Episode 3: The Intruder

We know Rachel was killed on June 4th. But to understand what happened, we have to go back to June 2nd. In early June 2022, Rachel returned to her apartment after losing her job at a ranch in Queen Creek. But the place she came back to may not have been the same home she left behind. The unit had been sublet to two tenants who had just been evicted. Then came the night of June 2. Something happened inside that apartment, something unsettling enough that it still raises questions about what Rachel may have walked into. And then there’s the pickle jar. It sounds trivial, until you realize it’s one of the strangest and most unexplained details in the entire case. When did it appear? And why do memories about it seem to change depending on who you ask?  And then there’s a man named in police reports as a person of interest. Later that month, detectives collected his fingerprints, DNA, and photographs during a police operation. But heavily redacted reports leave one haunting question: Why him? In Episode 3, the deeper we look, the darker the picture becomes.

https://www.youtube.com/live/75-6L6FqZ3o

https://web.archive.org/web/20081203033217/http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Papers/Py104/loftusmem1.pdf

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Today's episode is sponsored by a woman-owned company that's changing the way we think about personal safety. They create safety tools that are powerful, practical, and actually easy to use, including pepper sprays, training tools, and their patent pending safely sidekick. Because safety shouldn't feel complicated and it definitely shouldn't be a luxury. Being safe should be a given for everyone. Head to livesafely.co and use code BookClub for your discount today. Hi, I'm Emily. I'm Ashley. This is Reconsidered Unsolved, where we focus on unsolved cases in the pursuit of justice. You are listening to Season 1, Rachel Hansen. Welcome back to Reconsidered Unsolved, where you are listening to Season 1, Rachel Hansen, Episode 3. From December to May, Rachel had been living in a casita on the ranch where she was working in Queen Creek. She was terminated from that position and was planning to move back to her apartment that she had been subletting to a gal named America and her boyfriend who either lived with her or was a frequent visitor. June 1st of 2022, the tenants were moving out of the apartment after a relatively quick eviction, and Rachel was moving back in. She posted on Facebook requesting a deep clean for her apartment, looking for somebody that could come and clean it because the tenants had left it pretty messy with some trash and food and things left behind. Rachel was trying to clean up the apartment and had her brothers and Jomette help her move back into the apartment on June 1st. And on June 2nd, she started to stay there. On June 3rd, Rachel went to bed, and in the early morning hours of June 4th, she was murdered. Let us tell you about the night of June 2nd. Rachel was back in her apartment and she was ready to stay there. She had told her mom Kim that she was really feeling happy to be back. She felt settled and calm. She felt really safe. That evening, she went to bed, and in the middle of the night, Rachel awoke to see somebody had opened her bedroom door and was looking in at her. She, of course, startled. The person left the bedroom door and closed it and then left the apartment. Rachel got up to try to see who was in her apartment, and when she walked out into the main area, the person was gone and the door was closed behind them. However, she did notice that they had left something behind. A jar of pickles was left on the counter that hadn't previously been there. Rachel immediately texted Jomette and said, Hey, somebody came into the apartment. Can you come over? And we know Jomette lived less than 10 miles from her, so he could probably get over there quickly. Jomette found a lock at his home that was just in the garage and brought that over so that he could change her locks that morning. Rachel did not call the police to report this night intruder on the night of June 2nd. She said she felt like this was probably a case of mistaken identity, that she was sleeping in her bed, someone who had the key to the previous tenants' locks, because she had not changed the locks when she moved back in, came in looking for America and instead found her and they fled. The pickles maybe were just a snack. We don't know what her thinking was around the pickles being left behind. But we know that she felt like this was just something connected to America. I'm gonna change the locks, and now I've resolved the issue. She may have called her mom the next morning, and we're gonna talk about that a little bit more fully as well, because there is a major controversy here to talk about with the pickles. The pickle situation is one that we cannot get resolved. We are certain that Gilbert Police Department has evidence that they could produce to settle this controversy, but it is something that we are hoping that this podcast and other media can put out there and we can get some resolution through the right source. And that is that if Pickle Guy was somebody who came in because they were searching for America and they had no idea that they were gone and that Rachel was now occupying the place, they freaked out and they left. No harm, no foul, no big deal. We would love to have that person come forward. If you are that person or you know that person, to have them come out publicly, clear up this confusion, and let everybody move on from Pickle Guy would be really helpful. Because what we don't know is was Pickle Guy independent and a total mistake and have nothing to do of the night of her death? Or was