Introducing the Lori Vallow Daybell Trial Coverage

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is May 1, 2023, and today we are in the midst of coverage on Mormon Stories podcast of a sobering, a sad, a tragic story. We are covering the Lori Vallow and Chad Dabell stories. And specifically right now in Boise, Idaho, there is a trial undergoing with Lori Vallow. She has been charged with conspiracy to commit mur of her two children, JJ and Tylee, along with Tammy Daybell, which is her, I guess, her current husband's late wife. She's also been charged with murder for JJ and Tylee. And then over in Arizona, they're fraud charges. And then finally over in Arizona, she has been charged with conspiracy to murder her late husband, Charles. This story has a very Mormon flavor to it because as you all know, Lori Valo was raised a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or Mormon. She ended up becoming what we call within the Mormon tradition a prepper, which meant she became fascinated with preparing for the last days coming of Jesus Christ and that sort of thing. But it took a weird spin when she met Chad Dabel, who was an author and a publisher. And as they got together, honestly, people started to die. And it's a really dark story we've been covering here and Mormon stories and a face that won't be unfamiliar to many of you who have been following. We have Mindy Caldwell here today in studio to help with today's interview. Hey, Mindy.

Mindy Caldwell [00:01:46] Hi, John.

John Dehlin [00:01:47] Thanks for joining us.

Mindy Caldwell [00:01:48] Thank you so much. I'm happy to be back.

John Dehlin [00:01:50] Yeah. And in studio today, we are very pleased to have with us Meaghan Connor, who is Lori Vallow's cousin. Megan, thank you for joining us on Mormon Stories.

Megan Conner [00:02:03] Thank you for having me.

John Dehlin [00:02:05] And you travel all the way from where?

Megan Conner [00:02:06] From San Antonio.

John Dehlin [00:02:07] Yeah. Thanks for making the trip.

Megan Conner [00:02:09] Yeah, happy to do it.

John Dehlin [00:02:11] So the trial is very popular. It's kind of a national news story. But we're also dealing with the murder of children and of adults and very dark things. And so I'll just give that sort of content warning up front. Today we're going to be talking about very serious and sobering things. And while it's exciting, we also don't want to sound giddy or gleeful that we're talking about the deaths of so many people. And I think it's particularly sensitive for you, Megan, because this is literally your family.

Megan Conner [00:02:42] Right.

John Dehlin [00:02:43] Yeah. So anyway, I think the, the intention for today is to kind of combine your Mormon story because you were Raised lds. Is that right?

Megan Conner [00:02:52] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:02:53] But also to allow you to share your reflections both on Laurie and her family growing up. And her maiden name is Cox. Cox. So the Cox family, your reflections on your observations and experiences with the Cox family, because Lori's mom and your mother were sisters. Is that.

Megan Conner [00:03:14] No. So Lori's mom is my dad's sister.

John Dehlin [00:03:18] Okay. So Lori's mom is your dad's sister. Okay. And you're. And. And so your dad's last name is.

Megan Conner [00:03:27] Connor.

John Dehlin [00:03:28] Connor. Okay. And so Laurie's mom grew up a Connor.

Megan Conner [00:03:33] Right.

John Dehlin [00:03:34] Okay. And so. Okay. And so you would have observations both of. Of Lori's upbringing, but also of her experiences kind of as an adult.

Megan Conner [00:03:46] Right?

John Dehlin [00:03:47] Yeah. Okay. Before we kind of jump into those stories, and then, of course, we want to hear your thoughts on the trial, because you've been following the trial, is that right?

Megan Conner [00:03:56] Yeah, I have been.

John Dehlin [00:03:57] Yeah.

Megan Conner [00:03:57] I. I've wanted to hear. You know, I'll fill in all of the holes of things that I didn't know or understand after I sort of lost touch with her and the rest of the family.

John Dehlin [00:04:10] Yeah. And then I think probably what's different about today's interview than maybe some of the other interviews you've done will probably go in more depth than in all the interviews you've done before, but there's going to be kind of the Mormon lens of kind of how you feel pretty strongly about how Mormonism is kind of interwoven into Laurie's story.

Megan Conner [00:04:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:34] Is that right?

Megan Conner [00:04:34] Yeah, for sure.

John Dehlin [00:04:35] Okay.

Megan Conner [00:04:36] Yeah.

Meet Megan Conner, Lori's Cousin

John Dehlin [00:04:37] All right. Any. Any disclaimers you want to kind of offer before. And, Mindy, I'm going to have you do a little introduction, too, but any disclaimers that you want to offer before we kind of jump into your story?

Megan Conner [00:04:49] Yeah, thank you for asking that, actually, because I want to clarify that nothing that I say about Lori is to justify anything that she's done. It's merely as a reflection of how I think we got to this place. And I think the big question for me, and for most people, too, is people want to understand, how does a mother get to the point where they're willing to do something so horrific? And so I can shed a little bit of light on that. The other part is that I don't speak for anybody else in the family. I think I'm pretty unique in my point of view because I am out of the church and because I have been through the healing process of exiting several abusive systems. And so I see things very differently than most of my family does. And so I don't speak for them. And also my perspective is looking at it from outside of the family system. And I recognize fully that the people who are still really enmeshed in the family system may not see things the way that I do. And that's okay. It's just a. You know, this is just my perspective.

John Dehlin [00:06:14] So just as we were talking before we started, you've been going through your own kind of faith journey and transition just in the past, what, year or so.

Megan Conner [00:06:25] So I was, you know, what they call physically and mentally out shortly after my divorce in 2017. So it's been a gradual deconstruction since then. But I really. I mean, I resigned my membership in February, and it was after, you know, finding out a few things that I just. As soon as I found out that for sure, I knew it wasn't true. It was like, okay, I'm done. It was no more trying to see how I can make it fit and make it work.

John Dehlin [00:06:55] And would you say everything that's gone on with Laurie and Chad were parts or components of your deconstruction within the church, or was it totally unrelated?

Megan Conner [00:07:07] It was. I don't think that I really tied those two things together until I fully resigned and. And started doing my own deconstruction. And mainly because I didn't follow a lot of the media coverage when all of this first happened, because I felt like it was very sensationalized and a lot of speculation. And to me, that's not helpful. To me, I really wanted to know what really happened. And so I didn't start learning about Chad or his beliefs or any of that until very recently. And that was when I sort of started to connect the dots of how these two things fit together.

John Dehlin [00:07:48] Okay, so your processing for, like, it's true for most of us, your process is still ongoing?

Megan Conner [00:07:54] Yes, very much so, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:07:57] Okay, well, Mindy, we've had you on a few times before, but people still are kind of asking, why does John keep bringing Mindy on? They all know you're really knowledgeable about this case, but let's give people kind of maybe a refresher on your connections and interests with this case and why you're my co host for today.

Mindy Caldwell [00:08:17] Sure. So, yeah, I have been on the podcast a few times talking about the daybell case, and I have gotten a few messages from people who have seen these podcasts and have asked me, what's your story and why are you so interested in this case and how do you know the delins? And so I thought I would just give a little Update on that. So I did grow up very active LDS here in Utah. I did all of the things, checked all the boxes, and I got married in the temple, and I've been married for 27 years. I have six children. And about nine years ago is when my faith started to unravel, and that's when I found Mormon stories. And it was just a crucial component in my processing out of the church and was so helpful for me. And so I have valued Mormon stories for many years. Along the way, we were fortunate to meet John and Margi personally, and we've become dear friends with John and Margi. And so throughout the course of our friendship, I mentioned to John and Margi a few times about my family experiences with a few of my family members who have been pretty heavily involved in sort of this LDS prepper end times ideas with, you know, the supplies and the conferences and the books, and not affiliated with the Chad Dabel group. But, yeah, so my radar was kind of heightened for that sort of thing. So when this case broke, I was instantly intrigued by this case because of those elements and very, very concerned about the missing children, J.J. and Tylee. You know, as a mom, my heart was. Went out to their family members who were searching for them. And then Laurie and Chad were nowhere to be found. And like most people, I was so hopeful that those kids were safe somewhere in a bunker or somewhere. But as more time went on, it became less likely that that was the case. And then, of course, it was devastating to learn that their. Their remains were found in Chad's yard. And it's just such a tragic and compelling case. And I do think that there are so many LDS or Mormon elements to this case that have been brought up in the trial so far, and that I think it's so important to discuss these things. And I'm so happy that Megan is here to talk about her experience with Laurie and with the Cox family. I think so many people are very interested to help to better understand how this can happen, how a mother can allow these things to happen and be involved in this. And so I think it's a very valuable conversation, and I'm really grateful that you're here to shed some light on what you know. And I'm also really interested to hear your Mormon story as well. So thanks so much, John and Megan, for having me here today.

John Dehlin [00:11:49] Thanks, Mindy. And yeah, it's Megan, not Megan. Yep, I'll do my best to remember that. You guys can correct me if I get it wrong. Yeah, that's the question. How Does a. A Mormon mom end up, you know, killing at least one of her ex husbands? There's questions, maybe another. There's her. There's her brother, and then there's her two kids, and then there's the wife of her lover. And how does that happen? So. So that's it. Anything else you want to say before we jump in, Megan?

The Cox Family's Mormon Upbringing

Megan Conner [00:12:19] I don't think so.

John Dehlin [00:12:19] Okay, well, where does your. Your story begin?

Megan Conner [00:12:24] Well, I did grow up lds. My. My parents met at BYU and, And got married. And my dad's family, which is the side that Lori comes from, they actually joined the church in San Antonio in the 60s. His mom was tracked out by some missionaries and ended up getting baptized. His dad never joined the church, and he actually made the kids wait until they were a little older than 8 before they got baptized. So she was kind of doing the, you know, single Mormon mom thing for a while with. With no support from her husband and going to the church and. And all of that. So. But my mom's family, you know, fifth generation pioneers, you know, they all. Most of them lived here in Utah for quite some time and. Yeah. So, you know, I've asked you this once.

John Dehlin [00:13:23] Tell me your dad's full name one more time.

Megan Conner [00:13:25] Cliff Connor.

John Dehlin [00:13:26] Cliff Connor. Okay. Okay. All right. So those are your parents. And. Okay, so they met. Where'd they meet?

Megan Conner [00:13:38] Byu.

John Dehlin [00:13:38] Oh, yeah.

Megan Conner [00:13:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:13:39] Okay. Did your dad serve a mission?

Megan Conner [00:13:43] He did.

John Dehlin [00:13:43] Okay.

Megan Conner [00:13:44] I was just telling Mindy beforehand, actually served a mission in France, and he and his companion, and then two other sets of companions all shared a house, and they had a house mother whose name was Megan Legas, and that's who I'm named for.

John Dehlin [00:13:58] Okay. Okay. And again, it's. It's your dad, Cliff, who's connected to Laurie. Right, Right. Okay. What can you tell us about your dad's upbringing, the Mormon upbringing that's kind of worth mentioning or of note. And again, your dad's sister is Lori's mom.

Megan Conner [00:14:16] Right?

Mindy Caldwell [00:14:17] Right.

John Dehlin [00:14:17] And her name is Janice. Janice Cox. Janice Cox. Okay, tell us about what you know about Cliff and Janice's Mormon upbringing.

Megan Conner [00:14:27] Well, both of my dad's parents died very young, and so there were sort of family legends about my. About my grandmother being this amazing, wonderful person. You know, looking back, in light of what I know now, I think the stories probably were. Definitely were embellished. And even though she was by all accounts a very good woman and very loving, there's also a famous story where Janice wanted to go to a dance and my grandmother, whose name was novel, but we Called her Nonie, didn't want her to go. And she literally sat on Janice until it was too late for her to go to the dance. So I can't even imagine how that happened, but I guess maybe Janice was putting her shoes on or something, and Nonie went over there and literally sat on her until she. Until it was too late for her to go. And then there's another funny story that she, you know, Noni would pack lunches for the kids and she would leave little funny notes in there. And one time she made a ham sandwich for her other daughter and left a note in the lunchbox that said, if. If eating this makes you feel like a cannibal, don't eat it. So she was funny. And also, I think probably a little bit, you know, over the line sometimes with some of. Some of that behavior. But she was very faithful in the church. She. She took my, you know, my dad and the other siblings to church every Sunday, very faithfully. They.

John Dehlin [00:16:14] This is in San Antonio?

Megan Conner [00:16:15] Yeah, they lived in San Antonio, and the closest stake was in Houston, so they would have to take the train to Houston to go to state conference and things like that. But she was very faithful in doing that. And then she divorced my grandfather, and then he passed away, and she decided to remarry. And her number one goal was to marry somebody who would take her to the temple. That was all she cared about. And so she married this man who was 64 years old, and so he was quite a bit older than her, and he'd never been married and never had children, and he was from New England, and so he was a bit odd, and he wasn't very attractive, and nobody in the family really liked him very much. But what she cared about was that he would take her to the temple and that they could read scriptures together and pray together. That was really all she cared about. And there's another family story is that they got married and they were on their honeymoon, and it was Sunday morning, and, you know, he wasn't getting up to get ready to go to church. And she said, are you going to go to priesthood this morning? And he said, oh, we had a long day yesterday. I think I'll sleep in. And she ripped the covers off of him and said, my husband goes to priesthood. So she was very insistent that he be faithful.

John Dehlin [00:17:36] So Noni was intense.

Megan Conner [00:17:38] She was, apparently, yes. I mean, she died when I was a baby, so I never really got to meet her. But all of these stories, you know, make me feel like I know her a little bit.

John Dehlin [00:17:48] So Cliff and Janice grew up in a faithful Mormon household, but a family that experienced divorce, but with a lot of strictness, but also not kind of the model Mormon family.

Megan Conner [00:18:01] Right. And my dad's dad was a colonel in the Air Force, and they traveled all over the place, spent some time in England and some time in Japan. And he was very, very strict about the way he wanted his household run. And he was very adamant that the children behave a certain way and by all accounts was very controlling and very demanding. So he sort of had, you know, two parents who were very different in that way.

John Dehlin [00:18:32] Okay.

Mindy Caldwell [00:18:33] How many children were in the Janis and Cliff family?

Megan Conner [00:18:38] So there's four.

Mindy Caldwell [00:18:39] Okay.

Megan Conner [00:18:39] Janice is the oldest, and then my dad, and then Teresa was the other sister, and then Rex is the youngest.

John Dehlin [00:18:48] Okay, okay, okay.

Megan Conner [00:18:52] So

John Dehlin [00:18:56] I guess let's. What can you tell us about Cliff and Janice in terms of like, did they go off to college, did they go to byu, did they marry in the temple, that sort of thing?

Megan Conner [00:19:11] Yeah. So I don't really remember where Janice went to school. I think she may have gone to byu, but I may be wrong about that. But she and Barry did marry in the temple. My parents married in the temple. The other two siblings married in the temple. So, you know, they were very much on the Mormon track.

John Dehlin [00:19:33] And you said Cliff went where to school?

Megan Conner [00:19:36] He went to byu, also, my dad. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:19:38] Okay. Okay.

Mindy Caldwell [00:19:39] Because you said your parents met there, right?

Megan Conner [00:19:42] Correct.

John Dehlin [00:19:42] Right, yeah. Okay. So your mom's name is Elaine. Elaine. Okay. Just trying to get all these names.

Megan Conner [00:19:49] I know it's. It's a lot. It's very complicated.

John Dehlin [00:19:52] Okay, okay. So is there even a way to describe the culture, the family culture, other than saying strict and LDs and maybe appearance based? I don't know. Is there any way to just kind of summarize the family culture that your dad and Janice would have grown up in?

Family Culture, Appearances, and Secrets

Megan Conner [00:20:13] Yeah, I think. I don't know if the appearance based culture came from Nonie's family or if that sort of came later, but that was definitely a big deal. And family loyalty, huge. We keep each other's secrets, you know, and no one person in the family knows the whole story about certain things. And so there will be family rumors about something. And, you know, it's almost like you have to talk to four or five people to get the whole story because nobody really knows everything, you know, so, yeah, very controlling, very much concerned with everybody perceiving them to be the. The model Mormon family. And that was it. That was. It was that way in my family

John Dehlin [00:21:11] growing up, too okay, so you grew up mostly where?

Megan Conner [00:21:16] Well, so my dad was also in the Air Force, and so we moved around a bunch of. I was born in California, then we moved to Louisiana. Two different places in Louisiana. And then after that, after my dad got out of the Air Force, he worked for Citibank, which was almost as bad. Moving around wise. We moved to South Dakota and then to Connecticut, and then they finally moved to San Antonio after I graduated from high school.

John Dehlin [00:21:47] So where was high school for you?

Megan Conner [00:21:49] So I did middle school, high school years in Connecticut.

John Dehlin [00:21:52] Okay, but that was with the military, your dad being in the military.

Megan Conner [00:21:57] That was after he worked for Citibank. So he worked in New York City and we lived in Connecticut.

John Dehlin [00:22:02] Okay, Citibank.

Megan Conner [00:22:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:22:03] So kind of New York high finance kind of stuff.

Megan Conner [00:22:06] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:22:07] Okay. And those are good schools, right, in Connecticut? Those have been really fancy schools.

Megan Conner [00:22:11] Yeah. We lived in a very fancy part of the country, but we, you know, we were from South Dakota, so we were kind of bumpkins and we did not fit in.

John Dehlin [00:22:19] Okay.

Megan Conner [00:22:20] Especially being Mormon. Not a huge Mormon population there. In fact, I remember somebody saying that Chad served a mission in the New York area in the 80s, and that's right when we would have been there. And New York City mission was our mission, but our stake was New York and Connecticut.

Mindy Caldwell [00:22:38] Yeah, I think it might have been New Jersey was his mission, but maybe he served some time in the New York area.

Megan Conner [00:22:45] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:22:47] So what was your family culture like growing up? Like, how many siblings again with you?

Megan Conner [00:22:51] There's four of us.

John Dehlin [00:22:52] Okay.

Megan Conner [00:22:53] I have an older brother and a younger brother and a younger sister.

John Dehlin [00:22:57] So you're second of second. Okay.

Megan Conner [00:23:00] Just like my dad.

John Dehlin [00:23:01] What?

Megan Conner [00:23:01] Just like my dad.

John Dehlin [00:23:02] Was it a traditional orthodox Mormon family?

Megan Conner [00:23:05] Very much so, yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:23:07] So all the things, all the things.

Megan Conner [00:23:09] Very, very straight laced and very expectant that we check all the boxes and everything. But it was very hard to do because my older brother and I were the only Mormons in our high school and in our middle school. And so our ward was comprised of several towns, several small towns, and we were not in the town where most of the youth were. And so we had to travel for seminary and things like that. It was. It was pretty tough.

John Dehlin [00:23:39] Yeah, yeah. We, in Mormonism, we call that the mission field. If you're raised anywhere outside of Utah.

Mindy Caldwell [00:23:45] Right.

John Dehlin [00:23:46] It's called the mission field. I was raised in Texas. Houston.

