybe violence or crime in the community. But this is the opposite wanting to make a statement perhaps about the health care system. I don't know or how women are

“treated. I mean, that's just that is a scary thought that that's what jurors were actually thinking”

when they were trying to determine whether or not to vote guilty or not guilty in this case. I've talked to him with program and other programs for that matter about the stealth juror, right? These are people who get on to a jury. Maybe they lie, maybe they mislead, maybe they aren't truthful in the way that they answer questions or questionnaires because they want to get on the jury for some specific purpose or to further some agenda. But like you mentioned, you really think of

that as being like maybe one or two here or there, which could maybe lead to a hung jury, but you don't really think about 11 or so possibly trying to have an agenda. And to be fair, I don't know that Paula Devlin speaks for all the other 11. But what I will say is that I said this on X earlier today, juries are supposed to render a verdict not to affect some kind of social change, but to speak to the truth, the legal truth of a case, whether it be the law or the facts of a case,

okay? They're supposed to decide it on that basis not to affect some kind of change. But we were wondering

on CBS where you know, remember the issue was was this really a suicide attempt was it legit

or was she maybe play acting? And so despite voting to a quit, Lindsay Clancy, the jury apparently actually believed that the knife was not really sharp, sought for her. They also asked to see the knife, Clancy allegedly used to harm herself. One of the witnesses said that she hesitated in the prosecution was trying to say that she really didn't try to commit suicide, that her wounds weren't deep enough. So what did the knife tell you by looking more closely on it? There was dull.

That is terrifying. The fact that they were talking about this and they know that the knife was dull and that that didn't necessarily weigh into their deliberations, especially with that other statement that we were talking about where they said we wanted things to be better for women. So perhaps they

“didn't think this was a serious suicide attempt. You know, I think a lot of folks are asking what”

happens next really. And there's something called a rule 25 motion. And essentially what that is,

is it's a motion where the judge can actually outright acquitt Lindsay Clancy. And I think that's what we're going to see next. I think Kevin Rettington is going to be arguing for that. He's already filed it. They've already got it scheduled. But that is the next really major event that we're going to see. And what that motion really is, I've talked about on this show before how a judge can serve as what we call the 13th juror. That's really what this is. It's a 13th juror type motion. Some states

called a motion for a directed verdict. Massachusetts used to call it a motion for a directed verdict. Now it's called a rule 25 motion. But what it is is where the defense essentially asked the judge's rule outright that the prosecution didn't prove their case or meet their burden of proof.

So it's the asking the judge to direct a verdict or rendering a verdict of knock guilty.

The judge could also be asked to render a verdict finding that she was not criminally responsible.

“And that's what Kevin Rettington is asking. The thing that's really important I think about”

with these motions, though, is that the judge has to look at the evidence in what we call the light most favorable to the prosecution. And what does that mean? That means they've got to really give it the best go on the prosecution side. But here's the big thing. If the judge decides to direct a verdict in the state then appeals. So let's say the judge directs a knock guilty verdict in the state appeals. Well, that's reviewed for what we call an abusive discretion, which is a

standard on appeal that is almost impossible to overcome. So what that means in a nutshell is if the judge does decide to grant this knock guilty verdict by reason of insanity, it's over. Yeah. So I think see where we are. And this is what I think a lot of people, particularly people in the media might leave out of this analysis. We're not really in the area right now of what what what are the facts of the case? Because we're in we're now in constitutional law. We're

in the area of double jeopardy because when a judge declares a mistrial and this is outside the context of the client's case, just to sort of set the stage in any case. When a judge declares any kind of mistrial, even in a hung jury, over the objection of the defense, different rules apply. In other words, the state or the commonwealth, I should say, must establish that ending the trial in this way was justified by what the law calls a manifest necessity. Actually, you want to give it

a go at explaining what that is in layman's terms? Yeah, that's a hard concept. It's one of those, you know it when you see it, but essentially there was no alternative. And so, you know, that's something that he could definitely argue in this case. The judge might give him that. I know you and I probably have different positions on that. I'm not quite sure that it comes to the level of double jeopardy. I would love personally to see the judge grant this rule 25 motion and call

the case quits at this point. I know a lot of people want it retried, but I think that's probably

“unlikely. Maybe the render a deal. Maybe that's how we'll see this actually go down. But I think”

we are going to see some some interesting loyering over the next couple of weeks. A lot of legal concepts that are new to a lot of people, and we'll keep talking about it. Life insurance. We all know we need it, but many put it off because they think it's complicated or expensive. Stop telling yourself you will handle it later. Okay, that's just postponing something that you really need to get done. And consider taking care of it today with a select quote. Think of this.

