Episode 4: Gary

On April 27, Rachel went to Gary's house ( her fiances dad) seeking help contacting her fiancé. Rachel and Gary got into an altercation. Gary’s past, marked by criminal behavior, control issues, and strained relationships, raises concerns, especially given his rocky history with Rachel. Today we discuss who Gary is and shock you with information about his communication (or lack thereof) with the police. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

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SPEAKER_00 0:30

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.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Welcome back to season one, episode four of Rachel Hansen.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Before we start this episode, we want to go ahead and make a vow to you. We are going to try really hard not to use the P word in this episode. Pickles? Ashley, I told you not to say it. We I just made a vow we wouldn't say it. Should we just get it out of our system? Yes, let's do it. Okay, pickles. Pickles. Pickles. Okay, we we should be done. We will stop. No more. Let's leave that in the past. And let's move on because we've got some crazy stuff today.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Today we are taking you on a completely different direction. We are going to look at one of the first leads that police investigated.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

We can see from the Gilbert Police Chronology Report, which this is a detailed timeline of everything starting from the 911 call through all of the communication between officers on the line and the responses by officers. We can see the call was initiated at 207 by Rachel. And by 217, history had been identified that Rachel called on April 27th. So this is about five weeks before her death, to report her fiance's dad texted her. End quote. And they started pulling history.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

Not only was the call made to 911 to report this, but also it was reported by the sources we have talked with that she told people in her life that this threat had been made.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Right. By 9 o'clock a.m. There's a notation in the chronology report that they will be going to suspect's house at East Stotler. This is Rachel's fiance slash boyfriend Jomette, and we will explain the nature of that relationship in this episode. Jomette, Rachel's boyfriend, his dad is named Gary. And it looked like they sent five units to Gary's house at 8 55 a.m. And this appeared to be their first investigative lead. We can also see from the chronology report that shortly thereafter, there are different units reporting pulling utilities from the surrounding area. So these are neighbors' homes. We do understand that utilities likely means looking for camera footage. What we don't know is if there was any contact made with Gary at this point, or if the house was searched and a search warrant was obtained to do so. If any of Gary's electronics were pulled, we cannot tell any of that information from the chronology report or from the police report. But we know that very, very quickly Gary was identified and they started to run down this lead. Okay, Ashley, tell us more about this incident on April 27th.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

All right, let's get into it because it's going to probably blow your mind like it did ours. On April 27th, around 7:30 p.m., 7:30, 8 p.m. to be exact, Gilbert police were dispatched to a home on East Stotler Drive, which we know is Gary Bailey's home, where he lives with his children. The police were dispatched because they received reports of a potential suicide threat. So Rachel had received a text from Jomet, who was her fiance, that she interpreted to mean he was thinking about suicide or ending his life. And of course, Rachel was completely alarmed and immediately wanted to find Joe Met and some answers as quickly as she could. She decided to drive over to Gary's house to see if she could connect with Gary about if he could get in touch with Jomet or if he knew what was going on. In the police report, Rachel described the incident as follows. When she showed up to Gary's house, she saw him parked in his driveway in a black Mercedes. We have seen pictures of Gary's house. They're publicly available online, and his driveway is pretty long and pretty big. She arrived and he was in a black Mercedes. She was in a yellow Hummer that actually technically belonged to Gary, and Jomet was driving, and she pulled up behind Gary's Black Mercedes. She got out of the car and started talking with Gary about helping her try to try to get in touch with Joe Met. Gary did not think that Joe Met was feeling suicidal ideations at the time. He was not concerned at the time. And he was unwilling to work with Rachel on getting in touch with Jomet because he just didn't seem to be as concerned. Rachel continued to try to seek help and communication from him. She got back in the yellow Hummer. It's reported by Rachel that he physically got out of his car, came to the Hummer, and tried to pull her out of the Hummer. He was unsuccessful in doing this, went back to his Mercedes, got in the car. She was parked behind him. And as he was attempting to pull his car around, I would say almost doing like a U-turn to get out of his driveway. She used the Hummer to block him from getting out of the driveway. So he had to then do this U-turn maneuver, pull out of his driveway and into the street to go away from his house. At this point, the police are there and they are talking to just Rachel about the incident. Uh, Gary has left. They get in touch with Gary eventually about the incident, but it took a number of phone calls to get in touch with him about his version of what happened at his property on April 27th.