Megan Conner [00:23:49] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:23:50] And so it's different because you'll. You'll be in a high school. There might be six, you know, 20001600 kids in the high school, and there might be five or ten that are Mormon.

Megan Conner [00:23:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:00] What was that was. That was.

Megan Conner [00:24:02] So in my high school, there were about 900 kids and. And two of us were Mormon, me and my brother.

John Dehlin [00:24:07] Yeah, it's a different story.

Megan Conner [00:24:08] So there's no way that you could date members of the church because there just was no way. I mean, you could, but they were all in towns that were farther away. You didn't see people at school who you knew well.

Mindy Caldwell [00:24:22] So did they have a vibrant stake activity system? Were you able to meet other LDS kids? Yeah, I'm sure you had to travel, it sounds like, to do that.

Megan Conner [00:24:32] And so we were right on the border on the New York border. And so part of our stake was New York as well. And there were a lot of good stake activities. And the ward that had the most youth in it probably had maybe 40. And they met in the same building as us, but they were not the same ward as us. So it was kind of, you know, we did. We belonged, but we didn't belong, you know.

Mindy Caldwell [00:24:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:56] Okay. So you're like all the family prayer, family scripture study, family evening.

Megan Conner [00:25:02] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:25:03] Did your dad have callings, your mom, were they leaders in the church?

Megan Conner [00:25:08] Yeah, my dad, actually, while we lived in South Dakota, he was a member of the stake presidency and the stake was pretty big. And I remember traveling with him to all these little tiny branches that met in, you know, above a store somewhere. And we would go on Sundays and travel and do that. And then when we lived in Connecticut, he was ward clerk for a while and, you know, did some young men activity things. And my mom was in young women's for a while. She was a seminary teacher for a while.

John Dehlin [00:25:41] So as far as just the average Mormon family goes, as you understand it, up through graduating high school, would you say you were just. It was just. It was a average, normal Mormon family.

Megan Conner [00:25:53] I would say on the outside, for sure, 100%.

John Dehlin [00:25:56] Okay.

Megan Conner [00:25:57] On the inside, it was not that way.

John Dehlin [00:25:58] Oh, and that's probably sensitive stuff.

Megan Conner [00:26:02] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:26:02] And you probably have family members that are still living, so.

Megan Conner [00:26:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:26:06] I don't want to pry. Is there anything you want to share about what that, you know, meant?

Megan Conner [00:26:11] Yeah, I will. I will just say I think the difficulty is that, you know, my parents did the best they could with the knowledge that they had and the upbringings that they each came from. And I think that they did not know how to do things any other way than to be controlling. Because it felt like one of the things my mom said is that she thought that if she just told us no every time we asked for something that we turn out okay, which sort of gives the implication that you're inherently bad, you're going to ask for bad things, so I'm just going to say no to everything, and that way you won't get into any trouble. You know, I think it was, you know, she came by that concept honestly. I think that was probably prevalent in her upbringing. Her dad was very strict about being Mormon and very controlling as well. Would not allow her to. When she went to byu, she wanted to major in physical education, be a PE teacher, and he would not allow her to do that. He said, that's not ladylike. And so she ended up majoring in English instead and then didn't graduate because she married my dad. And that was what you did. You got married and you were a stay at home mom, you know, so I think she didn't really know how to do things differently. And, you know, and then we later found out that my parents had some marital troubles and some other things that were, you know, related to their own issues. And as a result, us kids kind of took a backseat to all of that that was going on. So there was definitely some emotional neglect. My parents are not good with emotions, didn't know how to handle their own emotions, and so we were not allowed to have emotions either. We had to kind of make ourselves really small and just, you know, try to sweep things under the rug. That came up. You know, there's a lot of secrecy, a lot of shame. It was just. It was just very difficult because I think they just didn't know how to do it any differently.

Mindy Caldwell [00:28:19] You might have mentioned this already, Megan, but how many children grew up in your immediate family and where did you fall in that?

Megan Conner [00:28:26] Yeah, there were four. And I was the second.

Mindy Caldwell [00:28:29] You did. Okay. Sorry.

Megan Conner [00:28:31] No, you're good.

John Dehlin [00:28:31] Usually it's me that asked multiple times.

Mindy Caldwell [00:28:35] I promise. I'm trying to pay attention to all things.

John Dehlin [00:28:38] This is a lot.

Mindy Caldwell [00:28:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:28:39] Okay. Yeah. Okay. So these themes that I wrote down about Noni's family, appearance and perception, loyalty, secrets and controlling, it sounds like some of that carried into your family as well.

Megan Conner [00:28:56] Yeah. Yep.

John Dehlin [00:28:58] It wasn't just your. Your dad that brought that, right? It sounds like your mom might have brought that too. And maybe that's all families. I don't know many families. It's hard to say. Like. Yeah, so. So as far as your. As far as, like, just focusing on your dad for a second since he's got the tie to. To Lori's mom, anything else worth saying about, like, what might have been unique that maybe ties into to what we're going to be exploring about Lori, or did we kind of COVID the main things?

Megan Conner [00:29:30] I think we kind of covered the main things. There. There may be something that comes up later, but.

John Dehlin [00:29:34] Okay, so. And again, everyone. All parents. I think all parents try their best. I'm pretty sure all parents try their best.

Megan Conner [00:29:43] So, yeah, I don't think. I don't think any parent goes into it going, well, I really am going to screw this up. You know, that's what I want to be.

John Dehlin [00:29:49] A jerk.

Megan Conner [00:29:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:29:50] Yeah.

Megan Conner [00:29:51] But there was for me, when I started having my own kids, there was a very conscious moment where I said, I am not gonna parent my kids the way I was parented. You know, I didn't want to have that kind of relationship with my children. So I think that there is a consciousness that can take place where you realize that maybe this isn't going the right way and maybe I should do something differently. So if there is one thing that I sort of begrudge my parents, that is it. I definitely give them the benefit of the doubt and. And their upbringing. And they're doing their best. I just wish that they would have had some introspection. But I know that's hard to get,

John Dehlin [00:30:30] especially when they're growing up in the 50s and 60s and 70s. It's just a different time period.

Megan Conner [00:30:35] Yeah.

Early Memories of Aunt Janice and Uncle Barry

John Dehlin [00:30:36] Okay. So I guess Laurie's mom and dad would have been Aunt Janice and Uncle Barry to you, is that right?

Megan Conner [00:30:45] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:30:46] So what are your earliest memories of Uncle Barry and Aunt Janice? And do you have memories of Lori as a cousin up through high school?

Megan Conner [00:30:54] Yeah. So we spent a lot of time over there in the summers. And where. At the Cox's house in. In California. Okay, so when we.

John Dehlin [00:31:05] They're. They're in Orange County. Right, right. By this point.

Megan Conner [00:31:08] Right, right.

John Dehlin [00:31:08] So we're talking 80s.

Megan Conner [00:31:10] The 80s. Yeah. So when we lived in South Dakota, we would drive down to Utah, spend a week with my mom's family, and then drive to California, spend two weeks there, and then make our way back. And so we spend two weeks at a time every summer with the Coxes. And we loved going to the Coxes because they were the fun house. You know, they were close to Disneyland. They had money, they had a swimming pool. You know, it was like. We looked forward to that a lot. Cause it was a lot of stuff that we didn't get at our house.

Childhood Closeness With Lori and Her Siblings

John Dehlin [00:31:41] How similar in age are you to Lori?

Megan Conner [00:31:43] Lori is a year older than me. Whoa.

John Dehlin [00:31:45] So you're really close to the age.

Megan Conner [00:31:46] And Summer's a year younger than me. Oh, wow. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:31:50] And so were you guys like 3 thick? Is it? Was it? I don't want to just impose a three, like a three person close kind of thing, but yeah, for the most

Megan Conner [00:31:59] part, I have a lot more memories with just me and Lori than I do of the three of us together. But we definitely. The three of us hung out all the time.

John Dehlin [00:32:09] So would you say you were close to Lori?

Mindy Caldwell [00:32:10] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:32:11] Oh, wow.

Megan Conner [00:32:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:32:13] So for like over a decade, you would spend a couple weeks a year just hanging out with Laurie and her family?

Megan Conner [00:32:20] Yep. And then we would write letters to each other during the school year and keep up with each other.

John Dehlin [00:32:27] So what are your memories of Laurie?

Megan Conner [00:32:31] Well, I'll say that you had asked earlier some of my first memories of Janice and Barry.

John Dehlin [00:32:36] Oh, yeah.

Megan Conner [00:32:37] And so being at their house, I remember Barry taking us to go see Rambo, which was very odd as kids. I don't remember how old I was or what year that movie came out, but I was very young.

John Dehlin [00:32:52] So for those who don't know, this is a Sylvester Stallone movie where he's a Vietnam vet and he comes back from Vietnam and has PTSD and gets in a conflict with the sheriff in the town and just shoots up the town, basically. It's. I don't know if it was our.

Megan Conner [00:33:06] It was definitely our. And it definitely had one of the highest body counts of any movie that was out at that time. So it was pretty scandalous for Uncle Barry to take it. And it was me, Lori, Summer and Stacy, I believe. And it was like, why would you choose to take.

John Dehlin [00:33:22] What age do you think?

Megan Conner [00:33:23] I was probably eight or nine maybe, you know, and then. And then the next.

John Dehlin [00:33:27] That's not a Mormon thing. So for a Mormon dad to take, you shouldn't be going to our movie at all. But to be taking nine year old girls to a violent R movie, that is a little off.

Megan Conner [00:33:40] Yeah, yeah.

Mindy Caldwell [00:33:41] And you mentioned Stacy. Maybe you can explain who Stacy is.

Megan Conner [00:33:45] So Stacy's the oldest of the Cox's children.

John Dehlin [00:33:49] Okay.

Megan Conner [00:33:50] She. So it's so in the Cox family, Stacy's the oldest and then Alex and then Adam and then Laurie and then Summer. And they also had a baby who died very young. She was three months old, I think.

John Dehlin [00:34:09] And Barry's profession was what?

Megan Conner [00:34:11] So he was an estate planner. And I did not really understand what that was when I was a kid. I just knew that he had an office, he worked for himself, he made lots of money, he Drove fancy cars. He had racehorses. And we later found out that he was doing that without a law license. So.

John Dehlin [00:34:34] Okay, and what was Janice like?

Megan Conner [00:34:39] She was always done up, always beautiful. Her hair was always done. And later on, Lori was the one who would have to do her hair. But she was. When we were at her house, I almost never saw her dressed in regular clothes. She was almost always in a swimsuit or a bikini, and she was always laying out by the pool.

John Dehlin [00:35:02] Okay. Immediately my Mormon bells go off. Bikinis are a no, no. Mormonism. So Dad's taking you to Rambo movies and Mom's in a bikini. Yeah, that's a no, no.

Megan Conner [00:35:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:35:15] So how did you encode that? Did you encode it as weird? And then how did you process it?

Megan Conner [00:35:21] I definitely, as a young child, thought, okay, this is not what my parents do. I definitely felt like it was off, but I didn't know in what way it was off. And it wasn't until I was a teenager that I sort of started to put pieces together and go, okay, this is not the Mormonism that I grew up with. You know, it's definitely a different family system from my.

Mindy Caldwell [00:35:44] So I have a question about that. Just about the apparent closeness between your family and the Cox family to where you would. It sounds like almost every year you would travel to California. Was California the draw just to be in the sun and maybe go to Disneyland? You know, were Janice and Cliff your dad? Were they close as siblings? Did you see your other cousins in that family as much? Or would you say that your family was particularly close with Barry and Janice's family?

Megan Conner [00:36:14] Yeah, we did see our other cousins as well. But it just, I think, was a general idea that family was really important to my parents, and I think it was important to them that we cousins got to know each other. So on my mom's side, there are 24 cousins, and on my dad's side, there are 21 cousins. And, you know, we all did grow up together, and we were pretty close. And I would say that my dad and Janice were close. They, you know, you know, they got along really well together and I think had a lot in common.

Mindy Caldwell [00:36:45] Did you ever have instances where you were visiting the Cox family and, you know, with, like, the movie or the bikini? Did you ever get, like, a conversation with your parents? Like, I was gonna say, yeah. Yes. I know in my experience, we had some cousins that maybe weren't following all of the same rules that our family did. And occasionally we would get a little talking to, like, okay, we love them, but I was gonna use those exact words.

Megan Conner [00:37:13] We love them.

John Dehlin [00:37:13] We love them, but not living the standards.

Mindy Caldwell [00:37:16] Yeah, we don't. We don't. I'm curious as to if you had those conversations with your family, your parents.

Megan Conner [00:37:22] So my family doesn't really have those conversations directly, but there was always this sort of indirect communication of, this is okay, this is not okay. But it was never like, we would never leave the Coxes, and my parents would say, okay, what happened just now was really not okay. That's interesting. You know, they would never directly say, janice should not be wearing a bikini and I don't want you wearing a bikini. Was never a direct thing. But if my mom and I were at the store together and I was, you know, looking at swimsuits and I was looking at a bikini, she would say, no, we're not doing that. You know, so it was never. Nothing ever got. And I don't like to use absolutes, but very rarely did anything get addressed head on.

Mindy Caldwell [00:38:09] Hmm.

Allegations of Abuse Within the Cox Home

John Dehlin [00:38:09] So, okay, so in terms of your observations around Barry and Janice, especially on non. Non lds, viewers and listeners are going to be like, why are we talking about bikinis and Rambo? Like, that's not even interesting. Any other behaviors on. On the part of Janice and Barry that were really off that you noticed up through high school?

Megan Conner [00:38:31] Let's just say, yeah, once I got to be a teenager and started observing more of their behavior, and especially there were a couple of times where I was at their house without my parents, that was when I really started to see the real family, I think. And there was a lot of very intense fighting that went on between Barry and Janice in those instances. And that was something I hadn't really been exposed to before because my parents were very polite about their fighting. They would fight behind closed doors, and we very rarely heard it going on. But definitely, you know, loud arguments and, you know, the kids were also. The Cox kids were also very aware of what their parents sexual relationship was like and what was going on behind closed doors. How it was. It was a discussion like we would come home from church and they would go to take a nap. And that was. The discussion among the kids was like, oh, mom and dad are taking a nap again. Better not go in there. Oh, yeah, that happened one time. Yeah, I went through the door and boy, I sure was sorry that I went in there. And it was a whole discussion about how often they had sex. And you know, they even, you know, they would bring up things like, at one point, I think the brethren said that there should be no oral Sex. And then they had to kind of recant on that. So I got exposed to a lot of sex conversation at a young age. That never would have happened in my home, so.

Mindy Caldwell [00:39:58] Wow.

John Dehlin [00:39:59] Yeah. So, like, Mindy, I'm trying to process my parents got divorced, but, yeah, that would have never been a topic. Like, whatever. If my parents are having sex, I wouldn't have known about it. Like, it just wasn't part of my upbringing with my parents. Just never discussed and never even known about.

Mindy Caldwell [00:40:16] Right, right. Yeah. I mean, I think most of us probably assume that our parents are having sex, but I think it is unusual for it to be so openly talked about with, like, younger kids.

Megan Conner [00:40:26] Right.

Mindy Caldwell [00:40:27] And I think a lot of people have hypothesized that about the. About the Cox family and about Alex and Laurie maybe having a little bit of an inappropriate. The way that they interacted with each other was maybe inappropriately too sexual or so that makes sense if they were exposed to just kind of open sexual behavior, you know, And I think maybe that can be done in a healthy way. But it doesn't sound like, like, this was the healthiest way.

Megan Conner [00:40:56] No, it was really. It was very much like the butt of a joke and, you know, sort of a scandalous conversation that was, you know, they liked to talk about it because it felt, you know, dangerous, exciting. And there was just a lot of, you know, like, has been talked about, just inappropriate interactions between, you know, Lori and Alex. Also, though, like, it was. It was just okay for them to, like, grab each other's body parts and, you know, the siblings. Yeah, just, you know, strange. Just very strange to me because I. There was none of that touchy feely stuff in my house.

John Dehlin [00:41:41] But it sounds like that wouldn't have come from Janice. Janice's side of the family, potentially. I can't imagine that Noni, you know, in imbuing that into Janice. And so maybe it's Barry that brought that.

Megan Conner [00:41:53] I really definitely think so. And Barry was always the more touchy feely. And, you know, you would come in the house and he'd put his hands on your shoulders and rub your shoulders kind of thing. And I was always a little weirded out by that. I didn't like it.

Mindy Caldwell [00:42:07] Yeah, that's creepy.

John Dehlin [00:42:08] Okay, so Barry made you feel kind of uncomfortable.

Megan Conner [00:42:11] Definitely.

John Dehlin [00:42:11] Okay.

Megan Conner [00:42:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:42:13] Yeah. And like you said, Mindy, there is kind of like a healthy sexuality where you kind of model for the kids that sex is a good thing and that it's healthy and that, yeah, we do it too, and you'll enjoy it someday. But you're saying it crossed that line for me?

Megan Conner [00:42:27] Definitely. Yeah, definitely. Especially with the kids talking about what might be going on behind closed doors. That was very odd to me. And there was one time when we were all in Austin visiting my great uncle, and Barry wanted to take us all to Barton Springs, which is a famous swimming area over there. And he had me, Laurie, and Summer dress up, and he wanted to do a photo shoot. And so he had bought, like, a brand new camera, and he wanted to take all these pictures of us, and so he was, you know, having us pose. And how old were you at this

Mindy Caldwell [00:43:08] time during the summer?

Megan Conner [00:43:08] I think I was 13 or 14.

Mindy Caldwell [00:43:10] Wow.

John Dehlin [00:43:11] That's a red flag. Grown men wanting to photograph teenage girls, probably a.

Mindy Caldwell [00:43:17] In swimwear.

Megan Conner [00:43:17] Yeah, in swimwear. Yeah. And. And having us pose all these different ways, too. It was very. Yeah, I just. I don't. I don't have those pictures anymore, and I'm grateful that I don't. I hope that they never get out. But I know that, you know, people related to the case have seen him.

John Dehlin [00:43:36] So is there any talk that you're aware of that you're comfortable sharing about Barry being sexually abusive to any of his kids?

Megan Conner [00:43:43] Well, he definitely has been under investigation for sexual abuse, I can say that for sure.

John Dehlin [00:43:49] Or of other people.

Megan Conner [00:43:50] Of other. Other. Other people. Other family members. And I know that in the divorce proceedings between Stacy and her husband, that Stacy's ex husband alleged that Barry had sexually abused her was there also.

John Dehlin [00:44:06] She's the third of. She's the five.

Megan Conner [00:44:08] Oldest. She's the oldest.

John Dehlin [00:44:10] Okay. Okay. Oh, right. Okay.

Megan Conner [00:44:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:44:13] Okay.

