Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host Ashley Flowers, and I'm Brett.
And the story I have for you today is about a young woman whose death was assumed to be an accident, but her mother believes that the facts point to something more sinister.
This is the story of Lauren A.G.
For those of us who aren't into wakeboarding, the name wakefest might not mean much.
But for those in the sport, or people who maybe even live in Tennessee, your ears probably just perked up a little bit, because wakefest is this weekend long wakeboarding event where hundreds of people come to party on houseboats, camp out, and watch wakeboarders compete.
It kind of feels like spring break in the middle of Tennessee at center hill lake where wakefest is taking place.
But sometime around 4.30, 4.45 on Sunday, July 26, 2015, Amanda and his adult son aren't there to party or even to watch the wakeboarders.
They are there to fish, and they're making their way across the lake in their boat toward a more secluded spot.
But according to the without warning podcast, as they pull into a small cove, they notice something in the water.
At first they think that maybe someone just threw something into the lake like trash or whatever.
But as they get closer, they realize how wrong they are.
Because floating on the surface, face down just off the shore is a young woman's body.
Now at first the father is basically like, we have to get her out of there, like I mean dude is ready to jump in the water.
But his son is actually an EMT and he can already tell that it's too late.
So he knows that the last thing they should do is disturb anything.
So he convinces him to turn the boat around and head back to the marina to get help.
They don't have cell phones?
I don't know if they don't have them or maybe if they just didn't bring them or even with the reception situation out there is like.
But basically once they get back to the marina, they meet up with Ryan Melanson and Chris Yarchuk, who are off duty officers working in security at a dockside bar for wake fest.
And they decide to go out and just kind of assess the situation.
So this group heads back out and they quickly find the young woman's body still floating in the cove.
Those officers notice that she has some trauma to the back of her head and shoulder.
Although with her still in the water they can't really tell how bad it is or even what it's from.
But they can't just pull her out because they don't have jurisdiction here.
So they call out the local authorities, the Sheriff's Department and the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency or TWRA.
Now while all of this is going on, officers Melanson and Yarchuk notice a canoe paddling toward the scene.
And inside are two young guys and when they get closer they start yelling, asking if that's their friend in the water who's been missing.
Now as far as anyone there at the scene knows, there hasn't been a missing persons report file.
But these guys pulling up are clearly missing someone.
So did they just see the commotion in the cove and put two and two together?
Well maybe, but the way Melanson and Yarchuk talk about this encounter without warning podcast, they seem to have a feeling that these guys know something.
Like they knew the body was already there.
That's the implication.
So they bring these two guys onto their pontoon boat and they start questioning them.
And again, they're out of their jurisdiction but they're still police officers and so they're trying to kind of assist here while the others deal with the body that's in the water.
So they learn that these two guys are Erin Lilly and Chris Stout.
And they're looking for this young woman who'd been in their group that weekend, 21 year old Lauren A.G.
The officers have Erin and Chris describe her and right away they're confident that that's who they have in the water.
But when they relate this to Erin and Chris, the two don't seem surprised or honestly even sad.
I mean maybe they're in shock?
Totally, but to the officers, this doesn't seem like shock or just processing their feelings to be fair Chris just met Lauren that weekend.
And it does seem like Erin only knows Lauren through his girlfriend Hannah who's like a childhood friend of Lauren's.
So it could just be like the distance of like, oh like we don't really know her.
We aren't extremely sad.
Yeah. So it is shocking that this person in your group is faced down in the water here.
Right. And what's also not helping is that Erin's been trying or at least seeming to try to like control the conversation since they first stepped foot on the boat telling Chris basically to keep his mouth shut like he'll do all the talking.
Oh, don't love that. Yeah.
And as he does, Officer Yardchuck realizes that he actually sort of familiar with Erin and Chris and some of the friends that they've been hanging out with.
He had actually seen them around throughout the weekend while he was working.
And he'd even met Lauren the night before or I guess technically it was like that morning because it was like two o'clock in the morning.
And he'd actually seen her with Chris and Erin and the three were climbing into a canoe with a second girl.
And the four of them paddled out to where they were camping, which was on top of this outcropping across from the marina.