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So get the right life insurance for you, for less at select quote.com/mk. Go to select quote.com/mk today to get started. I want to talk before we go about this cider case. This Ohio house of horrors, I mean, this case is just, it's a trotis for anyone who hasn't been following it. It is just an awful, awful case out of Ohio where there were a number of young children, all different ages who were found in this horrible living situation when the police entered this home.

They've taken all of the children into custody. And now the children's parents are charged, but also the grandparents. And the latest really that we have coming out of this case is the grandpa,

Gary Cider Sr., and you see that picture if you're watching our YouTube, you can see a picture.

So Mr. Cider Sr. was his competency was questioned. And I want to talk a little bit about what that means. And you and I were talking off the show. We both handled competency cases. So

“we can definitely talk about some real-life experience. But I think it's important that people”

really think when they hear incompetent to stand trial, that means someone's getting off. It doesn't. That's not what it means. All it means is that the court has decided that that individual currently cannot understand the charges against them, or they can't help their lawyer prepare to fence. That's it. It doesn't say anything about guilt or innocence. It's just whether or not you're competent to go forward. And a lot of times people get confused between competency and insanity,

which is what we've seen in the Lindsey Clancy case, completely different things. In sanity looks at the mental state at the time of the crime. We're competency only asks about the mental state right now today sitting in the courtroom. So you could be sane at the time of the offense and not competent to stand trial backwards, forwards. But what I really want to talk about Phil is this not restoreable part of this case, because he has also had a finding, which is not that common,

that he is hit whatever's going on with him is not restoreable. Yeah, let me, let me ask you this quick. And I don't mean to cut you off, but I want to make sure we understand this because that being competent and it's some people are competent on a temporary basis, some people are incompetent on a temporary basis. And sometimes people are just permanently incompetent and that can be a physical incompetency or mental. So just to break down, I know where you're about to go

with this. So what does this mean when the judge says that he can't be restored to competency is the state's stuck? Essentially, the state is stuck. I mean, if he cannot be restored this competency, the state, the cases indefinitely postponed. And most of the time the case will actually be dismissed. And usually something called civil competency or civil commitment will actually be initiated, where perhaps he goes into some type of a mental institution, some type of assisted living,

the thing that I don't think a lot of people understand is when someone is not restoreable, it typically means either they have such a low IQ, such as in the legal term, people hate this term, but it's mental retardation, that's the legal term. Either they have suffers from something like that or most commonly, it's some type of a neurodegenerative disease. And what that means is something like dementia, Alzheimer's, one of those types of diseases that really you can't

be fixed from ultimately because when you've got someone who suffers a mental illness and they

can then be restored to competency, it's because you're medicating them or you're treating them or you're teaching them about the court system. And so you're able to actually restore that level of competency, but when you have a neurodegenerative disease, until we come out with some medical breakthroughs that can cure Alzheimer's, we're going to see this where the person is not

“competent. And I think that's most likely what happened to your fill because there's been reports”

that he had a prior stroke and strokes can cause dementia. So that's probably what we saw here. Well, it looked, you know, the attorney, the attorney has said that the person, you know, the man does not have that he's not restoreable. I think those of us with life experience, with individuals, with dementia sadly, you know, that's oftentimes the case, but to be clear, the judge's order, you know, the judge is not a profit and can't see the future, right? And so

I think that what happens is there's going to have to be a continuing evaluation. And I think, you know, six months from now or a year from now, if he's still deemed medically incompetent by medical evidence, then that case against the Mr. Cider's senior probably is going to have to go away just because, you know, he's got a right to stand trial. He's presumed to be not guilty and without the trial, you know, that's it. Right. Well, it's going to be interesting to see what happens with the other

they're probably being a little bit different positions than he's in, you know, I think his is most likely going to be a neurodegenerative type disease, but they're all so seeking this competency evaluation.