Mindy Caldwell [00:44:13] And I'm sure we'll get to it, but Stacy ends up passing away. John, I don't know if you're familiar with that part of the story, but I'm sure we'll talk about that. I have a question about the photo shoot. You said that you felt uncomfortable. Did you get a sense from Summer or Laurie that they felt uncomfortable with that? Or do you think that that behavior had become so normalized in their family culture that, you know, maybe it's hard to remember that, but do you remember?

Megan Conner [00:44:44] I remember perfectly.

Mindy Caldwell [00:44:45] Yeah.

Megan Conner [00:44:46] Lori was very excited about doing that. She loved having her picture taken, and she loved being the center of attention, you know, so if anything, it was like, oh, dad wants to take our pictures. Let's do that. Yeah.

Mindy Caldwell [00:44:59] Wow.

Megan Conner [00:44:59] You know, it was very. She was very excited about that.

John Dehlin [00:45:02] Okay. So did Lori or Summer ever expressed to you concerns about their dad? Awkwardness, discomfort, anything? No. Okay.

Megan Conner [00:45:16] Not. Nothing. None of that Ever came from Lori or Summer or.

John Dehlin [00:45:19] Or Stacy.

Megan Conner [00:45:21] Stacy and I were not close enough in age to really. Yeah. To talk like that.

John Dehlin [00:45:25] Okay.

Megan Conner [00:45:26] But, yeah, what was, what was your

John Dehlin [00:45:28] perception of Barry's relationship with the church? Was he in leadership? Was he. Did he also try and be a spiritual, quote, spiritual giant, patriarchal leader kind of thing?

Megan Conner [00:45:37] Oh, definitely. I don't know the specific callings that he would have had, but he was the self proclaimed patriarch of the family, you know, not my dad, not Rex. It was Barry. And whenever we got together.

John Dehlin [00:45:53] Oh, the siblings of the siblings.

Megan Conner [00:45:54] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:45:55] Okay.

Megan Conner [00:45:56] Whenever we got together as a family, Barry loved to pontificate and quote scripture and give us his views and opinions on politics. And everything was framed around, you know, he would do a scripture quote and then talk about whatever his political view was. And so he very much considered himself a spiritual giant, a scriptorian. And later, when they moved to San Antonio, he and Janice were both temple workers.

John Dehlin [00:46:24] Do you know if he served in bishoprics or any of that sort?

Megan Conner [00:46:27] I don't know about that.

John Dehlin [00:46:28] Okay. And where did Barry grow up again? Do you know?

Megan Conner [00:46:33] I. I honestly don't know. I think California. I'm pretty sure he did grow up in California. I remember there being stories about his dad owning a chain of fast food restaurants called Barry's Better Burgers. And he. He worked there when Janice and he were first married.

John Dehlin [00:46:49] Okay.

Megan Conner [00:46:49] So.

John Dehlin [00:46:50] Yeah, so he probably fancied himself a renaissance man, wealthy, spiritual, and somehow sexually liberated all at the same time.

Megan Conner [00:47:00] Yeah, maybe. He's got a beautiful wife, he's got these beautiful kids.

Mindy Caldwell [00:47:05] You have to address the 95 and 5.

Megan Conner [00:47:08] The lower 95. So that was one of the things when he would pontificate that he would talk very frequently about this concept of the lower 95, and he would just flippantly say something about, well, that's the lower 95 for you. And it would be in context of talking about somebody who had done or said something stupid. And his worldview was that 95% of the population are stupid morons. And the 5%, that includes our family, we're the smartest, we're the brightest, we're the most intelligent, we're the most attractive, the best looking. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:47:45] So he considered himself in the 95th percentile, basically, of humanity.

Megan Conner [00:47:49] Top 5%.

Mindy Caldwell [00:47:50] Top 5 percentile.

Megan Conner [00:47:54] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:47:54] Means top 5, I think. Yeah, I'm trying to remember.

Megan Conner [00:47:57] Yeah, definitely not in the lower 95.

John Dehlin [00:48:00] Okay. So kind of arrogant.

Megan Conner [00:48:02] Very. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:48:04] So when I. Talking about Janice really quick, like, the first thing that comes to my Mindy, from what I've heard so far, is kind of the Stepford wife, trophy wife kind of thing. Beautiful homemaker, but also sexually liberated, but to please her husband kind of thing. Anything worth saying about Janice other than what we've said?

Megan Conner [00:48:25] You know, Janice, I think, is very, very smart. And she and my dad would kind of bond over Trivial Pursuit, and she would sit by the pool with a box of Trivial Pursuit cards, and she would memorize the answers. You know, she was very smart. I don't know that I really understand Janice very well because there seemed to be so many conflicting things, you know, but she was always done up. She was definitely the trophy wife and, you know, high heels and makeup and hair done all the time. And when I think about spending time with her, as opposed to listening to other people talk about her, it's just very. It's just very different. You know, she. She would say things, or I would. People would relay to me things that she would say that I would find incongruent with. With who I thought she was. So I don't know that I really know her, you know, but if I were.

John Dehlin [00:49:32] We were to. If Mindy and I were to pull you aside your senior year of high school and said, what do you think about, you know, Barry and Janice? What. What would you have said as a senior in high school? They're awesome. I love them. Or, they're creepy.

Megan Conner [00:49:44] Oh, man. As a senior in high school, I probably would have said, you know, they're. They're the fun. They're the fun aunt and uncle. You always want to be at their house. And, you know, they're. They're always traveling, going to Hawaii, going to Las Vegas. They would talk about how they were in Las Vegas a lot, and whenever anybody asked them about it, they would say, well, we have a really good dentist there, and it is really hard to find a good dentist.

John Dehlin [00:50:07] What are two devout Mormons doing spending a lot of time in Vegas? No, seriously.

Megan Conner [00:50:12] No, that's what I'm saying. Nobody knew really, what they did there. It was a little nudge, nudge, wink, wink. We don't know what's going on, but they're going to the dentist.

John Dehlin [00:50:22] Why are you smiling, Mindy?

Mindy Caldwell [00:50:23] I'm remembering from my notes. I reviewed some of my notes about the Coxes, and I do believe that there was a charge against Barry for soliciting a prostitute at some point in the 90s. Maybe that's just an indication of something. Not necessarily that that happened in Las Vegas, but. Yeah, I think it just points to his character with those types of things.

John Dehlin [00:50:48] What this seems to be leading to is the perception of a double life where they're trying to be wealthy, but also devoutly Mormon, but also a party lifestyle maybe hidden behind the scenes. I'm just trying to fill in the blanks.

Megan Conner [00:51:03] Yeah. I definitely think that, for me, there was an aha moment when they were temple workers in the San Antonio Temple and trying to piece together what I knew about them and their lifestyle and everything, it just didn't fit for me. And that was really hard for me to comprehend. And it was part of what made me feel gross about the temple in general was that, like, Barry and Janice are temple workers. Are these the kind of people that you really want in the most holy place? You know, that's fascinating. And so for me, it was hard for me to go to the temple because I would look at the other temple workers and go, what secrets are you hiding? You know? And I remember having that feeling and that thought and knowing about some of these allegations against Barry. And I remember going to a state conference shortly after that, and I was sitting. The whole entire gym area was full, and the only seats left were on the stage. So I was sitting on the stage, and I was looking out at this huge congregation in front of me, and all I could think about was, how many of you are secretly abusing people? And it was no longer, for me, this feeling of community that I had known before, where it was like, we all believe the same thing. We all have the same goals. We all want the same things. And then at that point, for me, it was like, that was over. I could never look at it the same way again. It was like just a place full of abusers that were hiding behind church callings.

John Dehlin [00:52:46] What made your brain go to abuse? And it. And again, what age was this?

Megan Conner [00:52:51] I would. This was when I was, you know, much later, when I was an adult. And it was. It was. Oh, gosh, I was probably 35 or so. And, you know, it was when. It was when some of these abuse allegations against Barry started to come out.

John Dehlin [00:53:06] This is long before the Lori and Chad stuff.

Megan Conner [00:53:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:53:09] Okay, so we'll. Maybe we'll come back to that.

Megan Conner [00:53:11] Yeah, we'll come back to that at some point.

Mormon Culture and the Silence Around Abuse

John Dehlin [00:53:12] I mean. I mean, Mindy, tell me if this makes sense to you, but, like, what I noticed growing up, I didn't have any sense of abuse happening within the church, sexual abuse or physical abuse. Personally, what I did notice was that in my extended family, there was a heavy emphasis on appearance and a. A Tendency within my family and extended family to have dark secrets that were hidden and not talked about. And, and then there could be a lot of pressure, not with my parents per se, but with other aunts and uncles. A real pressure to look good and to make everything seem perfect. And that just mental health wise, that's a recipe for dysfunction. When there's high control, high emphasis on appearance, but then secrets, it leads to kind of double lives.

Megan Conner [00:54:04] Right.

John Dehlin [00:54:05] And, and learning to, and hide things, which is super dark.

Megan Conner [00:54:08] Right.

John Dehlin [00:54:09] So that's this jives with my experience minus the abuse part, because I wasn't aware of it. But now that we look back and we see that the church, Mormon Church, has been willing to settle for almost a billion dollars with all the Boy Scout abuse cases and then we've just seen coming out all the rampant sexual abuse cover ups for decades of tens of thousands of Mormon children and teens. We realize that the Mormon Church has this probably centuries long history of a lot of child abuse that that's been covered up. So that part I'm learning now about the other parts I resonate with in my Mormon upbringing. And Mindy, I don't know if there's anything you want to add to that.

Mindy Caldwell [00:54:53] Yeah, I would agree with that. You know, I think most of us that grew up as Mormon, it was important to have the, you know, the facade that everything was going well. But yeah, my family had secrets and a lot of families have, you know, issues that they've had to deal with or maybe that they didn't want out in the open. And your thoughts about that made me recall a book club or a girls weekend or something that I went to like in my late 20s and we were all friends in the war together and everyone had grown up with what seemed like a pretty typical LDS background. And one person opened up about something that happened to them, a sexual abuse, and then another and another. And I'm not exaggerating, it seemed like the majority of the girls in this group just in this tiny sample had had some sort of something that had happened to them where it wasn't talked about or, you know, the church, you know, didn't deal with it in an appropriate way. And it shook me because I just thought, I just think that this happens a lot more than people want to admit. And so anytime these allegations come out, I'm sadly not surprised that this has been going on and been covered up. Yeah.

Megan Conner [00:56:18] And you have this culture that's created by the doctrine of the church that is so filled with shame and so necessarily you're gonna have people keeping secrets because the stakes are so unbelievably high. If you do admit that there's something going wrong. And it's so public.

John Dehlin [00:56:39] Sexual sin is a sin next to murder in Mormonism.

Megan Conner [00:56:41] Exactly, exactly. And it's so public, you know, you're not taking the sacrament, you lose your calling, you possibly get excommunicated, and then your entire family system is gone too. So the stakes are just unbelievably high.

John Dehlin [00:56:57] Eternal status together versus not right.

Megan Conner [00:57:00] So I feel like the church doctrine creates this culture where the stakes are so high that we have to keep secrets, because if we don't, it's everything. Your entire world, your eternal salvation, and everything that you know is gone.

Mindy Caldwell [00:57:17] And I think that that argument is used sometimes when allegations come to light and maybe an ecclesiastical leader is involved, where they will say, let's think about this. Let's think about this eternal family. You know, do we really want to go there? Because this eternal family is at stake. And so that's a lot of pressure to put on somebody that's coming forward with an allegation that probably should be going to the police, but instead is consulting with an ecclesiastical leader, like a bishop.

Megan Conner [00:57:46] Right. And especially when the allegation comes from inside the family.

Mindy Caldwell [00:57:51] Exactly.

Megan Conner [00:57:52] It's just. That makes it even worse.

Mindy Caldwell [00:57:55] Right.

John Dehlin [00:57:57] Okay. Wow. This is helping paint a picture for me. So thank you. If it's okay. Let's talk about your impressions of Laurie.

Impressions of Lori Growing Up

Megan Conner [00:58:08] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:58:09] As a teen and of Alex and Summer, at least them two. And I guess even of Stacy. Yeah, yeah, let's talk about Laurie and her siblings.

Megan Conner [00:58:19] Yeah. So Lori was, you know, the cheerleader. She was, you know, beautiful, blonde haired, blue eyed, you know, skinny, athletic dancer. Loved to dance, loved to sing, loved to, you know, put on a show. Anytime the family would get together, she and Summer would choreograph something and do a dance and, you know, they would get up and sing and just love to perform in front of everybody, you know.

John Dehlin [00:58:51] Wait, performing in front of family? Like, what is that? How, like families are together? How would a performance break out?

Mindy Caldwell [00:58:58] Yeah, so you don't know my family?

Megan Conner [00:59:01] I was gonna say impromptu.

Mindy Caldwell [00:59:03] Like talent shows all the time.

Megan Conner [00:59:04] Exactly. That's exactly what it was, an impromptu talent show. We would get finished eating dinner and we'd all go in the living room and, you know, the piano would be there and, you know, I'd sit down and play something and Barry would wanna sing, and Summer and Laurie would be off in the other room choreographing something. And Stacy Sometimes, too. You know, they would. The three of them choreographed some number while we were doing our stuff, and then they would come out and, you know, share whatever they had made up.

John Dehlin [00:59:31] Like the Osmonds kind of vibes?

Megan Conner [00:59:33] Yeah, for sure.

Mindy Caldwell [00:59:34] Sounds like it.

Megan Conner [00:59:35] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:59:36] Okay. Okay. Any dark side to Laurie's personality in through her high school years that you remember?

Megan Conner [00:59:45] I didn't really notice anything until after high school. Okay. Probably because I wasn't looking for it, but also because I didn't ever disagree with Lori. We didn't have any arguments, really. As long as you did everything Laurie said, you were fine.

John Dehlin [01:00:00] Are you saying she was high control?

Megan Conner [01:00:02] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:00:03] Was she kind of the leader amongst her sisters? Even Stacey, an older sister?

Megan Conner [01:00:08] Yeah. So Stacy. I think she was older enough than Laurie, but that I didn't perceive that Stacy sort of fell in line with that. And I don't really think that Lori was like that as a teenager necessarily. I think it sort of started to evolve when she was a teenager. She started to realize that she did have power in the family system and that she could make people do what she wanted them to do, you know, so it was very much a setting where if she wanted to do something, everybody else kind of fell in line. And I was part of that, too, because I didn't have my own brain at that point. You know, I didn't realize I could say no to things. And so if Lori wanted me to do something, I would do it.

John Dehlin [01:01:04] And what about Summer's personality and Alex's personality?

Megan Conner [01:01:09] So Summer being a little younger than me, as kids, we didn't hang out as much. I got to know her more as an adult through keeping in touch through social media and stuff like that. But she was always very sweet, very kind. She did definitely have a stubborn streak, you know, and she could put her foot down and get her way, too. But she did it kind of, I think, in a different way than Laurie did. I perceived that Laurie's way was more covert and Summer was more like, you know, she would demand something, you know, overtly, not in a bad way. You know, I didn't get any kind of bad vibes from Summer that way. Alex was always the comedian first. Like, that was his number one role. And that was actually how we would find out about a lot of the family secrets and is that Alex would make a joke about it. You know, something would come up and he would make a comment that he thought was really funny, and we would go, what? Did that really happen?

Mindy Caldwell [01:02:14] Wow.

Megan Conner [01:02:15] And most of the time, yes, it really did.

John Dehlin [01:02:18] Any Examples of the types of things he would reveal through jokes or.

Megan Conner [01:02:22] Oh, I mean, nothing was off limits. He would talk about people's mistakes. He would talk about, you know, body shaming. You know, Adam was a little chubby as a kid, and Laurie actually was a little bit chubby as a kid. And then she and Adam both kind of did this thing where freshman year of high school or so they just stretched out over the summer and, you know, and got skinny. But before that, it was the constant butt of jokes was, you know, body shaming. Laurie and Adam, by Alex. And. Yeah, I mean, nothing was off limits. Did not matter how you felt about it. Everything from, you know, you tripped and fell to you had childhood trauma. It was like everything was a joke to him.

Mindy Caldwell [01:03:08] It's been mentioned in other places that Alex suffered from some sort of brain injury as a teen.

Megan Conner [01:03:15] Yeah. So this is another one of those family rumors that we don't really. And when I say we, I mean, my part of the family doesn't really know all of the details of what happened, but he was in a car accident. He drove this red Toyota pickup truck, and he was in a car accident where the car was totaled, and he just left the car and walked away. And, like, did not. Nobody called the police. Nobody called an ambulance. Nobody did anything to correct this, you know, this accident. He just literally walked away from the car. And it was. I remember trying to, like, figure out, how does that work? Was the car paid for already? I'm sure it probably was. Was there insurance? I'm sure there wasn't. You know, it was that kind of thing. And so the family rumor is that he suffered some kind of a traumatic brain injury at that point and was not really the same after that. And I can't really speak to whether that's true or not, because I didn't know him well enough before the accident

Mindy Caldwell [01:04:17] to make the comparison.

Megan Conner [01:04:17] To make that comparison. Yeah. But I can definitely say, I mean, he never kept a job for very long. He never had relationships for very long. He was excommunicated twice, and I think

John Dehlin [01:04:30] he wanted extramarital relationships.

Megan Conner [01:04:34] Yeah. Yeah. So I think that shows, like, him being willing to get rebaptized, that he wanted to do what was right and follow what he was taught as a kid, but maybe just wasn't capable of it.

Mindy Caldwell [01:04:48] Weren't there also excommunications with Barry and Janice, or am I remembering that incorrectly?

Megan Conner [01:04:52] If there were, I don't know about it.

Mindy Caldwell [01:04:54] Okay. Perhaps I'm thinking of Alex's excommunications.

John Dehlin [01:04:58] Was there a culture of kind of fat shaming or fat phobia within the Cox family?

Megan Conner [01:05:04] Definitely.

John Dehlin [01:05:04] You want to talk about that?

Megan Conner [01:05:05] Well, because image was so important. Beauty was so important. And almost universally, you would come into the Cox household, and the very first comments out of everybody's mouth was about your appearance, your hair, your clothes, your. You know, when one of my other cousins got married, they saw a picture of the guy she was marrying, and, you know, the only comments that they made were, wow, they're going to have really pretty babies. They're both beautiful, gorgeous people. And so that was so important in that family culture that somebody being overweight was, you know, that was unacceptable. And Janice was. I'm pretty sure that she had or has some kind of an eating disorder, because we would have family meals together, and she would, like, chew up bits of food and spit it back out on the plate, and she would say, I don't really need to swallow it. I just need to taste it.

John Dehlin [01:06:04] You noticed that?

Megan Conner [01:06:05] Yeah.

Mindy Caldwell [01:06:05] I find that so fascinating that she did that just openly at the table.

Megan Conner [01:06:09] Yeah.

Mindy Caldwell [01:06:09] Wow.