this someone coming in looking to see who was there and do reconnaissance work or maybe build up the courage to actually shoot Rachel? And when they returned the next night, they carried out the crime. One of the questions I have is if you are Pickle Guy, the person who came into her apartment the night before and you had nothing to do with her actual death, why wouldn't you come forward and say, hey, I went in the apartment, I thought America was still there, that was me, but I have nothing to do with what happened to Rachel. I know. You would hope that that would happen. One thing someone said to us at one point, and I think is a really good point, is that you may not come forward if you're pickle guy because you're worried that you're gonna be pinned with a murder that you did not commit, particularly if you have any kind of criminal history. And the reality is you might become the focus of the investigation if you were in the apartment the night before. When you put it that way, yeah, maybe I don't come forward and say, hey, I was in this apartment the night before a girl was murdered. I agree. We know that it was reported the night of the crime that the apartment had a really heavy odor of marijuana use, and other people had reported them before that that the apartment had a heavy odor of marijuana. During the previous tenant's residency at the Redstone apartments, tenants reported a large number of people coming and going from the apartment, particularly men. One neighbor reported that she often heard noise from Rachel's apartment, with the tenant speaking loudly, sometimes in English, sometimes in another language. Neighbors also reported a strong odor of marijuana emanating from the apartment. We noted in the previous episode that one of the officers reported the apartment smelling like marijuana the night Rachel was killed. So this seemed to have been an ongoing situation. Police history identified that they had been called out to the apartment on noise complaints multiple times in the past. In fact, police responded to a call from the leasing agent at Redstone on May 31st, just four days before Rachel was killed. One of the leasing agents told the officers about the incident. In an interview with the police that we can see on May 31st, 2022, a downstairs tenant complained and said they were hearing multiple male voices upstairs being loud and one female who seemed to be upset and yelling. The leasing agent traveled over to the apartment and confirmed what the tenants were hearing and heard the same thing. The leasing agent, alongside the downstairs tenants, walked up to the third floor, and in the stairwell, they saw a male described as a white male in his late teens, maybe early 20s, approximately 5'10 to 6 feet tall, chubby build and dark hair, walking down the stairs. The male was carrying a box and was being yelled at by what appeared to be the males in the victim's apartment. The leasing agent stated when the male in the stairwell walked past her, he smelled strongly of marijuana. She decided not to confront the subject and instead called the police to take care of the problem. Police later arrived and knocked on the door, but there was no answer. They left shortly after. We have also heard there was some conflict between Rachel and the previous tenants with their eviction. We don't know the extent of this conflict, but it is something to keep in mind as well. We did reach out to the previous tenants. They were unwilling to talk with us, which we understand. Since we know there were so many people coming and going from the apartment, according to the neighbors, it stands to reason that this intruder could have been a number of different people, and that we have no idea how many people might have had access to this apartment with a key, particularly given it was a sublet situation. They could have been sharing the space with a lot of different folks. We have no idea. We also talked about how Facebook was the place that the Gilbert Police asked if anybody had ring footage camera, if anybody had any leads. And if you are someone who is in your late teens, early 20s, you might not be on Facebook. So is it possible the person who we don't know accidentally or intentionally came into her apartment, pickle guy, doesn't even know that they're looking for someone. As I say that out loud, I also think it feels implausible that you go into an apartment and you don't hear from some circle or someone that the apartment you accidentally walked into is the same one where a girl was then murdered the next night. Right. And also, this is a person who would have had a key. The other thing that comes up is is it possible? And these are this is us just riffing, right? This to be clear, this is totally just random ideas, but is it possible that someone was coming back? Like, could this be the previous tenants? Could this be somebody really closely related to them who's coming back to look for or pick up something they had left behind? So this may be something to do with that, like coming to find an item and they didn't intend to wake up, Rachel. And even if it was someone doing a reconnaissance mission, trying to figure out who was in the apartment, we do know from sources and statements we have seen that America and Rachel looked a lot alike. They do. That is something that we can see from the photographs we've been able to access, as well as it has been verified by multiple sources that America and Rachel could have been mistaken for one another, especially in a dark room. Okay, so what's the pickle controversy? Here's what it is. In the police report, Jamette tells the officers that he received a text from Rachel that someone had come into her apartment the night before she was killed. They had come in