SPEAKER_00 6:26

Oh, this this sounds really heated. And like Rachel and he were having a major issue and disagreement. So is this the point? And I'm obviously going to cue this up for us. Is this the point at which he threatened her to kill her?

SPEAKER_01 6:42

So the interesting uh and surprising part is that this is not when you might think in the heat of an argument like this, someone might say something like this. This is actually after he had threatened to kill Rachel if she ever came back to his property, because that event happened earlier in the day. So one of the crazy parts is we we do not know why he would threaten her life.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

They obviously had a complicated relationship, and this is something we can dive into more for the rest of this episode. But yeah, it's shocking that the way that we know that too is that it says directly in this police report about this incident that earlier in the day there was a record of Rachel calling and and saying that he had threatened her. And then this is like later that same day. I cannot help but think whatever the incident is that happened between Rachel and Gary that morning that led him to threaten her life, that then Jomette's response about being done or whatever that Rachel interpreted as being suicidal was related to this whole earlier conflict. Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

Well, and to follow up, because Rachel did move her car and block his car from leaving, eventually this turned into the police having a conversation with Rachel about disorderly conduct and what this could look like if Gary chose to press charges against her in any way. So that just adds even more to the muddy water situation.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Right. It's so much drama, all occurring at one time. Picturing this scene of this conflict, she rolls up in this big hummer. She's behind Gary. Gary tries to pull her out of the hummer as I get out of my car. And Rachel's videotape on her phone, and then Gary starts to leave and try to back out again. And Rachel like zooms the hummer up to block him. Then the police come and Rachel's reportedly hysterically crying on a bench. And just to be clear, Gary didn't think that Jomette was suicidal. And that's why he was like, get off my property and go away. So just to talk that through, he didn't believe that that was a true threat. So he wasn't refusing to help because he didn't care. He just didn't actually think there was a problem.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

We are obviously going to tell you all about Gary and Rachel, but we think to give you the full picture, we really have to start by telling you all about Gary Bailey. In early adulthood, Gary met and married Eva, who was born and raised Church of Latter-day Saints, which is commonly known as Mormon. I'll be referring to it here as LDS. Gary joined the LDS church and attended with his family. At their church, members of the congregation regularly get up within their wards and they share personal testimonies. This was kind of described to us as ways the Lord has worked through you this week or kind of good news you want to share. They're just moments where people stand up and speak about their faith, their experiences, and the way that they think God has worked in their lives. According to multiple sources we spoke with, Gary took these opportunities often and was pretty long-winded. To the people who knew him through the church, Gary appeared to be the kind of man who different sources describe to us as someone who naturally drew attention, kind of charismatic, someone who spoke confidently and seemed pretty comfortable standing in front of a crowd. He was definitely somebody who did not shy away from the spotlight and seemed to actually enjoy it. Many remember him as a frequent voice during these meetings, speaking openly to his ward about faith, service, and the experiences that shaped him. They actually recall him talking multiple times about trips he had taken to Mexico. He described them as humanitarian efforts to help underserved communities. He shared about these stories and experiences, framing them as examples of service and compassion, but often focusing on his own involvement. It kind of seemed like maybe these testimonies were more about him and less about his actual faith and works through faith. At home, Gary was the father of a very large family. He was married to Jo Matt's mother, and together they had seven children. Jo Matt was the fourth child in the family, and notably he was the first boy. Growing up in a household that size meant that it was a really busy environment, but it was reported that Gary was more of, I don't know if you've heard this term, but a Disneyland dad, which is really where you focus more on being kind of the fun parent and showing up for the fun things rather than being really like nitty-gritty handling the everyday parenting responsibilities. When people describe Gary's kind of day-to-day life, we start to see a pattern of what that might have looked like. A lot of sources portray him as somebody whose world revolved around a few key things: work, the gym, and guns. He was very dedicated to his job. He owned Paolo Verde and landscaping business. He also seemed just as committed to maintaining a disciplined routine when it came to his fitness. It sounded like he kind of worked all day and then went to the gym at night. Outside of those areas, people say he was not particularly socially involved and really just stuck to his routine of going to work, going to the gym, and liking guns.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