And that's going to be very telling to see what's really going on in this house. You know, I've always

wondered if all of these people had all of their what's about them, really? I mean, you know, to put it that way because great question. Yeah. I mean, they had children. They had children ranges between the ages of 13 and 16 in their house. They had 16 total children in their house. Actually, and they took in another one, right? There was something that happened back in the past involving another one that was not their biological child. And so Elizabeth is now facing new charges.

What is that? Oh, my gosh. So that one, that apparently is why the police were ever in this house to begin with. So thank God that case happened. And I hate to say that, but that's the only reason that they were in this house was to serve a warrant on that case. So Elizabeth and her husband, Gary Jr., have been indicted and alleged to have essentially had some type of sexual conduct. They don't specify in the indictment what the sexual conduct was, but some type of sexual

conduct was someone that they had brought into their home was not their own child. Someone who was in their early teen years, they didn't specify the exact age, but said that they brought them into essentially raised this child along with all of their dozen plus other children.

“Yeah, I miss the, I think I said 16, there was 12 that they had in this would have been the 13.”

Yeah. Well, they're only 12 at the time. Right. Back when they brought this child in, but so this, we don't know, you know, we don't know a lot about this child about what type of relationship it was, you know, where were this child's parents? I mean, there's just so many questions every time I look at this case, all I think about is all the systems that failed these children, but where this, where's this child coming from? And why is nobody checking up in the

side or family when they've got this random third party child in their home? And apparently are

having some type of sexual assault relations with this child together, because Gary and Elizabeth are indicted together with whatever these acts are? Well, I think it's worth pointing out. People are asking, you know, how, who raises the issue? How is it raised and who decides it? And what I can say is that usually it's the, you know, defense lawyers. And, you know, one thing that we, when we take on a criminal case, we have, if we have any issues that, you know,

suggest to us as lay persons, like I'm not a psychiatrist, but I can, you know, if I think there might be an issue, it's incumbent upon me to explore whether or not the client is actually

“capable of standing trial. And so you have to get experts. And so the issue is raised, usually”

by counsel for the defense, then there's an expert that will come in and evaluate the defendant and say, look, I've done this test, I've done this test, I've done this kind of psychiatric evaluation or psychological evaluation. And in my professional opinion, the defendant is, or maybe is not competent to stand trial, but the state also gets to hire an expert if they want to do that. And so you have, basically a little miniature trial, in some cases, it's a hearing, sometimes

you get a jury to decide, and sometimes it's a judge who makes a decision depending on the jurisdiction, but I've had these cases. And I know you have, too, and if someone is found not competent, like Gary Senior, or if the others are successful, actually what happens, do they just have to stay locked up, do they stay in jail, or do they go to a mental institution? What happens? Or maybe it's a hospital if it's just a physical type of incompetence.

Well, so if they are incompetent and they're able to be restored, they'll actually go to a mental institute and they are restored. It's kind of interesting because they actually call it competency school. They actually take classes on how to behave in court, who the different people are. The standard, I'm not gonna lie. Standard is really, really, really low to be competent.

“You have to basically be able to understand what's going on in court, understand who your lawyer is,”

what the prosecutor does, what the judge does, and be able to sit there and be quiet. I mean, that's really what it is. But if you are to the point where you're nonverbal, for example, perhaps that is something that is happening in Gary Senior's case. Maybe he's nonverbal. Maybe he had a stroke, and he's actually not even able to speak, and so he couldn't testify in his own defense. That's a significant issue. One of the things that I just can't help but wonder

about this case is how these children remained in this house. There were so many instances where child protective services was in and out of this house, and one thing that really bothers me is back in 2021. These children actually had what's called a CASA or a Guardian at Lightham, and just for our viewers CASA is a court appointed special advocate. And then a Guardian at Lightham

is someone who's actually usually attorney, not always an attorney, but someone who is supposed to

be looking out for the best interest of the children. And the good thing about these folks is they're able to go into the home and they're able to have access to medical records,

level of access. Why were they not using it? Why aren't they out in the home during site visits? Why aren't they talking to these parents? If these parents are incompetent, why aren't they finding

