September 6, 2022 • 25 mins
Today’s guests are producers Stephanie Lydecker and Jeff Shane.
When an otherwise safe neighborhood is rocked by a horrifying act of violence, investigators will be led down a twisted path.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Falling in love is the best feeling in the world.
You see stars, you feel giddy, But sometimes that makes
you do crazy things, and sometimes that means murder. Just
because the story starts out with once upon a Times
doesn't mean it ends happily ever after. Welcome to Crazy
and Love, a production of Katie Studios and I Heart Radio.
(00:24):
Today's guests are true crime producer Stephanie Laidicker and Jeff
Shane Episode forty three, The Case of the High School Sweethearts,
The Schemer, and The Loss of Faith. Anyone who knew
Jamie Faith would describe him as two things, goodhearted and
(00:47):
a confirmed bachelor. The thirty four year old American airline
manager vowed to his friends that he never wanted to
get married or have kids. However, that all changed in
two thousand and five when he was set up on
a blind and date with a health care administrator named Jennifer.
He felt an instant attraction to the brunette's single mother,
who had been married twice before. Suddenly, he found himself
(01:10):
reevaluating his preconceived notions about commitment. Jamie and Jennifer became
two peas in a pod. Jennifer checked so many boxes.
She was smart, fun and successful. She never seemed to
get mad. She made it easy to fall in love.
Jamie even bonded with her then eight year old daughter.
(01:32):
In two thousand and twelve, the pair got married in
Las Vegas. Jamie was truly a changed man. Here's Jeff.
Things were going really well for the couple. Jamie and
Jennifer lived in Arizona until seventeen, when he got a
promotion and ended up moving the couple to Dallas, Texas.
When Jennifer's daughter turned a team, Jamie officially adopted her.
(01:53):
By all accounts, the face were a very happy family.
Their neighbors spoke about how they were gracious and the
ideal family next door. In October twenty the couple celebrated
the fifteenth anniversary of the first date. Sure, their wedding
was important, but Jamie loved to honor this day because
it was the day he fell in love with his wife.
(02:13):
The next morning, on October nine, Jamie and Jennifer took
their dog, Maggie for a walk. This was around seven
thirty am. The couple lived in Oak Cliff, which is
about fifteen minutes outside of Dallas. The neighborhood was quiet,
the weather had just started to cool. It seemed like
a typical morning for Jamie and Jennifer. However, just moments
(02:37):
after stepping out of their house, Jamie was gunned down
in the street. Whoever shot the forty nine year olds
but off in their car after firing multiple shots. A
neighbor heard what sounded like a horror movie in the street.
Jennifer was screaming at the top of her lungs. The
police were called, but by the time they arrived it
was too late. Jamie is dead. Here's Stephanie. Jamie was
(03:04):
shot a total of seven times, three times to the head,
three times to the chest, and once to the groin.
When police arrived to the scene, they found Jennifer obviously
clearly shaken. Her wrists had been tied with duct tape,
and according to her, the killer came in shot Jamie,
then got out of the car, began hitting her and
(03:26):
tried to take her jewelry, which valued somewhere between two
and three thousand dollars. But during this whole exchange, she's
fighting for her life and she didn't really get a
good look at him, so she told cops that all
she could see was that he had tan skin, and
that he was wearing a blue COVID face mask. She
was in shock, so this is not surprising at all.
(03:49):
But following the murder, Jennifer did do an interview with
w f A, a t V in Dallas, and here's
a little exerpt from that. It was a normal day.
We walked the dog every day at the same morning.
We got up, we did our normal good morning thing,
and you know, we we we liked that time together
because our daughter has been staying with us since COVID hit,
(04:11):
and so it would say, it's our quiet time before
she gets up, and we just talked in the mornings
and so and then we got the dog ready and
just walked out the door like normal, right out our
front door. I got about as far as those hedges
behind you, and he Jamie always walked behind me when
because I had the dog, the dog usually go faster,
(04:31):
and so he'd stay behind and close the door. And
we walked out the door and we made it right
to the house right behind you, and I heard running
behind me and I turned around and then just shooting
just started. He Jamie just Jamie wasn't doing anything. He
actually he saw the guy and started walking backwards like
this with his hands out to his side, and the
(04:52):
guy just kept shooting and shooting. And then he turned
around and I yelled no because I knew he was
coming after me. And a neighbor said that they saw
him attempt to shoot me, but the gun was empty.
I was running up this driveway and he tackled me
and started beating on me and taped my hands together. Um.