in the night and they had left a jar of pickles. We do not know if the police verified this text containing information about the pickles or if they just got that information from Jamette. Why does that matter? Because we don't know how much verification there is around Rachel talking about these pickles, about Jamette, how he learned about the pickles, and there's a whole lot of confusion about the pickles from here. First and foremost, the police report that there were no pickles there when they entered the apartment. Kim has been informed by the Gilbert police that there were never any pickles there. However, Kim and Todd seem to recall that when the apartment was released to them on the 6th of June, two days after Rachel's death, they found the pickles right there on the counter. This is gonna get us into a really big conversation right now about memory and the construction of evidence. Here's what we know about the pickles from the police perspective. They took 330 crime scene photographs. Todd Hansen did ask for some of those photographs just a few weeks ago just to verify and settle the pickle controversy. The Gilbert police responded that they would not be releasing any of the photographs so that they would not show whether there were or were not pickles present. I guess one of the questions I have is why couldn't they release just one photo to disprove or prove that there were pickles there or not there? It feels like is there something else in the photo they wouldn't want us to see? Or would they be contradicting themselves when they said there are no pickles, but there actually are pickles? I guess I understand not releasing 300 plus photos, but why not just one? Yeah, I don't I don't get it either. I feel like too, if that would bring the parents some solace in this case, like it feels a little bit cruel not to be willing to. But the other part is like you said, maybe there's other evidence in every photo. Like maybe there is something on the counter they're really trying to hold tight to the chest. And so any photos would have it. Right. And we know from years of just talking about different cases and having these conversations. And you have taught me that sometimes there are things that they hold close to the the chest in investigations because it's something only the person who murdered her would know. Right. Like I think potentially that there was more than one shot fired. That could be one of those things that they are holding back. Yes. But maybe also there was a single gunshot. We have no idea. But still, I just think there are things they are holding back. And they do this in every case. We talked about that, right? Do you remember in the Jean Bonet Ramsey case? There was a guy, Mark, whatever, who came forward 10 years ago. And he was like, I killed Jean Bonet, and he was super weird. And everybody was like, it was like national news, like, Jean Bonnet's killer has come forward. And guess what? The cops were like, Nope, because he didn't know the thing that nobody knows. Right. So is there something in these pictures that's the thing that nobody knows? So they can't release them. Crazy, there's not like one piece of evidence they can supply, I guess. But yeah, maybe the pickles were next to or not next to, whatever it is they really don't want out. Right. It's just hard because that night leads us to so many questions about the next night. And I feel like if we had questions about that night answered, it would make it easier to figure out what actually happened for sure. Well, here is the evidence that we do have. In the highly redacted body cam footage, we do see an officer who is walking around speaking with another officer in the apartment. We have also triangulated that with another officer's body cam footage that is a third officer on site. So there's at least three officers present in the apartment at this time. The two officers whose body cam footage are showing this incident or this part of the incident arrived at 5 40 a.m. and 8 30 a.m. So we know it's sometime after 8 30 in the morning, but likely on June 4th. So in the hours after her death, we think it is very, very unlikely that these officers, multiple officers, were dispatched to the apartment after the apartment had been released to Kim and Todd from the crime scene, that they would have returned to do any kind of searching for anything. And in this video, they say it's a weird thing to ask about. And then you hear them say, Well, no pickles. We presume that is the morning of the crime. When we talked with Rachel's mom, Kim, she reported to us on the 6th, when the apartment was released to them, it had not been cleaned in any way, shape, or form. She so she walked into as the crime scene had been left when Rachel was taken to the hospital. Kim reports when she walked in that she saw this jar of pickles on the counter. When you first walk into the apartment, there's the kitchen, you can see the countertop. She says that she grabbed the jar of pickles from the counter and put them into the fridge. They then continued to pick up items from around Rachel's apartment. And when they left, Kim reports that she took the pickles from her apartment back to her house. Kim remembers keeping the pickles at her house for a certain amount of time. And then unfortunately, Kim reports throwing them away because she didn't want to hold on to that trauma anymore. And Kim also reports at the time that the apartment was released to them, they believed that everything that could be done with the jar of pickles had been done with the jar of pickles, so that throwing them away shouldn't have any huge implications in the future. So just to make it clear, we want to talk a little bit more about Kim and Todd and the pickles. When we spoke