July 10, 2023 • 25 mins
I speak with Lori Vallow’s brother, Adam Cox, and her uncle, Rex Conner. They have started a podcast that is linked below where they give insight into Lori and Alex that only they can give.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome to Pretty Lies and Alibis.Let's seek the truth and travel the long
road to justice together. What youknow, alib buyers, Welcome to another
episode of Pretty Lies and Alibis.I'm Gege. I have some guests today.
I have Adam Cox, who isthe brother of Lorie Valo, and
(00:23):
Rex Connor, who is the uncleof Lorie Valo. In the beginning,
when I started this interview, Ihad a brain moment and did not hit
record. So the first question thatI asked both Adam and Rex was why
start the podcast and we will pickup from there. This isn't our strong
suit, of course, it's Adamsone of Adam's many strong Susie he being
(00:46):
in the radio business. But goingthrough this it's not that it's pleasant.
It's not pleasant, but it's helpingus to heal and I hope helping a
lot of people and buy the comments. It's very gratifying that people are feeling
like they're getting something out of it. Adam, what do you think,
(01:07):
well, I think after Rex cameback from the the court hearing that he
was just kind of overwhelmed with howmany people are actually following this case worldwide,
and for me, I just feellike if we can do something to
(01:27):
help other families, because there's noway in the world I would think that
any family would go through something likemy family has gone through, because it's
the most bizarre, crazy story thatI've ever even heard of. But I
know there are Every family has struggles, and every family has you know,
siblings that you know are maybe goingoff in one direction, and there's other
(01:52):
family members that cut o their familymembers off. And so I think for
me, the message would be,as we talk about this, how to
make sure that things that happen tomy family don't happen to other people's family.
That's just That's just one of thereasons I think we're doing this podcast.
The other one is many, somany people have questions, and a
(02:15):
lot of people are saying things thatdon't make sense or that are lies,
and everybody wants to just know thetruth. And Rex and I are here
just to tell the truth that weknow. Yeah, and it's hard,
especially with social media. First ofall, you guys just were thrown into
this without any consent. I mean, you were thrown into this worldwide sensationalized
(02:36):
true crime story that was actually happeningto your family, and that in itself
is hard to deal with. Thenyou couple that with all the media attention
this got for months before we gotto the answers of where are the kids?
Is it? Have you found thatit's been hard to deal with just
the guilt by association of just beingblood related to Laurie. Oh, there's
(03:00):
definitely judgments going on. I atleast, you know, I get Facebook
messages and emails and you know,people that I don't know that will call
me a murderer or you know,just because they're associating me with her.
That being judged by people that reallydon't know the whole story or know any
(03:25):
of the story, that's hard tothat's hard to take. And that's another
reason I think we're writing this bookand doing this podcast is just to try
to clear some of that Upright,you have anything to add I do.
I'm hoping we can clear some ofthat up. And but the benefit to
doing this, which I didn't anticipate, I didn't have any experience with this,
(03:47):
just I'm on social media occasionally.But the very positive comments that that
outnumber and outweigh the the attacks.So Tom, we're pretty thick skin.
We've been We've been processing this fora while, so we know we're comfortable
(04:08):
with what we know and how we'veacted in this situation. But it certainly
is gratifying to hear that it's whatwe're doing is helping people. So thanks
for again, and Gigi you're you'rea part of that and having us on
your show and they help behind thescenes you've been giving us. We really
appreciate it. Yeah, I'm gladto help. You know, it's it's
(04:30):
unimaginable what y'all had to deal with. And do you have like the worst
rumor that you've seen online that absolutelywasn't true, just one that was just
so out there that you want toaddress, or is there anything that sticks
out that you've read before you startedthe podcast or at any point from the
day to sit the news to now. Because Keyboard Warriors are fears and you
(04:55):
have a lot of groups and youhave Reddit forums where all this is discussed,
and unfortunately it seems like people thatdidn't ask for this, their lives
started to get picked apart as wellor intention or things like that. Well,
I think everybody's entitled to their ownopinions, and sometimes it's people's opinion
(05:15):
that other people here and then theygo with that. So, um,
that's I think to me, sometimesthat is disheartening sometimes to hear that.