(05:13):
And then I think he got spooked by neighbors and
got in his truck and left. Luckily for investigators, a
neighbor security camera caught what they believed was the shooters
car driving away. They identified it as a black Nissan
Titan pickup. It was a big step in the right direction,
but like, I don't even bigger break. When they zoomed
(05:33):
in on the surveillance footage. On the truck's rear window
was a big white tea sticker. In Dallas, if you
see a t it's usually for the baseball team, the
Texas Rangers, so the cops could assume that the shooter
was a Rangers fan and most likely a local. During
her interview with w f A TV and Dallas, Jennifer
spoke about how important this break in the case. Was
(05:54):
truck is absolutely critical. Somebody has got to know whose
truck this is because it was a It's a black
Nissan Titan extended cab, had a um Texas Ranger sticker
in the back window, and so it's it was very
distinctive from that point. Um. I don't want to give
away too many other details, but if somebody knows somebody
(06:15):
who has that truck, there's there's got to be somebody
who knows somebody who has that track. And even if
the sticker is not there anymore, somebody who knows someone
who used to have a sticker in their back window.
I mean, if somebody could just come forward with that
information alone, it would be so helpful. Having covered a
lot of true crime cases, we know how vital it
is to have any sort of lead in a case,
and this was a big one. I mean, the cops
(06:37):
had what they believed to be the shooter's car. That's huge. Also,
having Jamie's wife be saw it's spoken really would help
their investigation, as it's important to have a victim's advocate
become the face of the case. This encourages the public
to care about the victim and keep the case in
the news, and Jennifer was doing just that. And obviously,
(06:57):
this tight knit community that the faith called home was petrified.
Everybody was scared for their own lives because these kinds
of violent crimes just didn't happen there. But they swallowed
their fears and really rallied around Jamie's devastated widow, Jennifer
neighbors were really there for her. At least fifty of
(07:18):
them joined together to make a vegan meal train for her.
They also raised about sixty dollars for Jennifer and her
daughter on a go fund me titled quote Help Support
Jennifer Faith End Quote and Listen. Jennifer was obviously mourning,
she was grieving, she was angry, She's devastated. She just
lost the love of her life. As she spoke to
(07:39):
w f A, a t V in Dallas, she got
emotional when they asked what the shooter took from her, everything, everything,
my partner, my best friend. I just I'm not supposed
to be widowed at forty eight. You know, my my
daughter's father, the only father she's ever known, whose was
(08:03):
they were two peas in a pod. He used to
call her his partner and crime I just hope that
at some point maybe this person can recognize the gravity
of what they've done and feel some sort of guilt
enough to come forwards. Like I said, I feel like
I'm going through the motions every day. I just don't.
(08:27):
It's just hard. I just our our life together was
every day together, and we loved it that way. So
you can really hear the pain in her voice. It
must have been so hard for her to lose her
husband and then also have to put on a brave
face and speak publicly about Jamie's death. She ended the
interview with more emotion. It's just a roller coaster for her.
(08:50):
She's just as up and down as I am. Thanksgiving
this particularly hard, having an empty seat next to us
at the table that wasn't supposed to be there. This here,
We're going to take a break. We'll be back in
just a moment. As the investigation continued, Jennifer plan not
(09:23):
one but two funerals for her husband. One was near
their current home in Dallas and the other in their
longtime hometown of Phoenix. Mourners were struck that the funerals
didn't seem like your typical remembrance. The events were over
the top and felt more like birthday parties rather than funerals.
Jennifer even hands out party favors to guests, matchbooks and
(09:47):
coasters with Jamie's face on them to be exact two
people mourning the loss of the well like Jamie. It
felt bizarre, but perhaps the odd funerals could be explained
by jennifer feelings about the lack of movement in the investigation.
Jennifer was growing increasingly frustrated with the detectives lack of answers.
(10:09):
She expressed this during her interview with w f A
A t V and Dallas Take a Listen. I was
getting pretty good communication from the detectives early on, I
mean really in helping them try to figure out, you know,
was this random? Might the motive have been? Is there
anybody that maybe would have caused it to be, you know,
(10:31):
where Jamie was targeted with this crime? And we just
really couldn't come up with anything. I mean, there are
some things that, um, definitely we're being pursued, but um,
lately I think, honestly, I think it's just gone cold
and there's no information he can give me, and so
I'm really not getting any communication. It would be nice
(10:53):
to have something, just to know that something still being
looked at and being done. But I'm not and I
know they're very busy. The cry rate in Dallas is
horrible right now, and I'm sure they're overextended and spread
very thin. But it doesn't It doesn't help me in
terms of finding the answers that I really need. But
just because Jennifer wasn't in the loop on the investigation
(11:13):
didn't mean the police weren't making strides well. Jennifer was
doling out funeral swag. Detectives were looking at her specifically,
they were looking at a text she had sent in
April of six months before the shooting. The text and
question was to a friend. Jennifer had told them she
had recently reconnected with an ex named Darren Lopez. Cops
(11:37):
began to learn more about their relationship, and it turned
out Jennifer and Darren had been high school sweethearts. Investigators
also learned that Darren had a family of his own.
He was a Special Forces Army veteran. He earned a
purple Heart after suffering a brain injury from a bomb
in Iraq. He was also going through a divorce, living
on his twenty acre farm in a small town in Tennessee.
(11:59):
But the most pertinent detail about Darren is that he
owned a black Nissan truck. Cops were able to do
aerial surveillance of Darren's property, and not only did they
see the black truck in the driveway, but guess what,
it had a white tea sticker on the rear window.