Megan Conner [01:06:10] And she would have a full plate of food, but she would never consume any of it. She would just.

Mindy Caldwell [01:06:15] Do you recall that anyone ever commented on that or.

Megan Conner [01:06:18] Oh, yeah, that would have been, you know, the butt of Alex's jokes, you know, all that kind of stuff.

Mindy Caldwell [01:06:24] But maybe no concern that that was an unhealthy approach.

Megan Conner [01:06:28] Nope.

Mindy Caldwell [01:06:28] Wow.

John Dehlin [01:06:29] What about, like, maybe fat shaming other people or, like, commenting on people being overweight or not attractive?

Megan Conner [01:06:37] Yeah, I mean, that was a pervasive conversation throughout the Cox house. Was everybody else's appearance. Not only our appearances, but everybody else's appearance, too, you know?

John Dehlin [01:06:47] Okay.

Megan Conner [01:06:49] And I think I shared, when I was on Lauren's podcast, this story about that I was in the foyer of the chapel one time, and Barry was up bearing his testimony open mic Sunday, as I call it, and he was talking about being a temple worker and watching the people come into the temple and looking at them and saying, these are not a listers. These are not the celebrities. These are not the beautiful people. These people are coming in to the temple, and I'm thinking, you know, these are just not great people. But they have a temple recommend, so they must be okay. They must be good people. Anyway, so it's just that sort of stunning that he would get up in front of a congregation of these people who obviously were coming into the temple. Some of them probably greeted him at the temple, you know, and they're listening to him talk about how ugly they are.

Mindy Caldwell [01:07:45] He's essentially doing the lower 95 in his testimony on Sunday.

Megan Conner [01:07:52] Yeah.

Mindy Caldwell [01:07:53] So I've always been curious about how people in the lives of the Barry and Janice Cox family growing up, I'm so curious as to how they were perceived by, like, their neighbors or ward members. Ward members, because that would turn me off so quickly to have, you know, we've all known people in wards that we've lived in over the years that are a little blowhards or maybe a little bit arrogant, but that, to me, is kind of next level. Do you have any perspective about how they were perceived by. By their neighbors or their fellow ward members?

Megan Conner [01:08:26] I don't have a lot of information about that, but I do know that people in the temple seem to really love them.

Mindy Caldwell [01:08:33] Wow.

Megan Conner [01:08:34] So they would find out that I was related to them and say, oh, I love Janice and Barry. And I would go, really?

Mindy Caldwell [01:08:41] Wow.

John Dehlin [01:08:43] So I'm getting a bit of a dichotomy. You're saying they were the fun, kind of the favorites, and they were also kind of problematic from your perspective.

Megan Conner [01:08:52] Yeah. I mean, when I was a kid, of course they were the fun. You know, I never would have gotten to go see a James Bond movie or a Rambo movie, you know, as a kid with my parents. But sure, you know, Barry could provide that experience or hang out by the

John Dehlin [01:09:04] pool or go to Disneyland and all that.

Megan Conner [01:09:06] Right. And, you know, and for whatever reason, Knott's Berry Farm, I don't know why they love that place so much, but I thought it was terrible. I never wanted to go there, but it was like, that was exciting to Barry. Let's all go to Knott's Berry Farm. But, yeah, as an adult, you know, once I had my own kids and had a different framework of how to view things, I realized how unhealthy a lot of those behaviors were and. And how toxic a lot of the dynamics were.

John Dehlin [01:09:36] Okay, so you kind of touched on this, but any indication Alex would become violent from his kind of high school years that you saw?

Megan Conner [01:09:46] I had no indication of anything like that when I was a teenager, but I did. And this was, you know, as an adult, much later, looking back on it, he really didn't have the ability to form attachments with people. And so there was no. There was that joking and comedian style was a very much a way of avoiding any kind of connection or intimacy.

Mindy Caldwell [01:10:13] So that's interesting.

John Dehlin [01:10:16] So maybe he. Maybe that was his personality, or maybe he played a. Paid a price for playing that functional role within his family.

Megan Conner [01:10:24] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:10:26] Because there is the Truth teller in family systems.

Mindy Caldwell [01:10:29] Yes, there is.

John Dehlin [01:10:30] Whether it's through jokes or whatever.

Megan Conner [01:10:31] Right.

John Dehlin [01:10:32] That say the things that everybody else is trying to keep secret or hide or that everyone's afraid to talk about. Right.

Megan Conner [01:10:39] That's really interesting for you to say that, because I never thought of Alex as the truth teller until you put that together just now. But that's really possible that that's what he was trying to do, was call attention to these unhealthy things and didn't know any other way to deal with it.

John Dehlin [01:10:53] And humor is sometimes the softest way to kind of say something that people don't want to hear.

Megan Conner [01:11:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:11:00] Right.

Megan Conner [01:11:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:11:01] It's like the sugar that helps the medicine go down sometimes, and I'm just making stuff up.

Megan Conner [01:11:06] Well, that's.

Mindy Caldwell [01:11:07] That's an interesting observation, for sure.

John Dehlin [01:11:09] Yeah.

Megan Conner [01:11:10] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:11:12] Okay. Any other. We'll come back to your story now, but any other Cox family stories kind of through the high school years that you think are really important to what happens later?

Megan Conner [01:11:21] Well, I didn't get. Get a chance to talk about Stacy, but I would just want to say how much I loved her. She. She was so kind, and she was just a bright spot in that family. You know, she was smart, and she was sweet, and she was always willing to do whatever she needed to do to help everybody else out. You know, she just was. I felt like she was such a good person.

Early Signs of Lori's Lack of Empathy

Mindy Caldwell [01:11:52] Okay, I know you mentioned this on a previous interview, but would you feel comfortable sharing the story about driving in the car?

Megan Conner [01:12:01] Oh, yeah.

Mindy Caldwell [01:12:03] I think that was very impactful when I heard it the first time.

Megan Conner [01:12:06] Yeah. So this was one of the times that my brother and I visited the Cox's without my parents. And Janice and Barry, I think, were in Vegas, and they had left Stacy in charge, and my brother went off with Adam and Alex, and Laurie wanted to go on a date with her boyfriend. And so she found a friend for me, and we went to, you know, typical mini golf and dinner and whatever, and afterwards, she wanted to go make out with her boyfriend. So we went to this golf course where it was dark, there was nobody around, and she and her boyfriend went off into a corner, and then she left me to deal with this other guy, which I was not appreciative of. I had no experience with these kinds of things, and it was really traumatic for me, but, you know, just neither here nor there. Just one of those things that I didn't appreciate, but I could not have spoken up and said, I don't want to do this. I could not have said To Laurie, you go ahead and go on a date with your boyfriend. I'll hang out at home with Summer or something. You know, that would have not been an option. But we were on our way back home, and her boyfriend had this Jeep, and they had the top off and the doors off and everything, and they were playing loud music and just hanging out the sides of the car and sort of joyride situation. And we were coming down this residential street, and there was a cat that ran across the street. And her boyfriend just made a conscious effort to run over this cat and kill it. And he sort of, like, after he hit the cat, sort of tapped his brakes, and they all sort of looked to see if it was dead. And everybody started laughing. And I was shocked and traumatized and horrified by that. And I was looking over at Laurie to just like, see, are you okay with this? That just happened. And she was just laughing, and there was no reaction. There was no remorse. There was no sadness. There was. And I was crying. You know, I was horrified. And it was really hard for me to see that there was no reaction from anybody else in the car. It wasn't just Lori. It was her boyfriend and. And the other friend, too.

Mindy Caldwell [01:14:28] Right.

Megan Conner [01:14:28] You know?

Mindy Caldwell [01:14:30] Yeah. So she wasn't the driver of the car, but it sounds like she didn't have a. A real strong reaction to. To a cat being intentionally killed.

Megan Conner [01:14:39] Just thought it was funny.

Mindy Caldwell [01:14:40] Yeah.

Megan Conner [01:14:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:14:42] So, I mean, immediately that pulls for me this diagnosis of a personality disorder called antisocial personality disorder, which isn't people, when they don't know the term, they think, oh, that means you don't have friends or you're not antisocial. Antisocial personality disorder, as I understand it, means you don't really have a conscience or you don't really have empathy. You just don't have it. And it's the type of thing where Jeffrey Dahmer could do what he did and not really be phased by it. Just. So that makes me want to check in about Laurie and her just basic levels of empathy or compassion for others, animals or people. Did you ever get a sense for

Megan Conner [01:15:22] that, that she had a lack of empathy or narcissism?

John Dehlin [01:15:25] Lack of empathy or narcissism.

Megan Conner [01:15:28] Definitely knowing what I know about narcissistic personality disorder, having, you know, been around lots of those people, she definitely has those qualities, for sure. That's. That's an easy one. Check, you know, as far as other cluster B personality disorders, obviously I'm not a professional. You know, you. You are. But I, you know, I Can only say that I see some of those behaviors in her. And, you know, certainly my experiences with her later on as an adult would definitely indicate that she has those qualities.

John Dehlin [01:16:08] Meaning a lack of empathy for other people's pain and suffering.

Megan Conner [01:16:13] Yeah, lack of empathy and more concerned with what's best for her and, you know, to the detriment of whoever happens to be around her.

John Dehlin [01:16:27] Okay. Okay. All right, so let's shift back to your story for a bit, if that's okay.

Deception and Manipulation in Young Adulthood

Megan Conner [01:16:34] Sure.

John Dehlin [01:16:35] Anything about. Let's just say your life up through high school that's notable in terms of your Mormon trajectory story and. Or, you know, Laurie's.

Megan Conner [01:16:49] Yeah. So I have kind of a weird story about girls camp, and I don't. If you want to edit this out later, you're welcome to. But I'm really curious to know if this is something that is odd or if it's normal. I loved Girls Camp growing up. I loved everything about it. And in our stake, we did this little closing ceremony thing that was called the Legend of Liahona. Have you guys heard of this?

Mindy Caldwell [01:17:17] I am just anxiously waiting to hear what this is.

Megan Conner [01:17:22] So the juniors and seniors were the youth leaders at girls Camp. And so we got to be in charge of doing these kinds of putting on these kinds of productions. And. And on the last night of camp, we would dress up like American Indians, Face paint and everything.

Mindy Caldwell [01:17:40] Oh, yikes.

Megan Conner [01:17:42] And there was a. There was a path that went from the dining hall down to the water. And we would stand in pairs across from each other on this path and held. Hold a lighted candle and stare at each other. And the younger girls were made to feel like this was a very sacred, very important part of girls camp. And so they were all told to be very quiet, but if you must talk, you must whisper, which has echoes of the temple, you know, so I didn't realize till later, but the younger girls would all come down this path and see us all dressed as American Indians standing there staring at each other. And then you would get down there, and there was a huge bonfire. And then on the dock, which was about probably 10 or 15ft off of the shore, there was an American Indian princess standing facing away from the crowd, and she had the whole feathered headdress and everything. And once everybody got seated, she would turn around and there'd be a microphone out there, and she would deliver this monologue that was called the Legend of Liahona. And it was basically a story about the American Indians and tying it in with the Book of Mormon and all that kind of stuff, and it was a very big deal.

John Dehlin [01:19:05] And this is in Connecticut?

Megan Conner [01:19:07] Yeah, in Connecticut.

John Dehlin [01:19:08] Okay.

Megan Conner [01:19:09] And this had been going on for, like, years and years and years. It happened all six years that I went to Girls Camp. So, I mean, it was before I was there and probably continued on for a long time after I left. But I was on the Stake Youth Council as a teenager and a senior, and I really wanted to be the one who played the Liahona, because I was a performer, and I thought that'd be so cool. I didn't know how to go about it. I think you had to be chosen or somebody had to recommend you or something like that. Well, I never got the call, so I was kind of sad about that. And then the Sunday after Girls Camp was over, you do this sort of debrief testimony meeting where it's the young men and the young women together, and the young women get a chance to bear their testimony about Girls Camp and how things. You know, how things went. And some of the leaders got up, too. And one of the leaders got up and said that she'd had this wonderful experience and she loved Girls Camp and everything, and she wanted to talk for a second about the Legend of Liahona. She said somebody had approached her and asked her if she had a recommendation for Legend of Liahona. And she put forward a name. And the Stake Young Women's President said to her, well, what about so and so in your ward? And she didn't name the person. And she said, I had to tell this person that no, I couldn't recommend this young woman, even though she might seem like the right person, because I knew that she had been lying to her parents. And I just about fell off my chair because I knew that my parents had recently talked to the bishop and told them that I had lied to them about some things. And so what was horrifying for me about that was that my parents had talked to the bishop, and then the bishop had talked to the young women's leader, and then this young women's leader had talked to the Stake Young Women's president. And, you know, essentially all these people talking about me behind my back, but nobody ever coming to me and saying, you know, is this true? What were the circumstances? Or even my bishop calling me in and saying, you know, your parents are concerned that you're lying to them. What happened? You know, nobody wanted my side of the story, you know, and so that was just. That was a really hard thing for me. And it was sort of this moment where I was like, Can I trust my bishop, you know, or can I trust my young women's leaders? You know, they're all talking about me, and nobody wants to talk to me. So that was a. That was the first moment that I think I really felt like maybe there's something weird going on with the leadership of the church, and they're not really who they say they are, you know?

Mindy Caldwell [01:21:56] Yeah. I'm sure that was impactful. And it's just an icky feeling to know that all these people are talking about you.

Megan Conner [01:22:02] Yeah.

Mindy Caldwell [01:22:02] And I think it's a glimpse into how sometimes church leadership works and how things can get spread around without maybe going to the source and finding out. I'm sorry about that. That sounds like it was a disappointing experience.

Megan Conner [01:22:16] It was disappointing and sad for me because I thought that I trusted my young women's leaders.

John Dehlin [01:22:20] Was this around dating boys kind of stuff?

Megan Conner [01:22:23] Yeah. I mean, my mother was horrified that I didn't have very many girlfriends. I mostly had friends that were guys. And so I had a boyfriend, and I had a group of guys that I liked to hang out with. It was my boyfriend, his twin brother, and three or four of their friends. And we would go bowling or we'd go to the movies or something like that. But my mom told me that if I continued to hang out with these boys, everybody was gonna assume that I was having sex with all of them. And that was a bad. That was a bad look. Yeah. And so she. She did not want me hanging out with these guys. So a lot of times I would tell her that there was another girl going along, or I would tell her that I was going to my girlfriend's house when really I was going out with all these guys to hang out or whatever. And she found out about it eventually.

Mindy Caldwell [01:23:13] So that was the big lie.

Megan Conner [01:23:14] Yeah.

Mindy Caldwell [01:23:16] It just seems so innocent. And I'm thinking, who else in that young women's group has lied to their parents? It's just unfortunate that that's how it came.

John Dehlin [01:23:26] Yeah.

Megan Conner [01:23:27] And it ended up coming back around again because I really wanted to go to byu. It was the only true school, of course, in our family system. Yeah. I'm not a cougar, so I disagree. Spoiler alert. I did not end up going to byu, but I remember asking my bishop for the ecclesiastical endorsement that I needed for my application. And we had a really brief conversation, but it was, like, in public, at youth conference, at a dance. He came up to me and said something about, you know, I heard you. You need this endorsement. And I said, yeah, I really want to go to byu. And he said, well, where else are you applying? And I told him I had applied to two other schools. One of them was the University of Connecticut, which was notoriously a party school. And he said, I don't know how in the world you're going to keep your standards if you go someplace like that. And I remember thinking that was a very odd thing for him to say, but I was like, but that's my safety school. You know, I want to go to byu. And he brought up the lying thing again. He said, your parents talked to me, and apparently there's maybe some things we need to visit about. And I said, okay, I'm happy to talk to you about it. We can figure that out. And then I never heard from him again.

John Dehlin [01:24:46] Wow.

Megan Conner [01:24:46] And then the next thing I got was a letter from BYU saying that my application was incomplete. They had never received my ecclesiastical endorsement.

Mindy Caldwell [01:24:56] Oh, that's disappointing.

Megan Conner [01:24:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:24:59] And there would. So just to be, I don't know, explicit. Like, there were never conversations with you and the bishop about, like, premarital sex or anything like that?

Megan Conner [01:25:07] No.

John Dehlin [01:25:08] So he wouldn't have had any reason in his conversations with you to think there were grounds for you not being worthy of following the honor code or any of that stuff?

Megan Conner [01:25:18] Right. And I, I, I went to the temple, did baptisms for the dead. And so we'd had conversations before, you know, but there was never anything that came up in those conversations that he told me that he was concerned about or that he thought I had done something wrong, you know?

John Dehlin [01:25:32] So you're thinking your mom was suspicious of your worthiness and so she told the bishop you might not be worthy? I mean, is that.

Megan Conner [01:25:38] I think that's really possible. You know, again, it's that culture of secrecy in our family where we just don't talk about things. And that would have been a confrontation she would have been really uncomfortable with. So it would have been more comfortable for her to go to the bishop and say something to him and vicariously maybe get the results she wanted.

Mindy Caldwell [01:25:59] Wow.

Megan Conner [01:26:00] So that's.

John Dehlin [01:26:01] What'd you do? Where'd you go?

Megan Conner [01:26:03] Well, I ended up going to the University of Connecticut.

John Dehlin [01:26:05] You were a husky.

Megan Conner [01:26:06] Yes. For one whole semester. You know, there again, my parents and I never had a conversation about money or anything like that. And I didn't. You know, I don't think they knew how to help me go to college anywhere but byu, because that was the only experience they had had. And I was 17 when I graduated from high school. And so when I got to college, I was 17, you know, I was still a minor and I had no idea what I was doing. And I just wanted to keep myself as busy as possible because I was for the first time away from my family system, realizing how painful it had been and how, how many hurt feelings I had over so many different things. And I was really in a bad place emotionally. I was very, I was devastated by getting out of it and looking back on it and thinking, oh my gosh, that stuff was all really horrible, you know. So I got, I got to UConn and there again it was me. And the first Sunday I went to church and there was one other girl who was a member, and then there was a boy who was a member, but he was on the basketball team. And so he was going to be gone for like the whole semester basically. And so I was like, okay, well, here I am again with, you know, nobody around me who really believes the same things that I do. And I was incredibly depressed and I just wanted to keep as busy as I could. So I signed up for 21 credits and I also got a part time job at the hamburger stand and I also got another part time job as an usher at the theater. So I just packed my schedule really, really full and I ended up, you know, getting into the drinking, partying part of it. And it was at first a way to sort of fit in with everybody else, but. But then also I very quickly learned that when I was drinking, I did not feel pain. And so it started to be a numbing thing for me. And so I spent a lot of time experimenting with alcohol and I ended up in a bad situation and ended up being the victim of sexual assault. And after that happened, I really went into sort of a dissociative state. I don't really remember a lot about the rest of the semester. And I ended up finally going to the health clinic because I was so depressed and did not know what was happening to me and I couldn't function. And so I went thinking, maybe I have some kind of a virus because I couldn't get out of bed. I, you know, I was sleeping all the time. And I don't remember how my mom got involved, but she ended up coming to pick me up. And I don't remember if it was her or me that made up the lie that it was mono, but one of us did because that was a good cover. And I went home for a couple of weeks and tried to sort of get my brain right. And by the time I went back, the semester was almost over. And only six of those credits ended up transferring. And it was just a. It was a really hard, horrible time for me. And during that time, my dad got a job in San Antonio. So they were moving and I really wanted to stay in Connecticut. I loved New York City. I would have loved to stay there, but I didn't have the confidence that I thought I could do that. So I stayed with the house until it sold. And then I moved to Austin to move in with Lori and Adam because they were in Austin, my parents were in San Antonio.