But um, I mean there's there'sjust so much because there's so much to
this story, and there's so manypeople involved, and um, then there's
(05:40):
there's family members or you know,cousins or in laws or whatever it is
that you know have their agenda withit, and and I just like the
truth to come out. And Ithink people speculate, and when they speculate,
they people tend to take that asthere as truth when it's they're actually
(06:04):
just their opinions very true. Isee that all the time in every case
I cover. Actually it's not uniqueto this case at all. But in
the very beginning when all this startedhitting and the kids were missing, I
mean, you guys never could haveimagined where we are today. What were
those early days like of just notknowing. That's been brutal ever since then,
(06:29):
because there's still a lot we don'tknow, isn't there And there are
some factors that we probably will neverknow because the only people that were in
the room are now dead or theyaren't talking, And so that's part of
the tragedy. That's why we're alltrying to figure it out, and it's
going to be frustrating for a longtime. So in that perspective, we
(06:54):
aren't going to get to closure forthose factors. So thank goodness for we
have found out. Thank goodness foreach other. And we've been saying that
in our family for a long timebecause that's how we process. We process
with each other and we talked.But now that we're connected with this worldwide
community, even the people that saythings that we don't like, there's still
(07:16):
a part of the discussion. There'sstill a part of the positive energy.
And I just keep in mind thatwe don't want the same thing, So
in that sense, we're on thesame team. Even though we're saying things
that each other, each of usdon't like, we're still wanting justice for
the victims and the living victims.Yeah, it's funny because you do have
(07:39):
that perception of people who don't knowyou. And it was interesting because when
you came to trial, everybody wastalking about how nice you were, and
I thought to myself, well,why would anybody think differently? Why would
anybody just assume that you were nota good person? And I think that.
You know, everything I heard frompeople that met you at trial was
just how kind and sweet you were, and we briefly said hello, are
(08:03):
you going to be at sentencing yetto be determined? Ah, okay.
I think Adam might a portal outof here. It looks like he's a
he's a spinning wheel. I thinkyou got in his portal. Family has
portals and I'm missing out on those. Yeah, yeah, I think Adams
might be on the blink. Um. But you know, one question is
(08:24):
does anybody in the family communicate withLorie at this point? Yes, her
mother, my sister, Janice,adams mother too, communication with Laurie regularly,
I think weekly. They talk andaccording to Janice, they can't talk
about the case. They don't talkabout anything substitutive because Laurie is still in
(08:46):
her delusion and she doesn't get outof it for conversations. I don't know
if she ever gets out of it, and so it's it's more superficial conversation
um, which McCall instead like,I had to get closer to a routers.
I was I the only one thatwas off? Yeah, you were,
(09:09):
you were off. We made alittle portal joke that you portaled out.
I'm like you, guys, Ihave dark humor. So it's kind
of like exactly. YEA. Onething is you know, as we follow
these cases over time, we feellike we know the victims and everybody involved,
but we don't what was Tyly likeas a person. We've been asked
(09:31):
this question a bunch, and youknow Tyley as a little kid, Um
was a little fire cracker and sobut super I'll say, hard on the
outside and soft on the inside becauseshe had a very sensitive soul. And
as she became a teenager, Umshe became more and more I think opened
(09:58):
and felt more comfort table. AndI don't think that she had really a
comfortable feeling. I guess growing upit just didn't seem like it with her,
with Lorie Merritt, you know,with Joe and the speculations of things
that happened with him, and thenbeing with Charles and you know, having
(10:18):
a stepdad and there are some roughthings there. But as a person,
I mean, I don't think youcan get as good as Tylely. I
just I miss her a ton.Yeah. I remember the interview your Son's
acted with Justin Lum and he wasrecalling the last time he saw her and
he broke down, and man,that just that broke my heart to watch
(10:39):
him. You could tell they hada special bond and unfortunately that's something that
will affect your son the rest ofhis life too. Just that loss,
that great loss. Yeah, weactually in a podcast that's coming up,
Rex and I talk about the lasttime I saw Tyly alive at my mom's
house. So there's definitely is somethingthere. And so there's speculations a bunch
(11:03):
did Lorie have highly lie and didTilely know that Alex and Lorie murdered Charles?
There's I mean, there's a lotthere. So we in our podcast
we do break some of that downfor you. And now it's time to
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free shipping. Bestcosis dot com slashWhat the World? What about Jj?