And this is where things kind of go off the rails with Gary. We had some sources come forward that we spoke to who talked to us about some of Gary's behaviors that are really concerning to us. I think these are part of the bigger picture of Gary as we go through this description and as we get more into what we know about him. One source told us that their child was friends with Gary's children. So given that Gary had seven children, they were part of the LDS community, they frequently interacted with other kids in the LDS community and through school, other means, right? So there's all these different ways that these kids were connected. So this is from a source that has a connection through the kids. That one of the children went on a trip at one point with the Bailey family and afterward had an item that they just kind of left on their shelf in their bedroom. The parent asked the child, hey, what is this item? It's really cool. How come you never use it? The child told the parent, Gary gave me that on the trip, on the vacation we went to, but he stole it. This then led us to some more questions. The source told us that Gary frequently stole and actually taught his children how to steal as well, even when they were young. One of the ruses that he would use was that he would take two large bags of dog food and put them at the bottom of the shopping cart. And then he would have his children take the items that were small that they wanted, maybe jewelry or cosmetics, or things that they just wanted but weren't needs. Because according to this source, Gary would never buy those items for his children. And so they knew if they wanted these items, they had to take them. This was the way that Gary was going to get them for them, and that's it. And so they would put the items in between the two dog food bags. So when they went to check out, checkers wouldn't pick up the top dog food bag. They would just scan the two bags on the bottom of the cart. And so they would never find those items in between. And when scanning, the bag foods would block the sensor so it wouldn't capture the sensor of any of the items, like the jewelry or the cosmetics. Clearly, there's something off there if that is true.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

According to another source we spoke with at the LDS church, people would very thoughtfully donate items to go to underserved youth in Mexico. And it was reported by this source that Gary was caught stealing from this stash of items. And then he would then take these items to Mexico and claim that he had gifted them to these people after stealing them from the church.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

Beyond these sources telling us about this behavior, Gary has a recorded criminal history.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

He does. And criminal histories are really not difficult to find. Most of this information is completely public. If you just know somebody's name and kind of where they live, you can find a lot of it. But also some of this comes from talking to people who are close to Gary, who shared stuff with us. But what we can see from these publicly available documents are that in 2021, Gary had a charge of disorderly conduct and was required to do some domestic violence counseling around this. In 2022, we can't see exactly what this means, but he was charged with interfering judicial proceedings. We can also see that in March 2022 and April 2022, the police were called to his house a number of times. Once for something involving threats and trespassing, once for something involving a welfare check, and once for something involving the violation of a court order.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

We can see from looking at the premise history, so the history of police responses to the home of the Bailey family while they were living there over 10 years, there's quite a lot of calls out to the property. And in 2021, so the year just prior to Rachel's death, where Eva and Gary were in the midst of splitting, we can see that there are 11 different dates in which police responded to the property for various issues. One of those is an animal problem. And then on another date, a month later, we see a call for animal cruelty. This actually came up previously as well in the document, so that years before there had been calls about an animal problem and calls about animal cruelty.

SPEAKER_01 16:20

We also know from sources we have talked with that there were concerns about Gary's treatment of animals.

SPEAKER_00 16:27

So beyond Gary's documented criminal history, Gary and Eva also had various police action and really complicated relationship. Gary and Eva married in 1997. Eva initially filed for divorce in 2015, but did not go through with the divorce. They did dissolve their marriage in 2021. This was not an easy process. They did not get along, and in fact, it was incredibly heated. We know from sources Eva believed that Gary was cheating on her and actually tried to set up methods to catch him cheating. She identified evidence, and when Gary was confronted, he said, No, I didn't cheat. But Eva believed that the evidence was real. Eva obviously didn't want to tolerate his cheating behavior. This was something that influenced the way that their relationship went. This was during the middle of kind of their divorce, and Eva was staying at this other apartment. Gary tried to get evidence of Eva cheating, and we do not know if that evidence showed that or not.