“that out and getting the resources that they need? That's where I think this case really just”

really upsets me. Yeah, I mean, it goes back, you know, you had child welfare authority stepping

in in 2020. There was a second case back in 2021, then the family sort of fell off the radar and

off the grid. We're going to keep up with this case here on the program, but this strikes me as just a really, really sad failure of the legal system and the authorities and the people that we have in place whose job it is to make sure that things like this don't happen. Of course, it's also if these kids were not being properly cared for, that's obviously on the parents of those who are charged with their proper care. All right, we're going to have to leave it there for this

part of the program. Actually, up next, we have Chris Stewart. He's the host of on the case on the law and crime network. He's going to be joining us to discuss the devastating death of little

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Good to be with you. You want to get. Yeah, it's great to see you. I want to talk about these cases.

These cases are awful. They are just tragic. Let's first talk a little bit about the sailor

Hayes case. I want to go over that with you in a moment. But first, I want to catch up on this so-called Lindsey Clancy Copycat case out of Illinois. So can you tell us what is going on with this awful case? We were just talking about off on air. It's so awful thinking that they're going to have copycats of Lindsey Clancy. Yeah, and we'll see where this case goes. And in the Lindsey Clancy part of it, I mean, the details we'll talk about here in a second. Certainly, you

can see a bit of the comparisons and why it's received that type of attention. But in the police report that we have, the mom in this case, who's facing charges of 1st degree murder for the death of her two-year-old son Barrett, it says that she was heavily invested in the Lindsey Clancy trial. Now, look, so many of us were invested in the Lindsey Clancy trial just from watching it. I mean, this was a story that had headlines, you know, well beyond true crime. And it's still

remains to be seen exactly what she was saying about Lindsey Clancy that made law enforcement believe it was more than just, you know, the regular kind of interest that people had. But I'll get into just some of the details and we can talk about it. So this goes back to September 1st in Frank for Illinois, which is a suburb South of Chicago, near like Juliette, Illinois, and Corey Walsh, she's a mom to four kids, and we know that around four o'clock in the afternoon,

a 911 call is made from a neighbor of the house. And the neighbor says that she goes into the home, and she allegedly finds Corey Walsh in the bathtub upstairs, and she was allegedly trying to harm herself with a knife. Apparently she had, she was, she was had some sort of like odd giggle that they talked about in court and some dilated eyes, and just did not seem like she was in the right frame of mind. And then she says that bear is in the basement. And we've learned that bear is

the nickname for her two-year-old son. And I won't go into the, you know, the very gruesome details, but this neighbor goes downstairs and discovers her two-year-old and her two-year-old died according to police of Asphyxia. Law enforcement's called, they find another infant in the home. Thankfully,

“the infant is okay. I believe that infant was eight months old. And then she has two other children”

who returned home around the same time that from school the same time as law enforcement arrived.

charges a first-degree murder. And as I said in the police report, they say that she was very

heavily invested in the Lindsey Clancy case. Her attorney, though, did push back on making comparisons to it. They held a news conference after she was denied bond. Her attorneys are claiming that she's been diagnosed with some sort of psychotic disorder. Prosecutors say they were unaware of that. So we're still trying to figure out exactly the specifics there. But you can see, I mean, this was a

“day where the jury I think was deliberating. We hadn't gotten into talk about this loan juror that's”

kind of taken over the Lindsey Clancy discussion over the past week. But it's just, I mean, it's an awful case. There's no way to talk about any more than that. But certainly because of the

prosecutors and why there's that draw. Yeah. If prosecutors, prosecutors are saying that that Walsh

had participated in a group chat with other mothers in which she believed that Lindsey Clancy's husband had killed their children. But allegedly, she had texted on the morning of the incident that she had somehow changed her view. So we know that at least as of the moment, the day this happened, she was at least aware of things enough to be participating in a group chat apparently to be evaluating the evidence that she's seeing coming out of the Lindsey Clancy trial