The same question for JJ? Whatwas he like as a little dude running
around Well, right, actoul youvisited him in in Hawaii when when Laurie
and Charlie lived in Hawaii. Yeah, Unfortunately, I've only had a couple
(14:03):
of interactions. That was one ofthem. We visited and got to stay
with Laura, Laurie and Charles.We stayed in JJ's room. He wasn't
thrilled about that, but is prettyyoung at the time. But what what
impressed me at the time, JJ, because of his birth situation, had
almost superhuman upper body strength and hewould run around as a a little mini
(14:31):
hulk and would dismantle anything in hiscourse. And the first time I saw
him as something other than a babyis when we got there to why we
had to go straight to an activity. Laurie was in charge, so Charles
was on JJ duty and an adulthad to have eyes on JJ every second
(14:52):
of the day that he was awake. And so we got to see Charles
and Laurie as parents dealing with that, trading off and coordinating and taking care
of him. What a little bundleof energy, happy energy. Not he
wasn't destroying things as a as amean, angry entity. He was just
(15:16):
a happy little guy going around takingthings apart. What a great memory.
But I'm sorry I only had afew memories, Adam, you have more
more than that, I think.I think. You know, we talk
about Laurie and Charles and their marriageand all that stuff, but I got
to tell you both of them didsuch a really did a great job with
(15:37):
raising JJ. He was severely autisticwhen they got him and they adopted him,
and they did such a great jobof help developing him that as he
got older and older and older,he was doing things that you know,
the experts and the doctors didn't thinkthat he could do, and you know,
(15:58):
read and run and talk and playand just to try to become like
more of a normal kid who hadsevere autism. So he did really,
really good for many years growing up. And that's what we've heard is that
Laurie was very hands on and wouldconsume herself with trying to better understand the
(16:21):
world JJ lived in so she couldhelp him. And it really did seem
like until it was good, untilit wasn't. You know. It's kind
of how it goes in true crime. But now, one thing, I
think the surprise everybody was Summer's phonecall with Lorie. That was played in
court. I said, I've neverheard so many emotions in each word as
I heard when that was played.And I know a lot of people had
(16:44):
given Summer a hard time because initially, Adam, your mom and your sister
went on national TV and defended her. You know, I don't think anybody
could have ever imagined what actually wasgoing on. And the one thing out
of this trial was that was oneof the hugest moments for everybody in that
courtroom. After that testimony, weall left that courtroom and went wow,
(17:06):
I mean just gutted, because theonline perception is very different than what's happening
in your lives and what you feelhere. Like you say, it's people's
opinions, and I just wanted tosay that that Summer's testimony totally touched my
heart and you could tell that sheloved those children with everything she had,
and I think that was a bigmoment for everybody. So do you guys
(17:29):
plan on doing any more seasons ofthis podcast? Is this very limited that
then you'll switch over to the bookand or have you decided yet? Go
ahead and Rex? Several times wehave planned on doing ten episodes of the
(17:51):
podcast, and hope so we'd bedone with a book, release the book,
and and we think that will beour contribution. I don't that we
have an ongoing contribution to give,and we don't want it's not our goal
to get into that business, apodcastingable. But if there's more we can
do, if we haven't told enoughof the story, if we haven't shared
(18:15):
enough, we might we might domore. We are dead set against it,
but we're really doing this for ourfor our own benefit, our own
therapy, and to help other people. We just don't think that will That
will take a long time, sowe're just going to try to stay tuned.
If we're contributing enough for not Yeah, and then we potentially have another
(18:40):
trial to go where more will berevealed that couldn't be brought out in her
trial, so you may have morethings to talk about. But UM,
you know, I just want tosay that I think it's it's amazing that
you guys are opening yourself up tothis and I'm not going to keep you
long, so I just wanted tosay, um, I've learned a lot
from your perspective of the people youguys knew from the time Lorie was little,
(19:03):
Alex was little that kind of thing. I agree. I was listening
to your episode. I don't thinkthat Alex just happened to fall over.
It seemed like he was very easilymanipulated and controlled, and maybe just was
kind of a drifter and didn't havethat one group that he could cling to,
and so I called him the bandof misfits. It's sort of just
(19:26):
this really small group because in thebeginning we thought cult compounds. I was
very conflicted for months of whether ornot the kids were alive, and I
would flip flop back and forth.The one time that I thought that there
was a good chance they were wasactually seeing the video of Lorie in the
Gilbert p D when Charles took herpurse, and seeing how Tighly would kind
(19:49):
of calm her mom down when shegot very animated. I thought they really
had this ebb and flow together.And that was one time that I thought,
I don't think she would she wouldhurt her daughter. But it has
to be so odd to see yourgo from really being a very dedicated mother
to this, and and I'm sosorry you guys have had to deal with
(20:11):
this. It's just unimaginable and probablyvery surreal. In a lot of ways
to go from hearing about true crimeto your family kind of being in one
of the craziest cases that I thinkI've ever seen in years of covering cases.
Yeah, it's it's it's been anordeal. It's been a long time
too, so we've we've seen andfelt probably every emotion you could possibly feel,
(20:37):
we have felt. So yeah,it's it's. It's one of those
things where you just you can't writefiction like this. It's a story that
you can't believe anybody would buy into, especially your brother and sister and us.
It's just one of those things youjust scratch your head and just like
can't believe it. Yeah, andAdam, you were rated as zombie?
(21:00):
How was I mean, how didthat feel when you heard that your own
sister had labeled you as a darkentity? Well, yeah, I didn't.
I didn't know that either. Well, after Charles died, I was
scared to death because I knew thatLaurie and Alex killed him. I just
felt that they did, and soI was scared that maybe they're going to
(21:22):
come after me. But then Ithought to myself, what good would they
What good would it do to killme? I didn't understand it because I
thought at the time, I thought, well, maybe they killed Charles for
you know, insurance money, orI knew that they thought he was a
zombie, that they you know,they've never mentioned that anybody else was a
zombie, so I really didn't know. Um. But then when I found
(21:45):
out that Laurie was convincing Alex thatI was a zombie and then maybe I
was next on the list to bekilled, That's that's hard to take.
Yeah, I bet that was avery rude awakening. Well, I appreciate
you guys doing this. I won'tkeep you any longer. I know you
guys are very busy, But youguys are releasing these once a week,
(22:07):
is that correct? We're releasing thepodcast once a week. But in fact,
right after this interview, gig Adamand I are guests start doing just
short video clips answering the most frequentlyasked questions and we'll post them on our
channel on YouTube because we don't havea chance in the podcast to do that,
and so we're just going to startposting maybe one a day. That's
(22:32):
a really good idea because I thinktwo of the most common questions that are
one of The most common questions thatI see is what did for Adam?
Like, what did you think whenyou didn't hear from Charles that morning?
Maybe just not hearing was like,Okay, everything's cool. He's doing his
thing and if he needed me,he would call me. You could have
never imagined that he would be killed. No, there were several things going
(22:53):
in my mind. One of thethings that I went on my mind was
he was going to get JJ,and I thought, well, maybe he's
just spinning all this time with JJand they're at a park somewhere and he's
just trying to do that. Theother thing was the other thing was maybe
he did get back with Lorie andhe and Laurie told him you can't contact
at him, you can't cut himoff like she's done that in the past
(23:15):
with everybody else, and her andCharles did get back together again after they
had to blow out. That wentthrough my mind. And then the other
thing that went through my mind wassomething may be wrong, something felt wrong.
My gut instinct was something bad happened, but I didn't know what to
do. All I did was callhim and text him over and over and
(23:36):
over and over again, hoping thathe would call me back or text me
back, but I didn't know whatto do. I didn't know where Lorie
lived at that point. I didn'tget involved with any of that. I
was arguing with my parents about weneed to get Laurie help, and then
tell me to leave her alone,that she's just she hasn't hurt anybody,
knowing, not knowing that Charles waslaying dead in her house at the time.
(23:57):
So it is such a those twodays. My stomach was in not
the whole time, thinking something iswrong. It didn't feel right, just
a sad, sad story all around. Charles really seemed like a great guy.
Yeah, yeah, you got thepreview to the first question you asked,
the question we're about to handle,right. Yeah. My heart goes
(24:22):
out to your entire family. It'sit's it's a hard load that you guys
will carry till your last breath.But anyways, I just want to thank
you guys for coming on and justdoing this little brief interview. Just wanted
to have my listeners here from youdirectly, and I think everybody will be
waiting for these little Q and Asessions you're going to do, answering the
(24:44):
most common questions that you've been askedthat I think a lot of people want
to know and a lot of peoplehave said, why aren't they talking?
Well, now you are and youcan answer all these questions yourself, so
I think that's the best way todo it. I wish you guys the
best of luck in getting your storyout and with your foundation, and this
is going to help other people downthe road in honoring JJ, Tiley and
Charles and you guys have a spothere anytime you want a shit chat.
