Episode 383: The Framing of Kelli Peters｜Morbid

Hey weirdos, it's Ash here, ready to share a little secret.

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I have been listening to the Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club, which actually Elena recommended to me.

She did not listen to it, but she said, girl, this title sounds so you.

And let me tell you, it did. I've been listening to it while I walk, and I am absolutely loving it.

I love all the different narrators. I love Audible.

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Visit audible.com slash morbid. I am absolutely obsessed with a sweet treat after dinner, and my favorite sweet treat right now is my mochi.

It's mine, not yours. Just kidding. You can have some too.

This is a cool, creamy scoop of ice cream wrapped in a soft, chewy dough.

It's like a sweet little ice cream dumpling or ravioli.

I'm obsessed. It's pillowy. It's satisfying.

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Hey weirdos, I'm Ash. And I'm Alayna. And this right here is the Morbid.

Whoa, this is Morbid. Alayna's like, what the fuck did you just say?

What the fuck? I don't really know. It's like the afternoon.

It's late in the afternoon. And as you know, me and Elena, we're early risers these days.

Early birdies. I mean, we've pretty much been early risers for a while now, but yeah.

But so I'm getting geriatric and around like three, four in the afternoon.

I'm just like, I don't know my name. Oh, yeah.

I'm not. We usually like we've told you before, we record in the mornings usually.

And that's when we're at our like most sprightly.

Oh, I want to say. And now it gets weird.

It gets weirder, which I guess is good because it can get weird in a fun way.

But we don't really know how to talk at this time of day.

So it can get weird in a weird way. Yeah.

But here we are. And speaking of weird. Weird.

In a good way. It's you. Let's talk about you.

You're weird in a good way. Weirdos. We went to the P.O.

Box and my goodness. Are you guys even real?

My goodness, guys. Like I'm wearing two new things of jewelry that are like the most beautiful, thoughtful things.

Yeah. You guys just like and you write such nice things and say like, you know, keep being yourselves and all that.

And you're like, it's just like really I'm telling you every time we read something like that or anything like that, we're always it just like sets our day off.

Right. It really does. We've been like bouncing through the day.

Yeah. It just like feels good. Yeah. So just like know that everything that you've said and sent and done and all that stuff has like really made every day awesome.

It's like you're making a difference. It's so appreciated that there needs to be a new word for appreciated, quite honestly.

Truly. Because, like, I get, like, overwhelmed with the sense of happiness.

Yeah. Like, truly. In a good way. Like, not overwhelmed.

Like, oh, I'm so overwhelmed. No, like, it's overwhelmed in the best way.

Like, right now I'm wearing skeleton hand earrings.

Yeah. That were sent to us. And I'm wearing a witchy woman. bracelet that i love yes and somebody sent us and we're gonna like thank everybody obviously yeah um we have like the the like um little tags that go along with everything next to your thing so um but i got like this cool snake ring and the witchy woman yes bracelet and also somebody like crocheted us ghosts yeah little witch hats and they are sitting in front of please know and again we we like put everything with all the things so we know but like right off the top of my head i can't I don't know everybody's name that sent it, but the little ghost that's crocheted with a witch hat is sitting on our pod desk in front of us while we pod.

And Elena can attest to this. There's something about, I took the one with the purple hat if you sent it, so you know.

There's something about this guy that I'm looking at right here.

She's holding him like a child right now.

There's something about him. I love him.

This ghost has soothed Ash's soul. Yeah, well.

Many times. in the last couple weeks. Yeah, I've had like a lot of anxiety in the last couple of weeks.

And she'll just grab him. I literally grab him and I just snug him.

And I'm not really like, like I love a good stuffed animal when I was younger, but I'm not like a big stuffed animal really now.

This is my guy. Yeah. This is my man. That is your man.

Step aside, Drew. No, I'm just kidding. No.

But honestly, like you guys just you rule and rule.

You've made us feel really appreciated. And I just hope that you feel just as appreciated because it's absurd how much we appreciate you.

It is. And we I also just like today's been such a good day.

I really want to shout out my wedding photographer.

Like I just have to because. Because we got a sneak peek of our engagement pictures today.

And like all of you should use this woman as your photographer because number one, she's so sweet.

She made us feel so comfortable within like five minutes.

And these fucking photos came out so good.

And these are just the sneak peeks that we got sent to us.

So our photographer that we're using is Molly Quill.

And if you want to follow her on Instagram, it's Molly Quill photography.

And if you don't do that, then I think you're lame.

She is amazing. Like, like, can't wait for you guys to see some of these.

Because I was so nervous. And I know like anybody else getting married, it's like a it's a crazy process.

Yeah. And I was so nervous, like because I was like, what if I don't like how I look in the pictures?

Like I'm not I'm not at the weight that I want to be at.

And, you know, like what if my face looks weird here and blah, blah, blah.

Let me tell you, none of that matters because you have the right photographer.

And if you are in love with the right person, none of that matters.

I love that. Like I Molly made me feel like a goddess in these pictures.

You look like a goddess in those pictures.

Shut up. Thank you. And Drew looks like a handsome prince.

And Drew is just so fucking cute. He is.

I want to punch him. Me too. I'm not going to.

Yeah. Because not nice. No. But I'm just happy.

I'm so glad you're happy. I'm glad that you're happy.

I'm happy. My little matron. My matron.

Technically, Elaine is my matron of honor.

But like, how rude is that? Yeah, it just doesn't sound great.

Isn't that the rudest thing to say to somebody?

Yeah. When they announce you, I'm going to tell them not to say that.

Thank you. I appreciate that. I just have two maids.

I'm still a maid. I know. Even that is like fucked.

I know. The truth is, it's all weird. I'm going to call you guys my humans of honor.

I love that. Yeah. Fuck that. You're not a maid.

You're bitches of honor. Oh my God. Imagine if I had you guys announced as my bitches of honor.

Yeah. I'll do that. Please do that. I will.

I will. Wow, wedding planning is fun because you can do whatever the fuck you want.

Yeah, it's your damn day. It's your damn day, but this whole episode is not about me.

It is ass. It is ass. It's hard to say ass.

It is ass. You know what, Mikey, my little brother, I understand why you called me that for the first three years of your life.

Ass. He used to call me Asley. Yeah, he did.

Yeah, a little shit. But I get it because I just couldn't even say my own name.

Yeah, you know, that's where we are right now.

It is an Ash-centric episode and I'm trying to get comfortable.

I was going to say, can you hear the screaming?

Oh, God, the chair, the everything. I'm happy, okay?

I'm happy. I'm happy chair. All right, we have an Ash-centric episode today, and it's kind of honestly different than anything we've really ever done before.

Ooh. Because this is going to be like an episode about somebody that was framed.

Ooh. Yes, which kind of gives it away. Intrigue.

Spoiler alert. The episode title would also give it away.

I have to move again, so I'm sorry, okay?

These chairs, we need new ones. They're not comfortable.

I can't look at my computer and also look at you if I don't move.

You got it. I moved. There you go. All right.

Squeak, squeak. I will not move again. Squeakity, squeakity, squackity.

All right. So this episode is about the framing of Kelly Peters.

Ooh. Have you heard anything about this?

No. Nor had I. I actually don't even remember how I found this case because it was a while ago.

All right. There we go. But I did find it.

What an interesting tale. Yeah, you're welcome.

We're both like, yeah, I don't know what this is.

Well, I know what it is now. You know what it is.

I just don't know how I found it. I'd probably Google.

But I did find a great source in the LA Times articles written by Christopher Gofford or Gofford.

I'm sorry if I didn't say that correctly.

He did. It was cool how they broke it up.

It was like broken up into chapters on the LA Times.

Oh, I love when they do that. I'm going to link it in the show notes for sure.

Incredible six-part article. And then I also found a great source in Kelly Peter's book, which is entitled, I'll Get You, Drugs, Lies, and the Terrorizing of a PTA Mom.

Wow. So I see where we are now. What gave it away?

I don't know. Yeah. what do you just have a feeling um but i used a bunch of other great sources that i'll link in the show notes but for time purposes let's get rolling shall we let's get into this pta moms let's go yeah on february 17 2010 kelly peters was where she usually was on weekday afternoon she was rounding up children for their afternoon activities Kelly had a completely different career before her daughter Sydney started school.

Before Sydney started school, she had been on the finance end of things and worked in the mortgage industry.

It was like a good job, but it wasn't really Kelly's calling.