SPEAKER_01 17:38

In talking with sources and people who were close to Eva, we were able to gather a lot of information about how incredibly rocky, tumultuous, traumatic their relationship was. And that when Eva initially filed for divorce, looking at the bigger picture, decided she should stay around for a while longer for her kids. She just felt like that was the right choice. Eventually, Eva got a protective order against Gary. There is a story that he did show up at where she was living at one point in time. We know that Gary arrived at the apartment where Eva was staying and entered the apartment without permission. While he was there, he recorded Eva. There were other people in the apartment who were a witness to this activity. He was questioned by the police afterwards. The charges were disorderly conduct, trespassing, and unlawful recording of a person. Eva got a protective order against Gary. Eventually, Gary also got a protective order against Eva. This meant that Eva could not come on or near his property, which is where Joe Met was living. We do know on the incident on April 27th, Eva got as close as she legally could in her car to the property. And when Gary drove away, it's reported that he saw Eva, got out of his car, started recording and saying some things to her. The police did also get in touch with Eva the same day and talk with her about her proximity to the property and her proximity to Gary and reminding her of the protective order that they had against one another, that she could not be that close to him. Clearly, their situation was extremely complicated.

SPEAKER_00 19:17

As we spoke with people who knew the family, one theme came up again and again, and that's about the relationship between Gary and Jamet. Though Gary was described as a Disneyland dad, he and Jamet had a uniquely close relationship, and this became very clear to us as we talked with multiple sources.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

On the surface, it might not sound unusual because Jomet was Gary's first son, but the way sources describe this relationship to us was just a little more complicated. Some use the word codependent to describe the dynamic between Gary and Jomet, but to be fair, that's a pretty heavy word and maybe not the most accurate one to apply when we're talking about a juvenile. Jomet was still a kid, after all. Maybe it's better that we just kind of describe what people actually reported seeing to us. According to several people we spoke with, Gary seemed to have an intense focus on Jomet. Like he wanted to know where he was all the time, who he was with, what he was doing, when he would be home. The level of attention went beyond what I would call typical parental concern, at least in the eyes of some friends who were close with them. There was also this sense that Gary didn't appreciate Jomet spending time away from him. And by most accounts, it seemed like Jomet did respond immediately when his dad was asking for attention or texts back. Sources say that when Gary called, Jomet answered. When he texted, he replied right away. If Gary asked him to do something, Jomet reportedly really did not hesitate. I think it's important we take a step back here for a second to say that we have not spoken directly with Jomet, but people close to the situation, like friends and family members, told us that they did worry about the level of control it seemed like Gary had over him. But the intensity raised questions about how much independence Jomet actually had.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

Ash, it just sounds like from their relationship, I'm all for a father-son close relationship, but that it probably was complicated for Jomet to kind of make his own decisions, especially about things that his dad didn't approve of.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

I think it's important we talk about Rachel and Gary's relationship. So we know Rachel and Jomette started dating and had a fairly quick engagement. From sources that talked to us about Rachel and Gary's relationship, it kind of seemed like in the beginning it was like any other new girlfriend meeting your boyfriend's dad, and things didn't appear to be rocky or tumultuous in any way. We do know from speaking with people who were close to Gary that he was someone who was very used to getting his way, especially when it came to women, and he really didn't like it when people pushed back. It was also mentioned to us that he may have conflated Rachel and his advocate. Ex-wife a bit because Rachel was the type of woman who did choose to push back. I mean, from everyone we have talked with, she was feisty and she appeared to be willing to stand up for herself and stand up for other people. We know from police reports and from talking with sources that Gary and Rachel's relationship did end up being complicated, and we have a few pretty specific examples as to what that looked like.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

In speaking with sources who knew Rachel, our understanding about some of the conflict that arose between Gary and Rachel was about cars. In particular, we know that on the April 27th conflict, Rachel was driving Gary's Hummer that was intended for Jomette to be driving. We also heard from other sources that they had seen Rachel driving Gary's Black Mercedes. We have heard from sources related to Rachel that Gary was not happy about Rachel driving these cars or Rachel's use of his cars. We also heard that there's another conflict that happened where Rachel maybe inserted herself into some of the family's business around a conflict with the car. From what we've heard, there was a story about some keys being lost that Rachel got involved trying to help identify a way to get the car rekeyed. We don't know all the details to this story, but what we do understand is that these car conflicts were occurring over the course of Jomette and Rachel's relationship, and it caused conflict with Rachel and Gary.