John Dehlin [01:29:49] Lori. Who?

Megan Conner [01:29:50] Lori. Cos. Whoa.

John Dehlin [01:29:52] I mean, I thought. But I just want to make sure

Mindy Caldwell [01:29:55] you're like, are we talking about another Lori?

John Dehlin [01:29:56] Yeah. Yeah. No. So, okay, first of all, I'm really sorry that happened. My reflection, Mindy, I'm curious if you agree, is that a Mormon teenager is completely ill equipped, grows up completely ill equipped to go to a state school. Right.

Mindy Caldwell [01:30:13] That's exactly what my thinking was. We just, we send these little sheep out into the wolves, you know, and especially if, if, If a child has been raised in a family where just a lot of things weren't talked about, including, you know, things that could be dangerous or to avoid. I'm guessing that that wasn't something that you guys, that your family talked about very much.

John Dehlin [01:30:38] How to drink responsibly? Sexual health.

Megan Conner [01:30:40] No, it was. No, it was just that, like going back to what my mom had said before, it's just. No, you just don't do that. You don't drink.

John Dehlin [01:30:48] But also how to make friends outside without the dialogue.

Mindy Caldwell [01:30:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:30:51] How to choose healthy friends, how to find community, like just in a gazillion ways. Mormon teens. I grew up in Katy, Texas, which is outside of Houston. I could have gone to any university I wanted to, within reason. And BYU was the only university I applied to because there was no other path.

Megan Conner [01:31:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:31:09] And all my friends that didn't go to a BYU school ended up out of the church and, and probably living kind of sadder lives because you're just not equipped in all the ways. It's just like you're on the train, the Mormon train. And if you go to state school, you're getting off the Mormon train without any tools to survive.

Mindy Caldwell [01:31:29] Yeah, I'll push back on that because I, I didn't go to a BYU school. I went to Utah State and Weber. Are you talking about kids that are. Who are raised outside of Utah?

John Dehlin [01:31:39] What? I mean, sorry. Yeah, it's kind of like the BYU's or a Utah University.

Mindy Caldwell [01:31:44] Sure.

John Dehlin [01:31:44] Right. Where there's a strong Institute presence.

Mindy Caldwell [01:31:48] Right.

John Dehlin [01:31:48] And so you still get the heavy Mormon experience at a Utah State or even a University of Utah.

Mindy Caldwell [01:31:54] Right.

John Dehlin [01:31:54] Or Weber. You're still going to get the Mormon experience there. Yeah, I'm sure there might be like in, maybe in some of the California or Arizona or Idaho schools, there would be a strong institute presence, but not a UConn.

Mindy Caldwell [01:32:09] Right. I mean, I was just feeling so much, you know, so tender for 17 year old you who goes to leaves, leaves the nest without a great support system, you know, without a great solid family foundation for how to handle those types of experiences. I mean, I went to a state school where we had institute and I knew a lot of LDS people and I still really struggled that first year. It's just a hard year. It's a hard year for teens and there's so much to process and so many new things and you don't feel quite ready and you really lean on the people that you feel like you can trust and that can be there for you. So I'm sorry that you seem that you didn't have the support that you needed during that time. I'm sure that was really tough.

Megan Conner [01:32:57] Thank you. I was completely unprepared for the outside world. World. I had no idea what I was doing. And there was never a conversation. Like, I don't think I ever heard my parents say the word sex until I was an adult. You know, we never had those conversations. I really think that they believed that the church. It was up to the church to teach me to be chaste and modest and all of that. Yeah. Because that, I mean, the, the implication was always like, we're going to church, we're watching general conference. We're going to all of our meetings. You're going to young women's. Your young women's leaders are teaching you these things. You know, we don't need to have a conversation about it. It's the expectation. You just meet the expectation that's probably

Mindy Caldwell [01:33:40] not super uncommon for some families to feel like, yeah, this is awkward to talk about these things. So thank goodness that the kids are going to young men's and young women's and they're getting the messages that maybe we're uncomfortable.

Megan Conner [01:33:52] Thank goodness for standards night.

Mindy Caldwell [01:33:55] Thank goodness for the pamphlet, what's it called?

Megan Conner [01:33:57] The Strength of youf. Yeah. And that one night a year where we sort of talk about the sacred powers of procreation and that's it. Wow.

Lori's Early Marriages and Time in Austin

John Dehlin [01:34:08] Okay. So how so? I'm remembering now when the Moon Turns to Blood, the book by Leah Sat.

Mindy Caldwell [01:34:12] Leah Satilli.

Megan Conner [01:34:13] Satilli.

John Dehlin [01:34:15] Where Laurie ends up not. Not going to byu. She ends up like running away with a boy and getting married and he was a non member boy, if I remember right. So maybe tell us how Laurie ends up. That. How Laurie ends up in Austin.

Megan Conner [01:34:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:34:31] And then how you end up with Laurie in Austin.

Megan Conner [01:34:33] Yeah. So. So she married her high school boyfriend, sort of surreptitiously ran off with him. Nelson. Don't remember his last name.

John Dehlin [01:34:43] So how did she get away with marrying a non member and marrying outside the temple when she's from a devout Mormon family?

Megan Conner [01:34:49] You know, again, this is one of those family stories that I don't really know the whole story. All I know is that she ran off with her high school boyfriend and Barry marched down there and kidnapped her and made her get it annulled. That's the family story. That's all I know.

Mindy Caldwell [01:35:04] I've heard that.

Megan Conner [01:35:04] I've heard that.

Mindy Caldwell [01:35:05] That's all you know. Yeah. Barry and maybe one of the brothers or something, probably Alice went down to. Yeah. To rescue her from this hasty marriage.

John Dehlin [01:35:15] His name was Nelson.

Mindy Caldwell [01:35:16] Nelson.

John Dehlin [01:35:17] And did you know Nelson?

Megan Conner [01:35:18] Nope.

John Dehlin [01:35:19] Okay, you didn't know him. Okay, so by the time. Okay, so help us get from Lori in Orange county to Lori in Austin. She. She runs away with this boy, gets married. The marriage is an old. Do you know how she gets to Austin?

Megan Conner [01:35:33] I think she went to Austin right after that. And. And Adam was in Austin and he was working as a primetime dj. And so, you know, he. He had a big fan base there. And I think Lori moved there to. To be with him and to sort of be away from her parents.

John Dehlin [01:35:50] Adam.

Megan Conner [01:35:51] Adam, the other brother.

John Dehlin [01:35:53] Okay, okay. He's the third in their family. So she goes to live with her brother Adam in Austin.

Megan Conner [01:35:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:36:00] Okay. Okay. All right. And that's when you, You. How did you get connected to them?

Megan Conner [01:36:05] Well, I just. We had kept in touch, you know, and I told them my family's moving to San Antonio. I didn't really want to live with my parents anymore. And, you know, we just sort of made a plan to make it work. I was like, you know, I kind of asked, is it okay if I come and stay with you guys? And, you know, until I can figure out what I'm gonna do with my next phase of life.

Mindy Caldwell [01:36:26] So this was after Laurie's hasty marriage to Nelson. Okay, gotcha.

Megan Conner [01:36:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:36:31] And Austin's a fun town. It's a music town. It's got great restaurants, great nightlife. It's where. It's the capital of Texas. So the legislature's there.

Megan Conner [01:36:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:36:40] So it's not a. It's not an unfun place to live.

Megan Conner [01:36:43] But I didn't know anything about it. I, you know, didn't know anything about Austin. I thought I was moving to, like, Scrub Rush and Tumbleweeds.

John Dehlin [01:36:49] Oh, yeah, no. Austin's happening.

Megan Conner [01:36:51] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:36:52] Okay.

Megan Conner [01:36:52] To my surprise and delight, it was great.

John Dehlin [01:36:54] So how long were you with Lori in Austin?

Megan Conner [01:36:57] Just a few months.

John Dehlin [01:36:58] Okay.

Megan Conner [01:36:59] And so adam was. Was DJing, working at night, and Lori

John Dehlin [01:37:03] at a radio station.

Megan Conner [01:37:04] Yeah, radio station. And it was like the radio station. Like the top 40 radio station. So he was pretty well known. And Lori was working at a tanning salon because, of course she was. And. I mean, it tracks, right?

Mindy Caldwell [01:37:22] Right.

Megan Conner [01:37:23] It's on brand.

John Dehlin [01:37:25] So. So around. What year was this? Do you remember?

Megan Conner [01:37:28] This would have been the spring of 1993.

John Dehlin [01:37:31] Okay. All right. So I'm just. I'm graduating from BYU. Where are you in 93, Mindy?

Mindy Caldwell [01:37:36] 93. I am finishing my first year at Utah State.

John Dehlin [01:37:40] Okay.

Mindy Caldwell [01:37:41] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:37:41] Go Aggies.

Megan Conner [01:37:42] Yeah, yeah.

Mindy Caldwell [01:37:43] Go Aggies.

John Dehlin [01:37:44] 93.

Megan Conner [01:37:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:37:45] Lori's doing a tanning salon thing. You're there.

Megan Conner [01:37:47] So she. She got me a job there, too, so we could work together. I didn't have a car. I didn't have anything. I mean, I basically had two suitcases, and that was it, you know? So I just came down there hoping that I could do anything but move back in with my parents, you know? So we were. We were working together and, you know, trying to figure out life in South Austin. And there was a guy that came into the tanning salon pretty frequently, and he asked Lori out on a date, and they went out on their date. She already had a boyfriend, as far as I knew, because we had. When we had gone out with Adam, there was this other guy that she'd been spending time with, but I don't really know what their relationship status was at the time, so I shouldn't cast aspersions, but she agreed to go out a date on this guy with this guy. She comes back to the apartment after the date, and she's not impressed. You know, she's like, ah, he was. Okay. I don't. I don't really think I like him. You know, we're probably not going to go out again. And that was that. And then a few days later, he was in the tanning salon, asked me if I wanted to go out, and I was like, well, Lori didn't like him. He's not really that cute. But I was like, okay. Whatever. I wasn't doing anything else socially except hanging out with Lori and Adam. So we went out on a date. It was uneventful. It was unromantic. I didn't really enjoy it. Came back, and Lori just, like, gave me the third degree about, where did you go? What were you doing? What did you guys talk about? Did you talk about me? Did you talk about my date with him? You know, just giving me the third degree about what happened on this date? And I, you know, I told her I didn't really like him that much. You know, he gave me a kiss good night. But it was not a big deal. You know, it was just one date. Probably not going to see him again. And a few days later, she told me that Janice was coming into town. And I was surprised by this because I didn't know this was the plan. And we're on our way to the airport.

Mindy Caldwell [01:39:46] Mom.

John Dehlin [01:39:47] Okay.

Megan Conner [01:39:47] Yeah, Janice, Lori's mom. We're on our way to the airport, and she starts grilling me again about this guy and making the implication she thinks I slept with him. Oh, wow. And I was, like, very blindsided by that. And we get to the airport, and I find out that the reason Janice is coming is because Lori has called Janice and told her everything that I'd been up to. And I'm gonna put that in quotes, and that I was a bad influence. And Janice wanted me out of the apartment. And at this point, I was not doing anything that Lori was not doing. We were doing everything together, you know? But I felt like it was really about this guy. Like, she saw me as a threat and she wanted me gone. So she called her mom to come and kick me out of the apartment. So we picked up Janice at the airport, we went back to the apartment, and Janice was basically there to supervise me packing my stuff and getting out.

John Dehlin [01:40:39] Were you. Was there tension between you and Laurie?

Megan Conner [01:40:42] Not until that car ride.

John Dehlin [01:40:43] Huh.

Megan Conner [01:40:44] You know, it was.

John Dehlin [01:40:45] Did she like the guy?

Megan Conner [01:40:46] She didn't even like him.

Mindy Caldwell [01:40:48] She didn't like the idea of him liking you?

Megan Conner [01:40:50] Yeah.

Mindy Caldwell [01:40:51] That's the bottom line.

Megan Conner [01:40:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:40:53] You women are connecting on this.

Megan Conner [01:40:55] That was it. Well, I mean, this is the way jealous females behave sometimes.

Mindy Caldwell [01:40:59] Yes.

Megan Conner [01:41:00] If, you know, if there's a perception that maybe she's going out with somebody that I like, but even if you don't like him, it seemed so odd to me. I was like, you don't even like this guy, so why does it matter?

Mindy Caldwell [01:41:14] I don't think it was about the guy. I think it was about you.

Megan Conner [01:41:17] Yeah.

Mindy Caldwell [01:41:17] And I think that she was starting to see you as a threat, like you said.

Megan Conner [01:41:21] Yeah, I was taken away. I was taken away from her attention.

Mindy Caldwell [01:41:25] Right.

Megan Conner [01:41:26] If somebody liked me then that may. Then maybe they wouldn't like her.

Mindy Caldwell [01:41:29] Right, exactly.

John Dehlin [01:41:30] But then I could see a healthy way to approach that. It's just, hey, you know, Megan, this isn't working out. Yeah, you know, sorry. Could you go find somewhere else to live?

Megan Conner [01:41:39] Right.

John Dehlin [01:41:39] Not call mom in Cal. Well, San Antonio, not California.

Megan Conner [01:41:43] Well, she was in California at this point. She hadn't moved to San Antonio.

John Dehlin [01:41:47] Call mom from California to come. Tell my cousin roommate to leave. That's.

Megan Conner [01:41:52] That's weird, right?

John Dehlin [01:41:53] Okay.

Megan Conner [01:41:54] So I packed my suitcases and bought a bus ticket to San Antonio and came down to live with my parents because I didn't have anywhere else to go. Wow.

Mindy Caldwell [01:42:02] Were your parents involved with that whole incident?

Megan Conner [01:42:05] I don't think so. Because when I talked to my dad about it a short time ago, he didn't remember that happening. So I don't think that there was ever any kind of communication between him and Janice where Janice called him and said, you know, Megan's misbehaving. Maybe there was. I don't know. Or maybe there was a phone call between Janice and my mom that I don't know about, but it would be very on brand for the family to just not say anything about it.

Mindy Caldwell [01:42:28] You know, I find it interesting that Janice was accusing you of doing some of the same things that it sounds like Lori was doing as well. Do you think that some of that was just a deflection, like she didn't want her parents to know, or. Yes. That she was doing that. So it was just way easier to just kind of dump all of that behavior on you and make you the bad guy.

Megan Conner [01:42:51] There's no doubt in my mind that Lori. The conversation did not go. I've been drinking and partying, and so has Megan. You know, that is not something that ever would have happened.

John Dehlin [01:43:01] We're partying.

Megan Conner [01:43:02] Yeah. And so the part of the story I kind of left out a little is that, you know, Adam, being a top 40 DJ, got invited to all these parties and, you know, clubs on 6th Street. They all knew him. They would all buy him drinks for free, and we were with him. So even though I was only 18 and she was only 19, we got into all these clubs, and people would buy us drinks, and they thought we were of age, you know, so we were both together this entire time, doing these things together.

John Dehlin [01:43:29] Okay. How did that affect your relationship with Laurie after that conflict

Megan Conner [01:43:37] the sad part is that we never talked about it. And family's family. So it was only two years later that I got married. And, you know, thinking about, who are my bridesmaids gonna be? And it was like, well, all of my high school friends are back in Connecticut, and none of them are gonna travel down here for a wedding. So it was my sister, and Laurie and Summer were my bridesmaids. And that was really kind of like the next conversation that we had after that, you know, was two years later. And.

Mindy Caldwell [01:44:08] And it wasn't discussed, like.

Megan Conner [01:44:10] No.

Mindy Caldwell [01:44:11] Did it seem awkward to talk to her again after kind of not talking, or is that just kind of the MO of the family? Just like, let's pretend it didn't happen, and we're moving on to the next thing.

Megan Conner [01:44:19] Let's pretend it didn't happen. Everything's fine now. We're not living together now, so there's no chance it's going to happen again.

Mindy Caldwell [01:44:25] Sure.

Megan Conner [01:44:26] So we just don't talk about it. We move on.

Megan's Own Faith Struggles and Coming Out

John Dehlin [01:44:29] And this boy, was he a Mormon boy? Not a Mormon boy that you married.

Megan Conner [01:44:33] Not a Mormon boy.

John Dehlin [01:44:35] So you had a couple years of not living the gospel, should we say?

Megan Conner [01:44:39] Yeah. Yeah. And I really. Once I went to UConn, I was not in the church at all, and I was. You know, I was trying to figure out who I was. I didn't really feel like I had an identity at that point. I had just done everything my parents told me to do, and there were a lot of things that didn't fit for me. Maybe a huge part of the story that I left out is that I'm bisexual. And I started having bisexual feelings when I was in seventh grade, and that did not fit.

John Dehlin [01:45:09] Yeah. In the late 80s, early 90s, right?

Mindy Caldwell [01:45:11] Yeah.

Megan Conner [01:45:11] And I didn't even really know what bisexual was. All I knew was that there was this girl that I really thought was beautiful. And I would try to go up and talk to her, and I would just get butterflies in my stomach.

John Dehlin [01:45:22] And.

Megan Conner [01:45:23] And she was in my orchestra class, and we had a concert, and we were all in the orchestra room getting ready for the concert, and she had worn this beautiful black crepe dress with a sweetheart neckline. And I just remember seeing her and thinking, oh, my gosh, she's so beautiful. I want to go tell her how beautiful she is. And I walked over there to talk to her, and I just could not get the words out. And I was like, I just. I just want to. I just want to be around you and, you know, maybe smell your hair. And just. I'm just kidding.

Mindy Caldwell [01:45:57] But I was not necessarily like sexual feelings, but just definitely attractive, wanting to

Megan Conner [01:46:03] be close to somebody beautiful and just wanted to be close to her, you know. And I remember thinking to myself, well, that's not. There's nothing sexual about this. This is not wrong. It's just that I admire her, you know, I want to be her friend. But then, you know, after a few more years of things like that, I did start having sexual feelings towards girls. And I thought it just. It's just wrong. I'm just not going to have those feelings. I'm just not going to have those thoughts. I just am not going to entertain anything like that. And I'm just going to pretend like I don't feel that way, you know, and if there were sleepovers or anything like that, if there was an opportunity to, you know, experiment or do anything, I just. I just said, that's wrong. I'm just not going to do that. So I kind of pretended that I didn't have those feelings for a very, very long time.