with Kim directly about the pickles in January 2026, she told us that she remembered the situation much the way we described earlier. Briefly, according to Kim, Rachel had called her and told her about the incident with the intruder the night before, including the strange detail about the pickles. However, in a YouTube interview from around a year ago, Kim and Todd described those events with a tad more uncertainty. They were speaking with Chris and Dr. Gary Broccado on a show called The Interview Room. And during the conversation, both Kim and Todd characterized the time period surrounding Rachel's death and their return to the apartment as somewhat unclear. Kim described that time as foggy, explaining the events around those days have never been perfectly clear in her mind. When the host specifically asked about the pickles, Kim said, I really feel like we had that conversation. It's kind of coming back to me a little bit. Todd also shared some of his recollection during that interview. He told the hosts that the first time he remembers becoming aware of the pickles was when he saw them in the apartment on June 6th, the day that they went back into the unit. Taken together, their comments suggest that while parts of the time period remain vivid, other details, like exactly when certain conversations happened, may have become a bit harder to pin down over time. I think this is a really important thing for us to talk about here. We tend to believe as humans that our memory is very infallible, that it is pure truth. I know what happened and I can be certain about it. And that's just not reality of how memory works at all. This is not to say that Kim and Todd don't have accurate memories in the least. But what it is to say is there is a possibility that with this pickle controversy, with this discrepancy between the police reporting there were no pickles, the body cam footage them saying there were no pickles that day, and then Kim and Todd finding the pickles, that maybe some memory was modified in some way, that maybe they were at the apartment at a different time and there were pickles, that maybe the pickles were in the refrigerator and they created a memory about finding the pickles that day. We actually don't know. And here's the thing, that might sound crazy that they created a memory, but I'm just gonna give you one example of how this can happen. First off, memory we know in trauma, particularly episodic memory, the memory for events, the type of memory that we have where we remember the autobiography of our lives, right? We remember what happened. That is disrupted in any kind of traumatic situation. We know Kim and Todd entering this apartment and viewing the blood and the materials that EMS left behind. This full crime scene that was just left for them was extraordinarily traumatic and is going to disrupt memory. We also know that memory can be created through repetition, questions, and suggestion. And this is not a complicated process. This actually can happen in really, really simple paradigms. If you're interested in knowing about false memory, the leading expert on this in the world is Dr. Elizabeth Loftus. And she has a TED talk. She has lots of resources out there. I'll tell you about one of her studies in 1975. This is a really interesting one where she showed participants a car accident. And afterwards, she asked them how fast was the car going when it bumped into the other car versus when it smashed into the other car. And there were other language items there. And the way that that question was asked actually impacted the speed that people estimated the car was going. So people estimated a car as going much faster when the word suggested that the car was going faster. So we know that simply the way that a police officer can ask a question can influence the way that we respond to it. And this is one of the biggest inherent issues with questioning. This is why police hold things so close to the chest, too. And they don't want people being questioned by everybody because they will change the narrative and not intentionally, right? Because your perspective will get married to my perspective, and then my perspective becomes a blend of yours and mine versus actually just purely mine. That's why they they hold the line here. In another study that Loftus conducted in 1995, she actually took 24 participants and she gave them a whole bunch of history about true events and also told them about false events. And that was in the story of them being lost in the mall when they were a child. This was completely fabricated. All 24 of these people were told, hey, you were lost in the mall. You ran ahead, you were gonna get an IC, you were with your parents, you ran ahead and you got lost. And luckily you found this older woman who helped you. Okay. Afterward, 25% of people, one in four of these people, recalled the false memory to some degree. It may not have been perfectly, but they did recall this false memory of being lost in the mall. And then when they were brought back later, they actually had increased their clarity around that false memory. So our memory not only can be created from a very simple paradigm, such as imagining a story, being in the midst of trauma and hearing about the pickles, imagining what that night was like for Rachel and thinking about those pickles. But then also our memory becomes more solidified over time, whether true or false. Fascinating and certainly calls into question how strongly we consider eyewitness testimony in any kind of case and just thoughtfulness around memory in general. Okay, I want to talk more about this lock that Jomet brought over because this is really relevant to that day, that the decisions that were made, and then the night of her death. So