SPEAKER_01 23:29

Something else we do know from speaking with sources is that Rachel was feisty and could at times be volatile. It has to make us think when we're talking about these different instances of conflict between Rachel and Gary, how heated they may have got, and how Rachel could have potentially been a bit of an instigator in those events.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

Right. And being that she was 19 years old and didn't have probably full control of the way that she behaved yet, as none of us did at that age, I think we all probably have some moments of like real cringiness from being a teenager. But I could see from Gary's point of view that in the way that we've heard about some of these conflicts, that Gary probably didn't like some of the behavior that he was seeing from Rachel.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

Right. And I also think when you are in a position where you have a young adult or a teenager who is dating and you see someone that they are dating and potentially think that that person is not the best choice for them, you can kind of get your guard up as a parent. And I could see that then if they were already having conflict, it would just make it even more challenging. If Gary's thinking she might not be the best choice for Joe Met, Rachel's thinking you have this kind of controlling relationship with him. It's pretty easy to see how these situations could have erupted.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

Exactly. I feel like one thing that we want to be really clear about is that Gary has been at the forefront of this conversation in this crime throughout the entirety of this. Like immediately after the crime, we see that it's the first investigative lead that police took. We also see that publicly in media, there's always commentary about Gary. In other podcasts and other places, people bring up Gary as someone of real concern, and it makes it seem like Gary is the prime suspect in the case. That's not what we're saying here. What we want to do is present a very unbiased look at what was happening with Gary and Rachel that makes it seem like there's potential that Gary was involved. And part of that is acknowledging that Rachel's behavior probably did tick off Gary.

SPEAKER_01 25:30

Well, and at the very least, it's just really important we have conversations and talk about how their relationship evolved and how volatile it was near the end, and how it was two people participating in this chaotic relationship.

SPEAKER_00 25:43

Another part of the conflict between Gary and Rachel has to do with Rachel discovering something about Gary, and we don't know what this is exactly. We do know from a source close to Rachel that Rachel was upset about Gary's relationships. We don't know the context of that upset if she was upset that he was cheating on Eva or if there was some other factor here that was bothering her. But we do know that she did start to make some threats about putting Gary in jail. We have no idea the context of what Rachel was talking about in these. Nobody seems to be aware of what it is that Rachel was talking about, but she told multiple people, including according to some of our sources, even some of Gary's family members, that she could have Gary put in jail for something that she found.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

In having this conversation, we talked some about what we have reviewed here that Gary does have a problematic criminal history. So it's really hard to know what Rachel could have been talking about here. It's hard to know, is it something we have no idea about? But what we do know is that she was pretty convinced that she had information that could harm Gary in one way or another.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

I'm guessing Gary got wind of this since Rachel didn't seem like she was very private about it, particularly since the sources that we spoke to were not firsthand on this, but there were multiple corroborations of this information. And he probably didn't appreciate whatever she was saying.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

We also don't know who else she could have said this to, but one of the things we do know is that it seems like Rachel was not shy with her words. It seems like at the point that it was reported to us that she had said this, she and Gary had gone to the point where they were not friends is a very understated word to use here. And I do, I do find it interesting. You and I actually haven't talked about this until right this second, but that whatever it was she knew, she must have felt like it was something important enough to share with these people directly related to him.

SPEAKER_00 27:51

Yeah, it's pretty significant. And certainly it does make me understand why Gary would not be a big fan of Rachel at that point. I do have to wonder, we don't know exactly the timeline on all of these things. And so it makes me wonder if that day that we started at the top of the episode, the April 27th conflict with her saying that Jamette was suicidal and then them having that whole police conflict there. And then the report in there that earlier in the day he had threatened her life. Is that related to this threat? Right.

SPEAKER_01 28:23

And do we know anyone? I mean, no sources have talked with us about did did Gary say anything to anyone about this? Or we don't know if she said anything to Joe Met about this. Right. Let's talk about Rachel and Joe Met's relationship. We know that they got engaged, but we also know that like many young adult relationships, their relationship was up and down and had conflict, as we would expect with people who are 19 and 18 years old. We know that they got engaged in Rocky Point, Mexico. We were actually told by someone close to them that Gary helped Jomet pick an engagement ring for Rachel. We also know that they had called off their engagement and they were planning to have a fresh start.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