and communicating that with other people. Although as you mentioned, we don't know all the specifics, but at least she had the ability to at least say to the others that she was considering the evidence. But you mentioned her lawyer. That's Andrea Lyon. This is the same attorney who wants represented Casey Anthony. And she's quoted as saying the speculation that this has anything to do with copycat or anything like that is baseless and cruel. She goes on to say, and let's run slot five

and slot six back to back because this is Andrea Lyon saying that she was psychotic. It's not first

degree and that it's not a copycat case. As you probably know, the judge denied pretrial release to a locked situation in a hospital, which is what we had hoped would happen given her psychological condition and the wounds that she's still recovering from. We're disappointed with the ruling, but we were going to continue to work really hard to investigate this case and present the defense's correct, which is that she was psychotic and this is not a first degree murder.

It's a psychotic break that is coincidental with the time of the crazy trial. Here you go. They are not correlated at all. It's just accidental. And you know, we have to be conscious of what the judge has told us we can talk about and not talk about. But that speculation that this has anything to do that it's a copycat or anything like that is baseless and cruel.

“Yeah, they want it to be as far away from Lindsey Clancy as possible because I think all of us”

were really invested in the Lindsey Clancy trial, but none of us went out and killed someone as a result of that. So I think they've got a really, really high burden. I'm sure they want to distance themselves as much as humanly possible from the facts of this case being related to Lindsey Clancy because that is not good. But this is an Illinois like you said in Illinois is a very different place than Massachusetts. For one, the standard for insanity is completely different.

And the burden is completely different. In Massachusetts, I think one of the big issues we saw was that the state actually the Commonwealth had to essentially disprove the insanity defense. They had to overcome beyond a reasonable doubt and prove sanity. And that is not the burden in Illinois. So I think we're going to see a very different presentation in this case. Well, I thought it was interesting too where I was just going to say that it seems like,

you know, Andrea Lyme comes out and says that she's been diagnosed with a psychotic disorder, but that was something that was news to the prosecution at the bond hearing. So that, you know, it remains to be seen exactly what she's been diagnosed with.

“Right. I was going to ask about that because this was, this is all pretty quick, right?”

You know, you can't just like breeze into an urgent care and get a psychiatric diagnosis like this. Like you do if you break your leg or something. So you've got to have an experts that go in. And this is a longer, more deliberative, hopeful, hopefully deliberative process. Look, I'm not necessarily questioning how another lawyer is handling their case, but I do. I am very curious to know how you can go into a case right out of the gate

and come out publicly and make statements like that about what, you know, the defense is and that you're definitely going to prove it was, you know, a psychosis because it's, it's so very new.

trial, there just hasn't been enough time to develop all those things. So Christ, you have any

insight on to where this is coming from?

“No, any, so it was rumored, I believe it was said in court that she had been seeing a counselor”

before all of this allegedly happened, remains to be seen, you know, what her background is, officially when it comes to any sort of mental health issues, I did find it interesting her attorney after the hearing, the two attorney she had representing her said that her husband stands by her and her family stands by her. And so this was a court hearing that happened roughly a week after she was arrested for allegedly killing their son but her attorneys going public saying that her

families in her corner, I don't know what to read into that, you know, when it comes to, you know,

was it known that she had some mental health issues and that this, you know, was was a, you know,

an issue that was going on. I just thought that that was interesting coming out of that news conference. Christ, that is really interesting because there's also allegations that she had threatened to kill her husband. So he was on that trip out of state trip, killed him using a poison drink. You know, so it's interesting that he's standing by her, but one thing that kind of tipped me and I, you know, I may be reading into it was that prosecutors said there was a drink and open bottles

of prescription medication on the counter at the home. And so we don't know, obviously, what the prescription medications were for, but we heard, you know, that her eyes were dilated and she had a weird giggle. So perhaps they were some type of mental health medications. I'm sure we'll be hearing more about that. But that kind of made me think maybe there's some mental health history here, maybe there's some components, particularly since the family is standing by her.

