The Shocking Murder of 13-Year-Old Lauren Landavazo - Serial Killer Documentary

The Shocking Murder of 13-Year-Old Lauren Landavazo - Serial Killer Documentary

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, here goes Lauren and she's all embarrassed. Oh ah,
flashing the peace sign in the duck lips.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
That's pretty common in pictures for her. One of her
early selfies.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
I think that's when she'd realized she could take such
good selfies.

Speaker 4 (00:33):
Lauren is just so friendly. She talked to everybody. She
knew so many people. I was always amazed, like, how
do you know her?

Speaker 5 (00:39):
How do you know him? This social butterfly, That's how
she was.

Speaker 6 (00:45):
She was one of the most popular girls in school.

Speaker 7 (00:48):
And it wasn't because she was in the popular crowd
or anything, just because.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Of who she was.

Speaker 8 (00:54):
She's a stay up late at night in her room
trying to help her friends.

Speaker 4 (00:58):
She was just the most compassionate person I've ever met
in my life.

Speaker 7 (01:06):
People were starting to run down the street. One of
our neighbors went by and stopped and said something.

Speaker 9 (01:12):
Police raced to the scene to find two thirteen year
old girls shot.

Speaker 4 (01:16):
I run in just in a panic, and I'm like,
you said, kids are down, And he's like what, And
I couldn't wait.

Speaker 5 (01:22):
I just took off.

Speaker 10 (01:26):
You don't know if it's gonna be a mass shooting
or somebody's run around shooting students or you know, if
this is one time deal.

Speaker 7 (01:33):
I just thought, this is crazy. There's a thousand kids
at that school. Whatever happened, it's not her, It can't
be her. And I don't know who answered her phone.
But I just heard somebody screaming.

Speaker 5 (01:43):
So I run down the street as fast as I can.

Speaker 10 (01:45):
Oh.

Speaker 5 (01:46):
I saw was people everywhere.

Speaker 9 (01:50):
There was no logical reason that we could think of
to where someone had just gone down.

Speaker 11 (01:57):
A thirteen year.

Speaker 8 (01:58):
Old girl stayed here because you know, it's a good
place and.

Speaker 5 (02:02):
Raise kids and it's safe. You just gotten down.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
My daughter.

Speaker 5 (02:08):
H a stranger. We don't even know you, She don't
know you.

Speaker 7 (02:15):
That was the first day that we didn't wake up
from a nightmare. We woke up to a nightmare, and
we've been waking up to one ever since.

Speaker 12 (02:26):
M hmmm, yeah, I'm daddy. Are you did you get

(02:48):
a picture taken? Do you have that one of cho.

Speaker 6 (03:03):
That's the haircut that you dreamed about the years before.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
It was like a watching a home movie, a premonition.

Speaker 12 (03:10):
I'm shore crying.

Speaker 5 (03:12):
It's one of my favorite pictures.

Speaker 8 (03:14):
That was Christmas or Christmas outfit.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
That's when she was wearing when she saw Santa Claus.

Speaker 5 (03:24):
When I was pregnant.

Speaker 4 (03:25):
I knew it was gonna be a girl, because I
know I dreamed of her, so it was so real,
just dream behind an old fashioned camera, you know the
kind that you crank with the handle, and there was
this little girl.

Speaker 5 (03:41):
So at first I didn't know who this.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
Little girl was.

Speaker 4 (03:44):
She had the short bob, she was about seven or
eight years old, and it was Lauren.

Speaker 8 (03:50):
Hi, this is.

Speaker 6 (03:51):
Laura, your favorite host n NY is Lauren.

Speaker 4 (03:58):
And I just knew was our daughter is because she
had pulled on Ferne's pant leg, on his Jane's She
was pulling it and she looked up and she said daddy,
and it was over. And I just knew that was
our daughter.

Speaker 7 (04:19):
And as soon as they pulled her out, I was
in love everything I could.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
Have hoped for.

Speaker 7 (04:24):
I just kind of spent a few minutes just looking
into her eyes. She was just staring back, kind of
just in disbelief that we finally had the daughter that
I had always wanted. She was beautiful, the most beautiful baby.

(04:44):
She was just full of, full of life. A lot
of my most precious moments with her were just knowing
when I'm coming home from work in the afternoon that
she would be waiting.

Speaker 6 (04:57):
When I pulled up, she's already opening the door and hugging.

Speaker 5 (05:01):
Oh god, she was so funny.

Speaker 4 (05:03):
I mean, this is like every day she'd come out,
she'd like to surprise us, come out of her bedroom
and dressed all crazy. She'd have this crazy makeup on
and big eyebrows, and she'd put on this like costume,
you know, from Halloween, or a pair of weird pajamas
and come out and you just start laughing. I mean,

(05:26):
she just had you laughing in tears or my stomach
would hurt so bad from laughing with her. She's just fun,
just random, and I love that about her. You know,
she was unpredictable, just never knew what she was gonna do.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
Well.

Speaker 7 (05:46):
Last time I saw Lauren was Thursday night before that Friday,
and I was going to bed, just drum on the
top of her head.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
And I told really loved room, it's for a good night.

Speaker 8 (06:02):
Burne goes to work and he leaves before us. Lauren
was running late.

Speaker 4 (06:11):
My friend took her to school that day, and so
I was telling Lauren getting on her like you need
a hurry. She's waiting, you know, can't keep her waiting,
but I did give her a kiss and told her
I loved her. And it was a beautiful day. It's
almost like a spring weather. It was just a beautiful day.
And I went to work and I even.

Speaker 8 (06:32):
Posted a selfie that day and said life is good.

Speaker 13 (06:44):
It was fairly early in the school year. School had
just started and it was a Friday before the weekend.
She and her best friend Michayla were walking home from
school and what Michaela said was they were talking about
boys and what they were going to do that weekend
and just typical thirteen year old conversation and just having
a good time, smiling and laughing and joking. And other

(07:04):
children from the junior higher were also walking in the alleyway.

Speaker 4 (07:14):
I'm waiting for Lauren to gom. I know it should
be soon, and a truck pulled up. My friend goes,
is Lauren home yet? And I'm like, know why? And
she said, kids are down, that's all she said.

Speaker 7 (07:31):
I heard the front door open, and I heard Bianca
and I saw her run, and I don't really know
what was going on. So I got in my truck
and I started to follow her.

Speaker 5 (07:46):
So I run down the street as best as I can.

Speaker 8 (07:50):
Oh. I saw was people everywhere in the crime scene tape.
I didn't know about, you know, her friend being shot.
I know about anything with gunshots at all.

Speaker 5 (08:05):
That I keep looking at. I'm look now at my
daughter's later on her back.

Speaker 8 (08:19):
Her head was during this way, so she's looking right appy,
and she's.

Speaker 5 (08:28):
The only one I see. I knew she was gone.
I can't explain it. I knew she was gone, and
I know.

Speaker 8 (08:38):
I was screaming, I guess really loud and horrible screams,
but I know I was calling her to come back.
I felt like she was going to the light and
I was trying to get her to come back, you know,
don't go, please come back, and nobody.

Speaker 5 (08:55):
Was working on her. She's just laying there by herself.
I couldn't understand why.

Speaker 2 (09:08):
Probably went into shock.

Speaker 7 (09:10):
But all I remember is like a white cloud everywhere,
like a fog, and just seeing her laying there.

Speaker 8 (09:20):
And I know I kept asking what happened, what happened?
Someone tell me, please tell me what happened. I don't
know who said it, but someone just said she was shot.
I think I went to my knees at that point,
and people were trying to hold me up and I
couldn't go to my.

Speaker 7 (09:38):
Babe, and they let me ride in the ambulance in
the front seat, and I kept looking back and just
telling her to hang on. I heard him say, I
have a heartbeat, and I thought, oh my god, she's
a lie.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
They have a heartbeat.

Speaker 7 (09:51):
I didn't know at the time it was just an
artificial heartbeat, but I thought she was still alive. So
when we got to the hospital and he took her
into the room, Mikayla's mom was out there in the hallway,
and I just remember hugging her and telling her that
I that I was praying for Michayla, that she would
be all right.

Speaker 8 (10:10):
I found out about Mikayla, I believe when I got
to the hospital.

Speaker 4 (10:14):
And when yelled out she was shot. And that's all
the information I had and story.

Speaker 5 (10:21):
I got in this room by myself. I'm pacing around.

Speaker 8 (10:24):
And then finally Burne comes in and I'm telling him
that Lauren didn't make it, and He's just like.

Speaker 5 (10:32):
No, no, no. They were working on her.

Speaker 2 (10:34):
In the ambulance.

Speaker 8 (10:34):
They were working on her. I said, we're in this room,
she didn't make it. Burned telling you, I don't know
how long before the door opened, and I think it
was a couple doctors, maybe two or three people walking
and just shook their head.

Speaker 5 (10:57):
Didn't make it, and that was it.

Speaker 9 (11:06):
Shots are fired in an alley just off the fifty
one hundred block of Kingston Avenue. Police race to the
scene to find two thirteen year old girls shot. I
was in the newsroom at Channel six here in Wichita Falls,
so we heard the call go out as it went

(11:26):
out to police that there was gunshots, that we had
two victims. We had a reporter and a photographer on
the way. We dispatched them immediately just to get to
that direction so that we could find out more information.
When the news came out, the city felt shock. Everyone
was in shock. Everyone wanted to know where their kids
were at that moment, we had a killer on the loose.

Speaker 13 (11:50):
Once I get there, there's a lot of chaos because
this was so unusual for witch Talk Falls, and they
didn't have a suspect. I talked to the head detect
and they update me with information of what they know
about the case. People were crying and upset. You can
only imagine parents their children were walking home and they

(12:11):
hear on the news that two young children have been shot.

Speaker 10 (12:15):
It was one of the first times that I've been
mayored that the community all together paused. It's like the
community banded together. It didn't matter if you're a Republican
or a Democrat, if you were black or white. They
wanted to get it right, bring this killer to justice.

Speaker 14 (12:34):
When we got here, I just remember having to go
into her room, which she was not the neatest kid
in the world, and it was just a mess. But
I just remember going and laying down on her bed
and just just crying.

Speaker 9 (12:50):
In the world would motivate someone to just drive up,
roll down their window, point a gun out the window,
and then just open fire on a thirteen year old
girl walking home from school. There was no rhyme or
reason at all as to what was behind it.

Speaker 4 (13:08):
The police, you know, had come to our house to
talk to us. They went Lauren's room and took you know,
her phone, and took her iPad and all this stuff
get any kind of information see if it's someone she
was messaging or new or you know, to look at
all the text messages and all that stuff. And then
the police officer did tell me that I'm just gonna
be honest with you, we may never catch who did this.

Speaker 8 (13:33):
And I just looked at him like.

Speaker 4 (13:36):
Like I can't. I don't know how do I even
take that. I'm like, what do you mean? He goes,
we may never catch who did this to your daughter.

(14:03):
Lauren was my mini me. She's taller than she got
taller than me, so she couldn't wear my shoes anymore.
I was happy, like, he can't wear my shoes anymore.

Speaker 6 (14:13):
Lauren awesome, Cooler than penguin feet.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
That's what I like to say about Laurence.

Speaker 12 (14:22):
She was very cool.

Speaker 7 (14:23):
After Lauren had been murdered, there was a lot of
outpouring from her friends and some of their parents. One
lady had written to another lady about her son was
a transfer from one junior high school in town to
another to where Lauren went, And on the first day
that he went there, he was kind of really worried
about lunch time. He didn't know anybody, so he went

(14:44):
into the lunch room.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
That day and sat by himself.

Speaker 7 (14:47):
I guess within a few minutes Laura had gone over
to him and introduced herself and invited.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
That kind of stuff. And it still makes me cry.

Speaker 7 (14:57):
To think about it. Just I didn't know anybody like
that in eighth grade. Eighth grader is usually that nice.
When I was in eighth grade, I remember eighth grade
being full of really nice people.

Speaker 8 (15:10):
And that kid will never forget it. A man meant
so much. Did Lauren did that? But that's just what
she did. You didn't have to tell her or do
anything like that.

Speaker 2 (15:20):
She just did it.

Speaker 8 (15:22):
So to hear all those, you know, stories after the fact,
you know, we're just so proud of her daughter, and
I just can't even tell you.

Speaker 9 (15:39):
Lauren lon Devoso does not survive. Michayla Smith is rushed
to the hospital and recovers and a manhunt begins. This
is the area that Lauren and Michaela was shot at,
and from what we understand, they were coming down this
sidewalk walking home from school and the car pulled up

(16:01):
right behind us, pointed a gun out the window, opened
fire and killed Lauren, shooting her fourteen times. Eight of
those shots were fatal.

Speaker 10 (16:10):
It kind of burst my bubble and tell you the truth,
because we don't have this in our community. Situations like
that happened, you know, in a Chicago or la or
in New York City. Those things don't happen here, but
it was a reality check that those things can happen
here Winchitol Falls.

Speaker 9 (16:25):
Mikayla Smith was shot in the chest and she turned
around and she said she could see Lauren laying there
and she could see her feet, and she called her
name a few times, but she didn't move. There were
kids all around that saw this. This was a very
public murder.

Speaker 13 (16:44):
There were a lot of children that witnessed the crime
that officers had to talk to, and it becomes difficult
because they're so young. You're dealing with twelve thirteen year
old children that had just seen something so horrific that
they never expected in their life.

Speaker 15 (17:04):
Anyone who's ever interviewed a traumatized child, particularly one that
just witnessed their friend begunned down and shot in front
of them, knows that it's not something that comes through quickly.
Asking the questions alone can be so traumatizing a child
will just cry and scream and shut down.

Speaker 13 (17:26):
We didn't know at the time Lauren's friend, Michayla Smith,
had actually locked eyes with the killer. She had a
description he had shaggy brown hair, that he was younger,
and he was a white male. So that's what we
were looking for.

Speaker 9 (17:40):
We were working very hard to get descriptions out of
via social media, on air, every avenue, trying to bombard
literally the community with information so that we could find
who did this. At that point, no one knew if
he was still out there. One knew if he was
in the area, if he'd gone away. Nobody knew.

Speaker 4 (18:05):
Michaelis saw him right in his eyes, and that's what
she recalls, you know. Thank god she had that information
and thank god she survived. How many people in town
have shaggy hair and their young men, I mean tons
of them.

Speaker 7 (18:19):
They didn't have any leads. For one thing. They had
two different description of vehicles, you know, a black truck
and a suv different color.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
That's about all they had.

Speaker 13 (18:29):
The police alerted the community about the vehicles and let
us know if you've seen any vehicles matching, either in
the black truck with the chrome or the gold suv.
We had no success on that.

Speaker 9 (18:42):
There was an appetite to get this guy behind bars
as fast as possible. I'm not kidding. Everybody was looking
for that car.

Speaker 11 (18:48):
They wanted justice done.

Speaker 13 (19:00):
By Sunday, around eleven o'clock, I received a call from
the sergeant detective. He thought that Mikayla Smith might have
gotten a good enough look at him, they might be
able to employ a sketch artist. In twenty four years,
I've never okayed that, and for the first time, because
we had nothing to go on, I said.

Speaker 15 (19:20):
Yes, sketches in crimes could be an asset if the
description is clear and accurate, and you can get a
description out that people can actually visualize and help police
getting them to a suspect a lot quicker, but could
also come with a lot of risks if your witness
is misremembering something and that now becomes canonized in this

(19:44):
sketch and people immediately assume that this sketch is accurate.
In this case, the primary witness was a child, and
so when accuracy of the description and the impact on
the public is so paramount, there was a lot writing
this poor young, traumatized girl.

Speaker 13 (20:09):
Within an hour of me Okaine a sketch artist, unbeknownst
to me, a woman and her fiance were going to
look at the makeshift memorial that people in the community
had made, and about that time, a gold suv slowed
down and stopped and then continued on and it matched

(20:32):
the description of one of the suspect vehicles. They ended
up following that gold Suv and a young white male
with shaggy hair got out of his vehicle and he
looked nervous and he was looking around. Went to the
passenger side and retrieved an item which was a long
item wrapped in a blanket and what they believed to

(20:54):
be the end of a rifle sticking out of that.
He came out without that item that looked like a
rifle wrapped in a blanket, And so she called nine

(21:14):
one one and they asked her to take down the
license plate, which she did. So then she calls that
into dispatch and it's a suspect that matches the description
of Michayla Smith, and there's reasonable suspicion to pull that
vehicle over that that might be the suspect.

Speaker 9 (21:35):
So there was a police officer that was just down
the road that heard the call that immediately got behind
the vehicle, followed it from a minute, and then pulled
it over on a traffic violation.

Speaker 13 (22:06):
The patrol officer asked for consent to search the gold Suv,
which the driver consented because, unbeknownst to the police department,
he'd already cleaned out the vehicle. So the officer searches
the vehicle. They find a brass shell casing from a weapon,

(22:28):
and in the meantime, he found a backpack. He searched
it and he found brass knuckles, and in the state
of Texas at that time, brass knuckles were a prohibited weapon,
and so the driver then was placed under arrest. My
first reaction was relief because of the safety of the community,
and you just want to say, heck, yes, we got him.

Speaker 9 (22:53):
We got word. There was going to be a press
conference and the chief was gonna do it, and all
I could think was that him, He's going to tell
us that they've got him. I just knew it. And
sure enough the police you came out and said, we've
arrested a suspect and his name is Cody Lott, twenty
year old Cody Lot. It's arrested after a traffic stop

(23:15):
on Southwest park Way. Police find a gun, among other
things believed to be evidence that could have been involved
in the shooting.

Speaker 4 (23:25):
Two days after, rumors start happening, and I do remember
someone coming up with a picture of this guy and
I'm like, who the hell is that?

Speaker 5 (23:35):
Like who is that? And she goes, this is a
guy who killed Lauren. This is him.

Speaker 7 (23:40):
The fact that they caught him and the woman who
saw him and called the police was all because of
Lauren guiding us and making sure that we got justice
for her. To me, that's divine, and from the moment
that this happened, I feel like I had been guided
from above my daughter, and I know that she had

(24:03):
everything to do with that woman being there at that
time to see what she saw.

Speaker 13 (24:09):
Cody Lot was not on anybody's radar. He was pretty
much a loaner. He didn't have a good employment record,
he did drugs, and he just was a young male
that was dysfunctional.

Speaker 9 (24:25):
The process begins as he's taken downtown and they start
to ask him questions.

Speaker 13 (24:32):
Cody Lock is right to remain silent. He doesn't have
to give a statement. He decided he wanted to talk
to the detectives and they asked him about the murder
and the aggravated assault. He denied it, and for forty
five minutes he lied to the officers.

Speaker 10 (24:46):
Poll me that now, man, because I want to clear
you and get you on your way.

Speaker 16 (24:50):
But if it's the opposite, if you were there and.

Speaker 7 (24:57):
You have any information about it.

Speaker 16 (24:58):
Then tell me right now, man, because I don't want to.

Speaker 12 (25:03):
Get you himed up in something that you didn't have
anything at all.

Speaker 17 (25:06):
To do with, you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 13 (25:08):
So it looks like he knows that he's busted and
he's trying to get himself out of it. But I
notice here the detective is speaking in a very soft voice.
He's not yelling, he's not screaming, he's not acting angry
in any any way. What he's trying to do is
start that rapport going to where the defendant thinks that
they have a relationship enough that he can get him

(25:31):
to tell him what he has done. And if you noticed,
Cody Lot has his arm crossed. That's defensive. He wants
to hide something, and when the detectives see him opening up,
they know it's working. After about forty five minutes, the
detectives do their magic. They're really good at what they do,

(25:52):
and they finally saw a way in and ended up
getting him to confess to the murder and aggravated a song.

Speaker 10 (26:01):
Yes, but I sung her.

Speaker 16 (26:02):
I drove by her in my car like a couple
of days before, and I made eye contact with her,
and her eyes looked like like gems or something to
me like that was I was like, how could someone
have such beautiful eyes? And like I just said what's
up to her? As I drove by, Like I didn't,
I just you know, said what's up. I didn't mess
with her or nothing. I just drove by her. But
I said, there's I'm not going to let nobody else
enjoy with that. So you you pretty much knew what

(26:25):
we oh Man, I rapped her for about a year.
Man for a year, I'd seen her walking with her boyfriend.
I hadn't had access to.

Speaker 9 (26:33):
A gun for four hours, he talked to detectives about everything,
everything that happened that day, everything that had happened since then.

Speaker 13 (26:43):
He then ends up slowly confessing to what he did
that day, that Friday that he murdered Lauren Lndovoso and
injured Michayla Smith.

Speaker 16 (26:54):
They stomped in their tracks, is what I'm trying to say.
They stopped, and Lawren looked at me like like I
was joking, or she kind of looked at me like
oh please, you know. She kind of just like turned
her head like that with a kind of smirk on
her face. And that's when I just my eyes changed
and I just I fell. I was like, and he
fired at her first? Yeah, I fired at her, and
then her friend was like right beside her. Man, I

(27:18):
pointed up and I did aim at Lauren, but not
at her head like I thought it would jam. I mean,
or you know, you would think a gun would jam
on you. But I was just pulling that trigger as
fast as I couldn't. It sounded like it was.

Speaker 9 (27:30):
It was hard to fathom everything he was saying. He
was talking like he was proud of it. There was
almost a proud presentation, if you will, from him about
when he was shooting her and explaining it to the police.
He was using the gun and how he made sure
he was in the right place and then he could
get the gun out of the window so he could
shoot it. I mean, it just it was calculated.

Speaker 15 (27:57):
After watching the confession and seeing how cavalier he was
in his description of the crime, describing it like I
would describe my experience as a vacation. He was almost
enjoying it. He's very animated and excited. He was reliving
it quite enthusiastically.

Speaker 9 (28:19):
He was telling detectives he had talked to the devil
he had said that it wasn't a senseless killing. He
was mad about that. He wanted us to report it
as an assassination, a calculated assassination.

Speaker 13 (28:32):
In Cody Lott's confession, he talked about having watched Lauren
walk home from junior high from school for approximately a year,
and when she was in seventh grade she had a
boyfriend and he wasn't happy about her having a boyfriend.

Speaker 16 (28:49):
This is just getting ready, man, this is a story. Okay,
So I just have patience. Let me finished, and you know, well,
I've had a problem, you know, with females for a while. Now,
you know, and you can you're already. You can ask
anybody I know and they'll tell you absolutely that's something
Cody would do. They'd say absolutely, he is. He has
hated in his heart, like I'd seen that girl lock
in multiple times with her boyfriend, and her boyfriend was
just a little punk looking kid that wasn't no man.

(29:12):
So it kind of just sparked a jealousyeing me man.

Speaker 13 (29:16):
And despite the fact he'd never met Lauren, he had
never met Michaela. They didn't know who Cody lot was,
but he watched him from afar from his parents' apartment
through the window. And he was a lonely, selfish, terrible person,
evil person that didn't think about anything but himself. His

(29:38):
whole confession was really about him.

Speaker 16 (29:40):
It's just all these girls were just ignoring me and
disrespecting me, And all I ever wanted was an opportunity
to be respectful and treat a girl right.

Speaker 9 (29:53):
It just made no sense to anyone to do that.
He was mad that he was not going to be
her boyfriend. It was just a sick feeling. It was
sick to read it. It was sick. It was sick
to report it. I mean, it just made you just
you just didn't feel good at all. It was just
it was upsetting, very upsetting.

Speaker 8 (30:13):
Never heard of him.

Speaker 5 (30:15):
It's a little stranger.

Speaker 4 (30:17):
Cody Lai was twenty years old, our daughter's thirteen, no way,
you know. And they weren't friends on Facebook, on any
social media. There was no links whatsoever to this person.
He fixated on her. He watched her walk home from school.

(30:37):
He watched her for quite a while apparently, and planned
the murder.

Speaker 7 (30:43):
I remember seeing the picture of him, how evil he looked,
and just like nothing. He looks like nothing. He's he's
a little coward. He's if he had tried to take Lauren,
you know, go and grab her and try to take her,
she probably would have kicked his ass. But he had
the power life and death that day because he had
an assault rifle.

Speaker 13 (31:05):
We knew that from the time that he was arrested
that he had some mental health issues. He was diagnosed
in twenty fifteen with schizo effective disorder, and so from
the very beginning we knew we were going to have
to look for things like him covering the weapon, him
throwing the weapon in a field, him retreating it, him lying.

(31:27):
We started making a list showing that Cody Lot knew
right from wrong.

Speaker 18 (31:33):
We know that Lot had a previous diagnosis of Schitzo
effective disorder, so that is a combination of schizophrenia and
an affective disorder. Schizophrenia is a state of psychosis where
people typically hear voices or they have paranoid delusions, and
an effective disorder is related to mood, so people who
suffer from this either are quite depressed or they're quite

(31:54):
manic when they can be overexcited and disinhibited. But crucially
by all of that, I still think he knew what
he was doing. Was wrong because he tried to cover
up his tracks.

Speaker 9 (32:07):
Cody a Lot told them he drove away from the scene.
He got on a highway and he stopped at a
field that he was familiar with, went into the field,
hid the weapon in a place he knew he'd be
able to find it later. Then he went to Archer City,
which is about twenty minutes south of Wichtaft Falls, met
up with the girl he knew, and they went to

(32:29):
her house and did drugs. It wasn't until Sunday that
he went back and retrieved the weapon, then ended up
taking it back to put it back in his stepdad,
I believe's gunlocker that was in that apartment. It was
clear because of his actions that he knew what he
had done was not right, that it was against civil

(32:52):
norms and.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
Against the law.

Speaker 5 (33:01):
Merry Christmas, you.

Speaker 4 (33:04):
Love you, Love you, Apprecia.

Speaker 7 (33:12):
After Lauren had been murdered, nothing was important. Nothing mattered anymore.
Work didn't matter, money didn't matter, nothing mattered anymore.

Speaker 2 (33:24):
I don't remember much about the funeral.

Speaker 4 (33:27):
Verne was so busy doing the service and I was
totally out of the picture. Honestly, I was in the backgrounds.
I didn't know really what was going on.

Speaker 2 (33:37):
There's things you have to do.

Speaker 7 (33:38):
You have to plan your child's funeral, something you never
thought you would have to do to plan a funeral.
How you're going to sum up your child's life in
an hour, an hour and a half, two hours, whatever?

Speaker 2 (33:52):
How are you going to do?

Speaker 4 (33:52):
That had to wait a couple of years before the
trial happened.

Speaker 5 (33:58):
I was anxious.

Speaker 4 (33:59):
I was scared, and I was thinking, what if they
don't find them guilty, what if something's messed up, what
if they didn't do something right?

Speaker 5 (34:08):
I mean, I was scared.

Speaker 4 (34:09):
I mean I really didn't know what was going to happen,
the outcome.

Speaker 13 (34:24):
I first saw Cody Lott in the courtroom and he
was physically how Michayla Smith had described him. He was
very thin, white, young male. He was twenty years old,
shaggy brown hair, didn't communicate very much in the courtroom.

(34:44):
And he's exactly the profile of a young killer in
Texas that commits stranger offenses. And I say that because
the profile typically like you have these school shootings, were
these mass shootings, is typically a young white male.

Speaker 12 (35:05):
God.

Speaker 9 (35:07):
They started that trial with children coming to the witness
stand that had seen this happen, which to me is
just unfathomable. But I think we were all ready for
this trial to start, and from the moment that the
district attorney warning Shelton in which Talk County opened her mouth,
that jury was ready to listen.

Speaker 13 (35:29):
My concern from the very beginning is that the jury
would feel sorry for Cuddy Latt. He was very young offender,
He had drug issues, and his mental illness was the
major concern. He was found incompetent to stand trial before
the September trial, so he was sent to a maximum

(35:51):
security mental institution to regain his competency before we went
to trial so he could have a fair trial.

Speaker 15 (36:00):
Cody had schizo effective disorder that may have led him
to have ideas and think that he needed to kill somebody.
The fact that someone would even have murder on their
menu that they could enact that has nothing to do
with mental illness. That has to do with his need
for power.

Speaker 16 (36:20):
And control, right, Because I knew this girl was gonna
end up getting raped during a couple of years and
there's all kinds of evil going on then, so on
my mind, I saved her from the evil of this world.
And also it was kind of a sacrifice to the devil,
because like I've been talking to the devil a lot,
and he's the one that that told me to do that,
because I was sitting there with the gun and I

(36:40):
was I was, I was watching, I was watching out
the window man waiting for them to or I was
she'd be walking by herself every day.

Speaker 4 (36:51):
Cody log gave many reasons. He said that he was
angry because he didn't have a girlfriend. He was angry
because he was jealous because she's so beautiful.

Speaker 8 (37:00):
He sacrificed her to God so he could have a
mansion and all the drugs that he wanted.

Speaker 5 (37:07):
As a gift.

Speaker 8 (37:10):
So he's had a lot of different reasons besides just
the devil made him do it.

Speaker 13 (37:16):
Coddy Lyde was never able to justify what he had
done because it's unjustifiable and his statement made it all
about him and that somehow Lauren was his possession, even
though he'd never had any interaction with her, Mikayla at all.
He was just selfish, you know, and didn't get beyond that.

Speaker 5 (37:35):
When I first saw him, he just looked so scary
and evil.

Speaker 4 (37:39):
He's never said he's sorry, He's never said anything to
Michaela's family or else.

Speaker 7 (37:52):
When we saw him after they had put him in
the state hospital, medicated him, and he came back into
court for that first hearing, I was immediately st by
the difference in his face.

Speaker 2 (38:01):
He didn't look evil anymore. He didn't have that same
evil look on his face.

Speaker 7 (38:04):
He looked scared. He looked like a scared little boy.
To me, that's what he looked like. And I actually
felt bad for him that day.

Speaker 2 (38:11):
I pitied him. I felt bad for.

Speaker 7 (38:13):
Him until I watched his confession, until I watched and
listened to the doctor's talk about how he still had
really no remorse.

Speaker 2 (38:20):
For what he had done. And that's when I knew
that I'll never forgive him for what he did.

Speaker 13 (38:27):
On top of all that other evidence that we play,
we also have to play the in car videos that
are in patrol cars that day, and you could hear
Bianco land of Ozo arrive on the scene, and it's
that blood curdling screen the jury got to hear and
it was very.

Speaker 11 (38:45):
Emotional, and.

Speaker 13 (38:48):
That was my strongest piece of evidence, I think, to
bring out the emotion of the jury because they were
all parents themselves, and it's emotional and it's the last
thing the jury heard, and it brought tears to my eyes.

Speaker 2 (39:11):
The day he was found guilty, and we knew it
was coming. It was something that we had known for
two years.

Speaker 7 (39:16):
The only thing it was surprising was how fast it was.
Within an hour. There was no time at all that
they were able to come back with those verdicts. So
God bless Terren County.

Speaker 9 (39:26):
Jury's Cody Lot was found guilty of first degree murder
and was sentenced to life in prison. And then he
was also found guilty of aggravated assault with a deadly
weapon and was sentenced to twenty years in prison for that.

Speaker 4 (39:42):
I'm glad that he was found guilty and he did
get life, but life in Texas is only sixty years,
which I did.

Speaker 8 (39:50):
Now, that's not justice to me.

Speaker 13 (39:59):
In thirty years, he's eligible for parole hearing. It doesn't
mean he's going to get it, but he can have
a parole hearing after he serves thirty years day per day.

Speaker 11 (40:08):
That to me is not good enough.

Speaker 13 (40:10):
But it's the same law that I was sworn to uphold.
I couldn't do anymore. Lauren was a sweet, kind soul
that had he stopped and talked to her and said
he needed help.

Speaker 5 (40:22):
She would have.

Speaker 6 (40:22):
Talked to him.

Speaker 13 (40:23):
And that's what's so ironic about all of this is
she was just such a nice person. Had he gone
up to her, I think she would have talked to him.

Speaker 19 (40:34):
Today we are in front of McNeil Junior High. This
is kind of the place right now in her life
where she'd be twenty years old. This is as far
as she got eighth grade, first week of eighth grade.

Speaker 2 (40:44):
This is as far as she made it.

Speaker 19 (40:47):
The spot that we're coming up on is the memorial
horse that they put up in her honor after she
was murdered. It was actually not just for her, it
was for Michaela as well, so that makes it kind
of special. It's not just a symbol of what we
lost that day, but it's a symbol of hope.

Speaker 2 (41:04):
Of hope.

Speaker 9 (41:05):
Yeah, after Lauren's death, this community rallied, They came together.
They guaranteed that she would not be forgotten. And you know,
you can still say her name in this community and
people know exactly what you're talking about.

Speaker 10 (41:23):
Lauren didn't get to get married, she didn't get to
graduate college, but she didn't get to develop friendships like
we all got to develop. You know, that's tough. That's
tough for a community. No parents should bury a young child.
It makes you chaish your family in the time you
have with your family.

Speaker 8 (41:38):
For parents who are going through what we're going through
to have a murdered loved.

Speaker 17 (41:43):
One, I'll what'shing on anybody, and it's difficult, But I
think what's helped us the most is to find the positive.

Speaker 8 (41:56):
We were able to find that. You know, with Lauren's Law,
he has to do with capital murder.

Speaker 4 (42:03):
In Texas, you have to be under ten for it
to be capital murder, and we didn't know that until
this happened to our daughter.

Speaker 5 (42:10):
She was thirteen, so it.

Speaker 4 (42:12):
Was not capital murder and that's why he will be
eligible for Pearl one day.

Speaker 7 (42:17):
Laura's Law raised the age now in Texas where if
you murder a child between the age of ten and fifteen,
you are eligible for life without the possibility of parole.

Speaker 13 (42:29):
When I first met Bianca and Vern, they were broken.
I watched them sad, I watched them mad. I've watched
them work to be better people, if that's even possible.
I watched Vern confront the defendant in the courtroom and.

Speaker 11 (42:45):
The thing that stuck.

Speaker 13 (42:46):
Excuse me for crying, but the thing that stuck in
my mind was he told the defendant in the courtroom
everything you said in your statement was a lie except
two things. That my daughter was beautiful, and she was
an angel, and he was composed as can be, and
he was a parent that day to Cody Lott in
a way, it was just kind of a strange dynamic.

Speaker 3 (43:10):
It's actually not the last picture I haven't learned, but
one of the last that night is the one where
she's going to kiss me and we can't really see
her face as the last picture I have.

Speaker 4 (43:20):
Over, you know, looking back on all that and the
way that she lived and so adventurous and spontaneous and
random and always wanted to go somewhere, it's like she
wanted to see what life had to offer. She wanted
to go out and explore, she wanted to try new things.

(43:41):
And it's almost, you know, to me, her soul new,
her soul new, she didn't have a long time here.
That's that's how I felt.

Speaker 8 (43:51):
And so Lord just lived, you know, the fullest life
she could in a short time.

Speaker 7 (43:58):
If the world were full of people like we wouldn't
have problems. We wouldn't need laws, we wouldn't need guns,
We wouldn't.

Speaker 2 (44:07):
She's just a pure soul, pure love, purest love.

Speaker 7 (44:12):
I've ever met anybody who knew her, knew how kind
she was, how loving she was. That's what she'll always
be remembered for, just the ability to bring a smile
to your face.

Speaker 6 (44:23):
No matter what.

Speaker 8 (44:26):
I told her before she passed, I think she would
be helping people, whether it be a therapist, you know,
counselor I just really feel like she would have been
helping people. I just know she would have done good.
We always told Laura that wherever you go, that's where
we're going.

Speaker 5 (44:47):
And we're right.

Speaker 8 (44:49):
We know where she's at now and we're going to
we'll catch up with.

Speaker 5 (44:53):
Her, alright.

Speaker 8 (45:00):
Merry Christmas until next year.