(25:07):
Thank you all right, thank youguys so much. We will see you
as soon. Ali Byers hope youhave a good one.
Welcome to Pretty Lies and Alibis.Let's seek the truth and travel the long
road to justice together. What youknow, alib buyers, Welcome to another
episode of Pretty Lies and Alibis.I'm Gege. I have some guests today.
I have Adam Cox, who isthe brother of Lorie Valo, and
(00:23):
Rex Connor, who is the uncleof Lorie Valo. In the beginning,
when I started this interview, Ihad a brain moment and did not hit
record. So the first question thatI asked both Adam and Rex was why
start the podcast and we will pickup from there. This isn't our strong
suit, of course, it's Adamsone of Adam's many strong Susie he being
(00:46):
in the radio business. But goingthrough this it's not that it's pleasant.
It's not pleasant, but it's helpingus to heal and I hope helping a
lot of people and buy the comments. It's very gratifying that people are feeling
like they're getting something out of it. Adam, what do you think,
(01:07):
well, I think after Rex cameback from the the court hearing that he
was just kind of overwhelmed with howmany people are actually following this case worldwide,
and for me, I just feellike if we can do something to
(01:27):
help other families, because there's noway in the world I would think that
any family would go through something likemy family has gone through, because it's
the most bizarre, crazy story thatI've ever even heard of. But I
know there are Every family has struggles, and every family has you know,
siblings that you know are maybe goingoff in one direction, and there's other
(01:52):
family members that cut o their familymembers off. And so I think for
me, the message would be,as we talk about this, how to
make sure that things that happen tomy family don't happen to other people's family.
That's just That's just one of thereasons I think we're doing this podcast.
The other one is many, somany people have questions, and a
(02:15):
lot of people are saying things thatdon't make sense or that are lies,
and everybody wants to just know thetruth. And Rex and I are here
just to tell the truth that weknow. Yeah, and it's hard,
especially with social media. First ofall, you guys just were thrown into
this without any consent. I mean, you were thrown into this worldwide sensationalized
(02:36):
true crime story that was actually happeningto your family, and that in itself
is hard to deal with. Thenyou couple that with all the media attention
this got for months before we gotto the answers of where are the kids?
Is it? Have you found thatit's been hard to deal with just
the guilt by association of just beingblood related to Laurie. Oh, there's
(03:00):
definitely judgments going on. I atleast, you know, I get Facebook
messages and emails and you know,people that I don't know that will call
me a murderer or you know,just because they're associating me with her.
That being judged by people that reallydon't know the whole story or know any
(03:25):
of the story, that's hard tothat's hard to take. And that's another
reason I think we're writing this bookand doing this podcast is just to try
to clear some of that Upright,you have anything to add I do.
I'm hoping we can clear some ofthat up. And but the benefit to
doing this, which I didn't anticipate, I didn't have any experience with this,
(03:47):
just I'm on social media occasionally.But the very positive comments that that
outnumber and outweigh the the attacks.So Tom, we're pretty thick skin.
We've been We've been processing this fora while, so we know we're comfortable
(04:08):
with what we know and how we'veacted in this situation. But it certainly
is gratifying to hear that it's whatwe're doing is helping people. So thanks
for again, and Gigi you're you'rea part of that and having us on
your show and they help behind thescenes you've been giving us. We really
appreciate it. Yeah, I'm gladto help. You know, it's it's
(04:30):
unimaginable what y'all had to deal with. And do you have like the worst
rumor that you've seen online that absolutelywasn't true, just one that was just
so out there that you want toaddress, or is there anything that sticks
out that you've read before you startedthe podcast or at any point from the
day to sit the news to now. Because Keyboard Warriors are fears and you
(04:55):
have a lot of groups and youhave Reddit forums where all this is discussed,
and unfortunately it seems like people thatdidn't ask for this, their lives
started to get picked apart as wellor intention or things like that. Well,
I think everybody's entitled to their ownopinions, and sometimes it's people's opinion
(05:15):
that other people here and then theygo with that. So, um,
that's I think to me, sometimesthat is disheartening sometimes to hear that.
But um, I mean there's there'sjust so much because there's so much to
this story, and there's so manypeople involved, and um, then there's
(05:40):
there's family members or you know,cousins or in laws or whatever it is
that you know have their agenda withit, and and I just like the
truth to come out. And Ithink people speculate, and when they speculate,
they people tend to take that asthere as truth when it's they're actually
(06:04):
just their opinions very true. Isee that all the time in every case
I cover. Actually it's not uniqueto this case at all. But in
the very beginning when all this startedhitting and the kids were missing, I
mean, you guys never could haveimagined where we are today. What were
those early days like of just notknowing. That's been brutal ever since then,
(06:29):
because there's still a lot we don'tknow, isn't there And there are
some factors that we probably will neverknow because the only people that were in
the room are now dead or theyaren't talking, And so that's part of
the tragedy. That's why we're alltrying to figure it out, and it's
going to be frustrating for a longtime. So in that perspective, we
(06:54):
aren't going to get to closure forthose factors. So thank goodness for we
have found out. Thank goodness foreach other. And we've been saying that
in our family for a long timebecause that's how we process. We process
with each other and we talked.But now that we're connected with this worldwide
community, even the people that saythings that we don't like, there's still
(07:16):
a part of the discussion. There'sstill a part of the positive energy.
And I just keep in mind thatwe don't want the same thing, So
in that sense, we're on thesame team. Even though we're saying things
that each other, each of usdon't like, we're still wanting justice for
the victims and the living victims.Yeah, it's funny because you do have
(07:39):
that perception of people who don't knowyou. And it was interesting because when
you came to trial, everybody wastalking about how nice you were, and
I thought to myself, well,why would anybody think differently? Why would
anybody just assume that you were nota good person? And I think that.
You know, everything I heard frompeople that met you at trial was
just how kind and sweet you were, and we briefly said hello, are
(08:03):
you going to be at sentencing yetto be determined? Ah, okay.
I think Adam might a portal outof here. It looks like he's a
he's a spinning wheel. I thinkyou got in his portal. Family has
portals and I'm missing out on those. Yeah, yeah, I think Adams
might be on the blink. Um. But you know, one question is
(08:24):
does anybody in the family communicate withLorie at this point? Yes, her
mother, my sister, Janice,adams mother too, communication with Laurie regularly,
I think weekly. They talk andaccording to Janice, they can't talk
about the case. They don't talkabout anything substitutive because Laurie is still in
(08:46):
her delusion and she doesn't get outof it for conversations. I don't know
if she ever gets out of it, and so it's it's more superficial conversation
um, which McCall instead like,I had to get closer to a routers.
I was I the only one thatwas off? Yeah, you were,
(09:09):
you were off. We made alittle portal joke that you portaled out.
I'm like you, guys, Ihave dark humor. So it's kind
of like exactly. YEA. Onething is you know, as we follow
these cases over time, we feellike we know the victims and everybody involved,
but we don't what was Tyly likeas a person. We've been asked
(09:31):
this question a bunch, and youknow Tyley as a little kid, Um
was a little fire cracker and sobut super I'll say, hard on the
outside and soft on the inside becauseshe had a very sensitive soul. And
as she became a teenager, Umshe became more and more I think opened
(09:58):
and felt more comfort table. AndI don't think that she had really a
comfortable feeling. I guess growing upit just didn't seem like it with her,
with Lorie Merritt, you know,with Joe and the speculations of things
that happened with him, and thenbeing with Charles and you know, having
(10:18):
a stepdad and there are some roughthings there. But as a person,
I mean, I don't think youcan get as good as Tylely. I
just I miss her a ton.Yeah. I remember the interview your Son's
acted with Justin Lum and he wasrecalling the last time he saw her and
he broke down, and man,that just that broke my heart to watch
(10:39):
him. You could tell they hada special bond and unfortunately that's something that
will affect your son the rest ofhis life too. Just that loss,
that great loss. Yeah, weactually in a podcast that's coming up,
Rex and I talk about the lasttime I saw Tyly alive at my mom's
house. So there's definitely is somethingthere. And so there's speculations a bunch
(11:03):
did Lorie have highly lie and didTilely know that Alex and Lorie murdered Charles?
There's I mean, there's a lotthere. So we in our podcast
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free shipping. Bestcosis dot com slashWhat the World? What about Jj?
The same question for JJ? Whatwas he like as a little dude running
around Well, right, actoul youvisited him in in Hawaii when when Laurie
and Charlie lived in Hawaii. Yeah, Unfortunately, I've only had a couple
(14:03):
of interactions. That was one ofthem. We visited and got to stay
with Laura, Laurie and Charles.We stayed in JJ's room. He wasn't
thrilled about that, but is prettyyoung at the time. But what what
impressed me at the time, JJ, because of his birth situation, had
almost superhuman upper body strength and hewould run around as a a little mini
(14:31):
hulk and would dismantle anything in hiscourse. And the first time I saw
him as something other than a babyis when we got there to why we
had to go straight to an activity. Laurie was in charge, so Charles
was on JJ duty and an adulthad to have eyes on JJ every second
(14:52):
of the day that he was awake. And so we got to see Charles
and Laurie as parents dealing with that, trading off and coordinating and taking care
of him. What a little bundleof energy, happy energy. Not he
wasn't destroying things as a as amean, angry entity. He was just
(15:16):
a happy little guy going around takingthings apart. What a great memory.
But I'm sorry I only had afew memories, Adam, you have more
more than that, I think.I think. You know, we talk
about Laurie and Charles and their marriageand all that stuff, but I got
to tell you both of them didsuch a really did a great job with
(15:37):
raising JJ. He was severely autisticwhen they got him and they adopted him,
and they did such a great jobof help developing him that as he
got older and older and older,he was doing things that you know,
the experts and the doctors didn't thinkthat he could do, and you know,
(15:58):
read and run and talk and playand just to try to become like
more of a normal kid who hadsevere autism. So he did really,
really good for many years growing up. And that's what we've heard is that
Laurie was very hands on and wouldconsume herself with trying to better understand the
(16:21):
world JJ lived in so she couldhelp him. And it really did seem
like until it was good, untilit wasn't. You know. It's kind
of how it goes in true crime. But now, one thing, I
think the surprise everybody was Summer's phonecall with Lorie. That was played in
court. I said, I've neverheard so many emotions in each word as
I heard when that was played.And I know a lot of people had
(16:44):
given Summer a hard time because initially, Adam, your mom and your sister
went on national TV and defended her. You know, I don't think anybody
could have ever imagined what actually wasgoing on. And the one thing out
of this trial was that was oneof the hugest moments for everybody in that
courtroom. After that testimony, weall left that courtroom and went wow,
(17:06):
I mean just gutted, because theonline perception is very different than what's happening
in your lives and what you feelhere. Like you say, it's people's
opinions, and I just wanted tosay that that Summer's testimony totally touched my
heart and you could tell that sheloved those children with everything she had,
and I think that was a bigmoment for everybody. So do you guys
(17:29):
plan on doing any more seasons ofthis podcast? Is this very limited that
then you'll switch over to the bookand or have you decided yet? Go
ahead and Rex? Several times wehave planned on doing ten episodes of the
(17:51):
podcast, and hope so we'd bedone with a book, release the book,
and and we think that will beour contribution. I don't that we
have an ongoing contribution to give,and we don't want it's not our goal
to get into that business, apodcastingable. But if there's more we can
do, if we haven't told enoughof the story, if we haven't shared
(18:15):
enough, we might we might domore. We are dead set against it,
but we're really doing this for ourfor our own benefit, our own
therapy, and to help other people. We just don't think that will That
will take a long time, sowe're just going to try to stay tuned.
If we're contributing enough for not Yeah, and then we potentially have another
(18:40):
trial to go where more will berevealed that couldn't be brought out in her
trial, so you may have morethings to talk about. But UM,
you know, I just want tosay that I think it's it's amazing that
you guys are opening yourself up tothis and I'm not going to keep you
long, so I just wanted tosay, um, I've learned a lot
from your perspective of the people youguys knew from the time Lorie was little,
(19:03):
Alex was little that kind of thing. I agree. I was listening
to your episode. I don't thinkthat Alex just happened to fall over.
It seemed like he was very easilymanipulated and controlled, and maybe just was
kind of a drifter and didn't havethat one group that he could cling to,
and so I called him the bandof misfits. It's sort of just
(19:26):
this really small group because in thebeginning we thought cult compounds. I was
very conflicted for months of whether ornot the kids were alive, and I
would flip flop back and forth.The one time that I thought that there
was a good chance they were wasactually seeing the video of Lorie in the
Gilbert p D when Charles took herpurse, and seeing how Tighly would kind
(19:49):
of calm her mom down when shegot very animated. I thought they really
had this ebb and flow together.And that was one time that I thought,
I don't think she would she wouldhurt her daughter. But it has
to be so odd to see yourgo from really being a very dedicated mother
to this, and and I'm sosorry you guys have had to deal with
(20:11):
this. It's just unimaginable and probablyvery surreal. In a lot of ways
to go from hearing about true crimeto your family kind of being in one
of the craziest cases that I thinkI've ever seen in years of covering cases.
Yeah, it's it's it's been anordeal. It's been a long time
too, so we've we've seen andfelt probably every emotion you could possibly feel,
(20:37):
we have felt. So yeah,it's it's. It's one of those
things where you just you can't writefiction like this. It's a story that
you can't believe anybody would buy into, especially your brother and sister and us.
It's just one of those things youjust scratch your head and just like
can't believe it. Yeah, andAdam, you were rated as zombie?
(21:00):
How was I mean, how didthat feel when you heard that your own
sister had labeled you as a darkentity? Well, yeah, I didn't.
I didn't know that either. Well, after Charles died, I was
scared to death because I knew thatLaurie and Alex killed him. I just
felt that they did, and soI was scared that maybe they're going to
(21:22):
come after me. But then Ithought to myself, what good would they
What good would it do to killme? I didn't understand it because I
thought at the time, I thought, well, maybe they killed Charles for
you know, insurance money, orI knew that they thought he was a
zombie, that they you know,they've never mentioned that anybody else was a
zombie, so I really didn't know. Um. But then when I found
(21:45):
out that Laurie was convincing Alex thatI was a zombie and then maybe I
was next on the list to bekilled, That's that's hard to take.
Yeah, I bet that was avery rude awakening. Well, I appreciate
you guys doing this. I won'tkeep you any longer. I know you
guys are very busy, But youguys are releasing these once a week,
(22:07):
is that correct? We're releasing thepodcast once a week. But in fact,
right after this interview, gig Adamand I are guests start doing just
short video clips answering the most frequentlyasked questions and we'll post them on our
channel on YouTube because we don't havea chance in the podcast to do that,
and so we're just going to startposting maybe one a day. That's
(22:32):
a really good idea because I thinktwo of the most common questions that are
one of The most common questions thatI see is what did for Adam?
Like, what did you think whenyou didn't hear from Charles that morning?
Maybe just not hearing was like,Okay, everything's cool. He's doing his
thing and if he needed me,he would call me. You could have
never imagined that he would be killed. No, there were several things going
(22:53):
in my mind. One of thethings that I went on my mind was
he was going to get JJ,and I thought, well, maybe he's
just spinning all this time with JJand they're at a park somewhere and he's
just trying to do that. Theother thing was the other thing was maybe
he did get back with Lorie andhe and Laurie told him you can't contact
at him, you can't cut himoff like she's done that in the past
(23:15):
with everybody else, and her andCharles did get back together again after they
had to blow out. That wentthrough my mind. And then the other
thing that went through my mind wassomething may be wrong, something felt wrong.
My gut instinct was something bad happened, but I didn't know what to
do. All I did was callhim and text him over and over and
(23:36):
over and over again, hoping thathe would call me back or text me
back, but I didn't know whatto do. I didn't know where Lorie
lived at that point. I didn'tget involved with any of that. I
was arguing with my parents about weneed to get Laurie help, and then
tell me to leave her alone,that she's just she hasn't hurt anybody,
knowing, not knowing that Charles waslaying dead in her house at the time.
(23:57):
So it is such a those twodays. My stomach was in not
the whole time, thinking something iswrong. It didn't feel right, just
a sad, sad story all around. Charles really seemed like a great guy.
Yeah, yeah, you got thepreview to the first question you asked,
the question we're about to handle,right. Yeah. My heart goes
(24:22):
out to your entire family. It'sit's it's a hard load that you guys
will carry till your last breath.But anyways, I just want to thank
you guys for coming on and justdoing this little brief interview. Just wanted
to have my listeners here from youdirectly, and I think everybody will be
waiting for these little Q and Asessions you're going to do, answering the
(24:44):
most common questions that you've been askedthat I think a lot of people want
to know and a lot of peoplehave said, why aren't they talking?
Well, now you are and youcan answer all these questions yourself, so
I think that's the best way todo it. I wish you guys the
best of luck in getting your storyout and with your foundation, and this
is going to help other people downthe road in honoring JJ, Tiley and
Charles and you guys have a spothere anytime you want a shit chat.
(25:07):
Thank you all right, thank youguys so much. We will see you
as soon. Ali Byers hope youhave a good one.
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