So when she and her husband Bill decided to move to Irvine, they got an apartment and decided that in order for Kelly to become more of a part of her daughter's school experience, she was going to quit her finance job and dedicate her time to volunteering at Sydney's school.

Okay. Really great. Yeah. Bill would continue running the restaurant that he owned, and on the side, Kelly would operate her small business only for the groovies.

What? She painted tie-dye jeans because she was basically... She's kind of like a hippie, which is fucking rad.

Or like was a hippie at one point in time.

So she had a side business called Only for the Groovy.

Only for the Groovy. Yeah. So if you're not groovy... I feel like you should start a business like that.

I would love to. Yeah. I don't know what time I will do that with.

Only for the Groovy. You do weird things in the time that doesn't exist.

Exactly. So maybe I will. You can do it.

Thank you. What a little freaking pep talk.

You know, I'm here to believe in you. Yeah.

So they decided that they were going to stay in their apartment.

She would be able to leave her job, run her side job.

But since they were in an apartment, they could have, you know, a little more leeway.

Yeah. And they were like, you know, being permanent renters was not ideal, but being more of her daughter's life outweighed the negatives that came along with it.

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So immediately, the kids, the staff, and the parents involved in the school system were drawn to Kelly.

They freaking loved her. She had a great personality.

She was really good with the kids. And she had really great ideas, too.

So in no time, she became president of the PTA and also had a critical role in eventually orchestrating a program for the kids that offered cooking, sports, and art classes.

Oh, cool. Yeah, really cool of that. So a few weeks before that specific afternoon that I mentioned in the beginning, Kelly was getting all the kids lined up to go inside after their tennis lesson.

It was almost time for the parents to come and pick them up.

When Kelly thought that everybody was all rounded up, they headed inside.

But shortly after returning inside, she realized that there was one little boy who did not line up.

So the tennis coach, excuse me, who had just worked with the kids realized that this little boy was still outside and brought him to the front office.

When his mother, Jill Easter, arrived to pick him up, she was a little late.

So he was still sitting in the office and Kelly was waiting with him.

And she could kind of tell that something was up.

So she was like, she asked her son what happened.

So once he filled her in, she was like, well, now I want to talk to Kelly to make sure that I have this whole story 100%.

Because like, did my kid get left outside?

Yeah, I'd be very angry. So Kelly was like, yes, he had been slow to line up, and this was really rare for this to happen, but unfortunately it had, and she apologized profusely for this.

She assured Jill Easter that the tennis coach had brought the boy right inside once he saw him, and he had only been left outside for a short time, a matter of minutes.

Still, that's a little boy, and he was left outside, and that is not okay.

And a million things can happen in a matter of minutes.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. And we we know that to be true, of course.

Yeah. So Kelly later remembered again, apologizing profusely to Jill and her son, too, and thought that the conversation was over and everything had been smoothed over.

But she thought wrong. Oh, yeah. Jill Easter had started walking away, but a thought entered her mind, and she had one more thing to talk to Kelly about.

What was the deal with the tennis coach who brought her son to the front office?

She said, had he been inappropriate with my son at all?

And Kelly was like, no, absolutely not. She was like, I know this coach personally.

We've worked together for years. He would never be inappropriate with a child.

So Jill was like, okay. And she walked away again.

But this time she didn't really seem as assured.

Okay. And Kelly was a little more concerned because the whole time that Jill was talking to her, she had this same smile plastered on her face, even though she seemed like she was irritated.

Oh, that's a little scary. It is a little scary.

It was unnerving to Kelly, but she had kids and a job to get back to.

So she was like, all right. And that was probably why she was a little less patient the third time Jill Easter approached her.

This time, not with her child. And this time she wanted to speak outside away from the children.

So her and Kelly made their way outside and she started pushing the point about the tennis teacher more.

She was like, are you sure that nothing inappropriate happened?

And Kelly was like, I'm absolutely positive.

And she was like, well, then why was my son crying and why was his face dirty?

Kelly later said that the boy had not been crying at all in her care and that his face wasn't all that dirty.

It was just like six year old boy messy.

Like there was mud on his face or anything like that.

But Jill saw it differently to her. It looked like her child's face had been forced down into the mud.

That's what she claims. This is stressing me out like a lot.

It's stressful. Don't worry. Nothing happened to this little boy.

Because I'm just like, ugh. Yeah. Should have started out with that.

Nothing happened to this little boy. He did get left outside for a couple minutes after everybody got lined up and that's not okay.

Which I'm going to be honest, I would be furious and my kid would be out of that.

Yeah. Situation. Absolutely. But I wouldn't do anything further.

No. That would just be it. No. That would be it.

Yeah. The trust has been broken. You can't handle it.

So I'm going to leave. Exactly. Exactly.

Because that's what you should do when something happens like that, when no one was hurt, nothing big occurred.

If nothing happened to this child, you know what I mean?

Mm-hmm. If you feel like you want to remove him from the situation, that's fine.

You go about your day. Yeah, exactly. Let the thing continue.

Other people can make their decisions. Exactly.

And that's where you and Jill Easter are a little different.

I see. So she was like, I think that it looks like he was forced down in the mud, like his face is covered in dirt.

And Kelly was like. it's not at all like no we wouldn't have left him covered in dirt even if he had tripped in dirt yeah no but jill would not stop pressing the issue and it was getting weird and kelly had enough she was like i'm not gonna continue to entertain that something happened with your son and the tennis coach absolutely not it did not happen so she said to jill one more time that nothing inappropriate had happened and that she was done with this conversation it would not continue So Jill did not change her irritated smile, but she turned to walk away.

And before she did, she said, how do you sleep at night with the way that you treat people?

And then as she was walking away, she yelled to Kelly, I'll get you for this.

Ooh. Yep. So Kelly was understandably really freaked out by the latter part of her interaction with Jill and really upset about the whole thing, specifically the accusations that Jill had made against not only her, but the tennis coach.

Yeah. She was really shaken up by this. And it's like, that's such a, that's such a, like an actual supervillain thing to say.

I'll get you for this. It's a lot. Or it's like the Wicked Witch of the West.

I'll get you for this, my pretty. Yeah. And your little dog, too.

And your little dog, too. She was like, I am shook.

Yeah, I'd be nervous. So she spoke to her co-workers about it.

She talked to some of the staff at school and they were like, listen, you can't let that happen again.

But don't worry about your interaction with her too much.

Like things like this happen from time to time with parents.

It usually blows over pretty quickly. Yeah.

And Kelly was like, okay, but she was still not so sure.

Something about this whole interaction made her think that this wasn't going to be a cut and dry situation.

Yeah, when somebody says, I'll get you for this, that's usually not the end of the conversation.

So Jill Easter, much like she had promised, wasted absolutely no time starting a campaign against Kelly.

Yeah, see, this is where... This is where I don't understand people like this.

No. Like if something happened, by all means, I would burn the entire world down if something happened to my child.

Like that would be the end of all of them.

Oh, yeah. I would start more than a campaign.

But if something did, of course, that I am, I would be pissed.

Yeah, I don't care how long it was. If you leave my six-year-old outside and you're in charge of them, they're never going to be in your charge again.

That's just the way it is. I get that. I get that.

But even if that happened, like I said, I would never start a campaign against someone.

No, I would just move on. I wouldn't do that anyways.

I don't understand when that stuff happens now with people.

I don't understand starting campaigns against somebody.

No. It's a weird waste of time. Yeah. It's like a very weird fixation.

It also just says so much more about you than it does about the person you're campaigning against.

Like just remove yourself and your son from that situation and let other people make their decision.

If they want to leave their children there and everything turns out great, then that is their business.

Right. Like you can make your decision, but other people, I never understand these kinds of things.

No, and honestly, when I'm approached by somebody, like, trying to get me to think one way because of their experience, I'm like, oh, I want to experience my own thing.

Yeah, just, like, let me make my choice.

Like, this isn't a cult. You don't need to brainwash me into thinking how you think.

But Jill, that's what she wanted to do. But it's like, did she really think, and I'm sorry if I'm going ahead.

Oh, no, you're okay. You can say, like, shut the fuck up.

I would literally never. But if, like, did she, do you think she really thought something happened?

Yeah. It's hard to say. Okay. And I think it will become clearer as the episode goes on that it is hard to say.

I think that Jill Easter loved her children.

Yeah. Obviously. Because if you really believed something happened.

Yeah. That I'm like, ah. So, the thing is, and we're going to get into it, there was an investigation.

Like, there were multiple investigations done.

And all three investigations, and I don't want to get too far, but all three investigations proved that absolutely nothing happened.