And I'm not talking about like this cute little outcropping over the water.
There was a 90 foot cliff on one side and about a 35 or 45 foot drop on the other.
That does not sound safe.
It's not. And there's actually even a video that's later found on Lauren's cell phone that shows them paddling out to this campsite on Friday night.
And someone in the background calls it a death trap.
So Officer Yardchuck goes with Erin to this campsite to get Lauren's ID.
This could help the police positively identify her and get all of Lauren's personal information so they can make the right notifications.
And so he gets to see firsthand how dangerous this campsite is.
I mean there's a tent up there and this giant hammock that is strung along the cliff's edge between two trees.
Now while Yardchuck is at the campsite with Erin, Officer Malanson is still on the boat with Chris.
He's just kind of making small talk with him waiting for the other two to get back.
And then at some point he notices that Chris is staring at the gun on his hip.
He's like, hey buddy, what are you thinking?
And Chris's response is chilling.
He says, I'm thinking how I'm going to get that gun off your hip and get off this boat.
What? And at first he thinks he's joking.
Yeah, what a funny joke.
Yeah, good one. But Chris actually repeats it again.
And the officer realizes, okay, this dude isn't kidding.
He wants off this boat in a bad way.
Now obviously he doesn't make any kind of move for it.
Nothing happens. The other two come back and then they all drive that boat to the Marina.
And it's here where they meet up with Hannah Palmer, who is Erin's girlfriend.
And like I said, one of Lauren's like childhood friends.
Like she's known her for a long time.
And she's actually the fourth member of this group who was camping on that cliff Saturday night.
And just as I know she and Lauren had actually like come to wake fest together.
Now all of us are melansin and Yartuck are just kind of taking mental notes of this group as they all continue to talk.
They're also taking digital notes too because according to an episode of Crimewatch Daily with Chris Hansen from 2017, Yartuck's recording some of these conversations on his phone.
Now Hannah tells him when the group woke up that morning, Lauren just wasn't there.
Hannah and Erin had slept in a tent and then Chris and Lauren slept in the hammock together.
Now if you have researched this case like I have, you might have read court documents that disclosed that there was indeed a tent at the campsite.
But there were also two hammocks listed.
So why exactly they needed to share one?
I don't know or really understand.
I'm trying not to read too much into that because Lauren actually did have a boyfriend who wasn't at wake fest.
And like I said, she just met Chris that weekend.
So she didn't even tell a friend that she had no romantic interest in him.
Also like you're not fooling around in a hammock.
So like, you don't forget that.
Anyways, according to a 2020 episode from 2017, Hannah says that she became worried because Lauren's flip flops, purse, and phone were still there at the campsite.
And she's no more than for years.
So she knows that Lauren would never have left that stuff behind.
Hannah tells Officer Yard Chuck that she woke up Chris and he told her that Lauren had gotten up a while ago.
But he also says that he didn't feel her get up.
Then how did he know she got up?
Good question. I am not super clear on that.
Like it's not super clear at all from anything.
But from what I gather, I think Chris might have woken up and then just noticed that she wasn't there.
And then he went back to sleep.
And then when Hannah wakes him up later, he realizes that she's still not back.
Which makes sense. So he knows she got up at some point.
He says no when. But if you've ever been in a hammock, even like a big one, I'm sorry.
There's no way you wouldn't feel someone else getting out.
Like they're so awkward and clumsy to get in and out of this thing.
I know. I'm with like my five year old daughter who doesn't get the concept, but still they're kind of tricky.
It's I agree. But the thing to know is that they'd all been drinking the night before and even into the early morning hours.
So I think it's possible that if he was like totally out of it, maybe he doesn't feel her get up.
That said, because they were heavily drinking like, honestly at this point, any information that they're getting from this group gives like kind of like questionable vibes.
Totally questionable.
Yeah. And that's if you believe their story in the first place, which officer Yarchuk is having a hard time doing because Hannah claims that after they woke up, they went back to the marina and asked around if anyone had seen Lauren.
They hadn't. But instead of reporting her missing, they just kind of went on to like party the rest of the day at wake fest thinking that Lauren was just going to turn up at some point.
