Episode 8 : Where Do We Go From Here?

In our closing episode we discuss where we go from here and how you can help. Thank you for being here and for caring about Rachel.

We will continue to post updates here. We will have a Patreon only episode soon with more information about what we chose not to share publicly and some of our reflections on the process of producing and hosting this series.

Please reach out with tips or information here - https://silentwitness.org/cases/homicide-rachel-hansen-1900-s-coronado-road-gilbert/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1884993352147717

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

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SPEAKER_00 0:31

I'm Ashley. This is Reconsidered Unsolved, where we focus on unsolved cases in the pursuit of justice. You are listening to season one, Rachel Hansen. Welcome back. This is Rachel Hansen, episode eight.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Today we are talking about where do we go from here? We know we started this podcast because of Rachel, who was a 19-year-old girl with big dreams, big hopes, who had her entire life ahead of her, but her life was cut short on June 4th, 2022, when she was murdered. And we still do not know who did it.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Ashley, today I think we talk about what do we think? How do we think this investigation went? And what's next? I know we've spent a lot of time talking about the Gilbert police in the last couple of episodes, and we'll get into a little bit more of that and our thoughts around it. And I think more than anything, like what has to happen next for this case to be solved and for Rachel to get justice.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

I honestly think one of the things that has to happen is something that you and I have been doing, and that was choosing to do this podcast because something that needs to happen is that people need to talk and people need to keep Rachel's story alive.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

I know. I sure hope that Dateline or somebody picks up this case and that it can get more and more national attention. I just feel like eyes on this are gonna put pressure on all of Maricopa County and the county attorney's office to keep pressing on this case.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

Right. And I think Crime Junkie picking it up and then obviously us doing our podcast on it has helped. But the more people who can talk about it and the more people who can keep eyes on it, the more likely it is that someone who knows something is finally going to say something.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

Yeah. Here's the interesting thing. I think the police have their suspect. I think the police feel like they know who this is based on just looking at the police report and what we can tell from it. And of course, we don't know for sure, but they really focused and they had two pages on why this one person was a person of interest. I just don't understand why they don't have sufficient evidence to pin that person if they have that much.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

I know you and I have talked about this multiple times, as have I with people who are close to me who listen to the podcast, and everybody says, Who do you think it is? What do you think it is? And I do find myself consistently saying from the police reports, from the sources we've spoken with, that Gilbert Police, that the people working on this have an idea of who it is and same, I'm not quite sure what the holdup is. There just might not be the evidence that they need or enough evidence. I don't know what that looks like because I'm not a police officer and I don't work in forensics and I don't do all the things you need to do to solve cases. But it's so hard for me to believe with what we have seen that there's not some sort of an answer. But then as I say that out loud, I think to myself, but there's other options. So maybe I'm wrong.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

I think if you ask us who did it, we don't know. We have no idea. And there's too many viable suspects. I think if you ask the police who did it and they were just telling you everything, they would tell you this one person in the police report.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

I agree. And I know this is something you and I have talked about while recording this podcast is that in our own personal lives, if something were to happen to one of us, there would be a few different options of who might have done it and what might have happened. But Rachel did have a lot, and we've said this a number of times, a lot going on around her. So the fact that there are so many people who look suspicious or concerning does make it more challenging to be like, I think I know what happened or who did it.

SPEAKER_00 4:15

Which let's get into that because it looks like the police did a huge amount of investigation on this one specific suspect, right? Which we think maybe was somehow related to the previous tenants, but not the previous tenants themselves, but like somehow related to that. So that's what it looks like to us that the police focused on. But we actually had things that we haven't included in the podcast, a lot of different information that we didn't include very intentionally. And one of those things is because it's purely hearsay and speculative, but we have heard a lot of rumors from a lot of sources that Gary was never investigated.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

As we kind of move away from doing a lot of our researching and reporting on this case, that is the piece of it that to me seems the most confusing and alarming and unbelievably hard to wrap my head around that someone who had literally threatened to kill her, who also had a problematic past, has never been spoken to by police. According to according to sources, we cannot confirm that. Right.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

We don't know for sure because the the Gilbert police may be telling many of our sources that they have not spoken to them. And also the people who know Gary, Gary may not be telling them the truth, right? About whether or not they've been investigated or his home has been searched or his electronics or anything like that. So we don't know for sure. But a lot of different sources have told us that he never had his home searched, that he was has not been brought in for questioning and he never had his electronics searched, which he has an alibi, it sounds like, for the night of the crime. But does that mean that he wasn't involved? That is the police responsibility to make sure they eliminate that. And here's why this bothers me so much. If they were so certain that somebody else did it, that they're not even looking at Gary or this other viable suspect, right? They don't even bother. They must have a lot of confidence that they know it's this other direction or this other person. How can they not have enough evidence then to bring it to a grand jury minimally? Maybe they did. Maybe they did. And maybe that's the problem is a grand jury won't indict. And we don't know that. How can you be so certain but not have enough evidence?

SPEAKER_01 6:32

We do know there was evidence taken and it was sent off to labs to look at fingerprints and to look at other things that they weren't able to gather information from. But if you felt like someone was so closely tied to this case that you sent that off, and then you, as you just said, didn't question another person, you must be very, very confident it is not Gary. Right. Right. Either that or you didn't complete the investigation. Right. And that's where the bigger questions come in. In working with private investigators and talking with other people who work in the legal field, I do know once someone hires an attorney, it is harder for them to be questioned. So did Gary lawyer up really quickly? And why would he lawyer up really quickly? So has he been quote unquote protected this entire time from being questioned by the police? I'm so confused.

SPEAKER_00 7:25

Yeah, I know. That part of it, that part of it to me is really frustrating. The other thing is I just wonder about if they couldn't tie physical evidence to this person, that may be the entire problem, right? And again, when we think about the nature of this crime, somebody went into an unlocked apartment, theoretically, kicked open the bedroom door and fired some shots and then left. I I don't know. I mean, they probably didn't leave behind a whole lot of evidence. But then how was the person identified? Do they have this person on camera? Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

And then it brings us back to something we talked about last episode, which was the fact that there was no press conference. So this person, and and we're not gonna share the name because that doesn't feel that feels like something that could harm Rachel's case, and that's the last thing on earth that we want to do. We've asked ourselves every single episode: does this episode help or hurt Rachel's case? What do we want to share to make sure that we're trying to move this case forward? And what do we want to hold close because we don't want to be the ones to say this name and harm the investigation in some way? All of that to say, without a press conference, nobody knows this particular name. So then no one could come forward and say, oh yeah, that person told me at a bar that he was involved in this, or I saw that person afterwards at this Chick-fil-A and he said something. The fact that the public has no knowledge that this person was a suspect means no one can give you information to help. I hate that.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

I hate it. Right. I just hate that there wasn't a press conference in the first place to say, hey, this happened. Does anybody know that anyone was acting suspicious that night? Because there might have been people who had no idea this even happened.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Right. I think we're I think we're walking in like a circle or down two a few different paths to get to the point of saying, Emily and Ashley, you have now recorded, this is your eighth episode on this. You have spent months, hours, sleepless nights talking to sources, researching this case, reading police reports. What do you think has happened? And I think we can firmly say we have two or three ideas of what could have happened to Rachel. Yes, we don't know at all. How shocking that just two 40-something year old moms might not know more than the police.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

I can't even believe it. We don't know. We do have more facts and information that we didn't share. And that was to protect everybody because guess what? People are innocent until proven guilty. We do not want to be irresponsible with information. And even with all of those additional facts, they make it more muddy, not less. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

You know, I already said this, but I just want our listeners to know about the amount of conversations that you and I had to have about what do we say and not say? Because our whole goal with this podcast is to keep Rachel's story out there and to get people talking and keep people talking. But the one thing we don't want to do is hurt her case. And we have had sections of recordings that we had to take out because after talking with a private investigator or just you and I talking back and forth, we had to say, but does that help her case? It doesn't. So I feel like the amount of stuff that we didn't share didn't give us more answers. I frankly feel like what you said, it muddied the waters a little more for us to be like, what actually did happen here?

SPEAKER_00 10:41

Right. That's the thing is I mean, I I have shared those extra details with my Pilates studio, shout out Reformed House. Those people know, and it doesn't help them to feel more confident either. It's all just a little like, wow, that's just more detail that doesn't that makes it less clear.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

The one thing we do know to be true is that the people that we have talked about who were surrounding Rachel within the past year of her life before she was murdered, these are dangerous people making unsafe, sometimes illegal choices. And that's what makes it even harder to try to figure out what exactly happened because there were a number of people around her who were involved in enough activities that were unsafe, criminal, whatever, that they really do look like someone who could have hurt her.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

Well, that's the problem, is that man, and maybe here is where we're gonna get in into Arizona. Because looking at the Nick Cordova case and this Dave Sweetman character in that, it's like, is there a Gary in every case in Arizona? These really shady characters, Gary and Dave, and just the I don't know, it's very bizarre to me.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

It reminds me of the the thriller books we read, and this is not trying to make light of the situation at all, but the authors do a really good job of having the villain, like the ultimate bad guy, but then also all of these red herrings of people who aren't the ultimate bad guy, but are bad enough that you question them. So it's just alarming that in these different unsolved cases in Arizona, there are people surrounding these cases who maybe they aren't the person that actually murdered Nick or murdered Rachel, but there are people who have made bad enough life choices that they look like they could be.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

It's just so terrible to think about Rachel being taken advantage of by some of these people that she happened to get involved with a very nice young man whose father was such a shady character. I mean, it's just like a lack of good luck in some cases. And some of it, yes, she created her own chaos, being a 19-year-old who had a history of trauma. That is not a reason for her to be murdered. That is just a fact of the case. I don't know, it's so complicated. So I guess basically what we're saying, Ashley, is we don't know. We can't tell if the investigation was complete or not. We were very defensive of the Gilbert police in the last couple of episodes. We asked some questions, we pointed out some concerns, we definitely addressed a lot of the allegations against them, but we didn't want to, in the name of Rachel Hansen's podcast, be the people who come after them for not doing a good job when we can't tell. We cannot tell. We don't know.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

Right. We only know the information that we have been provided. So in one of our episodes, we talked about Gabe, Rachel's ex-boyfriend, and how initially people had really looked at Gabe. Gabe's name's not in the police report anywhere. No, we just don't know though. Oh, right. Like that's what I was gonna say. So we don't we do not know with what we have if we even have a complete picture. So I think when we kind of come to the defense of the police department, as we did a little, we are working on the information we have. And the information we have looks and like they did a great job. But also we have then talked with sources who were close to the case who are not in there. So that makes us question is there more information that we haven't seen? I agree. Yeah, I feel like we're ending this podcast with more questions than answers.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

We are ending this podcast with more questions than answers. Basically, what we know is probably new evidence isn't going to come to light that's forensic from this. So what has to happen is people have to come forward. Somebody who knows something has to come forward and provide that evidence, provide the weapon or a casing or something that can be matched and identified and actually implicate someone, or just people that were told or knew that this was happening. And there's a $20,000 reward available for that information.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

We have received so many messages from people in Gilbert, Arizona who had never heard of this case before our podcast. So someone might know something and they don't even know what to say because no one has asked them a question, or even someone who was potentially living in her apartment complex, working with her, who have no idea what they saw because no one has asked them.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Right. I think a press conference now would be great. I think just attention on this would be great. I wish the Gilbert Police Department, I think they're holding everything close to their chest because they are being attacked constantly and they are worried about putting anything out there. That's probably not true about why they originally didn't put anything out there. That may be a lack of knowledge of what to share and not to share. I I I don't know. I think they've made missteps. I'm not gonna excuse them fully. I think they've made missteps. I don't think you get the reputation you get for as a police department without making mistakes. I don't.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

And as you have said before, I also think as much as people want information about this case, they can't, they being the Gilbert police, can't share stuff that then the person they're sharing it to might share it with the next person and the next person. And then information gets out that they didn't need to be out in the public yet that could hurt the integrity of her case. Like what we want is her case to be solved. And do we prefer that it happens today? Of course. But would we hope that if it's not today, it's that solved eventually, and not that there's a misstep in communication that then harms, you know, the evidence, the judicial proceedings, whatever, that would be a worst case scenario.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

Totally. If you can't get justice, can you imagine? Can you imagine having somebody be acquitted or not able to be prosecuted that they know for sure did it because of a misstep? So I I sure hope that the this is resolved eventually. Obviously, you know, just on a sad note, I did have an investigator that I was speaking to tell me sometimes there just aren't good answers in these cases. And that's a really hard pill to swallow. I don't want Kim or Todd to ever just take that information, Rachel's parents, and just give up, right? Obviously, they're not going to and they shouldn't. And I don't want Alicia Cordova to give up on Nick's case. Everyone should continue to pursue justice because you do not know when that actually will result in something. But she did tell me, you know, you have to think about these cases that we have never gotten answers, like Jean-Benet Ramsey or Madeline McCann or these very famous cases, Mora Murray. There's so many of them. And we will never know the answers of those. And that what if that is true here? That's heartbreaking.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

It's heart, yeah, it's heartbreaking. I've I'm happy's not the right word. I've honored, I feel honored. I feel something with those words to have shared her story and maybe be a tiny piece of just keeping her story going and hoping that enough people listen and share that somebody who knows something hears something and says something. We'll we'll be here. If there's anything that breaks in this case, you come to us first. I mean, I told Emily I literally check, I check Gilbert PD, Maricopa County, I check all Arizona sites every day to see if anyone has been arrested. I do an inmate search, I do a court case search every single morning. Thanks for being here with us and for caring about Rachel enough to listen to all of these and share them with everyone you know. And just be sure that you are subscribed so when there is some information that comes, you can come here because we will share it quickly.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

Thanks for being here. 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.