Okay. This child was not distraught. Like, he was completely fine.

So... I don't know. I don't know if it's a hard... I don't know if her brain wanted to trick her into thinking that something had happened.

It's easy to get that way when you're that worked up.

Yeah. And I... Yeah. You'll see. We'll get to it.

You'll see. So she starts this campaign against Kelly the day after this whole incident had gone down.

Jill was at the school handing out flyers to parents accusing Kelly of deliberately... And this is in quotations.

Deliberately locking her son outside of the school... calling him slow to his face, and dragging him out back and bloodying his knuckles.

What? So this incident turned in from he got left outside for a couple minutes, too long, wrong, like we've said, but it got escalated into she deliberately locked him outside, called him slow to his face, which I think that came from she said he was slow to line up.

Yeah. She was not saying, she was not insulting him in any way.

Yeah. Malicious with what she was saying.

Then saying bloodying his knuckles. How do you even bloody someone's knuckles?

Especially if you've already locked them outside.

I don't understand. Bloodying his knuckles?

She said she dragged him out back and bloodied his knuckles.

What? So like, I think there would probably be footage of that.

Wow. Yeah. I just picture her like standing with her arms crossed Regina George style as she is watching everybody read the flyers.

Yeah. And I'm like, whoa. Like standing at the top of the stairway.

Yeah, just like. But the school's principal, Heather Phillips, got a call about this, all this commotion.

And once she was briefed, she went outside to confront Jill herself.

She was like, Jill, this is harassment. Yeah.

And you need to get off of this property.

Like, you got to stop. Yeah. Jill, an attorney, told the principal that she was fully within her rights and that she was going to continue to do this until Kelly Peters was either fired or left.

That is a plot twist. I did not know she was an attorney.

Whoa. She is an attorney. Or she was. So she threw in...

Excuse, sorry. She threw in that she was actually considering making a bumper sticker for her car, laying out what she'd written on her flyers.

Like she was not done here. And she spent the next few days handing out those flyers.

And when she ran out of those, she would just hang outside of the school and talk to any parent who would listen about her version of events and how outraged she was that the school was not doing anything about it.

But that wasn't the truth. The school had done something about it.

They launched an investigation into her reports, as did the after school enrichment director who oversaw Kelly and the volunteers and the Irvine police launched their own investigation.

So the school did the parent company of the after school program did or like the enrichment program did and the police did.

Wow. All three investigations founded the same results.

Neither Kelly nor the tennis coach had done anything inappropriate to this boy.

No crime was committed. And while Jill had said that her son had been left outside for 20 minutes, all three investigations found that the time was similar or excuse me, was closer to five to eight minutes later.

Which is still a very long time to be left outside unattended.

But it's not 20 minutes. But it's not 20 minutes.

And the other thing is, I don't know if this was like a gated area.

So, you know, I would hope that it was. I would hope that it was.

I would think like that, like even eight minutes, like leaving a six-year-old outside for eight minutes when they don't know if they're being let in.

Again, would be terrifying for the six year old, like a little like, why am I locked out?

Yeah, kind of thing. But I just like one, you don't need to make it worse.

No, like eight minutes is already pretty rough.

That's pretty bad. That doesn't look great.

No. For anybody involved in this situation, no kid should be left outside at a school.

No. That's just the way it is. Eight minutes is bad.

So why are you upping it to 20 to look crazy?

Right. Because like eight minutes is bad.

You don't need to elongate the time. Yeah.

Five to eight minutes is a rough amount of time.

And now it's just looking wild. Like 20 minutes, you don't need to lie.

No. And then what is happening? Like, why are you adding all of this stuff on?

And that's so messed up to do to your kid.

Yeah. Oh, it absolutely is. Like, are you trying to get your kid to believe something happened?

Like, what is going on? Well, and so everybody that was, like, undergoing these investigations spoke with this little boy.

Yeah, so he's having to go through all this.

He's having to go through this. But all three investigations, literally, they were like, he wasn't bothered by this at all.

Yeah. Like, it happened, and he was probably scared when it happened.

Sure. But he, honestly, he probably wasn't that affected by it.

No. It's more like a parent thing that would be affected by it.

Exactly. All of them were like, yeah, no, like, he was completely fine.

Yeah. Like, he wasn't even crying. Damn.

And there was no mud on his face whatsoever.

This is just so weird. Like, this is so weird.

This is the weirdest beginning. Oh, we are only going to get strangers.

I'm just like, what? So Kelly, she made a mistake.

And she was very distraught over this entire thing.

Yeah. So she actually went to the school and offered to resign.

She was like, I fucked up. I feel like I should resign.

I'm making the school look bad. Like, I can't believe this has all happened because of me.

I'm freaking out. It was a mistake. It was a mistake.

No one was hurt, luckily. And I'm sure she never had it happen again.

I was going to say, and I'm sure that will make you look a hundred more times before you go inside.

Mm-hmm. So the school was like, you don't need to resign over this.

Absolutely not. Like, these things do happen.

So Jill Easter was still not happy, though, and now took things even further.

She petitioned the court for a restraining order against Kelly on the grounds of stalking.

Wait. Yes, I did say that Jill petitioned the court for a restraining order against Kelly for stalking.

Jill claimed that Kelly was now stalking her and her son and had gone as far as to even threaten Jill's life.

Wow, this has escalated. There was no evidence of such, and so the petition was denied, but Jill was still not done.

Now she filed a civil suit against Kelly, staying true to her word that she was going to get her.

She also filed against the school, the school district, and the parent company of the after-school enrichment program.

So in the civil suit, she and her husband, who was also an attorney... claimed that Kelly had falsely imprisoned their son and that the event left him with emotional distress and extreme and severe mental anguish.

This is so... This is so disturbing. It's the most bizarre.

This is so disturbing. It is the most bizarre.

Like... I'm just, I'm at a loss. I don't even know what to say here.

It's wild. So it was enough for Kelly to have to hire an attorney at this point.

But eventually the Easter's, that's them, Jill and her husband's last name, the Easter's dropped the suit when it became clear that they weren't going to win.

Yeah. So now let's go back to February 17th, 2010.

The day started off like any other day. Kelly drove her PT cruiser to the school.

She got ready to spend the afternoon keeping the kids busy with their activities.

Yeah. These days, she was sure to double and triple count each head as they got ready to line up.

And the day was going on like normal. But then things shifted quite dramatically.

Kelly was called to the school administrator's office.

And when she walked in, there was an Irvine police officer standing there.

She was told that the officer needed to speak with her privately.

And Kelly's first thought was that something had happened to her husband because her husband traveled for work.

And she was like, oh, my gosh, was he in some kind of accident?

They quickly assured her that wasn't the case.

That wasn't why they were there. So the police officer asked Kelly his first question and she is taken aback.

He wanted to know if he went in her car and searched it, what he would find.

And he said, Kelly was like, you wouldn't find much of anything, but you can go ahead and search it.

Like, feel free. Yeah. So she follows the officer out to the parking lot, but she's like getting nervous and confused.

Yeah, because even if you know you haven't done anything, but you're like, why am I being asked?

It's like when you get pulled over for like barely doing anything, like maybe you're speeding or something and you get pulled over and you're like...

Am I going to be like arrested? Like you have no idea because it's such a scary situation.

Anytime there's like a person of authority asking you to do something, it's like, fuck, why am I being made to do this?

Well, and she's walking outside and she sees that there's a cop car with its lights turned on parked behind her car.

So she is not going to be able to get out and a helicopter flying overhead.

So she's like, what the fuck is going on right now?

So the officer opens the doors and takes a look around and it does not take him long to exit the vehicle holding a pouch that had been tucked behind the driver's seat.

It kind of sounds like it was like in the pocket on the back of the driver's seat.

You know what I'm saying? Okay. Inside the pouch that he took out was one ceramic pipe, like kind of like what you would like smoke drugs out of, 17 grams of pot, 11 Percocet pills, and 29 Vicodin pills.

Oh, I'm going to give you that round up one more time.

A ceramic pipe, 17 grams of pot, 11 Percocet pills and 29 Vicodin pills.

The weirdest medley. Yeah. That one could find.

That's that's a strange concoction of things.

Now, the possession of pills were enough to be a federal offense.

Oh, so that was bad. That's really bad. So everything gets spread out on the roof of the car and Kelly is sobbing and begging the officer to get that away from there.

She's pleading with him and she explains over and over how she has no idea where these drugs came from.

She has no idea who they belong to. She absolutely does not do drugs.

Her husband doesn't do drugs. She doesn't even think she has friends that do drugs.