What? I'm sorry. If we'll camping one, praise you for getting me out there.
And if I wake up the morning and you're gone, I'm spending the entire day looking for you.
And if I don't find you, I'm calling the police.
I mean, to quote Dion Warwick, that's what friends are for.
Half of our audience is googling Dion Warwick right now.
But if you like me loved my best friends wedding, you already know, even if you don't know.
Here's the thing though, like, yes, I totally agree with you.
Now 35 year old me years into crime junky the deck season of justice totally agrees with you.
I will hunt you the down, but to be totally honest, if you can go back to that mindset, like me at 19, 2021 at some weekend festival camp out, honestly, I wouldn't have.
I see it. I mean, the reasons we tell these stories is to educate so friends do keep track of one another.
But if you haven't been living and breathing it the way that we have, I think it's easier to be in a different state of mind.
Like you truly believe the worst case scenario can't happen to you.
That invincibility, yeah.
Yeah, so maybe we can just chalk this behavior up to being young and dumb, but there are more red flags for officer Yarchuck and Malyansen.
And now that Lauren's body has been found both Hannah and Chris tell them that they wonder if Lauren had gotten up in the middle of the night to maybe go to the bathroom or something and she slipped off the cliff.
Which honestly seems kind of plausible when you learn that apparently where they set up the area to go to the bathroom at you had to like hold on to this tree and you're straight up like hanging off the edge.
What happened to just peeing in some bushes?
That's terrifying. I know it does not sound fun.
According to that crime watch daily episode both Hannah and Aaron also speculate that Lauren could have gone up to maybe meet a guy who Aaron claims was her ex boyfriend.
Like according to Hannah part of the reason Lauren even went to Wakefest in the first place was to see this guy.
But everything in the research points to Lauren's ex actually avoiding her at the bar that Saturday night and never even speaking to her and spoiler alert he had a solid alibi after leaving the bars so it doesn't seem like they actually ever met up.
So while officers Yarchuck and Malyansen are uber suspicious of this group.
The sheriff's investigators who by now have shown up and taken charge seem less so.
They ask Hannah Aaron and Chris for written statements.
But that's it. They let them go back to the campsite gather their things and go home.
So no crime scene preservation formal questioning.
Well no because from what I gather investigators basically decided this was an accident.
I don't think they're thinking there is a crime scene.
Wait unless I'm missing something they don't even know how Lauren died yet.
How can they know that it accident?
I mean she had some visible wounds on the back of her head like yes it could be from a fall but to her point like I don't know if they know anything else yet or they don't know how that fall happened even if they knew it was a fall.
Like there's a lot more that should be done if it's being done right and that lack of an investigation in the beginning is what ends up leaving so much room for questions all these years later.
Questions particularly from Lauren's family who at this point in our story are sitting in a hospital waiting room after being summoned by police.
According to a true life crime episode from 2021 all they've been told at this point is that she's been in an accident.
Her mom Sherry hasn't been able to reach Lauren all day but I mean she figured that if something happened at Wakef as one of Lauren's friends would have contacted her.
Wait do they not know she's dead or no thinking she's just hurt.
Yes but now that she's like sitting and waiting for news she starts spiraling as any parent would be and she's going over everything.
Lauren had said about Wakefest everyone she was going to be there with.
According to Sherry in that without warning podcasts Lauren had told her about Wakefest a few days earlier and she was supposed to go with another friend but that friend later told her that there wasn't enough room in the car.
So that's when Lauren decided to go with Hannah and Sherry actually had some concerns about that because even though the two like Lauren and Hannah had been friends since childhood they actually hadn't been close lately.
And Sherry says that when she ran into them as they were leaving she got a big hug from Lauren obviously but Hannah who was like in the car didn't even bother looking up didn't even acknowledge Sherry.
And as these memories are flooding back to her the lead investigator comes into the hospital waiting room and he takes Sherry and her family into a private room and that's where he tells them that Lauren is dead.
He explains that she may have sustained injuries from cliff jumping.
Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa where the fuck did that come from she's not like cliff diving in the middle of the night no one has said that.
No not in the middle of the night so apparently where this comes from is the police had found pictures on Lauren's phone of some people cliff diving or jumping or whatever you want to call it.