And will you tell us about that? Yeah, from what I understand from various sources who knew the family and knew the kids, that Rachel and Jomette had been through some pretty significant trials. And some of them are things that you are going to hear about in this episode or already have heard about in this episode. So the relationship between Jomette and his dad being super close, and then Gary, his dad, and Rachel not getting along and not having an okay relationship put a lot of strain on their relationship in general. And also, Rachel had gone through a couple of very significant mental health crises with some suicidality a couple of times in their relationship. And that put a lot of stress and strain on them as well. Jamette actually broke off the engagement with Rachel shortly before her death. She spent time working on her mental health and then was moving back into the apartment. And right in those days, as she was moving back into the apartment, she and Jamette were sort of at a critical crossroads with their relationship. According to some sources, Jamet originally had broken off the engagement, but then he did ask Rachel if they could start from scratch, start over from the beginning, no talk about the engagement. And he was pretty nervous about how she would take that. She took it really well, according to this source, which was kind of a surprise for Jomet because he was worried that she would be more upset.

SPEAKER_01 30:37

We know the night before Rachel was murdered, Jomet had a family dinner. And at this family dinner, he was talking with a family member about how he seemed excited that Rachel took this breaking off of the engagement well and was excited to kind of start again from zero, to start fresh and to start rebuilding their relationship and the young love that the two of them had. It was reported to us that this was very surprising information when Gary learned it. According to the source we spoke with, Gary firmly thought that the two of them were broken up.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

Yeah, and I guess he had assumed that. He was pretty bothered by that. He was.

SPEAKER_01 31:27

And what a quick turn of events. Because they were engaged in January, where it's reported that Gary helped Joe Met purchase a ring, and then this took place in June.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

Yeah, so in this six-month period, things really turned and changed for them. We know that Gary was the first lead that police ran down in this case because of the documentation that he had threatened Rachel's life in the weeks just prior to her murder. However, the focus on Gary seems to dissipate very quickly after that. We do want to talk about some of the things that came up in the course of our investigating this crime that made us consider Gary further and want to just keep an eye on the Gary angle. First, we've established that some of Gary's character we find a little bit questionable in terms of decision making, but that's not a reason to think that somebody committed a homicide or was involved in any way. In fact, we want to make clear here that we are not proposing that Gary should be a suspect in this case. We simply feel it is responsible to make sure that every angle of this case is considered fully. That said, we want to go ahead and continue to tell you about some of the things that continue to make those around Gary and those who look at this case suspicious. The night of Rachel's death, on June 3rd, Jomette and Rachel had spent the evening together swimming and having dinner, and Rachel had talked to her mom Kim, who reported that Rachel sounded peaceful and happy. They had just restarted their relationship from the ground up, so they were not talking about their engagement. They were just trying to reconnect and have a nice night together.

SPEAKER_01 33:06

What we know from security footage that night is that it appears they went swimming and came back for the night. And as you said, M had a nice night together. At 11:15, Gary, Jo Met's dad, called him and told him to come home. Around midnight, he listened to his dad and he left and went home.

SPEAKER_00 33:26

Rachel was murdered on the early morning hours of a Saturday morning, and on Sunday, Gary attended his church. Ash, tell us about that.

SPEAKER_01 33:35

So we have talked about how Gary was a member of the LDS church. And in the LDS church, they have what are called wards, which are like smaller sections of the bigger Capital C church where groups meet to worship. And oftentimes, members are encouraged to get up and share testimonies. And we talked earlier about how Gary already did this. He really liked to talk about the service work he was doing and how he felt like he was helping other people. But this testimony, and we learned about this through sources who witnessed the testimony, was very different. He got up in front of his congregation, according to these sources, and said that he had called Jo Met the night that Rachel was murdered. Because remember, Joe Met was with her and his dad called him to come home because the Holy Spirit had told him to tell Jo Met that he needed to come home. One of the initial questions some of these sources wondered was Did they not tell you to warn Rachel about this gut feeling the Holy Spirit gave you? So it just led us to a lot of questions about the sincerity of his testimony.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

Well, and one of the critical pieces here is that according to these sources, he didn't even mention that Rachel had been murdered. He just talked about calling Jo Met home from Rachel's apartment. And there were people in the congregation who still had no idea in that moment that Rachel had been killed. How bizarre that part is, too, to kind of leave that out. I will say that uh one of our sources is also mentioned that Gary was frequently really emotional during these testimonies and would he, I think it was described as like boo-hoo over lots of things and get all weepy and sort of like in a performative way, according to them. That was their perspective. He would be emotional about the the kind things he'd done for others or the way that he had provided for these children in Mexico and things like that. And that he was completely emotionless in this testimony where he talked about calling Joe Matt home.