Oh, no. She's losing it. Oh, I feel so much anxiety for her right now.

When you're trying desperately to say you didn't do something and you know you didn't do it.

Yeah. Oh, it's that's the worst feeling is when you just want to like scratch your own face off because you just want to be like, ah, this is not mine.

And then the other thing is, so they're taking all of this into evidence and she's freaking out and she's getting taken inside to do a bunch of field sobriety tests.

Oh, my God. And the whole time, all she can think about is her 10-year-old daughter, Sydney, who goes to this school hearing about this or seeing it and just in general having the word spread that she was some kind of, and this is her words, common criminal.

Wow. She's losing it. Oh, my God. My whole body is like stressed out right now.

Right? Yeah. So like I said, she's taken inside for all of these field sobriety tests.

And the reason she's taken inside for these, as well as further questioning, was because the Irvine police had received a call not long ago that came in from a concerned parent of a child at the school.

This parent was a man who identified himself as V.J.

Chandraskar. I'm sorry if I said that wrong.

And said that he had actually seen the P.T.

Kruver driving erratically in the school's parking lot.

He saw drugs in the vehicle and was able to identify the woman driving as Kelly Peters, the president of the school's PTA.

Oh, boy. He even provided the police with her license plate number.

And he said he had seen all of this. That's a lot to see.

Using how he would have seen drugs tucked into the back of the driver's seat, but like, okay.

Totally. So Kelly passes all the sobriety tests and she was told and then she's told what time the call had come into the school reporting her.

And she was like, yeah, I had been in the school for already 30 minutes when you got that call.

So that doesn't really make any sense. And this person said, like, I'm watching her drive like erratically.

I see drugs in the car. Like, I see all of this.

What? multiple staff members at the school were able to confirm that she absolutely had been in the building at this point.

So they had to go and search her apartment.

They're like, we have to search your apartment.

Yeah. You can't just, you can't take someone's word.

Like, no, those aren't mine. It's like, Oh, okay.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry, ma'am. Oldest excuse in the book.

So she allowed them to, and they ask obviously like if they can have permission and she's like, yeah, like I have nothing to hide or at least I think I don't.

Yeah. Now she's probably like, Jesus, like, yeah, I, I, I thought there was nothing in there, and now I'm sending them into my home.

That's the thing. She did say, though, that she did leave her car unlocked from time to time.

Like, she was like, I just didn't really think about it, especially when we're in the school.

Everybody lock your cars. Lock everything.

Not just because people will plant drugs in them, but because... They'll hide in your backseat and kill you.

Lock your cars. So luckily there was nothing incriminating found in the search of Kelly's apartment.

Not a single drug or any kind of paraphernalia.

So the cops are like, she's got all the makings of a drug dealer in her backseat, but nothing at home.

Yeah. And at home, there was these specific pill pouches that were found like with all the drugs in them.

They were like bagged up separately. And she didn't have those baggies in her house.

She had different baggies. So they were like, yeah, that's weird.

Yeah, none of this checks. That doesn't check.

So Kelly also informs the officer. She's like, neither me and my husbands are drug users.

Like, you're not going to find anything in here.

I don't know who would have put that parcel in my car.

And then she said, oh, wait a second. She did know one person who might be capable of setting her up.

Maybe someone who said, I'll get you. She said, I have one enemy, a parent at the school named Jill Easter.

So now a little background on Jill Easter.

Let's talk about Jill. Jill. Let's talk about Jill.

I've been really wanting to say Jumapel lately.

Jumapel. John said it the other day and I was like, I'm going to say that more.

Also, John said it with like a really good French accent.

Oh, honey, Elena's eyes are real spicy right now.

And I was like, can you learn more French?

Oh, she loves a ha ha. I'm just kidding.

That wasn't supposed to come out like that.

It was supposed to be more like, ha ha. But it came out as, ha ha.

Am I a fucking goose? What just happened to me?

I'm screaming. I'm not well, bitch. Oh, man, that's funny.

Ha ha. Back to Jemapel Jill. Jemapel not Jill.

Jemapel Ashkel. It rhymes. To Jepel Jill Easter.

Oh, there you go. I don't know. Anyways, I'm losing it.

Jill and Kelly were cut from two very different cloths.

Kelly was said by many to have a heart of gold, whereas Jill had been known to be a stoic, standoffish, inaccessible ice queen.

Oof. Those were literally the adjectives used by the people closest to her to describe her.

Oh, no. So that's bad. If anybody used any of those words to describe me other than maybe stoic, I'd be like, wow.

Yeah. I should get new friends or a new personality.

What's her sign? Bitch, I don't know. I couldn't find her birthday.

Oh, I want to see if I can track it down.

Do it. Jill Easter. So there were people who even went as far as describing her as, quote, a bit of a spoiled brat who was used to getting her way.

Oof. So I think that's kind of where this whole thing stems from.

Yeah, that's not great. Jill had gotten her law degree from one of the best schools in America, which is UC Berkeley.

And she worked for a time as a corporate and securities lawyer at a firm in...

Palo Alto? Palo Alto, I think it is. Thank you.

Geography queen. I might have said it wrong and I might have just steered you into the storm, but I'm hoping that I didn't.

Cheers to the foot. We just touched feet.

It was gross. We just touched foots. It was terrible.

But we presented you both Palo and Palo.

So do that what you will. She worked there.

But that was actually where she met her husband, Kent, who she would eventually have three children with.

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Why are there ridges on Reese's peanut butter cups?

Probably so they never slip from her hands.

Could you imagine? I'd lose it. Luckily, Reese's thought about that.

Wonder what else they think about. Probably chocolate and peanut butter.

Now, once she became a mom, Jill put an end to her law career and tried her new hand at becoming a stay at home mom.

Jill and Kent were like incredibly well off people.

They had a beautiful home. They lived in a very bougie neighborhood.

They were killing it. And also, Kent was a partner at a very successful and powerful law firm in Orange County.

So they were doing the damn thing. Yeah, they're a bit of a power couple.

Kelly came up and lived a more blue collar lifestyle.

She was born in 1961 in Reno, Nevada. I don't know if you're supposed to say Nevada or Nevada.

I think it's Nevada. Okay. To people from Nevada.

Okay, cool. I grew up saying Nevada. I did too.

But I've been told many times it's Nevada.

So Nevada. Nevada. Nevada's honestly more fun to say, so.

Well, Nevada just feels right to me, but I don't live there.

So I can't say. I don't know. Just like you can't say Worchester because that's not how you say it.

No. Well, Kelly was from Nevada and her father was an insurance salesman who also played drums part time in a band, which is pretty fucking rad.

Wow. Okay. Kelly's mom actually would take her to her father's shows.

I love that. She'd just like take her on tour.

And so Kelly grew up loving music and she also loved art and animals.

She rode horses and she learned to take care of them from her mom, who was a part time horse trainer.

So Kelly was like really always taking care of everybody around her, animals and people.

She learned how to take care of kids by helping out with her three younger brothers.

And then she and Bill met when she was about 25 years old and working on Newport Beach.

They'd always had like a really loving relationship.

So many people described their marriage as a fairy tale romance.

Oh, I love that. And they were married in 96.

And by 2000, Sydney was born. And as we know, just like Jill, Kelly also wanted to be a stay-at-home mom and left her career for it.

But that was like literally the only thing the two of them shared in common.

Awesome. So a few of Kelly's friends had warned her about Jill.

She would stop at nothing to get her way.

And in the weeks and months leading up to the drug bust of her car, Kelly would learn that to be true.

Whenever they ran into each other at school, Jill would just stare menacingly at Kelly.

She would mutter insults under her breath at Kelly.

Sometimes if she wasn't up for like too much of an interaction, she'd actually just flip the bird at Kelly.

Just like at school. Wow. I wish that you had watched Big Little Lies because it is giving that.

Ooh. Yeah. I know the, I know like the gist of.

Yeah. So that kind of makes sense actually.

You watch the first episode of Big Little Lies and like immediately I'm set in this story.

You're just in here. And you're right. You can't really find her birthday.

No, you can't. So it's hard. I don't know what her sign is.

I'm not going to speculate because it's only going to get crazier and I would offend anybody who signed up.

You'll offend all the signs. I'm also always offending people with their signs.

I'm sorry. I'm a fucking Gemini. So offend me too.

I'm made for it, man. Yeah, exactly. And also like.

I'm always offending people just by like being a Capricorn.

Opening my mouth. It happens. Capricorn vibes.

Yes. Maybe Jill was a Capricorn. She might have been.