Well, and another thing too, just as far as, you know, reading through it was, she apparently had told law enforcement that she had drowned her, her other children. And you can hear on the police scanner, then saying like, we have to, you know, she says that, and that didn't happen. You know, the other children thankfully are safe. But that's another thing to think about kind of trying

“to figure out what happened. Well, whatever happens, I think it's going to be a very different”

outcome than the state of Massachusetts with Lindsey Clancy, because Illinois, I mean, their burden is completely different. You know, the defendant has the burden to prove it, and it's actually by a clearing convincing evidence where in Massachusetts, the state had the burden beyond a reasonable

doubt. And that is just a significant difference. And so I think we probably will ultimately see a

very different outcome in this case. We want to talk to you about this sailor Hayes case, Chris, but before I get into that, let me just wrap up this conversation with this observation. I certainly hope that the Lindsey Clancy case has not turned her into some type of a weird celebrity in the sense that maybe people who maybe are unstable or have some tendency towards mental illness or looking at her and looking at this case and somehow gaining some kind of inspiration to do harm to their

children, because if this truly is such a copycat case, it's absolutely horrifying. Stick around folks for a little bit later on in the program, we're going to get to our closing arguments. I'm going to have more to say about these sensational cases as they get into the media, but Chris, we got sailor Hayes, right? This is another very sad case. Sailor Hayes was a child five years old. She was found deceased floating in a waterway. Her parents age 70 and 31 have been arrested. Not

withstanding that drastic age. Yeah, what's going on there? Can we just wait? I mean 70 and 31 with us? Right off right out of the gate, something is unusual here. What is going on with sailor Hayes case? This is a really sad story out of South Carolina. Sailor Hayes was a five-year-old girl. She was non-verbal on the autism spectrum and the family. They were on Polys Island, South Carolina for vacation at Seams and it was a Sunday afternoon late morning and John Hayes, the father,

called 911 saying that sailor had disappeared because they were going to go. He said to the beach, she was in her bathing suit. She's in the car seat. He goes in to get juice. He says on the 911

“call and then he comes out and sailor's gone. And sadly, I mean, I think we've all seen cases like”

that. Children who might be attracted to the water and sadly the next day, her body was found. The case took a criminal turn and kind of where the charges came in. Both John and Jordan were charged a couple days after Sailor's body was found and police are accusing them of misleading the investigation. And then on top of that, Sailor Ward, I'm sure I'm going to talk about this, this project life-saver tracker. And that was found back at their home. They're in Bristol,

Virginia. And it's a very specific type of tracker for people who might wander off. And that tracker was found back in Virginia. It was not found in South Carolina and apparently John and Jordan allegedly told law enforcement that that sailor had this tracker on her and that according to

are based on allegedly, and this is a quote, putting sailor at an unreasonable risk of harm affecting

her life and safety by failing to provide supervision and safeguards appropriate for a severely non-verbal, autistic, five-year-old child with a known affinity to water and a history of elotement, meaning running off. So that's where things started with the criminal charges. But as you mentioned, the parents are accused of complicating the search efforts which leaves me to this question. If they're complicating the search effort and they are allegedly making false statements about

“that tracker and how it came off or if it came off, does that give us, and I think I know the answer”

to this a softball question, does that give us any idea of where we think this case might go criminally speaking coming up coming next in the case? It's interesting. So the charge that they're

facing in South Carolina is placing a child at risk or willfully abandoning a child. And they

were appeared before a judge in South Carolina, it was on a Saturday. And I feel like when you look at that charge on the surface, I was saying, "Okay, you know, their attorney said in court, or it was actually was interesting. Here's one. John is the only one with an attorney who is there at the hearing. Jordan did not have an attorney." And he said, "John's really just accused of taking his eye off of the child." And that was the argument they were making. And the judge

at the end said something along the lines of like, "There's no way on earth that I would grant bond

“in this situation." So they're both being held in jail right now on these charges.”