It turned out that the t in this case did
not stand for the Texas Rangers, but rather Tennessee, Darren's
(12:21):
home state. Despite this damning evidence, the cops wanted to
build their case before making an arrest. We've covered a
fair amount of true crime cases, and while you might
think on its head that this was enough information to
arrest Darren, it actually makes sense that the cops didn't
do anything. Yet any defense lawyer could argue that the
car in the surveillance camera was simply circumstantial evidence, or
(12:43):
it wasn't even the same car. Detectives really needed more
physical evidence against him before they could do anything. The
first thing they wanted to look deeper into was the
communication between Jennifer and Darren, and it turned out there
was quite a bit of it. They talked all the time,
sometimes as much as five hundred times in one day,
(13:05):
and when it was all added up, Jennifer and Darren
had texted more than one hundred and sixteen thousand times
in just a few short months. As detectives combed through
their messages, they started to notice that there was this
odd pause in the messaging. Starting the afternoon of October eighth,
the day before Jamie was killed, Darren and Jennifer stopped
(13:28):
talking for approximately twenty eight hours. During their investigation, cops
learned that Darren had told his daughters that he was
going out of town on a hunting trip the weekend
that Jamie was killed. However, they were able to track
his movements through his GPS, and apparently he had used
his debit cards, which also showed his location and look.
It turned out he had in fact gone hunting that weekend,
(13:50):
but seemingly he was hunting for Jamie Faith Darren had
left a very clear trail of bread crumbs for investigators.
He could be seen on surveillance filling up his truck
at gas stations on the highway that connected Tennessee with
Dallas and guess what he was wearing in the footage,
a blue COVID face mask. Remember, Jennifer had told the
cops that the killer was wearing a very similar mask.
(14:11):
He also set his GPS device for the Faith home, which,
according to data, he arrived at two nineteen am the
morning Jamie was murdered. Cops were even able to track
down security cameras that showed Darren spent the night in
an abandoned home next door to the Faith house. This
meant that for five hours Darren lay in wait, allegedly
plotting to murder Jamie Faith. Three months after the murder,
(14:34):
in January, Darren Lopez was arrested while driving inside his car,
the arresting officers found a blue face mask. Later, in
Darren's home, officers found a gun that matched the shell
key things found the scene. The gun even had traces
of Jamie's blood on it. For prosecutors, it all added
(14:56):
up to a slam dunk murder charge. It's in important
to note that, as of the recording of this podcast,
Darren Lopez maintains his innocence, and despite all of this
evidence that is mounting against him, Darren pleads not guilty.
At the same time, the cops brought in Jennifer and
(15:16):
while she admitted that yes, she and Darren had been
talking quite frequently. She denied that the relationship was anything
deeper and definitely not sexual. However, the text kind of
implied a very different relationship. For example, at one point,
Darren wrote quote I love you with all of my heart,
and Jennifer responded, quote sleep well, angel, holding you tight.
(15:39):
At this point, nothing's really indicating that Jennifer was involved,
but it did seem that Darren was for sure a
jealous ex hell bent on getting back his high school sweetheart.
Not so fast, steph After the murder, Jennifer had texted
Darren in the middle of the night was something that
just couldn't be a shored She wrote, something is eating
away at me, telling me you need to take the
(16:01):
sticker off the back window of the truck. Darren later
responded sticker done. Oh yeah, she texted back, adding I
feel so much better now. This is very important because
remember the interview Jennifer did. Truck is absolutely critical. Somebody
has got to know whose truck this is because it
was a It's a black Nissan Titan extended cab, had
(16:23):
a um Texas Ranger sticker in the back window, and
so it's it was very distinctive from that point. This
text would seem to prove that she did in fact
know who drove the black truck with the white sticker
and was involved with the murder at least to some capacity,
and investigators quickly learned that Jamie also had a life
(16:44):
insurance policy somewhere to the tune of six nine thousand
dollars more than a half a million dollars. Now, remember
she also made over sixty dollars from the go fund me,
so she was really cashing in. Was she at least
using this money to start a new life for her
and her daughter? Definitely not. She was really using that
(17:05):
money to fund Darren's extravagant life. Records show that Jennifer
sent Darren tons of cash, whether that was through Venmo.
She also bought airplane tickets for him and his daughter's
and she allowed all of them to use her credit cards,
and one email she wrote to him said, please don't
hesitate to use any of these credit cards for whatever
(17:26):
you need end quote. She also wrote another email about
the money and said, quote, here's both of my major
credit cards. AMX has no limit and I think the
VISA has a thirty five thousand dollar limit. I pay
them off each month, so you never need to worry
about them being declined. End quote. So she's extremely generous,
but she's extremely generous with her ex husband's money. Yeah. Stuff.