She might have been. She's. No, she's like a. Yeah.

Yeah. So Kelly explained these run-ins that she had with Jill to the officers in her apartment.

And she also told them about some more recent harassment that she'd received.

She couldn't prove that it was from Jill, but she obviously had a feeling.

She started getting these emails to her personal email account and to her PTA one that she had through the school from all kinds of different senders.

It was basically like bots attacking her.

Yeah. for the people growing up in the nowadays.

Can you imagine spending this much time on anything?

No. Literally anything? No. And if I was going to spend this much time on anything, it would be something to like add value to my life and not terrorize another human being.

No. So these people are emailing her saying, you better hope that I never run into you in a dark alley.

What? Kelly's like, well, I don't really hang out in dark alleys.

Also, are you just like an animated character from like a, you know, 60s television show?

Yes. Twirling your mustache? Yeah, like twirling the ends.

Exactly. They would also send things like, you're lucky it wasn't my child you hurt because I would handle this myself.

I mean, girl, here's the thing. Like, if she actually, she didn't.

Like, the investigation has proven she didn't.

Her background. The multiple investigations.

And to me, it seems like she's got a pretty good, like, solid history and background behind her to kind of, especially along with the investigation, say that this was just a very big mistake that was remedied.

No one was hurt. Right. And that's it. Exactly.

And it's like. God, my goodness. She didn't hurt anybody.

You would think that she had broken this child's arm in the middle of a Wendy's.

Because that's the thing. There doesn't seem to be any... hurt that happened here.

I understand rage in that moment being like, are you fucking kidding me?

But I do not understand the level of rage that this reaches.

No, because, because it's a very easy, if that's what happened, then you say, okay, we're done at this school.

I hope you know that like you fucked up and he will not be coming back.

Exactly. Thank you. We'll be figuring something else out.

Exactly. And that's where it ends. You move on.

Exactly. Yeah. But no, Jill had to win this.

Yeah. I think that's what it was. Yeah. So all of these weird emails are seemingly from fake accounts, but it doesn't end there.

Kelly was telling the officers this. She was like, I took my dog to the park one day and I had this super weird interaction with a woman who was really interested in dog sitting for me.

This woman gave Kelly her card and insisted that if she need anything at all to give her a call.

But the weird thing was this woman hadn't approached any other person in this dog park at all.

And all of these people have dogs. So it's like if you're looking for new customers, why are you only interested in me?

Yeah. And Kelly said that the conversation felt like it was rehearsed beforehand.

She was like something about this was super weird.

That's creepy. In the days following, Kelly would realize that this woman was following her.

What? And there had been another instance where she noticed an older man in a white car following her, too.

I don't know how she figured this out. She was able to figure out that the woman was a private investigator hired by the Easter's, and she was hired to befriend Kelly and get any incriminating evidence on her that she could.

Okay. And the man who was following her was another private investigator hired by the Easter's.

And he was hired to gather evidence to show that Kelly was having an affair with the tennis coach.

What the fuck? She was not. I understand why private investigators are necessary in certain circumstances.

But in stuff like this? Things like this.

What are you doing? That's terrifying. Yeah.

Like, that's really scary. That's crazy.

So Kelly's getting more and more scared.

Her mistake had not called for this kind of a reaction.

She'd apologized profusely. She did not think that this was going to be the end result of this.

Yeah. And she started worrying that she was dealing with somebody unhinged here.

Yeah, I'd be a little worried. She was terrified that things were going to escalate further.

She was really scared about the safety of her daughter because it seemed like this woman was going to stop at nothing to destroy her.

So she started worrying about letting her guard down.

And she was worried about letting her guard down specifically when it came to Sydney.

She said she, quote, felt in her heart that Jill was going to kidnap her daughter.

Oh, my God. She was terrorized. So she changed the locks on her apartment.

She started carrying pepper spray and she avoided being alone any moment she could help it.

But as we know, this was still far from over.

Oh, my God. The police didn't arrest Kelly, although they very much could have.

Since they didn't find any kind of evidence of drugs or drug use at her home, or like I said, like anything that matched this weird parcel.

And they had now had the background on her relationship with Jill Easter.

They were like, I think we need to investigate this a little further before any kind of arrest is made.

Kelly was not ruled out as a suspect, but she also was not the only one that the police wanted to look into.

There's actually another... character, quote-unquote, in this whole debacle.

This is a character. There was a father who lived across the street from the school who was known to have a history of, quote, strange and alarming behavior.

This man was known to wander onto the school property without permission and And I said he's a parent at the school, like a parent of a child at the school.

Still. You can't do that. I just wanted to make sure I had said that.

Yeah. He would go on strange rants to the staff.

He was heckling the crossing guard all the time.

And he would videotape the kids crossing through the crosswalk.

No. He also... He also showed up as Batman to pick his son up, like, on a day that wasn't Halloween.

And he was also known to be desperate for the PTA president position that Kelly held.

So the police were like, yeah, he's a pretty good suspect.

Huh. So they interview him. But he gave an alibi that checked out for the time that the phone call was made.

But this man was arrested later for imitating a security guard on a high school campus while in possession of a gun.

What the fuck? Yeah. This area, like Irvine, California.

Is everybody okay? It's one of those areas where like everybody moves because there's no crime and it's like so safe and la-di-da-da.

And it's like all this shit is lurking beneath the fucking- Like, are you all right out there?

I'm all set. No, thank you. What is going on?

Because, you know, when you got to the Batman thing, I was like, I can't even be mad at that.

No. Maybe he told him he would show up as Batman.

That's fine. Sometimes you tell your kids something and you're like, oh, well, shit.

Shit, gotta do that. And I wouldn't give a fuck about what other parents thought about me when I pick up my kids.

But like you put it together with everything else and you're like, bleh.

Yeah, like videotaping children in the crossroads.

Videotaping the kids was the part when I was like, um, no.

Yeah, exactly. And then the last part. Well, in the last part, you're just like, what the actual fuck?

Exactly. Like something is wrong. here it sounds like he was a mentally ill person that was like judged heavily but then he needed help clearly because he was that incident happened dangerous so you know let's hope that that man got the help he needed let's hope but back to the original predicament in another attempt to get to the bottom of how these drugs ended up in kelly's car the police decided to investigate the phone call that they'd received from that concerned parent vj fake last name guy There were a few problems with that caller.

There was no parent or student on file with that last name.

The caller had given a fake number as the callback number.

Like if they were like had to call him back, he literally provided them with a fake number.

Listening back to the call, the investigators agreed that the man seemed nervous and had stuttered a few times.

And four, he started off with an American accent.

But after he was asked for his name, which was a name of Indian descent, he started using a fake Indian accent.

Huh. So the police said that it was like after he gave the name, he realized that it like required an accent or something.

Which is like, it doesn't. It doesn't at all.

But okay. Like, how rude of you. What? So with all the bizarreness, they make the decision to trace the call.

The caller had said that he lived across the street from the school, and that's why his vantage points showed him so much.

But when the call was traced, the location did not come up as being across the street from the school.

The call had actually come from a very ritzy hotel in Newport Beach.

What? And the caller had used one of the phones in their business offices at this hotel.

What? And because of that, the investigators kind of hit a jackpot.

Yeah. There were security cameras pointing in the very direction of those offices.

Oh, shit. So they were able to get the footage from the day that the call was made...

And wouldn't you know it, a man, that man making that call happened to look just like Jill Easter's husband.

Get the fuck out. Kent Easter. Are you kidding me?

The footage was shown to multiple school, like, administrators and staff, and they were like, oh, yeah, that's Kent, like, 100%.

What? Yep. It also just so happened that his personal law office was feet, feet away from this hotel where the call was made.

I, what is wrong with these people? Later in their investigation, the police would find that on the night the drugs were planted in Kelly's car, Jill and Kent had sent 15 texts back and forth between the hours of 2.37 a.m. and 4.21 a.m.

Wow. Kent was actually parking his car in the parking garage and getting ready to head into his office when he was served.

The officers asked him a couple questions, and then he said that he wanted to get a lawyer before speaking any more to them.

That's because he's married to a lawyer.

He knows. Oh, yeah. And he is a lawyer. Oh, I forgot.

He is a lawyer. They're both lawyers. Yeah, I forgot.

So he's like, yeah, I know how this works.

Yeah. So he had answered like a couple of questions because they started off simple.

They wanted to know if he knew Kelly. He was like, oh, yep.

Me and Jill had a problem with her, but we'd squashed our beef like we're all good now.