John Dehlin [01:46:54] And are you saying that maybe that influenced you not being as active in the church for a while?

Megan Conner [01:47:00] Yeah, because once I got to college, I started trying to think about who I really was and did I fit into this mold that my parents wanted me to be in. And I felt like I didn't. I felt odd, you know, I felt like I didn't really belong. And so I was wrestling with that and, you know, feelings of depression and getting out of my family and all that kind of stuff. It was a very hard time for me.

John Dehlin [01:47:21] Okay.

Megan Conner [01:47:22] So when I moved to San Antonio, my only option was to go to community college because my GPA was so terrible. And so I enrolled in this community college and I met a guy and I wanted to get out of my house so badly. And this guy really liked me and he wanted to marry me. And he was 31 years old and you were like 20 and I was 19.

Mindy Caldwell [01:47:53] Oh, 19 at this point. Okay.

Megan Conner [01:47:56] And yeah, he really wanted to marry me and I really wanted to get married. So we got engaged and I told my parents that we were engaged and my, you know, we went over there, did the whole thing, went to my parents house and, you know, they had met him before and knew who he was and he said that he wanted to marry me. And my parents were just very silent and we started talking about, you know, what kind of ceremony we might want to have and where we might want to have the reception. And my dad just stopped him and he said, this is Not a celebration for us. And it was very. An eye opening moment for me because I realized at that moment that if I didn't continue on the Mormon path that I was not going to be acceptable to my parents. So that was hard for me. I sort of ended up coming to the conclusion, though, he was not a good person. He was not good to me. He was not kind, he was verbally abusive. And I later found out that he was distributing marijuana. And I decided I didn't want to be married to somebody like that. So we broke up. And then two weeks later, I found out I was pregnant.

John Dehlin [01:49:16] Oh.

Megan Conner [01:49:18] So I started making a plan to get away from my parents. And I found a few friends at school that maybe wanted to move in together. And I just made this plan to go get a job close to the school, to live close to the school. So I didn't have a car, but that's how I was going to make that work. And I was just going to not talk to my parents again ever for like, maybe a couple years. And then maybe I would introduce them to their grandchildren.

Mindy Caldwell [01:49:50] So your plan was to not even tell them that you were pregnant?

Megan Conner [01:49:52] Yeah, because I knew the shame and the. I knew that was gonna be the end of the world for them. You know, I knew that it was gonna be a fight I didn't wanna have, you know, and I knew I was gonna be unacceptable. And so I made this big plan. And then one day they came to pick me up from school and it was both my parents in the car. And I was like, that's odd. Why are they both here? And I get in the car and my mom hands me an envelope that has been opened. And it was a. It was a letter from my OB GYN with the blood test results that was positive for pregnancy. And so she just handed me the envelope and she said, we know you're pregnant.

John Dehlin [01:50:36] Has anyone heard of HIPAA ever?

Megan Conner [01:50:38] Like, what is going on here? Well, I. I was 19 years old and the letter was addressed to me and it was from an OB gyn. So of course my mom wanted to open it. She, you know, okay. She was suspicious. So.

Mindy Caldwell [01:50:54] Wow.

John Dehlin [01:50:55] So how did that, how did that end up with. I mean, who. So was Lori a bridesmaid at a wedding?

Megan Conner [01:51:01] Yeah, but that. It's. It's coming.

Mindy Caldwell [01:51:03] Sorry.

Megan Conner [01:51:03] I had to rewind. I had to rewind a little bit because we have to get to the point where I had a child already when I got married.

John Dehlin [01:51:08] Okay.

Megan Conner [01:51:09] So, yeah, so that was all horrible. It was really hard. My mom got up in testimony meeting and relief Society and told everybody that I was pregnant and did the whole crying horrible thing and whatever. It was really, really hard. She made me go tell my bishop. She made me read the Miracle of Forgiveness.

John Dehlin [01:51:39] Oh.

Megan Conner [01:51:39] Oh, no. Which made me feel like I wanted to die. I felt like garbage after I read that book.

John Dehlin [01:51:53] Do you remember what it was about, the book that made you feel like garbage?

Megan Conner [01:51:57] Well, I had same sex attraction issues as the church called it back then, and I felt like there was nothing I could do to change that. And the book made me feel like not only was it the sin next to murder because I was pregnant, but then also being grouped in with people who are committing bestiality just made me feel like a terrible human being. And also I feel like the book should have been called there's no Hope for Forgiveness because I felt hopeless after I read that book. I felt like there was nothing that I could do to make myself clean again.

John Dehlin [01:52:47] And for the never Mormons who are watching or listening, this is a book that was published by one of the prophets of the Mormon Church, Spencer W. Kimball. And for decades, it was, like, considered almost up there with the Mormon scriptures, the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine Covenants, and then, like, there's, you know, Talmadge's books, Jesus the Christ and the Articles of Faith, and then the Miracle forgiveness. It's one of, like, four books missionaries were even allowed to read. But if you ever sinned, it's the book that your bishop would hand you to hand to you, because it was written by a prophet and was all about repentance. Fast forward to 2023. It's been. It's. It's publication has been ceased. It's no longer sold because it's such a heinous, horrendous book. And yet it governed how Mormons thought about themselves and morality and virtue and sex and sexuality. It governed 50 years of Mormonism. At least.

Megan Conner [01:53:45] It was the textbook for repentance.

John Dehlin [01:53:47] Yeah, yeah. And so it's a. It's a horrible book. And it was horrible for you to read it.

Megan Conner [01:53:54] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:53:55] I remember my stepmom telling me, don't ever read that book. And she was a faithful. She still is a faithful, active Mormon.

Megan Conner [01:54:01] Oh, wow.

John Dehlin [01:54:02] And when she heard that I was thinking about reading it as a faithful, active woman, she said, please, John, don't ever read that book. I was like, what? That's crazy. And then I read it.

Mindy Caldwell [01:54:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:54:12] Because I hadn't sinned in any of those major ways. So no skin off my back. Yeah, it made me feel good. Like, yeah, I'm not doing those bad things. You know what I mean?

Mindy Caldwell [01:54:22] And there are long lists of bad things that are listed in that book. It seems like most people. The long lists of other indiscretions, in my experience, don't seem to be as notable as if you've had sexual sin. It seems like it was a pretty much the textbook for.

John Dehlin [01:54:41] Yeah.

Mindy Caldwell [01:54:42] For trying to get rid of your sexual sin.

John Dehlin [01:54:44] Right. We have. There's a Mormon Stories episode where we read some of the most heinous portions of the Miracle Forgiveness. So if you want to check that out, do Mormon Stories podcast Miracle Forgiveness, and you can watch that episode. Okay. So you read that book. Felt like dirt. Lower than dirt.

Megan Conner [01:54:59] Yep. And then also had to be subjected to LDS Family Services because the appropriate thing at the time was to go to counseling to try and get the young couple who had sinned to get married. And I felt like that was a huge step backwards because I had already decided I did not want to be with this person, you know? But I attended the counseling sessions because it was, you're either going to marry this guy or you're going to give up this baby for adoption. That was the official path forward. And I remember the counselor telling me about this other girl that she had worked with who gave up her baby for adoption and had a great relationship with the adoptive mother and got to see her kid once a year, and the mother sent her pictures and all that stuff. And I just remember thinking, no, that is wrong. I don't want to do that. I don't want somebody else raising my child. You know, I'm a perfectly capable human being and I'm gonna. It was the first time I had ever done something that defiant to say, I'm not gonna go down this path. I'm gonna keep this child and I'm gonna raise this child.

Mindy Caldwell [01:56:16] That's really brave. Cause I do think a lot of women, especially in the. What would this have been like, early 90s, you know, who were faced with that decision, it seems like those were the options. Right. You just didn't hear a lot about. About women who were pregnant out of wedlock who chose to keep the baby but didn't want to stay with the partner. So that's really brave of you.

Megan Conner [01:56:38] Thank you. I didn't think of it like that at the time. I just. All I was focused on was the fact that I could not. I did not have it in me to give my child away.

Mindy Caldwell [01:56:50] Right.

Megan Conner [01:56:50] There's just no way that I could have done that and lived through it. I just. It would have been like ripping my heart out, you know, I just couldn't do it. And I'm so grateful that I was able to make that decision because, I mean, I can't imagine my life without my oldest girl, you know?

Mindy Caldwell [01:57:09] Of course.

John Dehlin [01:57:11] So you kept your daughter.

Megan Conner [01:57:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:57:15] And the church pressure has pressured decades and decades and decades of women to give up their babies for adoption.

Megan Conner [01:57:22] Yeah. And also into bad relationships because.

John Dehlin [01:57:26] Right, right.

Megan Conner [01:57:26] You're either going to marry the father of the baby or you're going to give it. And those are the only two options because it's not acceptable for a young woman to be raising a child on her own.

Mindy Caldwell [01:57:37] On her own. So did you maintain a relationship with your baby's father?

Megan Conner [01:57:47] I did not. I made it very clear to him that I did not want him to be a part of her life. It was probably extreme and cruel of me to do that at the time, But I looked at his lifestyle, and I thought, I don't want my child to be associated with that. I also knew his family relatively well. I knew there was a lot of dysfunction there, and I just really wanted to try to protect her from that if I could. And I'm not sure if I would do it the same way now. I probably would have tried to figure out a healthier way to navigate through that. But this is fast forwarding just a little bit, because I met my husband while I was pregnant with my oldest daughter.

Mindy Caldwell [01:58:30] Oh, wow.

Megan Conner [01:58:31] And he got involved with me knowing that I was pregnant with another man's child. And I thought was pretty brave of him to throw himself into that situation. But I wanted the baby's father to be involved to a certain extent until the day that I gave birth. And he showed up at the hospital with his casual sex girlfriend and another baby who had just been born, like, a month before.

Mindy Caldwell [01:59:06] And he was the father of that baby.

Megan Conner [01:59:07] Yeah.

Mindy Caldwell [01:59:08] Oh, wow.

Megan Conner [01:59:08] And I just said, you know what? Why don't you raised that baby? You know? And I had. You know, I had already met my future husband, and we had already talked about getting married. And so I was like, you know, I'll just have my life over here. You have your life over there. And that was kind of it. But at this point now, my parents were thrilled that I was getting married and did not care that he was not a member of the church.

Mindy Caldwell [01:59:36] Okay.

Megan Conner [01:59:38] Because at this point, all they wanted me to do was right the wrong of having a child out of wedlock.

Mindy Caldwell [01:59:42] Yeah.

Megan Conner [01:59:43] And so they didn't really know much about him, but he was a bartender, and, you know, it was. They were. They were just happy that I was getting married at this point, so now there could be a celebration. And so, yes, I invited Lori and Summer to be my bridesmaids, along with my sister. And so that's why there's a picture floating around out there of Laurie holding my. My daughter when she's dressed in the bridesmaid's dress.

Mindy Caldwell [02:00:09] I don't know if I made that connection when I saw that photo. That. That was your daughter?

Megan Conner [02:00:12] Yeah.

Mindy Caldwell [02:00:13] Oh, thank you for explaining that.

Megan Conner [02:00:16] But funny story about the bridesmaids dresses is that Laurie and Summer were living in Austin, and I was in San Antonio, and I had called her up and invited her to be my bridesmaid and said, you know, you guys can get your own dresses. I want you to have something that you want to wear. But I told her that my wedding colors were purple and, you know, had all this. All this other decor that went along with that. And the day before the wedding, she showed up with these royal blue bridesmaids dresses.

Mindy Caldwell [02:00:47] They are very blue. They are not purple at all.

Megan Conner [02:00:49] They did not match anything. And I felt a little sorry for my sister because they had kind of this low, plunging neckline, and they were so spaghetti straps with a little jacket over it. And she was only 14, and I felt terrible about making her wear that dress because I knew she would be uncomfortable. And I think she did share with me later that she felt really uncomfortable wearing that dress. But it was what Lori had picked, and it was what she wanted, and nobody could tell her otherwise, so that's what we went with.

Mindy Caldwell [02:01:17] Wow. After not having seen her for two years.

Megan Conner [02:01:21] Yeah. Yeah.

Mindy Caldwell [02:01:22] She comes onto the scene with the wrong color dress.

Megan Conner [02:01:24] Right.

Mindy Caldwell [02:01:24] And it's her way or the highway. Sounds like.

John Dehlin [02:01:29] Okay, and you may have already said this, but was the man you married LDS?

Megan Conner [02:01:34] He was not.

John Dehlin [02:01:34] Not LDS. And y' all were married how long?

Megan Conner [02:01:37] 22 years.

John Dehlin [02:01:38] Oh, that's a. Oh, wow. That's a significant achievement.

Megan Conner [02:01:41] 22 years.

John Dehlin [02:01:42] I say seven years is an achievement.

Mindy Caldwell [02:01:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:01:46] Okay. And you had how many children together?

Megan Conner [02:01:48] Six. Well, so six total. So my oldest daughter, and then we had five more.

John Dehlin [02:01:53] Wow. Okay. So any. Any stories about Laurie at the wedding or anything before we just go back to your life, was it.

Megan Conner [02:02:03] No, that was. No, that was pretty much it.

John Dehlin [02:02:05] Okay.

Mindy Caldwell [02:02:06] Did you see Laurie very often after you had your wedding and started having your family?

Megan Conner [02:02:12] Yeah, so after I got married, she then married Billy and had her oldest son, Colby.

Mindy Caldwell [02:02:18] Okay, so.

Megan Conner [02:02:19] So my Oldest daughter and Colby are very close in age, so they were born right around the same time.

Mindy Caldwell [02:02:25] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:02:27] So after she had her first marriage in old. She married who?

Megan Conner [02:02:33] Billy. Billy William Lagioia.

John Dehlin [02:02:36] And did you know him?

Megan Conner [02:02:37] I'd never met him.

John Dehlin [02:02:38] Okay.

Megan Conner [02:02:38] Nope.

John Dehlin [02:02:39] Okay.

Mindy Caldwell [02:02:40] And they together had Colby, the oldest son.

John Dehlin [02:02:42] Okay. And she was married how long to him?

Megan Conner [02:02:45] I don't remember, but he lived in Del Rio. And so I remember there was a lot of her going back and forth between Del Rio. And by this time, her parents had moved to San Antonio.

Mindy Caldwell [02:02:55] And Del Rio is in Texas. Forgive my.

Megan Conner [02:02:57] Yeah, no, it's okay. It's about 90 minutes outside of San Antonio. I think so.

John Dehlin [02:03:04] Okay, so it's Texas for both of you for this time. For those 22 years, were you in Texas?

Megan Conner [02:03:11] Basically.

John Dehlin [02:03:12] Okay.

Megan Conner [02:03:13] In the same house?

John Dehlin [02:03:14] Yeah. Okay. That's San Antonio.

Megan Conner [02:03:17] Yep.

John Dehlin [02:03:17] Okay. All right. Okay. So did you become activated in the LDS Church during those 22 years?

Megan Conner [02:03:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:03:28] So talk about that.

Megan Conner [02:03:29] Yeah. So as soon as my daughter was born, I thought I. I wanted to get back into church because I wanted her to have a good moral foundation. And I had really enjoyed primary growing up and girls camp and all of that. And so I thought that's what I wanted for her, too. And so, yeah, I got back active in the church when she was 2 and then tried to get my former husband to get baptized. And so that was like, all the focus of everybody was at that point was like, oh, well, you know, if Megan's back in the church, let's get her husband back in the church and let's get them married in the temple. And that would have made things nice and even, smooth and calm for everybody. So he did take the missionary discussions. He went through two or three sets of elders taking the discussions. And he did eventually get baptized. And it was right when he was turning 30. And he was sort of having, like, a moment where he wanted to decide what he wanted to do with his life. And so he, you know, he agreed to get baptized. And.

Mindy Caldwell [02:04:48] And how long had you been married? At this point?

Megan Conner [02:04:50] About two years.

Mindy Caldwell [02:04:52] And had you had a child together?

Megan Conner [02:04:55] Yeah. So it was right after I gave birth to my second child. Yeah. And so he got baptized. He was active. They immediately called him to the Sunday school presidency.

Mindy Caldwell [02:05:09] Wow.

Megan Conner [02:05:10] But nobody ever talked to him about what his responsibilities were or anything. As far as he knew, his job was to get all the teenagers to go to class and hold doors open for people. That's what he told me he believed his job was. And he was only active for about probably four months or so. And then he just decided he was not going to do it anymore. And I asked him, you know, I was like, well, what about your calling? And that's when he told me what he believed his responsibilities were. And I said, didn't anybody ever, you know, talk to you about that? And he said, no, nobody really. You know, and this is somebody who's never been a Mormon and they're expecting him to jump right into a Sunday school leadership position but not tell him anything about it. And I remember asking a couple of the men in the ward, like, can you befriend my husband? Can you hang out with him, take an interest in him, see if you guys have something in common so that he has people in the ward that he can associate with so that he can understand what this all means, because this is brand new for him. And of course he was taking the new member lessons. But I think the assumption was, well, you're married to a Mormon, so you'll figure it out, you know. Right. But he really needed to be fellowshipped and that just didn't happen. And I was really disappointed by that because even one of our home teacher at the time said, you know, every man in the church needs a responsibility and a friend. I remember that, yeah. And it just didn't happen. So I remember being really disappointed that people were not following their own advice, you know, to try and get him activated.

John Dehlin [02:06:49] Did you have a spiritual, quote, repentance and reawakening as a part of having the baby out of wedlock and marrying a non member and the parental shame? I don't know that you. Did you have some sort of spiritual epiphany that brought you back into the church or.

Megan Conner [02:07:04] No, I just. I think it was just more the experiences that I had as a young woman. You know, I did have a testimony and I did love the scriptures and I did love going to do baptisms for the dead in the Washington D.C. temple. And I did. I remember bearing my testimony on many occasions and feeling very strongly that this was right, you know, that what my parents had taught me was true, you know, and I really wanted to be acceptable to God. That was really important to me. And so I wanted to raise my children in that tradition where I felt like I understood who I was in the eternal sense. Like I really did feel like I was a child of God. And I felt like I was. I felt like he loved me. I felt like he knew my name and knew my circumstances and that was a good feeling. And I wanted my kids to feel that too.

Mindy Caldwell [02:08:11] That's beautiful. I think I'm thinking back to how you said earlier that you made a conscious decision when you had children to not do certain things, to not, you know, raise your family in the way that you were raised. So it sounds like you took that, but also were holding onto the good parts of the church that you were raised with and were influenced by. And so maybe the combination of what you learned from your parents and the way that they raised your family and then, you know, the good things from the church sounding like that's what you wanted to present to your children.

Raising Children and Questioning the Church

Megan Conner [02:08:45] Yeah, and I had this realization that I thought the way that my parents taught the gospel was wrong.

Mindy Caldwell [02:08:51] Oh, wow, that's.

Megan Conner [02:08:52] You know, I thought it was my parents that had done it wrong. I didn't realize till later that that's just the gospel according to the Mormon church. You know, it is a manipulative, controlling, shame filled gospel. And I thought that my parents had done it wrong. And so I was like, well, maybe I can do it better. Maybe there's a more healthy way to teach, you know, these principles. And the principle of free agency, which is what the entire church is founded on, is like your right to make a choice. That didn't exist in my home growing up. There was no question like, you are going to go to church, you are going to do these things, you are going to check the boxes. And I thought, maybe I can do it in a way where I teach my children about it and then let them make a choice instead of forcing them to do it.

Mindy Caldwell [02:09:43] So how did that work out when those decisions, did you live up to that? Do you feel like when your kids were getting old enough to make decisions? I say that because I think when I was a young parent, I had ideas of how I wanted to do things. And then when I was actually faced with some of those situations, situations, I felt some of my upbringing kind of creepy, you know?

Megan Conner [02:10:03] Well, I mean, we all say things that we're gonna do as parents that then later turns out we can't do those things because, you know, parenting is a real thing and not just a concept. So, yeah, I mean, definitely in a perfect world, things would have gone differently. But when my oldest son was 14, he started having doubts and did not want to go to church anymore. And I think it was easier for him to tell me that because my husband at the time wasn't going, his dad wasn't going, and so it was like safe for him to have doubts. And that was something that I didn't have in my family. It was like every single family member is a faithful, believing Mormon. So when he came to me with that, he said, I just don't believe this anymore. And I sat down with him and I said, well, tell me what you do believe. And he said, well, I believe in God. I think you have to be stupid to not believe in God. And I said, okay, well, let's start with that. And I said, you don't have to believe everything right now, but let's figure out what you do believe and start there and maybe other things will come later. Well, they didn't. And he never did go back to church and now he's an atheist. So that thought about there has to be a God, you know, didn't. Didn't come to fruition either that didn't stick around. But I didn't blame him. You know, he was really bullied in the church and I felt I was a second class citizen. Just bottom line, my husband was not a member. I had wanted to go through the temple, but my bishop asked me, he counseled me to wait until my husband was ready to go. And so I did wait. I waited for about seven years. And then I finally said, look, this guy's not coming back to church. There's no chance.

John Dehlin [02:11:55] He was a member, but not active.

Megan Conner [02:11:57] Right. He'd been baptized, but he was only active for four months. And then he didn't ever come. He would come to church if I was singing or sometimes he would come to church if there was. Like he would come for the primary program, sometimes to see our kids, but eventually stopped doing that too. So I very much felt ostracized and overlooked. And I remember when I did finally go through the temple, I got up in Relief Society and bore my testimony about my experience. And the Relief Society president came up to me afterwards and she said, I'm so glad that you told us that you went through the temple because we really wanted you to be a Relief Society teacher, but we felt really strongly it had to be somebody who had been through the temple. And so now that you've been through, now you can teach Relief Society, you

Mindy Caldwell [02:12:47] know, and she's like saying it as a compliment, it's kind of an insult, right?

Megan Conner [02:12:52] Yeah, exactly.

Mindy Caldwell [02:12:52] Yeah. Oh, that's too bad.

John Dehlin [02:12:55] Okay, so, yeah, I guess part member families and especially going to LDS Church as a woman whose husband isn't attending, and you're always hearing about eternal families and righteous priesthood holders and then your kids are all, where's your dad? Oh, he's not active. Like that's not a fun, that's not, that doesn't seem like a super fun experience.

Megan Conner [02:13:22] Yeah, it was really heartbreaking a lot of the time to sit and listen to all of those lessons all the time about eternal families and thinking, well, if I stay in this marriage, I'm never going to have that, you know, and also super heartbreaking. Had a miscarriage and the Relief Society president told me, you know, it's like what we believe is that families will be together forever. And she said, I know that's probably a happy and a sad thing for you because now you've miscarried this baby but you weren't sealed together and so you maybe are not ever going to see that baby again. You know, super harmful.

Mindy Caldwell [02:14:00] Oh, those types of stories are just so damaging.

Megan Conner [02:14:03] Yeah, they're just.

Mindy Caldwell [02:14:04] And you just hear about, about those types of comments all the time. It's really unfortunate.

John Dehlin [02:14:10] Yeah, yeah. I'm connecting to it because my sister Gina married a non Mormon and she had three kids and raised them and she died, you know, seven years ago of colon cancer. But she didn't like to go to the doctor. And part of it I think was she just, she felt like her life was a disappointment. Like her husband never joined, she was raising her kids. And then when her kids got to adult years and really weren't into the church anymore, she's like, I basically just need to get on to the next life because this one I'll meet my eternal companion in the next life. I can't divorce my non member husband now. My kids aren't in the church anymore. I don't have much to live for. I may as well just hurry and go to the next life. And she like got her cancer diagnosis in like October and she was dead by December.

Megan Conner [02:14:57] Wow.

John Dehlin [02:14:58] And it, but I just thought she wasn't happy.

Megan Conner [02:15:02] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:15:02] Even though the church meant everything to her, the way her life played out was just a total disappointment to the plan. And I'm. I don't know if you felt some of that.

Megan Conner [02:15:12] Yeah, I definitely felt that way. And I remember talking to my, I can't remember if it was my bishop or my stake president, probably during a temple recommend interview. And I said, why can't I just get sealed to my kids? You know, I'm a faithful believing member. I'm, you know, teaching gospel doctrine. I'm teaching, you know, new member missionary lessons in a ward where we baptize 30 people a year. So I was teaching new member lessons to two and three times a week. I'm bringing My kids to church by myself every single Sunday. And if I'm gone or if I'm sick, I get a ride for them and I make sure they go. They go to every activity. They're checking all the boxes, they're getting temple recommends and doing baptisms for the dead and all that stuff. I had a tradition with my kids where when they turned 12, I would take them on their birthday to the temple. We're doing all these things. And I said, why can't I just get sealed to my kids and maybe fill in the gap later when I find somebody faithful? Or like, maybe after this life I'll get sealed to somebody or something like that. Or maybe when he dies, somebody can seal us by proxy, you know, or something. And of course, you know, that was laughable. It was a laughable concept. You know, the person I was talking to said, well, you know, the church is about families. It's about whole families, not part families with an asterisk. Right. Not partial families.

Mindy Caldwell [02:16:37] Right.

Megan Conner [02:16:38] We don't seal partial families.

John Dehlin [02:16:40] What you probably did know then and may or may not know now is that Joseph Smith was sealed to other men.

Mindy Caldwell [02:16:47] Really?

John Dehlin [02:16:47] Yeah. He was sealed to other men, and he was sealed to other men's wives who were men.

Megan Conner [02:16:52] I didn't know that.

John Dehlin [02:16:53] But I mean, the point is, is back. And these were called dynastic ceilings, but in the early years of the church, all sorts of people got sealed together. It wasn't just husband to wife necessarily. So there is a historical precedent for untraditional ceilings, but it's just we kind of got corporatized and, you know, the patriarchy, kind of traditional family all kind of weaves in there.

Megan Conner [02:17:18] Can you see the look of shock on my face at finding out that we're not doing something now? That was done way back in the original church, right?

John Dehlin [02:17:27] Yeah.

Mindy Caldwell [02:17:28] So many examples of that.

John Dehlin [02:17:30] So a parallel now that I'm kind of drawing. Well, let me ask this. Did you live those 22 years as a faithful Mormon regretting you straying from the path as a teenager? How much of it was like, if only I'd gone to byu, if only I had found that returned missionary, if only I had married in the temple, if only I had lived the law of chastity and the word of wisdom, not had a baby out of wedlock and married my returned missionary at byu, I could have had the model Mormon family versus what ended up happening and kind of beating yourself up over those early decisions.

Megan Conner [02:18:12] I don't think that. I think there maybe was a short phase where I felt that way, but for the most part, I really did feel like everything happens for a reason, you know, And I felt like I went through those experiences in my younger life, and I was. I was pretty open about it. You know, there were a couple of times when I remember bearing my testimony and saying, you know, I was out of the church for a while and I was not happy. And I was promised that if I came to church, came back to church, and I was faithful and I did all the things right, that I could find true happiness, and that's what I was searching for. So I don't think there was a lot of regret about that. It was like, oh, I knew that I wasn't living the gospel, and that's why I was unhappy.

Mindy Caldwell [02:18:59] So you used your own story as a cautionary tale when you would talk to other people.

Megan Conner [02:19:03] Yeah. But it turns out it was really just because I had layers and layers of trauma and not because I was just not living the gospel.

John Dehlin [02:19:10] But you didn't beat yourself up and wallow in a lot of shame?

Megan Conner [02:19:14] No, I really didn't.

John Dehlin [02:19:15] Okay.

Megan Conner [02:19:16] I really felt like that everything that had happened to me up to that point had taught me something and brought me to where I was. And there was a long time when I was faithful that I was sort of on autopilot, you know, doing all of the things that I felt were right and hoping, hoping, hoping that it was going to bring me the happiness that I was promised.

John Dehlin [02:19:41] And how was your happiness level church wise in those 22 years?

Megan Conner [02:19:46] It did not happen that way. And it was also because my marriage was not a good marriage. I think we had a few happy years in the beginning, and then controlling behaviors started creeping in, and then alcoholism and then physical abuse and then emotional abuse. Very much a coercive control situation. But I. Believed that I needed to stay. And I prayed a lot about whether or not I should get a divorce. And I talked to my bishop about it, counseled with my bishop, and he said, you know what? I know that you're a faithful woman, and whatever you decide either way, that I'm behind you on that. That was the one good bishop that I had. He was actually a great, great supportive guy. All the other bishops I had were not supportive, not good guys for the most part. But I stayed for a very long time, much longer than I should have, because I believed that I was doing the right thing and I believed that my kids were better off with us staying together. You know, it wasn't until I sort of had some. Some watershed moments that we can get to later. But. But I stayed in. I stayed in there for probably 10 years longer than I should have.

John Dehlin [02:21:18] So it's 2023. How many years ago were you divorced?

Megan Conner [02:21:22] 2017. So it's been five years.

John Dehlin [02:21:24] Five years ago. Okay. Okay. And the Lori stuff starts coming on the scenes. 2018, when.

Mindy Caldwell [02:21:33] I think the story broke in December of 2019.

Megan Conner [02:21:36] Yeah, but.

John Dehlin [02:21:36] But she starts getting in. She meets Chad. When?

Mindy Caldwell [02:21:40] Oh, okay. Dates. I think she meets Chad in 2018. Yeah, but I think there's evidence that she was reading his books and kind of following him. Like, maybe it's clear back to, like, 2015 or 16.

Lori's Later Marriages and Growing Estrangement

Megan Conner [02:21:51] So let's rewind just a little bit, because I want to talk about Laurie's other marriages and where I was in all of that as well.

Mindy Caldwell [02:22:00] That would be interesting.

Megan Conner [02:22:01] So after. After she divorced Colby's dad, she moved to Austin to be a hairdresser. And I'm trying to think of sort of where. So, yeah, so I would go to visit her in Austin. She would do my hair, and Colby. She would leave Colby with her dad a lot.

John Dehlin [02:22:37] Okay, so you had a relationship with Laurie after you got married?

Megan Conner [02:22:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:22:40] Okay.

Megan Conner [02:22:41] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:22:42] She would do your hair. Yeah, she was a hairdresser.

Megan Conner [02:22:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:22:45] Okay.

Megan Conner [02:22:45] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:22:46] Okay.

Megan Conner [02:22:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:22:47] So she was married to her second husband for how long about Colby's dad?

Megan Conner [02:22:52] I don't. I don't really know. It wasn't very long.

John Dehlin [02:22:54] Okay.

Megan Conner [02:22:56] And so we were sort of, you know, both single moms at the same time, you know, in a way. And then I got married, and then we would get Colby and my oldest daughter together pretty frequently. We would go to, like, the Target Picture Studio and get pictures of the two of them taken together.

John Dehlin [02:23:17] Oh, really?

Megan Conner [02:23:17] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:23:18] Okay, so you're becoming close friends again.

Megan Conner [02:23:20] Yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, she would. She would do my hair. And I don't really remember being invited to her wedding with Joe, her next husband, but I do remember after they got married, visiting them at their home in Austin. And Tylee would have been two or three years old, and that was kind of the last that I. That I was in touch with her, mainly because.

John Dehlin [02:23:49] So Tylee was from her third marriage.

Megan Conner [02:23:52] Right?

John Dehlin [02:23:52] Okay.

Megan Conner [02:23:53] Right. So she married Jo Ryan, they had Tylee together, and then Joe Ryan adopted Colby. So that's why Colby's last name is Ryan. And I don't remember how long they were married. A few years, I think. And when she started to go through her divorce with Joe is when I sort of lost touch with her because there was a lot of really nasty information that came out of that divorce proceeding. She had accused him of sexually abusing both of the kids. And it was one of those situations where, you know, our part of the family didn't have all the information. We only got bits and pieces of things, and it.

John Dehlin [02:24:44] I guess there's the idea that he was abusive, or there's the idea that when divorce happens, it gets messy and people can get falsely accused.

Megan Conner [02:24:51] Right, Exactly. Exactly. And what ended up coming out of that was, I guess they had a custody evaluation, and the evaluator interviewed Colby and interviewed Laurie and interviewed Joe and observed all the situations. And what came out of it was that actually there might have been some inappropriate stuff going on on Lori's side. And I didn't know what to believe, and I didn't have all the information, and we just sort of were losing touch at that point. And I really wanted to stay as far away from that as I could.

John Dehlin [02:25:21] Meaning Laurie had been possibly sexually inappropriate

Megan Conner [02:25:25] in some way, or there was some suggestion that, you know, her talking about sex and sexual things in front of the kids might not have been appropriate,

John Dehlin [02:25:36] you know, and that would have been consistent with her upbringing with. With Jamie and Barry.

Megan Conner [02:25:42] Yeah, for sure.

John Dehlin [02:25:43] Okay.

Megan Conner [02:25:43] Yeah. Janice and Barry.

John Dehlin [02:25:45] Janice.

Megan Conner [02:25:45] Yeah. It's okay. It's hard to keep all the names straight. Okay, so.

John Dehlin [02:25:51] So that's kind of an ugly divorce.

Megan Conner [02:25:53] An ugly divorce. Very ugly. Very, very much had echoes of Stacy's divorce from her husband as well.

John Dehlin [02:26:02] Did that happen before?

Megan Conner [02:26:05] Yeah, yeah. So Stacy got married when I was relatively young. It would have been the late 80s. And they had a very ugly divorce. There was a lot of different allegations that flew around and things like that. And Stacy just was very. She was very sickly a lot. Now, we knew she had type 1 diabetes, but there also was this Epstein Barr virus that we weren't really sure how much of her illness was being caused by that and how much of it was maybe an eating disorder. But it was like the family rumors were never. We never got the full story on everything that was happening. But what did end up happening is that Stacy got divorced, and her husband ended up with custody of their daughter, Melanie, because Stacy was unable to care for Melanie because she was just too sick. And also, Steve did not want Melanie around the Coxes, and he was very adamant that that was a very unhealthy situation, and he did not want her daughter raised anywhere near them. So he ended up getting awarded full custody of Melanie.

John Dehlin [02:27:28] And I think you had mentioned previously that maybe it came out in Stacy's Divorce that she had possibly been sexually abused by her dad, Barry.

Megan Conner [02:27:39] Yeah, she. Stacy. So that. So what came out in the divorce documents is that Steve alleged that Stacy had confided in him that she'd been sexually abused by Barry.

John Dehlin [02:27:52] By Barry.

Megan Conner [02:27:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:27:53] And so Steve wouldn't have wanted his kids around Barry.

Megan Conner [02:27:56] Exactly.

John Dehlin [02:27:57] Or Janice.

Megan Conner [02:27:58] Exactly.

John Dehlin [02:27:59] Okay.

Megan Conner [02:28:00] Yeah.

Mindy Caldwell [02:28:01] There's a very inflammatory incident about Barry going into Steve Cope's place of work. And. And he confronted Steve and threatened him physically. And I think he quoted scripture at him and then like grabbed him and threw him up against a wall or something. And one of. One of Steve Cope's co workers called the police and I think charges were pressed against him for assault.

Megan Conner [02:28:37] Yeah. Does the family story is that during that assault that Barry shoved the pages of the divorce decree down Steve's shirt.

Mindy Caldwell [02:28:49] Wow, that's interesting.

Megan Conner [02:28:51] Had him up against the wall and was quoting scripture at him.

John Dehlin [02:28:53] And what was going on there?

Megan Conner [02:28:56] I mean, Barry was angry that Steve was divorcing Stacy and telling all the family secrets and trying to take Melanie away. And he was trying to intervene in the best way that he knew how.

John Dehlin [02:29:10] Family secrets, like potentially abuse other things.

Megan Conner [02:29:13] Potentially abuse. And that maybe Stacy had an eating disorder and, you know, just airing.

John Dehlin [02:29:18] Which would have. Which could be associated with all the fat shaming, diet culture, appearance culture.

Mindy Caldwell [02:29:27] And he said in those. In those proceedings that we have taken them to Hawaii and Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm. They do have a thing for Knott's Berry Farm, which is interesting. It comes up later with Chad and Laurie when they're brand new married. Right after Tammy dies, they take Chad's kids to Knott's Berry Farm. So it's interesting that that place keeps coming up in this story, but. So he just was kind of bragging about all the material things that he had given Steve. And I just think that it was pretty glaring that I think that's how he perceived to be a good dad, as he's giving his kids a lot of material things and these things and maybe not meeting their emotional needs.

Megan Conner [02:30:09] Right. And there was very much this idea of like, I spent all this money on you, so now you owe me your loyalty.

Mindy Caldwell [02:30:16] Yes.