And it wasn't her but like other people but they were told at some point that Lauren had done this and that actually she had hit her head doing this.
Now it's really unclear in the research who specifically told them this information there's like nothing in the police report about this event either.
And so I think that they're saying that it happened earlier and then that because of these injuries that she had maybe suffered a concussion that might have caused her to then fall off the cliff in the middle of the night.
Was she showing signs of concussion earlier?
Not as far as I can tell I mean I know Lauren is seen in videos she's like having a good time on Saturday night there's even a video of her waving and smiling in a bar.
But head injuries can be tricky and fickle I mean she could be smiling and waving and still have a serious concussion.
Correct right you're not wrong.
Now when Sherry hears this she's devastated and shocked because she doesn't think Lauren would do something like cliff jumping but I mean Sherry and her family believe what police are saying is most likely what happened like this is some terrible tragic accident.
And a few days later on July 30th Fox 17 published an article on Lauren's preliminary autopsy report and it seems to back up the theory that she fell on accident.
It states that Lauren suffered from blunt force trauma to the head and to the back though some source material claims her neck too but it's all consistent with a fall.
Fox 17 also reported that her autopsy indicated she had a small amount of water in her lungs and her blood alcohol level was determined to be twice the legal limit.
Can they see any signs of a concussion in an autopsy like is that still part of this whole theory.
I think that the concussion idea offered up by police was maybe just a way to explain the fall or like the how or why the fall to her family but honestly considering where they were camping and the fact that Lauren was drinking.
And if she did get up in the middle of the night I mean it's pitch black it's not completely out of left field to think that she could have fallen concussion or not so maybe they're thinking that maybe they're not it's not part of like the official autopsy narrative.
Got it. So the family at least now has a few more answers than they did before but when Lauren's funeral is held Sherry notices something odd something that leaves her questioning what she thinks she knows.
The group that Lauren was with the night that she died so Hannah, Aaron and Chris.
They didn't even bother to show up.
So the last people to have seen Lauren alive one of whom has known her since she was a kid or no shows at her funeral.
They didn't even show up for the visitation.
Now I'm sure you could come up with a list of all of the possible reasons that they didn't some are even innocent reasons survivors guilt maybe.
Chris would later claim that Aaron told him Sherry didn't want them there and that's why he didn't go but Sherry said that she never spoke to Aaron or Chris about them not attending the funeral.
So in her eyes them not showing up seems more sinister because she's thinking like if they're not there they gotta be hiding something.
And that feeling only gets stronger when she gets a call from officer Mollanson who tells her that he suspects that Lauren's death was not an accident.
That's when the wheels start turning in Sherry's head.
And then to top it all off she stumbled across something on Instagram that shocks her.
It's a post on Chris's account from the day after Lauren's body was found.
The photo shows Hannah and Aaron smiling on a boat followed by the caption best weekend ever.
What? Best weekend ever when someone not just someone someone in the party that you went with.
Die? I'm sorry. You Chris.
Oh and it gets worse. Chris I guess I don't know if he gets word of this or someone is like hey dude like not a good look but I don't know how or why but he ends up editing this post and if you're thinking like oh he realized it was like import taste.
He's going to change it to something more appropriate or just do made it all together.
No that's not what happens.
The new caption read week fest 2015 went pretty good this year met some new friends that made it awesome.
Met some new friends one of which who died died zero empathy.
Yeah Sherry is obviously disgusted and frustrated because I mean she's feeling like her daughter's case is not being properly investigated by the agency who says that they find no evidence of foul play after formally interviewing Hannah Aaron and Chris.
And so she's now more determined than ever to get to the bottom of Lauren's death.
So in February of 2016 she decides to hire a private investigator Sheila Waisaki.
Sheila Waisaki. Why do I know that name?
Because we've talked about her before she became a private investigator to dig into the death of her college roommate Angela Samota.
If you remember we covered yeah we covered Angela's case in the fan club.
So she's actually the host of the without warning podcast that I keep mentioning and I'm actually going to link to that in the source material you guys can find it everywhere you listen you should definitely check it out.