And the cops were like, yeah. So like if that issue was really solved, like, do you know anything about the drugs that got planted in her car?

Oh, and why did your phone ping a tower near her apartment on the night that the drugs were placed in her car?

Oh, no. And that's when he was like, yeah, I'm going to.

He's like about that. I'm going to need a lawyer.

Yeah. But obviously they could still execute the search warrant.

Oh, they found in Kent Easter's car a baggie filled with diet pills in his center console.

All right, cool. The baggie was the same brand that was used to separate the pills found in Kelly Peters' car.

Wow. Kelly Peters didn't have those baggies at her house.

But Kent does. But Kent has them in his car.

Yeah. Yeah. So another set of officers was sent to kill, excuse me, Jill and Kent's house.

I just made their couple names. You made them a power couple.

Whoa. To serve that warrant separately for the home.

Before they pulled up into the driveway, though, they sat outside kind of like getting ready.

And they noticed that they were being watched.

A man was watching them, and he was on his cell phone, and he just looked like super sus to them.

So as they took that in, out of the corner of their eye, they see the Easter's front door fly open, and Jill, dressed in a negligee, pops her head out.

Stop it. As soon as she sees the officer, she slams the door shut.

And it seemed to the officers that this man watching them had probably tipped Jill off.

Yeah. Oh, my God. So this guy gets back into his truck and he pulls away and the officers are like, who the fuck is this guy?

So they pull him over. They like made some kind of excuse to pull him over.

They found out that his name was Glenn. I'm not going to say his last name just because like, whatever.

You'll see why. His name's Glenn. He's a firefighter in the area.

And he's been having an affair with Jill Easter for the past two and a half years.

Oh. In fact, he was the very reason why Jill Easter was late to pick up her son on the very day that he was left outside.

Oh, my God. Yup. Also, I forgot that she was even late to pick up her son that day.

Yeah, it's like, oh, so do we all make mistakes, Jill?

Fuck. Yeah. This poor child. I know. I feel really bad.

He's just in the middle of all of this. I do, too.

I know. I hope he's all right. And he's getting left outside.

He got picked up late. Yeah. That's a rough day.

It's shitty. It really is. That's the thing.

People don't realize, I think, like their own big kid problems fuck their kids up.

Like there's kids involved here. Yeah. You got to think of them.

So they asked this guy. They're like, OK, wow, you just like really spilled the beans.

They're like, would you be wearing to wear a wire and talk to Jill about what was going on between her and Kelly Peters?

And he was like, oh, I don't even really know anything about that.

And he was like, I don't know if I should wear a wire.

Like, I don't know if that's the right thing to do.

But after a couple of weeks, he decided, why the hell not?

He's like, you know what? Sounds fun. Let's go.

Exactly. So I think they met at like a park or something where her child, like another one of her children was.

She's just like watching her kids with her side piece.

With her paramour. Yes. So the conversation, oh, Paramore has a really good new song that just came out.

I forget what it's called, but Drew told me about it and then he played it for me.

It's really good. I love Hayley Williams.

Me too. She's so cool. Yeah. Ginger energy.

Hell yeah. Well, the conversation between Jill and her Paramore was really not that useful to the police.

He was just asking why the police had started asking him questions and Jill just got mad at him for questioning her and quote unquote, abandoning her in her time of need.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay, Jill. She actually got so pissed at him during that interaction that she later went to his house and told his wife everything.

Oh, damn. She showed her the wife all of the texts.

I didn't know that he was married, too. He's married, too.

Oh, shite. She showed his wife all of the texts that they had shared throughout the two and a half years they'd been together and photos they'd taken together.

Oh, no. So although this wire thing didn't help the investigation much, it did let one woman get away from a douche canoe cheating butt face.

I was going to say there is some kind of silver lining there.

There's always a silver lining. But oh, yeah.

What a way to find out, too. I know. I feel really bad for that woman.

Two and a half years. Yeah. I mean, that's bad.

That's really bad. And when you get contacted by the other one, that's a no-go.

And I would also just be so, I'd be like, what, you're showing me pictures?

I don't need to see that. I've seen enough.

That's the thing. It's like you have the betrayal and the awfulness of hearing about what your husband or spouse is doing.

Right. But now you're hearing it from her or him or them or whoever it is like that's like going through with this.

Yeah. And they're showing you evidence like almost like they're enjoying showing you this.

It's like, you know, Jill was like, I've been fucking your husband.

Oh, yeah. Like that's 100 percent. Like that's so, so messed up.

But I'm glad. Get out of there, girl. Get out of there, girl.

So as the investigation went on, Kelly was officially cleared of any wrongdoing.

And the police were able to get warrants for the Easter's DNA.

And that's actually why Kelly was cleared of any wrongdoing.

Because they did find that Kent's DNA was found on the ceramic pipe, the Vicodin, and the Percocet.

So all three little whammies there. Wow.

And Jill's DNA was found on the pipe and the Vicodin, but for some reason not the Percocet.

So that combined with the proximity of Kent's phone to Kelly's apartment that night and the fingerprints and everything like that, it made the police pretty confident that they had a strong case here.

But they still needed more if they wanted to bring this case in front of a jury and get both of the Easter's convicted of a crime.

And it was going to prove to be pretty difficult to do so because the Easter's had the means to hire a really good defense attorney.

The other thing working in their favor was just the simple fact that they were married.

Because they had spousal privilege, it was going to be really difficult for the police to get information off their cell phones, which was something that the police really wanted to do to help this case.

Now... If you're like me and you just thought that spousal privilege just meant that the married couple couldn't testify against each other, have no fear.

I did head over to lawcornell.edu. And according to them, quote, will be free from public exposure.

In order to invoke a spousal commitments privilege, the party must establish that A, at the time of the communication, the spouses were in a valid marriage.

B, the communications were intended to convey information between spouses and neither spouse has been disclosed the communication to a third party.

And C, the communications were intended to be confidential.

Okay. So I didn't realize. I didn't know that.

Your conversations and your communications are even under spousal privilege.

As long as you do not share them with anyone else.

With a third party. They have to be secret secrets.

Because secret secrets are no fun. Secret secrets hurt someone.

Kelly. Yeah. So. Did you know that parents rank financial literacy as the number one most difficult life skill to teach?

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That was going to be difficult because they really, really wanted the communications on their cell phone, but it was basically impossible to get close.

If they were holding it tight. Mm-hmm. And the spousal privilege, man.

So the police, having done the best they could, which really was a bang-up job, like They brought the case to the Orange County District Attorney Special Prosecutions Unit.

Whoa. So many mouths, words. So many things in that title.

But one of the attorneys there, Christopher Duff, looked over the case and he was really impressed with everything that the police had done.

They had put a lot of officers on this case.

At one point, there were about 20 officers investigating this case.

Because this is so wild. They probably were like, pick me.

I was going to say, I'd be like, I want to do this.

If I was an officer, I'd be like... Hi.

Like, I will be part of this. Please spill more tea.

I just need to know how this ends. Exactly.

So he also felt incredibly bad for Kelly.

And he, which is something we haven't talked about, he realized how differently this case could have gone if Jill and Kent were able to get her arrested.

Yeah, absolutely. And he said he also could have seen this case going very differently if Kelly Peters was not a white woman.

Yep. Like, 100%. Had they done this to a person of color, that person would absolutely be in jail right now.

Prison, no questions asked. Open and shut.

Like, I don't even think their apartment would have been searched to prove that they weren't doing anything wrong.

That would have been cut and dry. Like, that was it.

And how fucked is that? Nine times out of ten, that would be the case.

How fucked is that? Yeah. Like, not cool.

So that pissed him off. And he was like...

You know, it's terrible that they chose to do this to anybody, but if they had chosen a different person, they could have absolutely destroyed somebody's life even more than they destroyed Kelly Peter's life.

Yeah, in an irrevocable way. Like, it would have been... And that's the thing.

It's like, this isn't just playing... This isn't like a game, man.

No. Like, this is such heavy shit that can destroy someone's life.

Because there were people, and I'll make that point later.

This is a mother with a child. These are two mothers.

Yeah, which is the saddest thing of all.

That's what's wild to me. It's a mother doing this to another mother.

Right. And it's like... Damn, you could have taken her away from her children forever.

Mm-hmm. And even though Kelly Peters didn't go to jail, there were still people that thought she did this and thought she was guilty.

It's reputation. It destroyed her reputation.

And then you're sending private investigators after her, which is...

Heightening her anxiety. Yeah. She thinks... She's so scared, she thinks you're going to kidnap her daughter.