SPEAKER_01 35:42

Which leads to bigger questions. Then when he called Joe Met home and said it was the Holy Spirit, could it just be that he was upset about this rekindling of a relationship that seemed to interfere with his relationship with Joe Met?

SPEAKER_00 35:57

Right. I mean, without the context of that Rachel was murdered that night, we would think he does not like this relationship between them. He doesn't think this is a good fit. He doesn't want Jo Met around Rachel, so he called to be like, hey, come come home. One other thing though, if Gary was just thinking, I don't want my kid around this person, it's a little bit strange that he didn't say that more clearly at some point versus the next day, the Sunday, claiming, oh, you know, the spirit guided me that Jomet wasn't safe and he needed to come home.

SPEAKER_01 36:34

Also, was it reported by Jomet, I'm asking you this and saying it at the same time, that his dad called him home because they had to work early the next day?

SPEAKER_00 36:43

Now that is something we have heard from a couple of sources that he called to say, hey, come home. You have a 4:30 a.m. wake up time or start time tomorrow. And there was some landscaping project that apparently Jomet was the lead on or needed to take care of, whether that was at home, at his personal home or elsewhere, I'm not clear. But that that was some of the intent. But that's also not what Gary seemed to report in terms of later reasoning for why he called him home. So that it seems like there's some real logical reasons he could have called. We also understand that that that was an atypical thing for Gary to call Jamet home, although it was very typical for Gary to control Jamet sort of in a passive way, where Jamette just really jumped whenever Gary said anything. And so whether that was intended or not on Gary's side, if Gary called Jamette and said, Hey, Jamette, you need to leave, Jamette would get up from the middle of the dinner table and leave if that was what was going on. So there was sort of this established pattern with them and relationship with them where Jamette did whatever Gary said on the one hand, but on the other hand, apparently it was atypical for him to call him home late at like midnight like that.

SPEAKER_01 37:56

Right. The timing feels odd to call someone in what I maybe wanted when you're young, it's not but what feels almost like the middle of the night. Right.

SPEAKER_00 38:05

Uh, for certainly for an adult man, you would think so. Like for me, I'm I'm not up at that hour. Although you are up at that hour waiting for Hunter. And so maybe this was sort of one of those moments where he was like, I can't sleep because my kid is out there with this woman that I don't think is a good match for him and I think is problematic. I don't want this happening.

SPEAKER_01 38:24

Oh, 100%. 100%. Being a concerned parent and staying up late is a very natural and normal response when you have a teenager or a young adult.

SPEAKER_00 38:35

So there you go. We fully contradicted ourselves. This was not normal, is normal, all the things. We don't really know what to make of this, but we're just telling you what the people around him have said. Okay, another piece of circumstantial evidence that we have, or maybe not, is in episode two, we told you a lot about that. We wondered if the Gilbert Police Department was actually redacting how many shots were fired, and that maybe Rachel believed she'd been shot twice, and that's why they redacted that information. If she heard two gunshots, we know there was an entry wound in her lower abdomen and an exit wound up at her shoulder. The bullet had traveled across her body. But we did wonder if there were two shots fired. And we noted that we have never seen anyone in the media speak up on this. We haven't seen this theory elsewhere.

SPEAKER_01 39:24

While speaking with sources, we were surprised to find out through a screenshot of a comment on Facebook that Gary had stated, by the miracle of God, my son is still alive. He left her apartment around 11 p.m. and he returned home. He listened to the Holy Spirit. Only three hours later, somebody came into her apartment and shot her twice and killed her. I'm so lucky and so blessed to have my son alive.

SPEAKER_00 39:50

This may or may not be meaningful. We don't know because maybe he at first when we saw this, just to be clear, at first when we saw this screenshot of this comment, we thought it really meant nothing. It was like, well, who cares? He thought she was shot twice, maybe because he heard about the entry wound and the exit wound and thought that was two different shots. Like, we didn't really care. As we got into the evidence, and all of a sudden we felt like maybe there was more than one shot fired. All of a sudden, this came back up and we were like, wait a minute, remember? Gary posted that she was shot twice.