But one of the first things that Sheila does is obviously track down Hannah and Aaron who by that point had moved to Florida together and actually had moved like just like a month after Lauren's death.
And a planned move. I don't know I tried to figure out why like was it was a job was it family I couldn't find anything but it could be for entirely like normal non nefarious reasons.
But when she tracks them down to Sheila's surprise when she shows up at the house in Florida Hannah is totally willing to talk and not just talk but like on the record fully recorded.
In that without warning podcast Hannah repeats her story that Lauren wasn't there when she woke up that Chris was asleep in the hammock.
And while she didn't know him well she didn't think that he would have like done something without her hearing it.
Plus she says that they had their dog with them this German shepherd puppy that she feels would have barked if something was going on.
And according to Hannah Chris was so drunk the day before when they came back to the camp like they had found him passed out on a houseboat and had to practically carry him back up to camp.
So in her opinion he would have been physically incapable of doing anything that night.
Correct. Now Sheila asked Hannah if the canoe that they paddled back to the campsite with was still there that morning and she says yes it was.
The canoe was basically like their taxi all weekend it was the only way to get back and forth from the Marina.
So if Lauren had left in the middle of the night someone would have had to pick her up another boat or she would have had to swim.
Right. And both are plausible I guess and from what I gather the Marina is I mean it's like shouting distance to the campsite.
But if someone was picking her up why would she leave all her stuff behind like even her shoes?
Yeah. Yeah you think you did at least bring your shoes.
Hannah tells Sheila that she did look for Lauren in and around the campsite when she woke up she checked that pee spot but found nothing.
But she didn't leave the campsite.
Then at some point the boys started jumping off the cliff so she got in the canoe and was like picking them up in the water whatever and eventually the group made their way back over to the Marina.
And that's where Hannah ran into Lauren's ex-boyfriend who told her that he hadn't seen Lauren.
Now in an ABC news piece from 2017 Hannah had explained that she didn't call Lauren's parents or the police because everyone pulled her not to worry.
I mean Lauren was super social so the idea that she could be with other people was not at a character.
Hannah felt that she searched as much as possible without going like to every single boat and she thought that Lauren would find them at some point you know.
Now here's what's interesting.
So the whole time that Sheila is interviewing Hannah there's this dude who is also in the house.
And Sheila would later find out that it's actually a friend of Aaron's named bricks.
Now this brick sky was also at Wakefest and helped set up the camp but from everything I can tell he was not actually sleeping at that campsite there that Saturday night.
But this brick sky keeps kind of coming in and out of the room sort of interrupting the interview.
And then Aaron who apparently wasn't there starts calling Hannah like multiple times.
Hannah answers and Sheila can hear Aaron's voice on the other end and she hears Aaron say something alarming.
Stick to the story. Now what story he's talking about or what he even means Sheila can only speculate.
Can you hear him saying that on Sheila's recording?
No you can't. There isn't much said even on Hannah's end to so it's not like you're hearing like you can't really piece together a full conversation.
And she hangs up eventually but after she hangs up she gets another call.
And Sheila can't tell who this one is from but after that call Hannah's tone just like changes and she decides that she should stop talking without a lawyer present fearing that she may be putting herself in legal jeopardy.
From a purely legal perspective she's not wrong.
She's not but for Sheila and by extension Lauren's family this leaves them back where they started with no new information that will crack this case.
But Sheila's not done and she interviews Aaron's ex-girlfriend this woman named Cassie hoping that maybe she'll have something to point them in the right direction.
And boy does she ever. Cassie says that she was also close friends with Lauren and was at Wake Fest that weekend too.
In fact Lauren had wanted to stay with her that weekend but there was no room which is why she ended up staying with Hannah, Chris and Aaron.
And speaking of Aaron Cassie tells Sheila in that podcast that he was physically abusive in their relationship.
Hitting, biting, slamming her down, things got so bad after one fight that they were both arrested and police tried to convince Cassie to get away from him.
And for a while they broke up but were like secretly started seeing each other again and then this whole secret relationship was going on up until the weekend of Wake Fest.
So he's cheating on Hannah.
It seems that way. And when Aaron showed up that weekend with her, I guess Cassie was pissed.
She and Hannah had even gotten into a physical altercation over him.