(17:51):
And when detectives presented all this to Darren, he never
turned on Jennifer and wouldn't tell them if she was
involved in the murder. Cops also discovered that Jennifer and
and continued to talk even after he was arrested. Allegedly
through a third party, Jennifer was able to get a
message to Darren saying that she would love him no
matter what happened. I guess I asked the question, was
she actually in love with him or was she just
(18:12):
trying to keep him loyal to her. Definitely just trying
to keep him loyal to her. Prosecutors continued to look
into Jennifer, and on February she was arrested. However, Jennifer
didn't get a murder charge as you might expect. Rather,
she got an obstruction of justice charge for lying to
police and destroying evidence. Obstruction of justice is a crime
(18:37):
or act of willfully interfering with the process of justice
and law, specifically that can be by influencing, threatening, harming,
or impeding a witness, potential witness, juror judicial or legal officer,
or by furnishing false information, or otherwise impeding an investigation
or legal process. In this case, it would be referring
(19:00):
to the text from Darren that she deleted and telling
him to get rid of the tea sticker. Jennifer pled
not guilty. After she was brought into custody, the police
were able to search Jennifer's home, and one of the
first places they looked was the family computer. They found
emails that changed the entire case. There were emails dated
before the murder, sent from Jamie's account to Darren telling
(19:23):
him he was going to rape and beat his wife Jennifer.
The emails had almost a taunting and provoking tone, with
things like quote I am finally going to get what
I wanted from her this weekend end quote and quote
enjoy knowing that you can't do a fucking thing about
it end quote. Some of these emails even had close
up photos of the injuries Jennifer had been subjected to
(19:43):
at the hands of Jamie. Also on Darren's computer, they
found even more emails, this time, one of them from
Jamie's friend who basically corroborated the cruelty. The friend wrote
to Darren telling him that Jamie had been burning Jennifer
as a form of a beat. Darren replied to the
friend with this, and keep in mind Jamie was shot
(20:05):
to death quote. I know I won't feel better about
her situation until she is dot dot dot away from him,
or she lets me put a bullet in Jamie's head.
I keep offering, and she keeps telling me no, l
O l end quote. Let's stop here for another break.
(20:41):
In September, seven months after first being charged with obstruction
of justice, Jennifer was charged with murder for higher Prosecutors
were able to make the charge based on the fact
that Jennifer had given so much money to Darren following
the murders. The prosecutors also revealed that they discovered Jennifer
had written those abuse emails herself after making fake accounts.
(21:04):
She did it to go Darren into killing her husband.
But why it makes no sense really, but prosecutor surmised
that money was the motive. She had the life insurance
policy plus four hundred and one thousand dollars which Jamie
had in the bank. Also also get this, Jennifer's second husband,
the one before. Jamie claimed that this was not the
(21:26):
first time Jennifer had done something like this. She had
apparently told him that her first husband was abusive to her.
It made her second husband so mad that he admitted
it made him want to kill the guy. Police never
found any evidence of abuse from Jamie or Jennifer's first husband.
It seemed like that she would just get off on
enraging her current partner to go after her ex partner.
(21:49):
It's so manipulative. On February seven, Jennifer accepted a plea
deal and pled guilty to the charges against her. She
pled guilty apparently to avoid the death penalty. As part
of her plea deal, Jennifer had to admit to all
of her lies no one ever abused her for example,
also that the emails were fake, even the photos attached
(22:12):
were the ones that she found on Google, and that
she was just a total con artist and a killer.
I wonder if she really ever loved Darren or if
he was just upon the entire time. I fear that
he was upon the entire time, because this goes back
to this is a very slow plan. However, can you
imagine getting married with the sole purpose of getting rich
(22:37):
from that person's murder, It's impossible to imagine. On June one,
Jennifer was sentenced to life in prison. In addition to
being sentenced to prison, Jennifer was ordered to pay sixty
dollars in restitution to Jamie's family. This was to cover
(22:57):
the funeral expenses, and she also had to pay a
two d and fifty dollar fine. The U S Attorney
commented on the case, calling Jennifer cold blooded and saying
her crime was made all the worse by her behavior
after the fact. Here again her news piece where Jennifer
was pleading for justice. I just I'm not supposed to
(23:21):
be widowed at forty eight. You know, my my daughter's father,
the only father she's ever known because was they were
two peas in a pod. He used to call her
his partner in crime. I just hope that at some
point maybe this person can recognize the gravity of what
they've done and feel some sort of guilt enough to
(23:45):
come forward guess this. Like I said, I feel like
I'm going through the motions every day. I just don't.
It's just hard. I just our our life together with
every day together, and we loved it that way. Darren
Lopez has maintained he is not guilty and is awaiting trial.
(24:09):
Jennifer's daughter, who is now twenty five, is a young
woman who lost her adopted father at the hands of
her mother. However, she somehow found room in her heart
to forgive. She speaks with Jennifer twice a week Shameless plug.
If you're enjoying Crazy and Love, leave us a review
and listen to season three of our hit series. The
(24:31):
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at Katie Underscore Studios. Crazy in Love is produced by
Stephanie Lydecker, Jeff Shane, Chris Grieves and me Courtney Armstrong.
Editing and sound design by Jeff Twa. Crazy in Love
(24:54):
is a production of I Heart Radio and Katie Studios.