Jomet bought a lock from his house, which he lived with his dad and his siblings. I think it's a really large house from what we can tell, high square footage with a lot of rooms. And we were told by one source that at some point this lock was on a door that was utilized as like a closet, maybe a storage area that was converted into something else. And so it was no longer used as a lock in their home at all. So Jamette took this completely unused lock out of this garage area, brought it to Rachel's to replace it, but he did not have a key. So what this means is that it's a lock that can only be engaged from inside. You cannot lock it or unlock it from outside of the door. So if you're going to lock it, you have to be inside of the apartment. Which then leads us to questions like when Rachel wasn't at the apartment during the day, was the door just left unlocked? Totally. And we know that. Know that Jomette and Rachel were caught from a neighbor's camera that the police obtained, leaving the apartment to go swimming that evening as she had reported to her mom that they were doing the night of the crime and then returning as well. So sh they certainly were gone from the apartment during that period, and we have to assume that the door was just left unlocked. So what this leads to is bigger questions about the night Rachel was killed. And was the door unlocked? Was the door locked? Because what we know from the police report is that there was no sign of forced entry. Yes. So according to multiple sources, the story that was told to police by Jamet is that that night they hung out, they went swimming, they had dinner, they were hanging out. And then late at night, probably close to midnight, Jamet was leaving because he had an early landscaping job to do in the morning. And in Arizona in June, it's really, really hot. So they often start at 4 30 in the morning, those kinds of hours. So he left to go home. This landscaping company was one that his dad owned. So he and his dad worked together on these projects. We know from multiple sources that the night of her murder, he left between 11 and midnight. Since the door could not be locked from the exterior and he did not have a key, he told Rachel to get out of bed, get up, and come and lock the door. He said that he walked out of the apartment. He didn't hear the lock and gauge, so he walked back in, went back to Rachel, woke her up again, and said, Hey, get up. You need to lock the door. I guess he assumed that she would do so because then he left. Kim, Rachel's mom, assumes that she never did get up and lock that door. The thing that's really critical in thinking about this is that the person who came the night before had to have had a key unless Rachel had left the door unlocked that night. But the assumption is they had a key, according to what we understand from the testimony of what Jomette said from the interview with Jomet, that he said that she figured it was someone related to the previous tenants because they had a key. So the second night, the person who came either was completely unrelated to the pickle guy night and I I don't know, just got lucky with the door being unlocked, or was from the night before or related in some way to those previous tenants. And I don't mean related like in a family way, but had some relationship with those previous tenants that they had access to a key or they came prepared to break down the door. Right. And we're we're happy or lucky to find that it was unlocked. Right. I mean, it's it's a little, it's just a strange thing. Here's the other thing that we do know about that night of her murder. That person entered the apartment through the unlocked front door, or at least it is assumed that it was unlocked. Could it have been locked? And this is the one person who had a key. They did kick in the bedroom door. The bedroom door was broken with a shoe print. So maybe they were prepared to kick down the front door as well. Although the bedroom door, I don't think, was locked. It was just kicked open. Right. Maybe they made an assumption that the bedroom door was going to be locked if the exterior door wasn't and didn't even try it without first kicking it down. Well, or maybe they just didn't want to get their hands or risk leaving behind any kind of evidence on the doorknob. Right. The lock and the precarious situation we have with it also leads me to have questions about if it could be the same person both nights, if it's a different person both nights, if it is a different person but with the same goal, like someone showed up to do reconnaissance one night and the next night it was someone else. The fact that the first night someone potentially had access to a key and opened the door, and the next night the new lock was on, but it was potentially unlocked, it just makes it very messy. Very messy and confusing. And how did they plan on getting in? And what was the intention? And if she had locked the door, would they just have been like, oh, well, I guess I'll go home. And it's so confused by the whole thing. Right. I mean, that's another question. Did the person who eventually, the intruder who came in and killed her, know that the door was unlocked? Or was it just lock? Right. Okay, here's the other thing is Jamet took this lock from his home. A key did exist to this lock, but according to some of the sources we spoke to, it would have been something that hadn't been used for a very long time. So it would have been a key that they assumed probably wasn't really known where it was, or it was just with a bunch of other keys that were unused. That's not to say that somebody didn't know where it was. And it is a lock that could be locked and unlocked with a key. Yes. And I'm just gonna deviate a tiny bit here, but