Did the sheriff's investigators know about all this?
They did because Cassie had actually went up to them even showed them pictures of what Aaron had done to her in the past but they just dismissed it because again they were convinced Lauren had just fallen off the cliff.
They didn't feel like this was some violent crime.
So they basically put the Hannah and Cassie fight into the police record.
So I mean if they are it's documented but like that's it.
Now Cassie also tells Sheila her theory about what might have happened.
She thinks it's possible that Aaron made a move on Lauren or tried to get with her in some way and Hannah woke up and saw something going on.
She freaked out and took her anger out on Lauren much like had happened with Cassie.
And so she thinks maybe there's this fight Lauren gets hurt and was either dead or they thought she was dead.
Is her theory that they hurt her at the campsite then like pushed her over or they carried her to the water or what?
I guess I'm confused. So good question.
She's not super detailed on this theory.
She's sort of rambling while she's talking about it just like taking a stab in the dark at what could have happened at that campsite.
Like I mean she wasn't there she doesn't know.
She thinks basically just some kind of fight Lauren is either severely injured or killed.
And then she doesn't really offer any theory as to how her body ended up in the water like did Lauren trip and fall off the cliff during this fight and then people went down and moved her or was she thrown over the cliff after or carried away in the water.
I mean it's just left kind of fuzzy in her version of what might have happened.
But this Cassie theory isn't that far off from Sheila's own theory.
She also believes that Lauren was attacked in some manner and that the blunt force trauma that she had was caused during that attack or her trying to escape an attacker.
According to that true life crime episode Sheila hires a forensic scientist to review the original autopsy report.
And he finds a few inconsistencies.
The first is that while it only takes a small amount of water in the lungs to drown most of the water ends up in your stomach, which I didn't really know.
There was no water in Lauren's stomach, which tells him that she did not drown.
And that's not to say it's not possible as pointed out in the episode you can drown without water in your lungs.
IE, dry drowning, IE, back to Joanne Matuke.
I can't even, I still can't fully wrap my head around it.
But you know, but the forensic scientist also notes that Lauren's injuries were nothing that you would expect to see from someone falling off a cliff.
Like he said you would like expect to see severe road rash, severe bruising, cutting scrapes, abrasions.
And the abrasions that she did have weren't consistent with falling off a cliff.
He said her clothing would have been ripped too, but they were quote pristine.
The medical examiner's report indicated that Lauren's facial injuries were minor, but this forensic scientist is shocked to find that they were significant.
Split open head, fractured nose, busted lip.
There were also symmetrical abrasions on Lauren's shoulder blades.
He thought maybe she was slammed down on a hard surface and then dragged slightly.
And there's what appears to be a bite mark on her right breast.
And that injury wasn't even mentioned in the original autopsy report.
And the bite is especially interesting because it's consistent with what Cassie said about Erin.
That's something that Sheila points out.
Yeah. And it's not just some of the autopsy inconsistencies that Sheila and the family are worried about at this point.
When Sheila takes a dummy, roughly the same size and weight as Lauren up to that campsite, she tries to recreate this fall that everyone's saying happened.
But she can't. That dummy never goes into the water.
Like there are trees and rocks that this like dummy keeps getting hung up on.
So if Lauren had fallen, her body would have been covered in all these scrapes and scratches too, which again it wasn't.
And she isn't the only one who can't make it work.
According to that 2020 episode, Officer Yard Chup, remember one of those off-duty officers on the day that Lauren's body was discovered, he did a similar experiment and he too could not get the dummy into the water.
And listen, if you watched that part, you'll probably notice as I did how that experiment was extremely speculative.
But again, he's not the first official to make the claim that her body wouldn't have fallen in.
So wait, weren't the guys cliff jumping from this place?
Like how were they able to get into the water?
Well, that's a thing. I mean, if you're actually jumping, you can jump out and get to the water, but you got to like push and leap out.
If you're accidentally falling, you're not landing in the water.
So no one can explain how she would have gotten into the water with a fall.
But even if you could explain that, there's another problem.
Sheila can't figure out how Lauren ended up where she did in the water.
That episode of Crime Watch Daily says that Lauren ended up about 700 feet away from where their campsite was.