I can't imagine that. Which, honestly, I would probably think the same thing if I was in this position.

Because the lengths that Jill and her husband went to to destroy this woman's life... Yeah.

I mean... Yeah. I would be terrified as well.

Absolutely. So Chris Duffy was just as fucking passionate as we are right now.

And he was like, you know what? I think it is, quote, crucial that Jill and Ken Easter are arrested and put through the same legal and criminal process that they wanted Kelly Peters, an innocent victim, to go through.

Yeah. Yeah. Let's go. So he decided to file the case.

And once he did, Jill and Kent were promptly arrested.

Damn. Kent was arrested outside of his Newport Beach law office.

Excuse me, Newport Beach law office. And Jill was arrested at their home.

They both were charged with conspiracy to procure a false arrest, false imprisonment.

Funny how the tables have turned. Yeah. And conspiracy to falsely report a crime.

Whoa. Whoa. All of the evidence pretty much proved that it was Kent.

His cell phone was pinging those towers at those hours.

And he was texting Jill from that area. So maybe Jill was finally ready to fess up to something.

Or maybe she knew that if she and Kent were tried separately, she could testify on his behalf because you can testify for your spouse.

You just can't testify against them. And maybe she could help prove his innocence.

And then she knew that by pleading guilty herself, she would most likely receive a lighter sentence.

Wow. So she thought... She lawyered it. She lawyered it.

Yeah. Exactly. But the DA, Christopher Duffy, had absolutely no intention on going easy on Jill.

He later said, it was symbolically important that she went to jail.

She was a rich Orange County housewife who committed a serious crime, and people wanted to make sure she paid for what she'd done.

Damn. So when all was said and done with Jill's trial, she was sentenced to 120 days in jail.

Okay. That's it. Okay. Kent was not going to go not going to plead guilty or go down without a fight.

He hired a very impressive legal team when it came time for his trial.

And he also so he hired like a legal team and also hired some of the most highly respected defense attorneys in the country.

Damn. Like he went for it. So since Jill had confessed to doing the actual planting. it was really easy for Kent's team to make it look like he was kind of just a pawn in Jill's game and that she basically bullied him into helping her take down Kelly Peters.

So his attorney explained everything to the jury and summing it all up by saying that Kent was a, quote, overly trusting husband trying to appease a difficult wife.

Wow. I'm like, you're really just going to be like, he was just trying to shut her up.

Yeah. So he planted drugs in an unassuming woman's car.

What a defense. They actually even used Jill's affair to their advantage, claiming that Kent actually knew about it, and that's how powerless he was.

He just sat around and let it happen because he didn't want to lose Jill.

Wow. Yeah. So during a later civil trial, Kent admitted that he was the one to make the 911 call implicating Kelly Peters, and that the reason he'd done it was to save his marriage with Jill.

He doubled down, saying that he was scared of what Jill would do if he didn't help her.

Wow. So his team really just tried to set him up to look like a pathetic nincompoop.

Yeah. They actually even tried to convince the jury that he and Jill switched phones that night.

And that's why Kent's phone had pinged the towers near Kelly's house.

It was really Jill with Kent's phone. Okay.

Yep, totally. Yep. The jury was not buying it, though, especially once the DA provided evidence showing that both the Easter's phones had been pinging for at least eight hours near Kelly's apartment, which meant that they, quote, were both driving around Kelly's apartment the entire night before the drugs were found in her vehicle.

Oh, my God. How scary is that? Yeah. Just thinking about that, you're like, my God.

They just were like driving. And also, like, where are your kids?

I was just going to say, your parents. Like, how do you have fucking time to do any of this?

You hired a babysitter to go plant drugs in somebody's car?

Like, be felonious? Are you joking? Also, where did you get that amount of Vicodin and Percocet?

That's the other thing. Like, weed is like everywhere.

But like, where did you get that? My goodness.

Yeah. Now, the thing was, the jury also didn't really like Kent Easter as a human.

They said that he was detached and arrogant.

But when it came time to deliberate, there was one juror who did not want to convict.

She said that she felt like the crime didn't fit the punishment.

But the judge was like, let me clear things up for you.

Your role is not to determine sentencing or anything like that.

You're just to decide whether they're innocent or guilty.

Nothing more, nothing less. But in the end, the jury still couldn't figure it out.

I think this one person wouldn't budge. And a mistrial was declared.

Wow. So his second trial began in 2014. And this time, the jury quickly decided that Kent Easter was guilty.

Yeah, I was waiting for that. He was sentenced to 180 days in jail, 100 hours community service, and a five-year suspension of his license to practice law.

Damn. Yep. He was fired from his job. His reputation as a lawyer was absolutely destroyed.

It was unlikely that he would ever get a job in law again.

And he was only given one day to make arrangements before he was taken into custody.

And when he got there, this is a trigger warning because this is the most fucked up one of the most fucked up things in this case.

When he got to jail, Jill started—the conditions were really awful for him.

He really hated it, and he was talking to Jill about how terrible it was.

She started convincing him to try to kill himself so that she could cash in on the life insurance policy that would have given her $500,000.

And she felt like Kent should do this for his family.

Are you kidding me? No. No. Holy shit. Yeah.

Like that's a real thing. Wow. Like that's who we're dealing with here.

Wow. Thankfully, Kent did not do as she asked and they were divorced very soon after.

Yeah. But Kent still obviously wasn't happy about the income.

Or, excuse me, Kelly wasn't happy about the outcome, not the income.

The income, the outcome. That was a real big mistake there.

Somebody wasn't. Kelly wasn't happy about the outcome.

After all of this, she'd never received an apology.

And she had gone through years of stress, anxiety, panic, all of the above.

Yeah. And although few, there were still people, like I mentioned, who didn't believe that the drugs had been planted.

They thought she really had done this. Wow.

And even though Jill pleaded guilty, she was going around town claiming that she actually had nothing to do with it and that she just had no choice but to plead guilty.

So not only is Kelly suffering, her daughter actually suffered similar effects to her mother between anxiety and stress and everything like that.

She was scared. And so was Kelly's husband, Bill.

Throughout the entire ordeal, Bill had trouble sleeping and was suffering panic attacks.

Oh, my God. And the day after Ken Easter was found guilty, Bill was actually hospitalized.

He had multiple organs failing, including his kidneys.

Oh, my God. Because he was so stressed out.

Luckily, he was able to be treated and he started therapy, but he actually had to go out on disability to deal with everything.

Oh, that's awful. So with everything Kelly and her family had gone through, coupled with the fact that the Easter's never even gave a motive as to why they wanted to destroy this woman's life.

Kelly felt like she was entitled to compensation.

Yeah. Yeah. And she felt like she was entitled for compensation for false imprisonment and infliction of emotional distress.

So she sued the Easter's in a civil suit.

I don't blame her. So Kent, or excuse me, Kelly's attorney knew that it was going to be difficult to win this case.

Kelly most certainly had gone through a lot.

But at the same time, she hadn't lost her job with the school.

She was still the president of the PTA. And she had not been physically injured.

So it was going to be hard to convince a jury that. anything had happened here.

Yeah, of course. Also, because Ken Easter had no money and no job, he had no choice but to represent himself in this matter.

This meant that he was going to be the one cross-examining Kelly, which was going to be incredibly stressful, and he's a skilled attorney.

I was going to say that's literally his job.

So Ken's whole shtick was to really emphasize that he had lost absolutely everything.

Kelly remembered in her book that he was, quote, acting poor and penniless.

He would hang his head and give sad eyes to the jury like some starving waif.

He didn't even wear a belt. He didn't even wear a belt.

Didn't even wear a belt. What the fuck? I think he also wore, like, the same purple sweater in the courtroom a lot.

It was really a choice. But he, in his... defense of himself, made it seem like Kelly was overreacting here.

He said he and Jill had already faced their punishments.

He actually even called Jill to testify for him.

They were divorced at this point, but she still did so.

Wow. She made a motherfucking spectacle of herself.

She insisted that the court address her by all of her names. which included Jill Easter, as we know, but also Ava Bjork, which was a pen name that she used to self-publish a mystery novel about getting away with the perfect crime.

I gotta go. Yep. I really gotta go. She also had Ava Easter that she went by and Ava Everhart.

And she made them address her by all of these.

All of those names. Which was confusing to the jury.

They were like, where are we? Yeah. She also came in tow with an American Sign Language interpreter claiming that she was now deaf.

No explanation, just like from the stress of it all, she'd gone deaf.