but this is just how I'm thinking about this whole thing. I get very upset and confused at this point of the whole conversation and story because how in the world this 19-year-old woman moves back in. The next night, somebody keys in using the previous tenants' keys, but it's not somebody that Rachel reports knowing she could have and just have not wanted to say that, right? It could have been the previous tenants themselves who came in. It could have been somebody just that was super tight with them who had a key who was coming to get something or coming to find them. And this was a whole big mistake. But then somebody comes the next night. The locks have been changed. You have to wonder if they aren't gonna assume that if it was the same person. Right. And then they just happen to find it unlocked. Yeah, well, it does it doesn't seem plausible when you put it in that succession of steps. It's so, it's so confusing. So anyway, the lock is a is a critical piece of this just because it allowed for the door to remain unlocked. You know, there's something else interesting here, and this is not to be harsh towards Jomet, because I do think Jomet is a victim here. And I personally have no suspicion, actually, I don't think you do either, that Jomet is involved in this. I know the family doesn't think that, of course, I'm never gonna rule anything out. I'm not an investigator or an expert, but it doesn't appear to us that he is also high on a list of anything to do with any suspicion by the Gilbert Police Department, as far as we can tell. There was a different incident at one point with Rachel where Jomet, we were told by a source Jumet went and got a rifle to have on hand just to protect Rachel from something. So we know Jumet was very protective of Rachel. They really must have been convinced that the pickle guy who came in that this was an error and mistaken identity and whoopsie and was not at all the threat for him to have left her there without verifying that the door was locked that next night. You and I have had this conversation a number of times because it's really easy to try to put yourself in someone else's shoes and think, how could you leave without being 1 million percent certain that she locked that door? But also, we have both been teenagers or in our early 20s. And I think that we can't look past that. That's just a different time of life. It's a different space that your brain is in. And like you're saying, if they really did think the threat from the night before was no longer a threat, then maybe he just was like, okay, I'm gonna go. It is midnight. I have to work at four in the morning. I I can't do this anymore. Like, lock the door, Rachel, and he just left. And not out of being upset or angry, but just out of being like, I'm gonna go. Right, agreed. I feel like we just don't know too. Like, maybe she made a movement like she was going to get get up. And so he really made that assumption. I'm sure he kicks himself far more than anyone else could kick him on this topic. And so that's not to point fingers. I'm I'm just trying to get in their mindset around this. And I think it's really telling that if he left and the door remained unlocked, that they really didn't have any sense that this was coming. Okay, let's move on. There's another detail in the police report that raises some questions. In one of the heavily redacted case files, investigators interviewed someone who is described only as an investigative lead. From the documents that were shared with us, it appears this person was interviewed at least twice and was actually incarcerated during one of the interviews. During what is listed as the second interview with him, the individual was shown a series of photographs. According to the report, the interviewee said that they recognized someone in the photos. The name of that person has been redacted in the version of the report we reviewed. The interviewee then stated that the person they identified was someone they had previously traded a redacted item to in exchange for four ounces of marijuana. From what we can find, four ounces of marijuana in 2022, when purchased from an individual, would have been anywhere between$800 to$1,200. And per the police report, there was a redacted item traded for this amount of marijuana. We want to clarify something for our listeners. People we will be discussing in this episode and future episodes were mentioned to us by sources as people who visited the apartment connected to this case. However, we do not know exactly how these individuals are connected to one another or to the events themselves. But we're sure gonna try, aren't we? We Ashley, we're gonna tell you just how we think everybody's connected. We absolutely are. And what I can promise you is that we have crossed our Ts and dotted our I's. When I say that, I mean we have spent hours pouring through background checks, criminal records that you can find online, social media profiles. We have talked with people by connecting with them through Facebook Messenger, finding people's phone numbers, and we have confirmed that a number of the people we are connecting are exactly who we say they are. In the words of one investigator, they said, You're a pretty good cyber stalker, aren't you? And we said, Thank you. One of the people we want to talk a little bit more about is someone that we are not sure if he was associated with previous tenants. We're not sure if pickle guy night could be something he was also associated with, but we do know, according to a number of sources we have talked to, that this person is described as scary. And we believe has been named as a person of interest in the police report. Yeah, so here's what we see in the police report. On June 29th, so Rachel was killed in the early morning hours of June 4th. So later in the month, there is a search warrant that was activated. Essentially, there's a listing in the police report of the SWAT team assisting with the apprehension of someone in Glendale, Arizona. I'll just read you kind of this police report. There are redactions throughout, but I'm gonna give you the reading so that you can understand how we've identified that this was the same person. It says, our team parked in an unmarked police vehicle near the blank and began surveillance on the vehicle. Within minutes, a black male who matched Blank physical description walked up to the vehicle. Our team blocked the vehicle, activated red and blue lights. Commands were given to Blank and he complied. Blank was taken into custody without incident. Blank confirmed his identity and he was told the reason for the apprehension. Blank was checked for weapons. A fanny pack was strapped across Blank's chest, contained a blank and blank. The person of interest's name was placed in our unmarked vehicle and transported to Gilbert Police Department, where he was turned over to violent crime unit detectives. While en route, I placed Blank's phone into airplane mode as directed by the computer forensics detective. So there is probably an error in redaction there, I'm not sure, or maybe an intentional left unredacted, but the name is associated with this arrest. This continues. The next page is from a supplement where on 629, same date, 2022, I assisted in obtaining evidence reference, a physical characteristics order for blank. And this is where there were buckle swabs taken, which are swabs in the mouth, latent prints taken for hand prints, hand knife's edge, print fingerprints taken, and photographs taken. So we know that there were items that were sent to Pennsylvania to the lab, remember, to try to get latent prints. There was no evidence obtained from those items. We also know that there were other items that were taken into evidence and swabbed for DNA or for fingerprinting that we don't know what they were, or we know some of them and listed those in the last episode, but we do believe this person of interest is one of the people who they took prints to try to match. And we also know that much of the evidence that we are aware of, the results were not conclusive or there was insufficient evidence on those items. The police report continues. The there's another account by Officer Peterson on the arrest team on 629-22. There is no mention of the specific name of the person of interest in this version of the arrest. However, it matches identically to the previous version of arrest where this person's name was mentioned. In fact, it even says I went up to Blank and confirmed his name and date of birth, which matched. I asked Blank if there were any weapons on him, and he said he had a handgun in his fanny pack that was strapped across his chest. This is multiple times mentioned and associated with this same person. And then we see Detective Freer's account of this date of 629-22, and it says the entire name, first, middle, and last name of the person of interest. On 629, 2022, at approximately 1530 hours. So this also matches 30 minutes after his arrest. Blank was brought into the Gilbert Police Department on a valid blank. Blank is a person of interest in the homicide of Rachel Hansen due to the following. And then it contains about two pages of redacted information. So again, with the pages of redactions, we are not sure how this ended up. We are not sure how he was arrested and released. We do know a person of interest was identified in this case, and some of the people associated with it have documented criminal histories. Okay, I just want to run through this with you, Ashley. I feel like we should talk through our five crazy theories of pickle guy night. Let's do it. Okay, so the first one is the first one we talked about. This was somebody who was looking for the previous tenants. It was a total whoopsies, like, whoop, brought my snack, came in, not who I was looking for, ran for it, and it's completely unrelated. Here, here are my two thoughts on that. One reason that makes me think, maybe this theory would work for us, is that the person left as soon as Rachel reacted. They were like, oh no, I'm I'm not here. You're not the right person, and just left. And this person never came forward and said, Hey, I was in the apartment. I was not involved in the murder, but I want to let you know I accidentally entered. So those are two very different ways to look at that same scenario. And also the thing about them just leaving, maybe she kind of screamed and they were like, uh-oh, I've lost control. Right. Like she has maybe someone probably heard her. And we also do not know, we talked about this earlier, if there was any communication before she screamed. Right. Okay. Two, it was someone looking for something related to the previous tenants or any of their guests. Maybe it was somebody who had stored something of value in the apartment and they were coming back to look for it. And they came back both nights. And maybe Rachel got in the way. Three, this pickle guy and the next night, the whole thing was somebody who was not okay with the fact that whatever they were doing at that apartment or the however they were utilizing that apartment, they had access, they had a key for personal use or whatever. Maybe somebody else was living there. I don't know. Regardless, could they have had another roommate? From the police reports of other calls of noise complaints and from different neighbors reporting they saw a lot of people coming, including people that had children with them. There could have been more. I mean, Rachel was subletting, and you're not supposed to sublet. So what's