SPEAKER_01 40:22

And we also had questions about the timing of the comment because at the time the Facebook post had been released, right, saying what had happened to Rachel. The question we had was, how did Gary get this information to so confidently say two shots in this comment?

SPEAKER_00 40:39

Everyone is under the impression there was one shot fired. Again, this could totally be meaningless, but it's just one piece of the puzzle. There's another Facebook comment that we have from Gary, and actually it's multiple comments that we have a screenshot of that say something very similar.

SPEAKER_01 40:56

So the comments that we had through screenshots from some sources say the private detective told me if my son would have stayed the night, it would have been a double homicide. I am so thankful my son listened to the Holy Spirit and came home. And some iteration of this comment is done multiple times.

SPEAKER_00 41:14

We don't know if Gary could have been referencing some other private investigator, but we do know that the private investigator who has worked on this case in consultation with the Hansons has never spoken with Gary. Along with all of these things, we do have other allegations that were made by sources that we spoke to who know Gary and Gary's family. Some of these are about his ability to continue thinking like a criminal in other capacities, such as talking about how to get away with crimes.

SPEAKER_01 41:44

People in Gary's community shared with us he had made claims about being able to have access to undocumented people, and that if someone was hoping to commit a crime and get away with it, that would be a way to hire someone to do that.

SPEAKER_00 42:00

Yeah, he basically said if you use an undocumented person, they won't have fingerprints on file, which isn't necessarily true, but also in some cases would be if they hadn't been here or committed any crimes.

SPEAKER_01 42:13

It's also just alarming when the sources shared this with us to think that someone is thinking about those things and verbalizing them, saying, if I were to commit a crime, here is how that would look.

SPEAKER_00 42:25

There are some other things that sources have told us about Gary's criminality and kind of the way that he thought about things that we just don't feel comfortable saying because they're completely hearsay. We really don't feel like there's a firsthand account necessarily of some of them about varying degrees of manipulative sort of behavior on Gary's part to try to have the best outcome for himself personally. This really brings us to just thinking about his criminality and criminal versatility. Something that we talk about in the psychology and law field is criminal thinking patterns and criminal thinking theories. There are two types of criminal thinking: there's proactive criminal thinking and there's reactive criminal thinking. Proactive criminal thinking is essentially what we would talk about with Gary here. He is planning in advance, thinking all of the time about the way that he can engage in criminal or just non-legal behavior, even if it's more minor types of crimes like theft. He is thinking in a criminal fashion to produce the results that he is looking for. Reactive is more that emotionally charged, reactionary criminal behavior. And I think we're looking more at Gary as even though he does seem like a very emotional person, as he's also just very accustomed to criminal thinking patterns. We don't have any hard evidence that Gary could have done this or been involved in any capacity with Rachel's death, but we just think that dismissing him entirely is something that we're not prepared to do as people sharing the story.

SPEAKER_01 43:56

One of the most surprising pieces of information we have learned is that. Gary has not spoken with police.

SPEAKER_00 44:03

To this day, according to some reliable sources, they have been informed by Gilbert Police that Gary has never been brought in for questioning. We wish and ask that Gary come forward and go to the Gilbert Police Department and make sure that he is engaged in a full investigation, interview, whatever needs to happen, so that he can be fully cleared from any form of suspicion in this crime. That would allow everybody in the public to focus more clearly on what it is they should be thinking about they might know about this crime, as it doesn't relate to Gary.

SPEAKER_01 44:40

You may think that we are done here, but we're not. We'll be back next week because it was shocking to learn that there were actually a number of people surrounding Rachel in the last few weeks and months of her life that had some form of conflict with her.

SPEAKER_00 44:58

If you have any information about the Rachel Hanson case and you would like to come forward to us, please feel free to contact us at the Creepy Book Club. We are on all social media platforms at the Creepy Book Club, or our email is infothecreepybookclub.com. We are happy to talk with you and keep you as an anonymous source. Thank you for listening. If you have any tips on the Rachel Hanson case, please call the Gilbert, Arizona Police Department or head to silentwitness.org to submit your tip. Visit our Patreon at the Creepy Book Club for early release, ad-free, extra episodes, and behind the scenes content. Music by Craig Reaver. Editing, production, research, and writing by the Creepy Book Club.