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your favorite shows. Stay safe, lovers,
Falling in love is the best feeling in the world.
You see stars, you feel giddy, But sometimes that makes
you do crazy things, and sometimes that means murder. Just
because the story starts out with once upon a Times
doesn't mean it ends happily ever after. Welcome to Crazy
and Love, a production of Katie Studios and I Heart Radio.
(00:24):
Today's guests are true crime producer Stephanie Laidicker and Jeff
Shane Episode forty three, The Case of the High School Sweethearts,
The Schemer, and The Loss of Faith. Anyone who knew
Jamie Faith would describe him as two things, goodhearted and
(00:47):
a confirmed bachelor. The thirty four year old American airline
manager vowed to his friends that he never wanted to
get married or have kids. However, that all changed in
two thousand and five when he was set up on
a blind and date with a health care administrator named Jennifer.
He felt an instant attraction to the brunette's single mother,
who had been married twice before. Suddenly, he found himself
(01:10):
reevaluating his preconceived notions about commitment. Jamie and Jennifer became
two peas in a pod. Jennifer checked so many boxes.
She was smart, fun and successful. She never seemed to
get mad. She made it easy to fall in love.
Jamie even bonded with her then eight year old daughter.
(01:32):
In two thousand and twelve, the pair got married in
Las Vegas. Jamie was truly a changed man. Here's Jeff.
Things were going really well for the couple. Jamie and
Jennifer lived in Arizona until seventeen, when he got a
promotion and ended up moving the couple to Dallas, Texas.
When Jennifer's daughter turned a team, Jamie officially adopted her.
(01:53):
By all accounts, the face were a very happy family.
Their neighbors spoke about how they were gracious and the
ideal family next door. In October twenty the couple celebrated
the fifteenth anniversary of the first date. Sure, their wedding
was important, but Jamie loved to honor this day because
it was the day he fell in love with his wife.
(02:13):
The next morning, on October nine, Jamie and Jennifer took
their dog, Maggie for a walk. This was around seven
thirty am. The couple lived in Oak Cliff, which is
about fifteen minutes outside of Dallas. The neighborhood was quiet,
the weather had just started to cool. It seemed like
a typical morning for Jamie and Jennifer. However, just moments
(02:37):
after stepping out of their house, Jamie was gunned down
in the street. Whoever shot the forty nine year olds
but off in their car after firing multiple shots. A
neighbor heard what sounded like a horror movie in the street.
Jennifer was screaming at the top of her lungs. The
police were called, but by the time they arrived it
was too late. Jamie is dead. Here's Stephanie. Jamie was
(03:04):
shot a total of seven times, three times to the head,
three times to the chest, and once to the groin.
When police arrived to the scene, they found Jennifer obviously
clearly shaken. Her wrists had been tied with duct tape,
and according to her, the killer came in shot Jamie,
then got out of the car, began hitting her and
(03:26):
tried to take her jewelry, which valued somewhere between two
and three thousand dollars. But during this whole exchange, she's
fighting for her life and she didn't really get a
good look at him, so she told cops that all
she could see was that he had tan skin, and
that he was wearing a blue COVID face mask. She
was in shock, so this is not surprising at all.
(03:49):
But following the murder, Jennifer did do an interview with
w f A, a t V in Dallas, and here's
a little exerpt from that. It was a normal day.
We walked the dog every day at the same morning.
We got up, we did our normal good morning thing,
and you know, we we we liked that time together
because our daughter has been staying with us since COVID hit,
(04:11):
and so it would say, it's our quiet time before
she gets up, and we just talked in the mornings
and so and then we got the dog ready and
just walked out the door like normal, right out our
front door. I got about as far as those hedges
behind you, and he Jamie always walked behind me when
because I had the dog, the dog usually go faster,
(04:31):
and so he'd stay behind and close the door. And
we walked out the door and we made it right
to the house right behind you, and I heard running
behind me and I turned around and then just shooting
just started. He Jamie just Jamie wasn't doing anything. He
actually he saw the guy and started walking backwards like
this with his hands out to his side, and the
(04:52):
guy just kept shooting and shooting. And then he turned
around and I yelled no because I knew he was
coming after me. And a neighbor said that they saw
him attempt to shoot me, but the gun was empty.
I was running up this driveway and he tackled me
and started beating on me and taped my hands together. Um.
(05:13):
And then I think he got spooked by neighbors and
got in his truck and left. Luckily for investigators, a
neighbor security camera caught what they believed was the shooters
car driving away. They identified it as a black Nissan
Titan pickup. It was a big step in the right direction,
but like, I don't even bigger break. When they zoomed
(05:33):
in on the surveillance footage. On the truck's rear window
was a big white tea sticker. In Dallas, if you
see a t it's usually for the baseball team, the
Texas Rangers, so the cops could assume that the shooter
was a Rangers fan and most likely a local. During
her interview with w f A TV and Dallas, Jennifer
spoke about how important this break in the case. Was
(05:54):
truck is absolutely critical. Somebody has got to know whose
truck this is because it was a It's a black
Nissan Titan extended cab, had a um Texas Ranger sticker
in the back window, and so it's it was very
distinctive from that point. Um. I don't want to give
away too many other details, but if somebody knows somebody
(06:15):
who has that truck, there's there's got to be somebody
who knows somebody who has that track. And even if
the sticker is not there anymore, somebody who knows someone
who used to have a sticker in their back window.