to say that the people she was subletting it to also didn't have other people living with them? For sure, right? So there could have been five people staying there for all we know. We have no idea. But one thing we do know to be true about the eviction that I do think about when it comes to this theory is the very short timeline. They were not anticipating having to leave the apartment. This wasn't like you have a month to be out. This was like, I'm coming back, you need to leave. And that could really make someone upset and potentially cause conflict. Right. And I think related to this one, we would have to consider then were there other conversations that were being had between Rachel and anybody else that could have actually given more information about this. Did somebody come by the apartment and say, I need to get in and get the rest of my stuff? And Rachel said, get out. No, you can't come back in. Or did the person the night before come looking for something? We also don't know. And we just have to say this again. They do not know if the person who came and shot Rachel said anything to her before. They could have said, Where's my cash pickles? Rachel could have been like, I don't have your cash pickles. And they were like, Oh, she stole them. We have no idea. That's all completely made up, right? But these are just the ways that our brains have been thinking about things. Okay. Four. Four theory. It was recon. So pickle guy was intentionally coming. And maybe this one is not unrelated potentially to the third one, the eviction. It was related to the eviction and whoever was living there that needed the space. This was a go back in and see who this was, who's staying here, do they have my stuff? Or did they block something? Whatever. Well, and also the recon for me, yes, it could be. But back to the lock, the fact that the lock was changed would definitely interfere with their recon game. Like what they found the night that they did recon was not what they found the night that they came back. I know. Is it possible somebody, I don't know, with access to locksmith tools was the person who came both times, or is an expert at picking locks? And so none of this was of concern to them? Also, I don't think Devil's Advocate is the right term to use here, but when the person came and stood over her bed and she screamed, knowing that that is the type of reaction you would have when she sees you, is that why the door was kicked down? That you didn't open the door and alert her to anything before you just kicked it down and shot her. Right. That's what it seems like is like now I do this fast and I get in and out fast. Right. But also, are you going to be reckless enough? I suppose if you are someone who's going to murder someone, to leave evidence two nights in a row, knowing that people might have surveyed, like there are you're taking so many risks. Right. True. The recon person doesn't have to be murderer. Right. Ugh. Okay. What's our fifth? Okay, our fifth and our fifth and last one. And it also could be related to four. So the recon one really shouldn't be its own theory. I I messed up this list. Okay, everybody. Five is this was someone who knew Rachel well. This was a targeted attack, and leaving the pickles was actually a message. And here we're gonna tell you a very strange coincidence, and that is about the pickles in relation to Rachel's family. We were told by Rachel's mom, and we have heard through other sources that there was a family tradition around pickles where whenever they were on a trip, like a vacation or something, Todd would say, Okay, everybody, we're camping. Now we're all packed up. It's time to leave. Everybody come have a pickle. But Todd clarified that these were usually the spear kind, and the pickles that were left on the counter were kosher whole dill pickles. This theory, or whatever we're calling it, has my mind spinning a million miles per hour because I'm it feels like a coincidence, but it feels like a very weird coincidence. Exactly. It's so bizarre. The other part of this is we just talked about memory and how memory can be fallible. And I don't think the memory that Kim and Todd have of finding the pickles is probably wrong because they're so aware of the type of pickles that they found, but also I'm not certain. And it's just the timeline that's confusing. It's the timeline around these pickles that is hard to reconcile. Especially with the body cam footage of them saying, Oh, no pickles. Right. Okay, thank you for hanging with us through this episode. We provided no clarity, I'm well aware, but we know you may have ideas and you may have thoughts around this, or have seen information elsewhere that you want to share. So we are creating a Facebook group for Reconsidered Unsolved that you can find on Facebook, search reconsidered unsolved. We'll also link it below in the show notes so that you can hop over, share your theories, and engage with the community who is listening to this. Next episode, we're gonna present to you more of what was going on in Rachel's life in a completely different direction. And we're gonna give you just as much information that is going to absolutely confuse you and make you very suspicious. Thank you for listening to this episode. Please take a moment to read us, leave a review, and share this with anyone you know who loves crime. The more ears that we can get on Rachel's case, the more likely we are to reach the right person. Thanks for listening. Join us on Patreon at the Creepy Book Club to continue the conversation and for monthly bonus episodes. Also catch our other podcast, Books with Your Besties, where we talked all about thriller books. Thanks to our producers, editors, and research team, which is just us. Take care, Beth.