Which like if you just eyeball it, you'd be like, okay fine, she floated whatever.
But if you hold it up against science like Sheila did, it doesn't work.
She tested the current in the lake and where Lauren's body ended up in the cove was actually the opposite of where the current should have taken her body.
Like her body should have floated toward the marina.
So someone placed her body in the cove?
Unless there's another way for her to get there.
As more people begin to question what happened to Lauren, officer Yarchuck points out something that he noticed in the autopsy photos.
There is an imprint of a triangle on Lauren's stomach.
And he's convinced that this imprint is from the bow of a canoe.
A canoe like the one her friends were using all began?
That's what he's thinking.
But the sheriff's office disputes this claiming that the imprint was from, I guess, one of their vehicles when they moved her body.
Explain that. Yeah. So it was hard for me to kind of wrap my head around.
But I think Crime Watch Daily did a decent job of explaining this.
So basically in that episode, the sheriff's department said that they loaded Lauren's body onto a boat to transport it back to the boat ramp.
Then her body was placed face down on top of this boat storage locker lid.
And I guess that lid or some corner of the lid is what caused this imprint.
Like they say it's an exact match.
So that's their explanation.
Now in December of 2016, Lauren's family took Sheila's findings and filed a wrongful death suit against Hannah, Aaron and Chris.
They even found a new witness who saw Aaron swimming from the cliffs to the Marina dock around midnight on Sunday.
And the witness claimed that when Aaron got out of the water, he seemed distraught, they said.
And you said this was around midnight?
Yes, which doesn't really fit the timeline of when Lauren was back up at the campsite.
Because remember, we've got officer Yard Chuck saying that Lauren and her crew didn't return to their campsite until around 2 a.m.
on Sunday. So I think whatever this witness saw, even if it was Aaron, it doesn't fit into anything really for me.
Like it's two hours earlier and I trust what officer Yard Chuck is saying, right?
Now ultimately, Hannah, Aaron and Chris all plead the fit, refusing to answer any questions.
Hannah is the first to get herself dismissed from the lawsuit and eventually Sherry and her family drops the lawsuit altogether.
But what the civil suit does accomplish for Sherry and her family is that it shows the incompetence of the lead investigator.
He admitted in his deposition that he had no specialized training in investigating homicides.
He also never requested a sexual assault kit because he assumed the pathologist would do that.
He didn't realize that it was something that he had to ask for.
I actually didn't know that either.
Me neither, but I'm a podcaster who is in charge of zero homicide investigations.
So I feel like, maybe if that's your job, you should know the rules.
And it's not like it's this dude's first day.
He's eight years in at this point when he was in charge of Lawrence's case.
And he also admitted that while he knew evidence could be collected from Lawrence fingernails, that never happened.
It sounds like no one covered the hands or tried to protect any evidence that could be under those fingernails.
Oh, what exactly did this guy do?
Nothing, including not even preparing for this deposition which he admitted to when asked.
In February 2019, an appeals court ruled that Sherry and her family could pursue a wrongful death lawsuit against Hannah.
According to that Fox 17 article by Dennis Ferrier, the appeals court pretty much shredded the original judge's decision.
In that article, it highlights a couple of choice words that the appeals court used like abuse of discretion, applying incorrect legal standard, and reaching illogical or unreasonable decision.
So this puts that option back on the table for the family.
And I don't know if they've continued to pursue that avenue.
Nothing in the research material says they have, but these things also take a really long time to play out.
Either way, it still leaves Lawrence's family without answers.
And the longer this goes, the more difficult it becomes to get those answers.
But they deserve them because it's hard to find peace when you feel justice hasn't been served.
And it's even harder when those in charge were never interested in even trying.
Lauren would have been 30 years old if she was still alive.
She would have been out of school, maybe working in the criminal justice system like she wanted to do, helping other families get the answers and closure that they deserve.
Lauren was someone who had a lot to offer our world, and now it's time that this world offers her something in return.
The truth. You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, GrimeJunkeyPodcast.com.
And be sure to follow us on Instagram, at GrimeJunkeyPodcast.
We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.
GrimeJunkey is an audio-check production.