Okay. How insulting to people who actually are deaf or hard of hearing.

Like, how fucking dare you? Wow. So she announced to the entire courtroom also that she had gone to a better law school than any person in this room, and also that she'd grown up on a Native American reservation in Minnesota.

Wow. Okay. Didn't have literally anything to do with the questioning and it didn't make her appear sympathetic to the jury.

If anything, she just came off like her husband did as arrogant and rude.

Yeah. And just very confusing. And just like, what the hell is going on?

Just what is happening right now? So this jury deliberated for less than an hour and when they returned with their verdict, it was announced to the courtroom that the Easter's were certainly liable for false imprisonment and infliction of emotional distress.

I think Kent calling Jill to testify him was the...

The straw that broke the camel's back. Selling that for sure.

Yes. So this meant that Kelly and her family were going to be awarded $5.7 million.

Damn. And don't you worry, I got the breakdown right here for you.

$365,000 in damages to Kelly for false imprisonment.

$800,000 in damages to Kelly for emotional distress.

$365,000 in damages to Bill for false imprisonment of his wife.

$600,000 to Sydney for emotional distress.

$1.5 million in damages to Kelly Peters from Kent Easter for malice, oppression, and fraud, and $2.1 million in joint punitive damages to Kelly from Kent and Jill.

Wow. Unfortunately... Very shortly after this, Kent filed for bankruptcy.

Yeah. So it's unlikely that Kelly's ever going to see any of the money that she's owed.

But it really wasn't the point for her. She really just wanted to prove, according to her lawyer, that, quote, these people thought they were above the law and the jury acted accordingly.

Yeah. Now, the Easters seem to still be trying to outsmart the legal system.

They moved their assets around and gifted their home to Jill's father, who then sold the home and put the money in some kind of trust for Jill and Kent, which is, like, incredibly illegal.

Wow. Um... They didn't really do themselves any favors trying to be smart because now Kelly's lawyers are actually going after Jill's father for damages.

And it's going to be pretty easy for them to prove that he participated in a fraudulent asset transfer.

Oh, no. So that sucks. Yeah. Because it's like he might have not have understood that.

I wouldn't have. Yeah. Just like stop involving other people in your scam.

In your shit. Right. Jill and Kent are still divorced and they do share custody of their children.

Neither of them has ever really expressed any kind of amorse.

And they still say that Kelly blew everything out of proportion and overreacted.

You planted drugs in her car. Pot, meat, kettle.

Like you, Kelly overreacted? You literally planted drugs in her car.

Like, I think you overreacted. Kent tries now to help people out with law matters for like, you know, like a job.

And he freelance rights. But he says that both his professional and romantic lives have been ruined.

I think they call that like a consequence where I'm from.

Yeah. And the romantic life being ruined is because you can Google him now.

Yeah. And I guess he had gone on a date and the woman was going to.

And before they even got to the date, the woman was like, no, I'm not going out with you.

It was like you literally planted drugs in the PTA president's car.

Thank you. Kelly spent a very long time in therapy.

She, Bill, and Sydney had to work together to rebuild their lives and their sense of trust.

And in 2016, Kelly wrote that book that I mentioned in the beginning.

It's co-authored by Riley J. Ford. Kelly also appeared on an episode of Dr. Phil, as well as 2020 Inside Edition and Good Morning America.

And I'm pretty sure that Jill was also on the Dr. Phil episode.

Yeah, I think so. She, Kelly, wanted to promote the book that she wrote and share her cautionary tale.

She says, though, that she hopes people are interested in this story not because of just how crazy it is, but because of her and the investigators' perseverance.

Yeah. Which I don't blame her. They put a lot of work into this.

Yeah. She said she still, again, hasn't gotten an answer as to why they wanted to destroy her life.

But her therapist shared the following from her book or for Kelly's book and tried to shed light on the situation from like a mental health standpoint.

Okay. She said, quote, I have not personally evaluated Jill Easter, so I don't have any opinion on her diagnosis.

But there has been mention of the psychopathic personality in regard to this case.

We are all exposed to the reckless behavior of those who may be psychopaths.

They are out there in our everyday life.

Kelly was trusting, loving, positive, and she disbelieved in the level of evilness of someone who came to interact with her for just a few minutes, whose evil behavior changed Kelly's life forever.

Wow. So whether or not you believe that Jill was mentally ill, ultimately she was used to getting what she wanted when she wanted it.

And she didn't get that from Kelly Peters.

Kelly Peters seemed to be one of the first people that Jill encountered that just didn't give in to her antics.

So I guess for Jill and Kent, Kelly's resilience and refusal to give in for them was enough to ruin her life.

Wow. And that is the story of Framed Kelly Peters, the PTA president.

I'm shook. At a loss for words with that.

Insane. And there's even more detail, by the way, in those LA Times articles written by Christopher Goffert or Goffert, I'm sorry.

Definitely, if you want to hear more, go read those because-

He includes, like, even more detail, like, between, like, when Kent was first served the papers, he actually has the interactions between the officers and Kent that are really interesting to read.

There's a lot more tidbits in there that I didn't use.

I just don't understand this. No. Like, I don't understand this.

Like, I really, I'm, like, just trying to, like, what the fuck? what the fuck is right what the fuck like what what's wrong with you right that's the thing this is like such a different case than i think you or i have ever presented yeah but when i was reading it i was like no the weirdos literally gotta hear yeah they gotta hear this because it's just so wild that is the most reckless thing i've ever heard reckless and it's like just like there's not even a word if you really thought someone hurt your child's Then you go out to lengths to make sure that person is like, you know, investigated.

Absolutely. Through the law. Faces a consequence through the law.

Right. But like investigations happened.

Multiple. And it sounds like, you know, nobody was really claiming that anything happened here.

Right. Like besides somebody who wasn't there.

Right. And it's like, what? Yeah. What? Like I've said, we've we've both said it a million times.

I understand being mad. Yeah. I do not understand the level that this reached.

No. With that being the inciting incident.

I just never understand devoting your life to taking someone else down.

I will never understand that kind of behavior.

I really won't. And this is just a perfect example of it that it's like, You devoted all of your time.

It literally is like an episode of Housewives.

Kelly's lawyer says it at one point, like Jill was like an OC housewife.

It really is like an episode of a TV show.

Yeah, it's just really weird to me. I'm like, why do you have that much time?

You shouldn't have that much time. And why are you spending this much time doing that?

I have no idea. And it can't be good for your insides either.

And the thing is, it's like, they both had time because they were stay-at-home moms.

So, like, you do, you get time, like, when your kids go to school to, like, get stuff done.

But, like, Kelly dedicated her time to being at school with her child and, like, helping the lives of the other kids.

Exactly. And Jill dedicated her time to doing this.

To doing this all the time. That's why you wanted to be a stay-at-home mom?

And it's like, were you feeling good inside?

Like, that had to have fucked your insides up too.

But I think she, like, I I mean, she was also cheating on her husband for two and a half years.

Yeah, that's just toxic shit. In their home.

Oof. It's the whole thing. Damn. Is such toxic shit.

And it's also a cautionary tale. Yeah. Just lock your doors.

Don't trust people. Frickin'. Don't talk to anybody.

Yeah. And make sure... My dad always told me to, like, if somebody's strange or somebody's weird or somebody's just, like, off to you, like, giving you bad vibes, he was like, write it down.

Mm-hmm. Write everything down. He has always said that.

He always says that. He says, log that shit.

Mm-hmm. Because later, if you need to show it, you can go, well, on this day, this is what happened.

He was like, diary's a diary. Do it. It's true.

And diaries have been used in court cases for... many many and in this case like I don't know you know who knows if it would have helped at all but it's just one of those things like well maybe I like you should always log things if you can it just helps yeah and it helped Kelly that she had talked to people at the school who were willing to vouch for her and say like this incident was not at all what it was made to be yeah exactly so damn wild I had to tell you guys what a story I was like what the fuck what a story So with all of those words being said, we do hope that you keep listening.

And we hope you keep it weird. But I swear that you convince your husband to plant drugs in somebody's car and you take down their life because, wow, that would be like such an overreaction to anything.

Literally. Literally anything. Don't do that.

Bye. Bye. If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

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[PTA 회장의 비극적인 함정: 켈리 피터스 사건]-[Episode 383: The Framing of Kelli Peters]

📋 Summary

악몽의 시작: 사소한 오해에서 비롯된 음모

끔찍한 함정: 차에 숨겨진 마약

법의 심판과 그 너머

켈리 피터스의 회복과 교훈

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript