Transcript of 455: She Beheaded Her Ex…And Married His Son | The Johnathan Willette Case

Now, I hope you are ready. I know you just came off of a long weekend, or maybe not a long weekend, but a weekend nonetheless. It's Monday if you're listening to this on Monday. Man, I'm just, like, crushing myself left and right here. But it's Monday, and so I know you just had a happy weekend, but I'm about to dump all over it. And I just hope you're in the mental space today to listen to the case that I have to share with you, because it is so twisted, so disgusting, and, like, the fucking audacity, okay? That's, like, all I can really say.

It's a wild one. So whether you are listening to this on your commute into work, maybe you're listening to it while you're cleaning the house, maybe you're listening to this at work with your work bestie, wherever you are, I just hope that you are getting your mind right, getting prepared, because we're about to go down the rabbit hole together. Now, before we do, do me a quick favor. If you're listening to this on the podcast, make sure you're following the podcast so that you don't miss any future episodes. It's also a free way to support the podcast and help with discoverability. And if you are watching this on YouTube, press subscribe, because it is also a way to help other true crime connoisseurs like us find the channel.

However, when she got to the kitchen, she realized she wasn't the only one awake. Jonathan's ex-girlfriend, Devin Michaels, was also downstairs. She was just there washing dishes in the middle of the night at 1:00 a.m. She and Jonathan shared two daughters together, and even though they had split up, they still co-parented very closely with one another. So Devin had mentioned that the next morning she and Jonathan were supposed to register the girls for school. So it was this completely normal interaction, normal conversation. Nothing felt off besides the fact that she was washing dishes at 1:00 a.m.

But even that could have been explained away, like, a long night, right? So Yoko drank some water, she headed back upstairs, and she went to bed. But she had absolutely no idea that when she was going to wake up just a few hours later, she was going to walk into something absolutely horrific. At around 8:00 a.m., Yoko woke up once again, and it seemed like she was the first person awake in the house. This time, nobody was downstairs, nobody sounded like they were, you know, shuffling around in the hallways. But almost immediately, she noticed that a few things did feel strange.

The dogs were outside in the backyard. However, the door was locked, and nobody else was downstairs, which was odd. The doggy door, also, that the family normally kept open, had been shut. So it seemed as though these dogs were left outside, the door locked to lock them out, and then also the doggy door shut down so they couldn't get back in. And it didn't look like they had just been let out to, you know, quickly use the bathroom and come back in. They were, again, like, locked out. Still, Yoko didn't think too much of it at first.

That is until she looked out the front window and noticed that Jonathan's truck was still sitting in the driveway. And Yoko remembered that conversation from the night before, or the middle of the night, I should say, when Devin was doing the dishes. She mentioned that Jonathan and her were going to be taking the girls to register for school that morning. She also had mentioned that Jonathan had been drinking that night, so Yoko figured, okay, maybe he was hungover, maybe he overslept, maybe Devin took the girls. Who really knows? Which, okay, he's an adult, that's on him.

But even though Jonathan was pushing, what, 50 years old at that point, the truth was Yoko was still his mother. She still looked out for him, and she didn't want him missing the school registration for his daughters. So she headed back upstairs toward Jonathan's bedroom. But before she even could open the bedroom door, she noticed a smell, and not necessarily a strange smell, but a very strong smell. And that split second that it took to open Jonathan's bedroom door, it was the last moment of peace that Yoko would ever know.

Because once she stepped inside, the room was completely still. Quiet. Now the smell was growing even stronger. She could also tell that somebody was lying on the bed, but as she got closer, she realized something was horribly wrong. Jonathan was lying there, or at least his body was. But Yoko immediately knew that he was dead. And the reason that she knew he was dead and that he wasn't just asleep or in a deep, drunken trance where she couldn't, you know, jolt him awake is because his head was missing.

He had been decapitated. Right in front of her now was her son's lifeless body beheaded. And sitting nearby, there were two bottles of cleaning solution, a bottle of ammonia and a bottle of bleach. So Yoko panicked, right, and immediately called the police. And even the first responders who arrived on the scene reportedly were, like, sick to their stomachs when they got inside that bedroom. Jonathan's death, obviously, was immediately treated as a homicide, and investigators quickly realized that this wasn't some random, sloppy murder or, you know, quick, spur-of-the-moment type violence.

Whoever did this had put a lot of thought into it. So let's go through some of the things that the investigators noticed right away about this crime scene and also about Jonathan's body. There weren't any obvious signs of forced entry. No shattered windows, no kicked-in doors, nothing like that at all. But Yoko did point out a few things that the investigators found interesting. The door leading from the house into the garage was wide open, which she said that was very unusual. Even if the main garage door itself was shut, the family normally kept the interior garage door closed, you know, to keep bugs out, keep the dogs contained inside the home, things like that.

Yoko also pointed out that the garage door itself was cracked slightly open, which you can actually see that in the body cam footage. There was obviously a lot of blood at the scene as well, but I have to say, too, honestly, not nearly as much as you would expect in a case that involves a decapitation. There was blood on the bed where Jonathan's body was found, but first responders specifically noted that there was no blood spatter throughout the room. Investigators also noticed what appeared to be ammonia and bleach poured around Jonathan's neck area, the area where his head should have been.

And by the time that first responders arrived, there was already a chemical reaction happening to Jonathan's body, all the way to the point where it looked like smoke was visibly coming from his neck area. Now, this may already be common knowledge, but, you know, roll with me on this. I'm still going to say it because it's important. You should never mix ammonia with bleach, because together they do create a toxic gas that can absolutely make somebody lose consciousness, if not kill them outright directly.

And in this case, investigators believed that these chemicals likely had been poured onto Jonathan and onto his neck area after he had already been killed and beheaded. So I really don't know the intended purpose there, what that was. Maybe it was to get rid of any evidence or whatever tool was used to perform the decapitation so that it couldn't be traced back to clean it up. I don't really know. But the biggest issue that the investigators were dealing with now was the fact that Jonathan's head was nowhere inside the home.

It was completely missing. Now, all of the people inside the house that night can get a little bit confusing, so I want to break it down clearly for you. Jonathan had three children. His oldest son, Devier, was 27 years old and was from a previous relationship years earlier. He was grown. He was living on his own. He also shared twin daughters with Devin, who were pre-teens at the time, although their exact ages have not been really made public. And like I mentioned earlier, Jonathan and Devin were no longer together romantically, but because of the twin girls, they still communicated, they saw each other often, and they co-parented together.

However, Devin didn't live in that house with Jonathan. And while Jonathan had full custody of the girls, the twins happened to be with Devin that night after she left Jonathan's house, which I know that that's really complicated because we know that Devin was washing dishes at 1:00 a.m., so, you know, leaving after that with the girls, it's complicated, which you shouldn't be keeping pre-teens up that late. Whatever. Not going to go into it. So my point is that when Yoko discovered Jonathan's body the next morning, the only other two people physically inside the house were Yoko herself and her boyfriend, Yoshida.

Her boyfriend also lived there at the time. And they are both seen on the body cam footage from first responders, but nobody else is. And I'm going to play this body cam footage for you intermittently throughout this episode, so if you're watching this episode, you'll see that. If you're listening, feel free to hop over to YouTube after if you want to get the visuals.

And this is what Yoko told them. The last time that Yoko saw Jonathan was at around 10:00 p.m. the night before. Jonathan and Devin had both been at the house together, and then Yoko went upstairs to bed. We know that at around 1:00 a.m., Devin was downstairs washing dishes, but Jonathan wasn't with her. Then, sometime around 3:00 a.m., Yoko said that she woke up because she heard the dogs barking, which she thought was unusual but not alarming enough to get out of bed and go investigate. So then the next thing we know is it's around 8:00 a.m., and Yoko is waking up and finding Jonathan's body upstairs.

But there were also some additional follow-up questions that the investigators wanted to ask Yoko. However, there was a bit of a language barrier because Japanese was her first language, and they knew that they needed to get this right. So they wanted to, like, get the answers, but they wanted to be clear. They wanted to dot all of their I's and cross all of their T's. Investigators also started speaking with neighbors, especially neighbors who had security cameras outside of their homes. So one neighbor went back through her footage, but she said that she didn't notice anything that happened that was suspicious overnight.

However, she did mention something else that caught the investigators' attention. She claimed that a day or two before Jonathan was killed, she noticed a work truck that was slowly driving through the neighborhood with two or three men inside. According to her, they seemed to be driving very slowly past houses, possibly looking at house numbers or security cameras. The men were reportedly wearing bright-colored work vests as well. Now, whether that was a disguise or whether they were actually workers, who's to say at this point? The neighbor couldn't provide a detailed description of either the truck or the men themselves.

So the detectives documented the information, but the truth was, at that point, they weren't really even sure if they had anything to do with Jonathan's murder or not. So at that stage of the investigation, the detectives believed that the last confirmed time that Jonathan was alive was around 10:00 p.m. And because Devin had still been at the house after that, the investigators knew they obviously needed to speak with her next, even if she hadn't personally seen or heard anything suspicious. She still was in the house. They needed to build the timeline. Now, when Devin was notified and learned that Jonathan was dead, she was shocked and distraught.

Just like Yoko, she described the day before as feeling completely normal. According to Devin, she and Jonathan had spent August 6th back to school shopping for their daughters, and she described that day as pleasant or, in her direct quote, "pleasant for the most part." She also explained that they had driven Jonathan's truck around that day because it had branding for his business on the back, so he liked driving it around whenever he could as a, you know, source of free marketing. But as the night went on, she said that things started getting a little more complicated.

Like I mentioned earlier, Jonathan and Devin had separated after being together pretty long-term, though they had never officially married. Jonathan lived in Henderson at the same house from the incident and that you saw on the body cam footage, while Devin lived about 15 or 20 minutes away in Las Vegas. According to Devin, the night before Jonathan's death, they had been moving some of their daughter's belongings over to her place, including things like a dresser, a bunk bed, and clothing. Because even though Jonathan did have full custody of the girls, he still wanted the girls to be spending time with Devin, their mother, spending the night over at her place as well.

So moving some of their things into her house, it made sense. They would feel comfortable that way. They'd have some of their own stuff, their own environment, right? And it would make that transition back and forth between the homes a little bit easier. However, according to Devin, it also seemed like Jonathan was slowly moving some of his own things into her place.

But then later, in that same conversation, she admitted that she had already worked things out with her husband so that Jonathan could move in. And according to Devin, her husband was not happy about it at first, but eventually, she said that he accepted it because it supposedly was what was best for the girls, which I'm not going to lie, when I first read that detail in my research, I kind of had to stop and reread it a couple of times because most people are probably not going to willingly move out so that their spouse's ex can move in, especially when the ex is also the father of the children.

It's like reunification. It's reuniting the family together. Wouldn't that feel, I don't know, threatening? But there was one more detail in all of this that Devin included, and it made everything even more complicated in all of this. Because Devin's new husband, her new husband was Devier, Jonathan's oldest son. Now, I feel like we probably all collectively need a second to process that because it's a lot. Jonathan and Devin had been long-term partners for years and years and years, and they shared twin girls together.

Then, after their breakup, Devin married Jonathan's oldest son from a previous relationship. So Devin's ex-boyfriend and father of her children was now technically what? Her father-in-law? I mean, that's wild, right? And once you hear that, it suddenly makes more sense why Devier would agree to move out for the girls' sake. Like, he wants the younger girls to have a good life, not be overly complicated or be traumatized by what she's seeing. I mean, those were his younger half-sisters, so of course he wanted what was best for them.

So upon hearing this, obviously, the investigators' heads were about to explode. They were spinning, but they tried to stay as professional and unbiased as possible about the relationship dynamic that was going on here. Although, I think it's fair to say it definitely did raise some eyebrows. So Devin was 45 years old. Devier was 27 years old, which means that he was only around 25 years old when the two of them got married in 2021. And beyond this age gap, remember, I mean, he was Jonathan's son.

This is bizarre. This is weird. A lot of the details about this whole love triangle are a little unclear, but by all accounts, Jonathan was very uncomfortable with it. And hello, obviously, I get it. It caused a lot of tension and a major strain within the family. And it also sounds like the relationship between Jonathan and Devin was already pretty messy even before all of this. And then there was another detail that started showing up in headlines that were surrounding this case. Apparently, Devin had previously worked in adult films.

Now, to be clear, most reports never really went into depth about that part of her past. A lot of outlets just referred to her as an ex-porn star, you know, adult film worker, which honestly might be even overstating things a little bit. I don't know. But either way, it became another layer in an already very complicated situation. Now, before Devin could continue walking the investigators through the night that Jonathan died, she said that she needed to clarify something else. Devin acknowledged that her relationship with Devier looked really bad from the outside, but according to her, there wasn't actually a romantic relationship between them anymore.

She claimed that the marriage was primarily for medical reasons. She never fully explained what those medical reasons were, but according to Devin, being legally married would make things easier because Devier could then help her and access information as her spouse. She also claimed that because of these medical issues, she was unable to have sex. According to Devin, she and Jonathan hadn't been intimate since 2018. And while she admitted that she and Devier had been sexually involved before, she said that they hadn't had sex in quite a while.

So honestly, I mean, instead of clearing things up, this now new revelation and explanation, it just raised even more questions, at least for me. I don't know for you, but certainly for me, because if you're watching this on YouTube and you're seeing the photos and the videos, the photo I showed earlier of Devier in a tux and Devin dressed in white, apparently, that was from their wedding day. So even though the marriage was supposedly only for medical reasons, they still seemed to fully commit to the wedding itself. Now, look, to be fair, it could be to fraudulently obtain health insurance, to sell the lie, to do whatever.

I mean, we've seen that happen a million times, right?

So instead, she said, you know, just stay at your own house for the night. We will meet up the following morning, and we will register the girls for school. Now, if you remember, his mom, Yoko, told the investigators that the last time that she saw Jonathan was around 10:00 p.m., but according to Devin, she actually saw him later than that. She explained that when Yoko came downstairs at around 1:00 a.m. and saw her washing the dishes, Jonathan was awake as well and was outside in the garage smoking. Then, after she finished the dishes, Devin said that she went into the garage, she told Jonathan that she was leaving, and she said that she would see him the next morning.

And according to her, that was the last time that she ever saw him alive, which honestly, it could explain why both the garage door and the interior garage door had been left open. Maybe Jonathan cracked the garage door for airflow while he was smoking. Then maybe he forgot to shut the door into the house because he was drunk and intoxicated. Who knows? But that still leaves the biggest question unanswered in all of this. Who killed him? And how did somebody get into that house without anybody hearing or seeing anything? And how is somebody so quiet during a decapitation?

I mean, how is there not more evidence or clues here? I mean, sure, someone could have come through the partially opened garage door, but if that's the case, how would they have known that Jonathan was going to leave it open that night? So detectives started asking the obvious next question. Did Jonathan have any enemies? Was there anybody who might have wanted to hurt him? And at first, Devin's answers were pretty vague, but eventually, she started bringing up parts of Jonathan's past. According to Devin, years before they even got together, Jonathan apparently had been involved in selling drugs.

She said she didn't know exactly what kind, whether it was just marijuana or if it was possibly something more serious, but as far as she knew, that lifestyle was long far behind him.

And apparently, this man told Jonathan he was, quote, "coming for him," which is obviously an incredibly alarming thing to hear after somebody turns up murdered, right? So the detectives immediately went over to Devin's house so that they could interview her daughter directly. Because if this story was true, I mean, it could be huge. It could be a huge break in the case. So while detectives were walking up to the house, they noticed something that was sitting near the driveway, a black cell phone. Now, at the time, they just kind of mentally clocked it, noted it, continued going inside, and they didn't immediately stop or ask whose phone it was.

But then, before the detectives could even start the interview, the two twins came running inside holding the exact same black phone, except they weren't treating it like it belonged to them. It wasn't a toy. It wasn't something like that. They handed it directly to the investigators, and they said that it was Jonathan's phone, which once again, this immediately raised more questions. I mean, why would Jonathan's phone be outside of Devin's house, especially when his body had been found back at his house and he didn't go back to Devin's house that night? Investigators also noticed that the phone was cracked and even more, that there appeared to be a dark-colored stain near one corner of the phone, a stain that looked like it possibly was consistent with blood.

So detectives asked Devin whether Jonathan normally left things lying around like that. And according to her, yeah, he did. So she didn't seem shocked or surprised that his phone had apparently just been sitting outside of her house. Yet still, leaving your phone behind is one thing. Leaving it cracked on the ground, possibly with blood, that's a whole nother thing. So the detectives collected the phone as evidence, and they moved forward with what they had originally come there to do, interviewing one of these twin girls. However, that interview itself was never really detailed in court documents, so we don't fully know what was said.

What I do know, though, is that while the investigators were there, they decided to interview one more person, Jonathan's son, Devier, who, remember, is also now Devin's husband. Devier was cooperative and confirmed that, yes, he and Devin were legally married, but just like Devin had claimed, he said that the marriage was mainly to help her with medical issues. Now, from everything that I read, nobody ever really explained exactly what that meant. Devin had mentioned that by being married to him, it allowed him to help access medical information and assist her more easily.

But honestly, that also feels like a pretty extreme step. So I know I alluded to this earlier, but I really do wonder whether it maybe had something to do with health insurance or medical coverage through Devier's job or something along those lines, just like cheating and working the system. And I don't know if any of that is for sure, so I don't want to speculate too much, but it would at least make a little bit more sense in all of this, right? So when detectives then asked about his relationship with his dad, Jonathan, he admitted it was not good, which honestly, probably isn't really surprising given the circumstances, right?

According to him, the issues between them went back way before he even married Devin. He claimed that Jonathan hadn't really been present during his childhood and that he wasn't a good father to him. The two of them apparently weren't close at all. In fact, he told the detectives that the last time he and Jonathan had even spoken was a couple of months earlier. And out of everyone that the investigators had interviewed so far, his son definitely had the most negative things to say about Jonathan. Not to mention, if detectives were looking at potential motive, I mean, there were a lot of different directions that they could go.

Maybe there was resentment over his childhood. Maybe possible financial motivations if Jonathan died. Maybe tension over having to move out of the home that he was sharing with Devin, his now wife. Maybe even jealousy and possessiveness considering he had married his father's ex-girlfriend, even though, again, both he and Devin insisted that their relationship was mostly platonic. And then there was the issue of Devier's alibi. According to him, on August 6th, he had mostly been home alone packing up his belongings so that Jonathan could move in, which, look, that could absolutely have been true, but the investigators also couldn't really verify it.

Aside from the times when Jonathan, Devin, and the twins had stopped by with belongings, Devier claimed he had been there just completely alone by himself. He did have a more solid alibi for the morning of the 7th, though by then, Jonathan may have already been dead, so who's to say, right? He claimed that he was at work when he got the call that Jonathan was found. And according to him, he went home afterward and he started drinking because he was just consumed and overwhelmed with emotions. At that point, though, everyone that investigators had interviewed had technically been cooperative.

They weren't hiding anything. They were forthcoming. They were answering questions. But what nobody inside the house realized was that once the detectives confirmed that that black phone belonged to Jonathan, they immediately started working on a search warrant for Devin and Devier's home because that detail, that phone, it was way too strange to ignore. And meanwhile, as all of this is unfolding and going on, the investigators were still missing one major, major piece of this case. Jonathan's head still had not been found.

Now, the search warrant, it ended up leading investigators to a few pretty interesting discoveries. And look, finding Jonathan's DNA inside the house, that obviously would not have been shocking. Neither would finding some of his belongings there. Detectives had also already recovered his phone outside the home before the search warrant was even executed. So like, that wouldn't have really been a, like, hallelujah moment finding his DNA or his belongings. Like, they already found his belongings. They also knew his belongings would be inside. We know he was in the house. Like, fine. But what the investigators apparently did not expect to find was a plastic bag hidden inside Devin's room.

And inside that plastic bag was Jonathan's wallet, his ID, his cards, his social security card, and the keys to his truck. So while the detectives continued searching the house, they also asked Devin if she would be willing to do another interview. This time, though, they spoke with her inside one of their patrol cars. And because of the topics that they were about to get into, the detectives read Devin her Miranda rights, although they also made it clear that she was not under arrest at that point in time. So Devin said that she understood her rights and she still would agree to speak with them.

The interview itself was actually pretty short, but detectives mainly wanted answers to two things. First, why was Jonathan's phone outside the house in the driveway, which Devin didn't really seem offended by the question. According to her, Jonathan often smoked cigarettes in that area, so maybe he had been there outside the night before while they were dropping things off, dropped his phone, and simply didn't realize it. And as for what looked like it could be blood on the phone, Devin claimed that Jonathan had cut his hand earlier in the day while they were moving things around.

So a pretty simple explanation and a plausible explanation. And the truth was, investigators actually had found cigarette butts in that same area where the phone was recovered. So I mean, part of that explanation, it certainly lined up. The second thing, though, that the detectives asked her about was that plastic bag that contained Jonathan's belongings. But again, Devin's answer, it sounded fairly straightforward. She claimed that Jonathan had asked her to hold onto those items for him, though she also said she didn't realize that the keys inside were actually for his truck.

She thought that maybe they were for something else or maybe even a spare. Who knows? Now, obviously, investigators couldn't verify whether that conversation had really happened because Jonathan was dead and he couldn't confirm. But it also wasn't impossible. Jonathan was supposedly preparing to move in, and he had planned to meet Devin again the next morning, so maybe he did say, like, "Hey, hold on to all this. I'm going to see you in the morning anyway. I'll just get it from you then." Although, honestly, the truck keys do stand out a little bit because you would, of course, think that he would need those if he planned to drive himself to the school the next day or over there to Devin's house the next day.

But again, Jonathan had reportedly been drinking that night, so maybe Devin kept the keys intentionally to stop him from driving intoxicated.

So we're not talking about a small kitchen knife here or a paring knife or anything like this. This was a large, large, heavy blade. And according to Yoko, the night before Jonathan was found dead, Yoshida had actually used the meat cleaver while making dinner. Afterward, it had been left sitting in the sink before they went upstairs to bed. So this knife couldn't have been lost. It couldn't have been borrowed. It couldn't nothing like that. They used it. It was in the sink just the night before. But now the cleaver was gone. It wasn't in the sink.

It wasn't misplaced in a drawer somewhere. And according to them, it had completely disappeared. So as soon as the detectives heard that, they immediately had to wonder whether this missing meat cleaver could have been part of Jonathan's murder and also used as the weapon to decapitate him, which also kind of shocks me a little bit because if you find a decapitated body, wouldn't one of your first thoughts be to go look and see if any tools are missing from the garage or any knives are missing from the knife block? I don't know. Maybe that's just me.

So eventually, Jonathan's autopsy results came back, and the investigators learned several more important details. The medical examiner determined that Jonathan's head had been removed post-mortem. His official cause of death was listed as homicidal violence with no anatomic or toxological cause determined, which basically means that the medical examiner could confirm that Jonathan had been murdered but could not identify the exact injury or substance that killed him. So unlike cases where they can point to a gunshot wound or strangulation or an overdose, the investigators here could only definitively conclude that Jonathan's death was a homicide.

The autopsy also determined that Jonathan's body had not been moved after death, meaning he was killed right there on the bed where he had been discovered and decapitated. And lastly, investigators believed that both a hand-powered knife and a mechanically powered saw had likely been used in this decapitation, which if that's the case, how did nobody hear this saw? I mean, I get even small saws sometimes are quiet, but like, how do you not hear that, right? And again, how was there no blood splatter in all of that?

So during Devin's third interview with detectives, they asked whether or not she would be willing to take a polygraph exam, and she agreed. So on August 15th, Devin came into the station and she went through with the test. And according to the reports, she seemed very calm, very ready to get it over with. However, the results that came back, they raised some concerns. At one point during the polygraph, Devin was asked point blank whether or not she had participated in Jonathan's death in any way.

And investigators noted that she had a significant reaction to that specific question, which this obviously became a major red flag. And Devin also knew that it looked really bad, too, because the very next day, she reached back out to the detectives herself and asked to speak with them again. And she said that she wanted to better explain why she hadn't passed the polygraph test cleanly. And I have to say, honestly, investigators were probably pretty curious at that point. In most cases, detectives are, like, chasing people down trying to get answers, but here Devin was, and she just kept voluntarily coming back to them with more information.

So during this next conversation, she started opening up more about her relationship with Jonathan. And this version, it sounded a little bit different from what she had originally described. According to Devin, yes, there were times when she and Jonathan got along, but there were also periods where things were not good between the two of them at all. I mentioned earlier that Jonathan had full custody of the twins while still allowing Devin to spend time with them. And from the way that Devin described things, she felt that Jonathan used that custody arrangement to maintain control.

According to her, if something wasn't going his way, he would threaten to take the girls away from her. But then whenever it benefited his own schedule or made his life easier, he would allow her to come and be with the girls.

She said that she still didn't want to do anything sexual with him. She was over him. It wasn't like that. They were just co-parenting. But she did agree to give him a back massage and, like, crack his back as well. So Jonathan laid down on his stomach while Devin leaned over him and started massaging his back.

However, investigators already knew that there was a major problem with this timeline. Based on surveillance footage from the neighborhood and GPS data, detectives determined that there was roughly an hour unaccounted for between when Devin claimed she hit Jonathan and when she actually left the house. And when the investigators confronted her about this missing hour, she just continued sticking to the same story. Although by that point, I mean, the detectives clearly were not buying it. Not to mention, there were already multiple inconsistencies throughout her version of events.

So at this stage, investigators were pretty pissed, and they stopped handling her with kid gloves. The timid, soft-spoken demeanor that Devin had initially presented during her interviews, it didn't really seem to be working anymore. And you could tell that the detectives were getting frustrated with her answers, too.

This can go one or two ways. When we write this report, we're going to say Devin was non-remorseful, not even emotional.

So that's the stuff that I'm talking about.

So what? The boogeyman came in and decapitated him? Like, what do you mean? So Detective has basically pushed back with the obvious question. If she didn't kill Jonathan, if she didn't decapitate him, if she didn't pour chemicals onto his body, then who the hell did?

So which is it? And then there's the position of his body itself. According to Devin, after she hit Jonathan, he collapsed unconscious onto his stomach, which investigators later found him in that exact same position the following morning, except now he had also been decapitated, which is obviously just a very difficult detail to ignore.

I thought I was home at like 2:00 something. You guys are saying it was.

According to Devin, one of the twins had confided in her about disturbing behavior involving Jonathan. Now, I want to be very crystal clear here. This entire allegation came from Devin. Whether it was true or not has been heavily disputed, and there is no actual evidence proving that it happened. But according to Devin, one of the girls told her that Jonathan had repeatedly made her uncomfortable while she was in his care. Devin claimed that her daughter told her that Jonathan had forced her to shower in front of him.

And according to Devin, this allegedly was not an isolated incident. She claimed that it happened multiple times. Devin said that she was so incredibly disturbed by this because the girls were older by that point and they no longer needed help bathing. So why would this have been happening? And according to her, she felt like she needed to step in and she needed to protect them somehow. Even with that explanation, though, Devin still maintained that when she hit Jonathan in the head, she only intended to injure him. She claimed she wanted to hurt him badly enough that he might end up with a concussion or maybe require a short hospital stay, but not dead.

But I also just want to pause here really quick because if you're saying first you say it's because he got grabby during a massage. Now you're saying it was done to protect your daughters. If you're trying to protect your daughters, and that's where this is stemming from, don't you think that you're talking out of both sides of your mouth because you're also allowing him to move in with you and your daughters? And maybe, I mean, I guess the argument could be so that you could have a more watchful eye on things and things like that, but why would you like, and you would be involved more since he had full custody, but like, it still doesn't really make a whole lot of sense on the surface.

According to Devin, the goal was simply to get him out of the picture temporarily so that she could then figure out what to do next and keep the girls safe. So now this new explanation, it was changing the supposed motive for why she hit Jonathan. But even still, she wasn't admitting to murdering him or decapitating him. At the same time, though, detectives now had what they believed could be a very strong motive. It's also important to note that Devin herself was already dealing with accusations involving abuse.

Jonathan had full custody of the twins for a reason. And shortly before Jonathan's murder, Devin had actually been in court on a separate child abuse case after one of the twins reportedly told a teacher that Devin had given her, quote, "a whooping," which this obviously complicates things even more because now you have someone who was herself accused of abusing one of the children, also accusing Jonathan of abusive behavior. So on August 15th, 2023, Devin was officially arrested and charged in connection with Jonathan's murder.

And from the moment that she was arrested, Devin maintained that she was innocent. So it really wasn't all that surprising when she pleaded not guilty and pushed for a trial. But despite continuing to publicly insist that she was innocent and despite claiming that the only thing that she was guilty of was hitting Jonathan over the head and then leaving him there, Devin did eventually accept a plea deal in 2024. She pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, and under the terms of the deal, she would become eligible for parole after 15 years in prison, which honestly, for a murder involving decapitation, parole eligibility after 15 years is pretty shocking.

I mean, obviously, sentencing involves a lot of different legal factors, but the idea that she could potentially have been released in under two decades, it definitely stood out to a lot of people. And apparently, it stood out to Devin too because instead of accepting the plea agreement and serving her sentence, she decided she wanted to withdraw her guilty plea altogether. And the timing of all of this was wild because it happened right as she was about to be sentenced.

And I'm angry for you. And this is not fair to you. This has been dragging out for almost two years. It's not fair to you. And it's not fair to his children, any of them. And it's not right. It really isn't. It's not. I've seen so much that it's just terrible.

The way that they manipulated and altered and delayed things is wrong. They should not be able to do it. And they have. And for you to be able to look me in the eye knowing that the things are altered and.

I am so sorry for all of this, but I am so sorry. But I didn't do this, and I and I didn't know this would end up like this. I really didn't.

And even now, Jonathan's head has never been recovered. The defense, however, argued something completely different. According to them, Jonathan's son was actually the person responsible for murdering him and decapitating him.

The facts taken as a whole, and not this little piece here and this little piece there, show that this murder and, you know, it's silly to say a murder didn't occur. Obviously, it did. It happened after Devin left. The facts taken as a whole bear that out.

And there it is. And Detective Ozawa just kind of discounted that and said, "Well, we don't know how long they were there, but apparently no one really looked at Yoko's testimony and Yoko's statements. Four dogs were out there for most of the night."

The defense also repeatedly focused on the lack of noise and blood evidence because if a mechanically powered saw really had been used, how did nobody hear it? And why wasn't there more blood splatter throughout the room?

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, are the is this your verdict as read? So say you want. So say you all.

Take a listen.

I know no matter what I say, they're still going to feel the same way. So just let them have their time, and that's all I can say.

So I guess my question for you is, do you think that Devin acted alone? Do you think that his son was more involved than the investigators believed? Or do you think that there is some sort of other explanation entirely that never fully was introduced during the trial? Because even now, this case, it just still feels incredibly unresolved in a lot of different ways. So I'm curious to know what you guys think. Let me know in the comment section, the Apple review section, or the Spotify Q&A section.

I don't know. All right. Bye, guys.