Her cause of death was pulmonary edema, which is, I talked to a, I'm going to show on the case say a corner about this. It just means fluid in the lungs, which could mean water, but it also could mean, you know, a bunch of different possibilities. And we're still waiting on more tests to be run. And that's going to take eight to ten weeks. So there's a lot of questions about what exactly happened to sailor. Yeah, but my understanding is there's a little bit of a prior

history and to me, without that prior history, this immediately reads as a tragic accident during a family vacation. But if you look at the pattern and apparently back in 2023, officers responded to the home for concerns about substance abuse. The children were removed and they replaced in foster care. And then Jordan actually had a 2026 arrest for reckless disregard for human life and child endangerment involving an infant under the age of one. So she's got that, you know, active case,

that's very recent. And then the fact that the tracker itself was actually removed, you mentioned that earlier, but this is not a tracker where the battery just went dead or fell off. This is something that actually had to be cut off. So someone deliberately took this off of this non-verbal autistic water-attracted five-year-old who died from what it sounds like is, you know, times like pulmonary edema, I mean, it sounds like drowned. Right. And the tracker, I think is the

really important part of this. Like it reminds me a lot of like a GPS tracker, someone would wear when they're out on bond. This is not something. This isn't like an air tag where you're going to look at GPS. This is, it's a nonprofit that will work with law enforcement agencies. And so, you know, maybe you had like an older person that has an affinity for running away. They fit them with these

“trackers. You have to cut it off. And then if someone goes missing, you alert law enforcement.”

And then they're looking for a very specific frequency in an area for it. So it's not like a GPS tracker where you can just look on your phone and see where the person is. And so at least it appears on the outside. This is something you would know that she would not have on her. It was traced to the vehicle, the vehicle was traced to a vehicle. It was, the signal was traced to a vehicle. And the police, as I actually mentioned, said it cannot simply be unclashed or removed by the

client. The band must be physically cut in order to remove the transmitter. I want to run socks seven, which is the mother Jordan Hayes at Jordan with a G on the search effort. This is Jordan just saying that she's praying that the child may be just fell asleep. This is a very interesting video. So for folks who are listening on podcast, I encourage you to take a look at us on YouTube as well, because you really got to get the visual here. But let's go ahead and run socks seven.

Let's do that. She's always going for a fridge. She has kind of like a habit of that.

Yeah, you know, we looked on the camera. We didn't see her. We saw at 1137 and we walked that way. And just see when she was missing on the car. And we didn't see her on the camera. We just saw me and my husband, one that way to look. Because we're out when I saw her on the car. I ran her with a river. You know, in my two minutes. So I don't know, in the dolly under this way. I'm just praying. I don't know, you know that she's somewhere. And she's fell asleep maybe. Yeah. Thank you, bro. Especially she had it.

No, I don't want to say anything. So you can't say what was happening yesterday when she went missing.

“Wow. I mean, that's something else, Chris. I mean, there she is with a”

another child, apparently, making various comments that, you know, it seems like it's something investigators can absolutely look at and try to verify or not. But also, you know, I look at her overall demeanor and and just something in my opinion just looks very off about that whole thing. I'm interested to know what cell phone like records will show. And what, you know, what was going on prior prior to that 911 call that was made? Because I listened to the 911 call. It's it's online.

It's, you know, we did an episode with it. And, you know, my unprofessional opinion. I like it sounded somewhat authentic. I've heard far more, you know, 911 calls. I think we all have where you're like

this person's lying. Like this one did sound. I mean, you hear Jordan in the background as John's

calling. And so I don't know what any of that means as far as the investigation. But it was just interesting. And you just wonder if there's some text messages or something like, what got them to the point? Because if police, you know, if you're going to charge a family after their daughter was found in a river, like you better have good evidence to be able to do it. And really,

“really, really believe. And we just haven't seen that yet. Right. I mean, I think the only thing”

that they could have is this prior history. You know, this pattern. And then maybe the pattern, especially with prior intoxication, pressure substance abuse. I mean, maybe that's why they're taking a closer look. But definitely something that we're going to keep following. Thank you so much,

Chris. Tell our audience where they can find you. No, always great to be on with you guys.