I mean, if somebody could just come forward with that
information alone, it would be so helpful. Having covered a
lot of true crime cases, we know how vital it
is to have any sort of lead in a case,
and this was a big one. I mean, the cops
(06:37):
had what they believed to be the shooter's car. That's huge. Also,
having Jamie's wife be saw it's spoken really would help
their investigation, as it's important to have a victim's advocate
become the face of the case. This encourages the public
to care about the victim and keep the case in
the news, and Jennifer was doing just that. And obviously,
(06:57):
this tight knit community that the faith called home was petrified.
Everybody was scared for their own lives because these kinds
of violent crimes just didn't happen there. But they swallowed
their fears and really rallied around Jamie's devastated widow, Jennifer
neighbors were really there for her. At least fifty of
(07:18):
them joined together to make a vegan meal train for her.
They also raised about sixty dollars for Jennifer and her
daughter on a go fund me titled quote Help Support
Jennifer Faith End Quote and Listen. Jennifer was obviously mourning,
she was grieving, she was angry, She's devastated. She just
lost the love of her life. As she spoke to
(07:39):
w f A, a t V in Dallas, she got
emotional when they asked what the shooter took from her, everything, everything,
my partner, my best friend. I just I'm not supposed
to be widowed at forty eight. You know, my my
daughter's father, the only father she's ever known, whose was
(08:03):
they were two peas in a pod. He used to
call her his partner and crime I just hope that
at some point maybe this person can recognize the gravity
of what they've done and feel some sort of guilt
enough to come forwards. Like I said, I feel like
I'm going through the motions every day. I just don't.
(08:27):
It's just hard. I just our our life together was
every day together, and we loved it that way. So
you can really hear the pain in her voice. It
must have been so hard for her to lose her
husband and then also have to put on a brave
face and speak publicly about Jamie's death. She ended the
interview with more emotion. It's just a roller coaster for her.
(08:50):
She's just as up and down as I am. Thanksgiving
this particularly hard, having an empty seat next to us
at the table that wasn't supposed to be there. This here,
We're going to take a break. We'll be back in
just a moment. As the investigation continued, Jennifer plan not
(09:23):
one but two funerals for her husband. One was near
their current home in Dallas and the other in their
longtime hometown of Phoenix. Mourners were struck that the funerals
didn't seem like your typical remembrance. The events were over
the top and felt more like birthday parties rather than funerals.
Jennifer even hands out party favors to guests, matchbooks and
(09:47):
coasters with Jamie's face on them to be exact two
people mourning the loss of the well like Jamie. It
felt bizarre, but perhaps the odd funerals could be explained
by jennifer feelings about the lack of movement in the investigation.
Jennifer was growing increasingly frustrated with the detectives lack of answers.
(10:09):
She expressed this during her interview with w f A
A t V and Dallas Take a Listen. I was
getting pretty good communication from the detectives early on, I
mean really in helping them try to figure out, you know,
was this random? Might the motive have been? Is there
anybody that maybe would have caused it to be, you know,
(10:31):
where Jamie was targeted with this crime? And we just
really couldn't come up with anything. I mean, there are
some things that, um, definitely we're being pursued, but um,
lately I think, honestly, I think it's just gone cold
and there's no information he can give me, and so
I'm really not getting any communication. It would be nice
(10:53):
to have something, just to know that something still being
looked at and being done. But I'm not and I
know they're very busy. The cry rate in Dallas is
horrible right now, and I'm sure they're overextended and spread
very thin. But it doesn't It doesn't help me in
terms of finding the answers that I really need. But
just because Jennifer wasn't in the loop on the investigation
(11:13):
didn't mean the police weren't making strides well. Jennifer was
doling out funeral swag. Detectives were looking at her specifically,
they were looking at a text she had sent in
April of six months before the shooting. The text and
question was to a friend. Jennifer had told them she
had recently reconnected with an ex named Darren Lopez. Cops
(11:37):
began to learn more about their relationship, and it turned
out Jennifer and Darren had been high school sweethearts. Investigators
also learned that Darren had a family of his own.
He was a Special Forces Army veteran. He earned a
purple Heart after suffering a brain injury from a bomb
in Iraq. He was also going through a divorce, living
on his twenty acre farm in a small town in Tennessee.
(11:59):
But the most pertinent detail about Darren is that he
owned a black Nissan truck. Cops were able to do
aerial surveillance of Darren's property, and not only did they
see the black truck in the driveway, but guess what,
it had a white tea sticker on the rear window.
It turned out that the t in this case did
not stand for the Texas Rangers, but rather Tennessee, Darren's
(12:21):
home state. Despite this damning evidence, the cops wanted to
build their case before making an arrest. We've covered a
fair amount of true crime cases, and while you might
think on its head that this was enough information to
arrest Darren, it actually makes sense that the cops didn't
do anything. Yet any defense lawyer could argue that the
car in the surveillance camera was simply circumstantial evidence, or
(12:43):
it wasn't even the same car. Detectives really needed more
physical evidence against him before they could do anything. The
first thing they wanted to look deeper into was the
communication between Jennifer and Darren, and it turned out there
was quite a bit of it. They talked all the time,
sometimes as much as five hundred times in one day,
(13:05):
and when it was all added up, Jennifer and Darren
had texted more than one hundred and sixteen thousand times
in just a few short months. As detectives combed through
their messages, they started to notice that there was this
odd pause in the messaging. Starting the afternoon of October eighth,
the day before Jamie was killed, Darren and Jennifer stopped
(13:28):
talking for approximately twenty eight hours. During their investigation, cops
learned that Darren had told his daughters that he was
going out of town on a hunting trip the weekend
that Jamie was killed. However, they were able to track
his movements through his GPS, and apparently he had used
his debit cards, which also showed his location and look.
It turned out he had in fact gone hunting that weekend,
(13:50):
but seemingly he was hunting for Jamie Faith Darren had
left a very clear trail of bread crumbs for investigators.
He could be seen on surveillance filling up his truck
at gas stations on the highway that connected Tennessee with
Dallas and guess what he was wearing in the footage,
a blue COVID face mask. Remember, Jennifer had told the
cops that the killer was wearing a very similar mask.
(14:11):
He also set his GPS device for the Faith home, which,
according to data, he arrived at two nineteen am the
morning Jamie was murdered. Cops were even able to track
down security cameras that showed Darren spent the night in
an abandoned home next door to the Faith house. This
meant that for five hours Darren lay in wait, allegedly
plotting to murder Jamie Faith. Three months after the murder,
(14:34):
in January, Darren Lopez was arrested while driving inside his car,
the arresting officers found a blue face mask. Later, in
Darren's home, officers found a gun that matched the shell
key things found the scene. The gun even had traces
of Jamie's blood on it. For prosecutors, it all added
(14:56):
up to a slam dunk murder charge. It's in important
to note that, as of the recording of this podcast,
Darren Lopez maintains his innocence, and despite all of this
evidence that is mounting against him, Darren pleads not guilty.
At the same time, the cops brought in Jennifer and
(15:16):
while she admitted that yes, she and Darren had been
talking quite frequently. She denied that the relationship was anything
deeper and definitely not sexual. However, the text kind of
implied a very different relationship. For example, at one point,
Darren wrote quote I love you with all of my heart,
and Jennifer responded, quote sleep well, angel, holding you tight.
(15:39):
At this point, nothing's really indicating that Jennifer was involved,
but it did seem that Darren was for sure a
jealous ex hell bent on getting back his high school sweetheart.
Not so fast, steph After the murder, Jennifer had texted
Darren in the middle of the night was something that
just couldn't be a shored She wrote, something is eating
away at me, telling me you need to take the
(16:01):
sticker off the back window of the truck. Darren later
responded sticker done. Oh yeah, she texted back, adding I
feel so much better now. This is very important because
remember the interview Jennifer did. Truck is absolutely critical. Somebody
has got to know whose truck this is because it
was a It's a black Nissan Titan extended cab, had
(16:23):
a um Texas Ranger sticker in the back window, and
so it's it was very distinctive from that point. This
text would seem to prove that she did in fact
know who drove the black truck with the white sticker
and was involved with the murder at least to some capacity,
and investigators quickly learned that Jamie also had a life
(16:44):
insurance policy somewhere to the tune of six nine thousand
dollars more than a half a million dollars. Now, remember
she also made over sixty dollars from the go fund me,
so she was really cashing in. Was she at least
using this money to start a new life for her
and her daughter? Definitely not. She was really using that
(17:05):
money to fund Darren's extravagant life. Records show that Jennifer
sent Darren tons of cash, whether that was through Venmo.
She also bought airplane tickets for him and his daughter's
and she allowed all of them to use her credit cards,
and one email she wrote to him said, please don't
hesitate to use any of these credit cards for whatever
(17:26):
you need end quote. She also wrote another email about
the money and said, quote, here's both of my major
credit cards. AMX has no limit and I think the
VISA has a thirty five thousand dollar limit. I pay
them off each month, so you never need to worry
about them being declined. End quote. So she's extremely generous,
but she's extremely generous with her ex husband's money. Yeah. Stuff.
(17:51):
And when detectives presented all this to Darren, he never
turned on Jennifer and wouldn't tell them if she was
involved in the murder. Cops also discovered that Jennifer and
and continued to talk even after he was arrested. Allegedly
through a third party, Jennifer was able to get a
message to Darren saying that she would love him no
matter what happened. I guess I asked the question, was
she actually in love with him or was she just
(18:12):
trying to keep him loyal to her. Definitely just trying
to keep him loyal to her. Prosecutors continued to look
into Jennifer, and on February she was arrested. However, Jennifer
didn't get a murder charge as you might expect. Rather,
she got an obstruction of justice charge for lying to
police and destroying evidence. Obstruction of justice is a crime
(18:37):
or act of willfully interfering with the process of justice
and law, specifically that can be by influencing, threatening, harming,
or impeding a witness, potential witness, juror judicial or legal officer,
or by furnishing false information, or otherwise impeding an investigation
or legal process. In this case, it would be referring
(19:00):
to the text from Darren that she deleted and telling
him to get rid of the tea sticker. Jennifer pled
not guilty. After she was brought into custody, the police
were able to search Jennifer's home, and one of the
first places they looked was the family computer. They found
emails that changed the entire case. There were emails dated
before the murder, sent from Jamie's account to Darren telling
(19:23):
him he was going to rape and beat his wife Jennifer.
The emails had almost a taunting and provoking tone, with
things like quote I am finally going to get what
I wanted from her this weekend end quote and quote
enjoy knowing that you can't do a fucking thing about
it end quote. Some of these emails even had close
up photos of the injuries Jennifer had been subjected to
(19:43):
at the hands of Jamie. Also on Darren's computer, they
found even more emails, this time, one of them from
Jamie's friend who basically corroborated the cruelty. The friend wrote
to Darren telling him that Jamie had been burning Jennifer
as a form of a beat. Darren replied to the
friend with this, and keep in mind Jamie was shot
(20:05):
to death quote. I know I won't feel better about
her situation until she is dot dot dot away from him,
or she lets me put a bullet in Jamie's head.
I keep offering, and she keeps telling me no, l
O l end quote. Let's stop here for another break.
(20:41):
In September, seven months after first being charged with obstruction
of justice, Jennifer was charged with murder for higher Prosecutors
were able to make the charge based on the fact
that Jennifer had given so much money to Darren following
the murders. The prosecutors also revealed that they discovered Jennifer
had written those abuse emails herself after making fake accounts.
(21:04):
She did it to go Darren into killing her husband.
But why it makes no sense really, but prosecutor surmised
that money was the motive. She had the life insurance
policy plus four hundred and one thousand dollars which Jamie
had in the bank. Also also get this, Jennifer's second husband,
the one before. Jamie claimed that this was not the
(21:26):
first time Jennifer had done something like this. She had
apparently told him that her first husband was abusive to her.
It made her second husband so mad that he admitted
it made him want to kill the guy. Police never
found any evidence of abuse from Jamie or Jennifer's first husband.
It seemed like that she would just get off on
enraging her current partner to go after her ex partner.
(21:49):
It's so manipulative. On February seven, Jennifer accepted a plea
deal and pled guilty to the charges against her. She
pled guilty apparently to avoid the death penalty. As part
of her plea deal, Jennifer had to admit to all
of her lies no one ever abused her for example,
also that the emails were fake, even the photos attached
(22:12):
were the ones that she found on Google, and that
she was just a total con artist and a killer.
I wonder if she really ever loved Darren or if
he was just upon the entire time. I fear that
he was upon the entire time, because this goes back
to this is a very slow plan. However, can you
imagine getting married with the sole purpose of getting rich
(22:37):
from that person's murder, It's impossible to imagine. On June one,
Jennifer was sentenced to life in prison. In addition to
being sentenced to prison, Jennifer was ordered to pay sixty
dollars in restitution to Jamie's family. This was to cover
(22:57):
the funeral expenses, and she also had to pay a
two d and fifty dollar fine. The U S Attorney
commented on the case, calling Jennifer cold blooded and saying
her crime was made all the worse by her behavior
after the fact. Here again her news piece where Jennifer
was pleading for justice. I just I'm not supposed to
(23:21):
be widowed at forty eight. You know, my my daughter's father,
the only father she's ever known because was they were
two peas in a pod. He used to call her
his partner in crime. I just hope that at some
point maybe this person can recognize the gravity of what
they've done and feel some sort of guilt enough to
(23:45):
come forward guess this. Like I said, I feel like
I'm going through the motions every day. I just don't.
It's just hard. I just our our life together with
every day together, and we loved it that way. Darren
Lopez has maintained he is not guilty and is awaiting trial.
(24:09):
Jennifer's daughter, who is now twenty five, is a young
woman who lost her adopted father at the hands of
her mother. However, she somehow found room in her heart
to forgive. She speaks with Jennifer twice a week Shameless plug.
If you're enjoying Crazy and Love, leave us a review
and listen to season three of our hit series. The
(24:31):
Piked and Massacre episodes are every Wednesday wherever you get
your podcasts, and don't forget to follow us on Instagram
at Katie Underscore Studios. Crazy in Love is produced by
Stephanie Lydecker, Jeff Shane, Chris Grieves and me Courtney Armstrong.
Editing and sound design by Jeff Twa. Crazy in Love
(24:54):
is a production of I Heart Radio and Katie Studios.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. Stay safe, lovers,
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