Uh, we have a show on the case with Chris Stewart. You can find us on LawnCron, YouTube channel. And we're also on Spotify and streaming on a couple other platforms like Peacock. Awesome. Thank you so much. It's good to see you. Well, next up, we've got our closing argument station. You know, those pieces in your class that you find yourself reaching for over and over again,

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Welcome back to the MK True Crime Show. I'm Phil Hallway along with my co-host Ashley Merchett. This is the time of the program where we now get to deliver to you our closing arguments our thoughts on whatever's on our mind. Ashley, take it away. Well, thanks Phil. So every single show that we've talked about on this show today. Every single story has sort of the same shape. Once you see it, it's kind of hard to unsee it. Talk about Lindsey Clancy. A jury sits through

weeks of a murder trial and that one juror has an active restraining order against him. A nephew who called 911 because his uncle had grabbed his wife by the throat and he had witnessed it. A mom screaming your evil as police made the arrest. That is the juror. That should have been on a form. And it wasn't. Or nobody checked and nobody followed up on it and he ended up on the jury. Jury selection isn't really about selection. It's about desolation. And you're working with

limited strikes. You're working with limited time and courts are keeping that strict and cutting that. And attorneys are not even allowed to ask all of the questions. The honor system on this only works if someone is actually enforcing it. So now sailor Hayes, this is a five-year-old girl, a non-verbal autistic little girl who drowned in the water. She was drawn to the water. She has her safety tracker physically cut off her body before a family vacation, not lost,

not a dead battery, but physically removed. This is a family that already had children removed once back in 2023. A mother with new charges pending reckless disregard for human life just two weeks before her little girl walked into a waterway and drowned. Two weeks, just two weeks. And then

horror for years, in plain sight of the system. Child services opens a case back in 2020. Close

“is it? They open another one in 2021. Close that one too. Why? Well, the family moved and nobody”

could find them. And nobody apparently looked. 16 children, years of warning signs. And nobody kept up with their file. None of these systems failed because nobody knew. Every single one of these cases and every single one of these disasters was preceded by someone, somewhere, who actually had information that could have stopped it. That could have prevented these tragedies. We all love hunting for a villain. Everybody loves hunting for the badger or the negligent mother or the

monstrous grandfather or the monstrous mother. It's satisfying. It's simple. It gives us an easy way out. It lets everyone else off the hook and it gives us a bad guy. But maybe they are villains.

“Now, we're not saying they're not villains. There's no question about that. But maybe if we look”

at fixing the process that keeps handing these bad actors a second, third, or fourth chance,

we won't be back here next month with a different name telling the exact same story. Phil, take it away. All right. You know, what I'm about to say, the irony of what I'm about to say is not lost on me considering this is a true crime video podcast. And we are very active on social media. Personally, and of course, as well through this MK True Crime Channel. But you know, I have concerns about social media and the criminal justice system. You know, we used to treat

a criminal trial as a solemn act in a formal courtroom setting. And we had an official court record. We had a jury that was sworn to decide only what was proved in that courtroom. Justice was supposed to be seen and justice was supposed to be done. It was not supposed to be cheered, not meamed, not scored like a Saturday college football game. Social media has turned this

solemn courtroom into basically a stadium. High profile trials are now just content. Teams seem to

form overnight, hashtags become jerseys, live strings become the play by play, complete with color commentary. Influences become those color commentators and every objection is a highlight. Every tier is a clip. Every ruling is a touchdown or a foul, depending on which team you're rooting for. The public does not watch to understand. The public watches, however, to cheer on their chosen team, and the game never seems to stop at the courthouse door. It admissible evidence

leaks into the feed sidebars become theories. Witnesses become villains, jurors become targets.

Lawyer start performing for a second audience that will never deliberate and never be sworn.

The algorithm does not care about the presumption of innocence. It cares only about heat. This is not open justice. This is a spectacle with a docket number. When the trial becomes a sporting event, dignity leaves the room. Integrity becomes optional. The court is still trying a case with the crowd is trying a show and a spectacle. The system of criminal law and procedure that we have has taken centuries to fully develop to where it is today. It's meant to be a calm,

thoughtful, and deliberative process. Let's all try to be as dispassionate as we can be in our spectating, not cheering fans because this is our justice system. It's not perfect. It's the best one we have and we need to save it before it's too late. I'll leave it there. I want to say thanks to you, actually, and thanks to you all our audience for being here because you are what makes this program, and do me a favor. If you're listening now for the first time

“and you haven't subscribed, remember to subscribe to the MK True Crown Show on YouTube or wherever”

you get your podcast. Thanks again, and we want to make sure we thank Chris Stewart, our guest today, and all of you out there have a great week. We'll see you back here next time on the MK True Crown Show.