Stacy Cox's Death and Alex's Role

Megan Conner [02:30:17] So, okay, so to sort of go back to Stacy for a minute. I do want to talk about her death. And I have to. I have to give my apologies to Lauren if she'll eventually watch this, because I. I didn't tell the whole story because I wanted to be respectful of family members. But the more I thought about that, the more I thought it's a story that needs to be told. If anything, it's one of the most important stories in this entire thing because you'll understand why. So at this time, Stacy is living with Janice and Barry in San Antonio. And I believe at this time, I want to say that Laurie was married to Joe at this time, but I don't know that for sure because I can't remember what the years were of her marriage to Joe, but that would have seemed to be about right. Anyway, So Alex was also living in San Antonio, and he had his own apartment, which was kind of a rare thing because he was very much a couch surfer. And he did live with Janice and Barry for quite some time. And so Stacy was in this state where she had been sick a lot, and she wasn't doing very well managing her diabetes. And Alex, even though he lived in San Antonio, he and I didn't spend a whole lot of time together. But every once in a while he would call me up or I would call him up, and we would get together and have takeout and watch a movie. That was kind of what we would do when we hung out. What's strange, though, is that we had gone a long time without really talking to each other, and a lot of my calls went unreturned. And I just thought, well, he's probably just busy or whatever. But one night he called me kind of out of the blue and asked if I wanted to hang out. And I was like, sure, you know, happy to be finally, you know, talking to him again. And so he got some takeout, and it was probably Taco Bell, if I want to be real about it, came over to my house and we were watching a movie. And I just remember he wasn't as jovial and joking as he normally is. He was a lot quieter. Normally you couldn't really watch a movie because he was constantly making a joke or a comment or something. And he was much more quiet than normal. And about a third of the way through the movie, he actually stopped the movie. And he said, I've been really worried about Stacy lately. And I said, what's going on? And he said, well, you know how sick she's been, and you know that she has really struggled with her diabetes. And I think she's been really depressed lately, and I'm just really worried about her. And I said, okay, well, what do you want to do about it? You know? He said, well, I'm just. The reason that I'm really concerned is because tonight she told me that she was just going to take a big shot and go to bed. And I didn't know very much about type 1 diabetes at the time, but now that I do, I have a son who's type one diabetic. And I know that if you take a huge shot of insulin, your blood sugar is going to go way low, and that's very dangerous. You can end up not waking up if you don't have somebody there to wake you up when your sugar goes low to get you to eat something. So at the time, I didn't really know what that meant. Take a big shot and go to sleep. Does that mean that if you take a big shot that you're going to sleep longer or better or whatever? And he said, I'm just really worried that she might do something to hurt herself. And he said, will you come with me to my parents house to go check on her? And I said, yeah, sure, I'd be happy to do that.

Mindy Caldwell [02:34:12] So did you already mention that the parents were out of town or they were in Hawaii?

Megan Conner [02:34:17] Yeah. So when we're on their way over there, I was asking him, where is everybody else? Why is nobody with her? And he said that they were all in Hawaii. So Janice, Barry, Lori, Colby and Summer had all gone to Hawaii, and Adam was working, and so it was just Alex and Stacy. And Alex was in his own apartment. So Stacy was at the Cox house by herself. And so he told me that, you know, they were all on vacation. So we drove over there, and I don't really remember if the door was locked or how we got in, but when we opened the door, all the lights were off, everything was dark. And I know Stacy had her own room, but what was odd to me was that we went straight upstairs to Janice and Barry's room, and Alex was like, leading the way, and I was like, why would she be up here? He's like, well, their bed's more comfortable or something. Like, I can't remember what he said. And we go in there, and she's lying on the bed and she's sleeping, and Alex goes over and tries to shake her and wake her, and she won't wake up. And he calls her name and calls her name again, and then he shakes her harder and she won't wake up. And I remember not really understanding what was going on. I just thought, like, I was like, that's weird. Why won't she wake up? I mean, I could see she was breathing. She looked like she was fine to me, but she just wouldn't wake up. And so Alex called 911 and the paramedics got there, and almost immediately, one of the paramedics got up on the bed next to her and thumped her really hard in the sternum with his two fingers and called her name. And she wouldn't wake up. And so he immediately got off the bed. They immediately brought a stretcher up the stairs, and they started cutting her clothes away. And I just, like, turned away, and I was like, what is going on? Why does everybody know what's happening except for me? Like, everybody obviously knows this is very serious, but all I can tell is that she can't. She's not waking up. So they get her on the stretcher and take her to the hospital. And Alex and I sat there and waited for the doctors to come out and tell us what was going on. And I called my parents, and my parents came, and they came out and told us that she was in a diabetic coma and that she was not going to wake up. I just. It took me a long time to absorb those words. It was kind of like they echoed in my head for a long time. And my parents were there, and so I thought, well, they'll call Janice and Barry and they'll let them know what's going on. And they did. And gradually, over the next few hours, we sort of started to figure out what was happening. And they did keep Stacy at the hospital for a few more days while my parents arranged for hospice care. And I thought that, you know, everybody would come home and, you know, and be there with Stacy. But they didn't come home. They stayed in Hawaii. And I remember when they transferred Stacy to the hospice facility, and I came in, and right after they had gotten her settled, and Alex showed up shortly after that.

John Dehlin [02:37:59] And hospice from this event.

Megan Conner [02:38:05] Yeah. So they kept her in the hospital for just a few days, and when they realized she wasn't going to revive, they sent her to hospice care because they knew she only had a few days left.

John Dehlin [02:38:14] So you were around during this time? Time?

Megan Conner [02:38:17] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:38:18] Around. What year would this have been?

Megan Conner [02:38:19] This was 1998.

John Dehlin [02:38:21] Okay.

Megan Conner [02:38:22] So when Alex showed up at. At the hospice care, I kind of asked him. I was like, where have you been? You know, it's been a couple days. And my parents had been there, and I was there, but there Alex was nowhere to be seen, and he.

Mindy Caldwell [02:38:37] Alex is nowhere to be seen. And Janice Berry and the rest of the family are in Hawaii.

Megan Conner [02:38:42] Yeah. While their oldest child is dying.

Mindy Caldwell [02:38:44] Is dying. It's such an absurd and heartbreaking story to me. I've always. I could never make Sense of this story. Did they know that she was really

Megan Conner [02:38:53] sick when they went on the trip? Yes. Well, so, yeah, she had been sick, Lee. You know what I mean?

Mindy Caldwell [02:39:00] But maybe there's more to it.

Megan Conner [02:39:02] Well, I think in light of everything that's happened, we cannot ignore the fact that Janice and Barry had told Stacy over and over, maybe it's your time to go. She'd been sick for a long time. She was somewhat of a burden on Barry and Janice, you know, not working, racking up all these medical bills. At one point, Barry was giving her morphine. And I didn't think she was sick enough to need something like that. But I didn't know for sure because, again, you know, family secrets and everything. And I think we just can't ignore the possibility that they went to Hawaii and Alex performed a mercy killing. I really think that's what happened, Especially in light of everything else. Looking back on how suspicious the circumstances were and how he used me basically as an alibi to go with him to Barry and Janice's house and find Stacy together so that he wouldn't be the last person that saw her alive.

Mindy Caldwell [02:39:59] Wow, Megan. And that he mentioned to you he planted the idea that Stacy had been suggesting taking a shot, a huge shot

Megan Conner [02:40:10] of insulin, and setting it up and telling me she'd been depressed.

Mindy Caldwell [02:40:16] It's suspicious, for sure. And that she wasn't in the same bedroom that she normally was in.

Megan Conner [02:40:23] And that became sort of the family rumor, was that she'd been depressed. And maybe she did do something to hurt herself. You know, maybe that's what happened. And what I was about to say is that when Alex finally did show up at hospice and I asked him where he'd been, he told me that he'd been shopping, and he went out and bought golf clubs and new comforter and all of this on Stacy's credit card. And when I asked him about that, I said, why would you do that? She's obviously dying. And he said, well, I don't think she would mind. She would want me to have stuff, and she's not gonna need it. So it was, like, very much this callous, unfeeling, unemotional response to the situation of, like, what's in it? What can I get out of this? As long as we're here and she's dying anyway, Might as well run up her credit cards, because she'll never have to pay him back, and neither will I.

Mindy Caldwell [02:41:23] This is such an interesting story that I think so many people who have followed this case have had these same Questions. And I think as an isolated incident, who knows? But I think now when you have the whole story of what Alex is capable of and some of these mentalities that this family has subscribed to, you know, some of the ideas. I don't know. It's interesting.

John Dehlin [02:41:52] Would that make Barry and Janice potentially complicit or conspirators?

Megan Conner [02:41:57] I would think so, but I don't know what the legal requirements are to bring charges on that. And I did. After all of this started coming to light, and, you know, with everything that was happening, I did call the FBI and tell them my suspicions, really. And they advised me to contact the law enforcement in the county where the crime occurred, and I did, and I made a report. And, you know, unfortunately, Stacy was cremated,

Mindy Caldwell [02:42:32] and everybody gets cremated.

Megan Conner [02:42:35] Yeah. And so that was. I mean, there's pretty much no. No way for us to ever know or to ever hold anybody accountable for that, because you have. I mean, I guess we could look up the medical records again. I remember there being some kind of accusation about alcohol in her system, in her bloodstream, but I didn't ever know her to consume alcohol. So I don't know.

John Dehlin [02:43:01] And Steve wouldn't have been around to protect Stacey from Alex.

Megan Conner [02:43:05] No. He was away, and he had Melanie, and, you know, I think he had remarried at this point.

Mindy Caldwell [02:43:13] Yeah.

Megan Conner [02:43:13] They were separate. Yeah. So my dad was able to get in touch with Steve and tell him what was happening, and they were able to come and say goodbye to her before she died.

Mindy Caldwell [02:43:25] And I want to clarify. When I said everyone is cremated, I'm just meaning these critical cases where some answers would be nice.

Megan Conner [02:43:33] Right.

Mindy Caldwell [02:43:34] Stacy, Jo, Ryan, Alex. Was Alex not cremated as well? He was. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:43:44] So were Janice and Barry around when Stacy died?

Megan Conner [02:43:50] No, they were in Hawaii.

John Dehlin [02:43:51] They were still in Hawaii when she died.

Megan Conner [02:43:53] They were in Hawaii when she died.

Mindy Caldwell [02:43:54] And they had the opportunity because your parents had arranged the hospice. There was time for them to come home.

Megan Conner [02:44:00] They had days and days and days.

Mindy Caldwell [02:44:04] I'm just. I'm just stunned by that story. Did they have any explanation as to why they. Why they wouldn't come home? Do they feel like they'd already made their peace with her?

Megan Conner [02:44:14] Maybe that was part of it. I don't really know because I wasn't privy to the conversations between my dad and Janice. And if

John Dehlin [02:44:26] we're just all speculating here. But if Stacy had had suggested. Sorry to Steve. That maybe Barry had abused Stacy, and if Stacy were working through having been a victim, she could have been estranged from. From Barry and Janice.

Megan Conner [02:44:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:44:51] As A result of those types of.

Mindy Caldwell [02:44:53] She was living in. She was living at their house at the time. So they were. They were taking care of her as she was dealing with her diabetes. So it sounds like there's at least a shallow relationship there.

John Dehlin [02:45:06] And then if Alex did it, would he have done it through the insulin, or would he have done it, are you thinking, through some type of poison?

Megan Conner [02:45:16] I don't know. It's obviously speculation at this point, but, I mean, he had access to her supplies, and there's a million ways you could introduce something into, you know, into the insulin vial or the needle or, you know, something else. Or maybe he. He really did just give her a big shot.

Mindy Caldwell [02:45:37] I just. I find that part so interesting that he went out of his way to tell you that that's what he claims Stacey had said. It feels just like he's maybe planting that story, you know, as part of, you know, an explanation.

John Dehlin [02:45:55] Yeah, but that's pretty dark if mom and dad say to son, take care of daughter. You know what I mean?

Mindy Caldwell [02:46:03] Or if he takes. Or if he just takes it on himself without the, you know, necessarily upon instruction of his parents. But maybe if he just took it on himself. And I just think him using her credit cards while she's literally dying just shows just such callous disregard for.

John Dehlin [02:46:23] Plus, not being around while she's in hospice. Right.

Megan Conner [02:46:27] No remorse, no responsibility, and no feeling.

John Dehlin [02:46:33] And Laurie wasn't there either. Laurie didn't come back either.

Megan Conner [02:46:35] Right.

John Dehlin [02:46:37] What about Summer?

Megan Conner [02:46:39] They were all together.

John Dehlin [02:46:41] Okay, so. Well, that's dark.

Megan Conner [02:46:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:46:44] Thanks for sharing.

Megan Conner [02:46:45] Yeah. I mean, it's like I said, whenever all of this stuff started happening, I had to start reexamining every interaction that I had with this family and thinking about it through these new. Through this new lens of who are these people really?

Mindy Caldwell [02:47:01] And what are they capable of?

Megan Conner [02:47:02] And what are they capable of? And there was a time when I felt like I was in danger and like my kids were, too. So.

John Dehlin [02:47:10] Were there any other suspicious deaths?

Mindy Caldwell [02:47:16] I think. Have you talked about Joe Ryan?

Megan Conner [02:47:19] Yeah, we haven't. So we were just about to talk about Joe when we kind of went back to Stacy a little bit. So. Yeah. So during the divorce proceedings with Joe, Laurie had accused him of abusing both of the children. And Alex got really angry and upset about that and decided that he was going to take matters into his own hands. And the family rumor now is that the plan was for him to tase Joe and throw him in the trunk of a car and go take care of him somehow.

John Dehlin [02:47:57] Dang.

Mindy Caldwell [02:47:58] It's Dark, John.

Megan Conner [02:47:59] It really dark. It's like, well, you abused it, children. So I feel justified, you know. So he did actually get Joe with a Taser and Joe ended up having some heart complications and things like that afterwards because of it. And Alex did serve time for that assault as well.

Mindy Caldwell [02:48:21] I think that's starting to fall into the whole narrative of Alex being Laurie's protector. She was very, very vocal about Alex being her protector, and I think he took that role very seriously. And then, especially when Chad came onto the scene and they talked about Alex being Laurie's protector and how he had, you know, this beyond earthly, you know, previous probations and this was his special reason for being on the earth at this time was to be Laurie's protector. And it sounds like the seeds of that, of that idea were planted even before she met Chad. You know, that Alex had always just kind of been her. Her right hand man and would take care of the thing, maybe the undesirable things that she didn't want to face.

John Dehlin [02:49:24] You hear suggestions that somehow Laurie and. And Alex may have had some inappropriate, I don't know, communications or behaviors towards each other, implying weird sexual stuff. Did we talk about that?

Megan Conner [02:49:38] No. I mean, we touched on it a little bit. I did hear the call with Alex's ex wife about their inappropriate touching and things like that, and I wasn't really around them enough as adults to witness any of that. But it's not surprising given, given the context of the family and, you know, lots of touchy feeliness and, you know, just grabbing each other's body parts for, you know, to make fun of them or to, you know, make a joke or something like that. So it's. I, you know, I don't. We can only speculate as to what that relationship was really like, if there was actually any, you know, sexuality there. But I would be surprised, honestly, if that was the case because I think Alex got his needs met elsewhere. And, you know, I don't think there was necessarily any real desire to be with his sister in that way. I know we're talking about super dark things here, but. Okay, but we can't know. You know, we also, you know, we don't know if Laurie also may have been abused, you know, by Barry. If he abused one daughter, it stands to reason he may have abused all his daughters. But we don't know that for sure. We can only speculate. And I know it's. It's probably. Well, I. I know from firsthand experience that nobody in the family wants to believe that Barry is A sexual abuser. Nobody does. And there is a division in the family about people who think that he is and people who think that he isn't.

John Dehlin [02:51:13] Remind me if Barry and Janice are still alive.

Megan Conner [02:51:15] Yeah.

Mindy Caldwell [02:51:15] Oh, yeah.

Megan Conner [02:51:16] Oh, still alive, still married.

John Dehlin [02:51:18] Oh, okay. So you were going to say. Yeah. I remember reading about some suspicious things around Joe's death.

Megan Conner [02:51:29] Yeah. And maybe you know more about this than I do. Really? Because I just kind of read about it after. After the fact. But I know that he was found in suspicious circumstances. And Laurie did collect some life insurance, did she not?

Mindy Caldwell [02:51:44] Right. I think that was an underlying theme of, you know, of all of these deaths was what she could gain financially from people dying. And I should have brushed up on Jo Ryan, but there was the allegations of abuse and then the confrontations with Alex. And then, if I remember correctly, Joe was deceased and Laurie and the kids were gone. And I don't think that he was found deceased until several days later.

Megan Conner [02:52:18] Yeah.

Mindy Caldwell [02:52:20] And that he was cremated. And maybe we'll never know what happened to him. But I think it's important to note that Laurie is on. She's recorded talking about her relationship with Jo Ryan, where she's at. I believe she's at one of these little fireside conferences, and she's presenting it as a spiritual faith building experience that she's had. But she admits that she had murderous feelings towards Joe. And she said. And she admits that she talked to her bishop about it and she says, I'm either going to commit murder or I need to go to the temple. And people are laughing in the audience and I'm like, oh, my goodness, this is wild. So I just don't know if we'll ever know with Joe. But I think. I do think you have to look at people's patterns. And I feel like there's a pattern here with Laurie and people dying, collecting money, moving on to something else.

John Dehlin [02:53:26] And that Alex could have been involved, right?

Mindy Caldwell [02:53:28] Oh, absolutely.

John Dehlin [02:53:29] With Joe.

Mindy Caldwell [02:53:30] Yeah, absolutely. I think if Laurie and. Or Alex, if they're responsible, I think certainly they probably did that as a team.

Megan Conner [02:53:39] Yeah. I think that Joe's sister, Annie Cushing, is trying to get the interest of law enforcement re involved in Joe's death. And I think she may have a petition out there.

Mindy Caldwell [02:53:52] Yeah. I'm so glad you brought her up, Annie. So this is Tylee's Aunt Annie, who has been very vocal in trying to get some exposure on this part of the story.

Megan Conner [02:54:03] Yeah. So I would love if people would find out more about that and we could try to help her get the recognition and attention that that case deserves.

Mindy Caldwell [02:54:14] Right. I agree completely.

John Dehlin [02:54:19] Okay, so during this time, was Lori ever telling you, man, my life has just gone in the crappers. What's wrong with my life? Things aren't working out for me, any of that kind of thing.

Megan Conner [02:54:30] Oh, no. Those words never would have come out of her mouth. No, no. She was very much like, no matter what was happening, it was all good. Everything's good, everything's great, and all the

Mindy Caldwell [02:54:42] bad things were someone else's fault.

Megan Conner [02:54:44] Someone else's fault? Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:54:45] So you never saw her get down or discouraged or express sadness or frustration?

Megan Conner [02:54:51] I never saw those emotions from her.

John Dehlin [02:54:53] Interesting. I mean, that. Going back to the cat story.

Megan Conner [02:54:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:54:59] It's just like a certain set of. Of emotions, and it's. It's about her, and it's. And it's not so concerned about other people and just kind of what. What's going on with her.

Megan Conner [02:55:12] Right.

John Dehlin [02:55:15] And maybe angry at other people, but angry if they're getting in her way.

Megan Conner [02:55:20] Yeah. Angry if they're preventing her from getting what she wants. Really? Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:55:25] Was her Wheel of Fortune experience, was that during her marriage to Joe?

Megan Conner [02:55:29] I don't remember if that was. I think it came after, when she was married to Charles.

Mindy Caldwell [02:55:34] She does talk about a marriage on the Wheel of Fortune story.

John Dehlin [02:55:38] I thought that was in Austin.

Mindy Caldwell [02:55:40] It might have been Joe.

Megan Conner [02:55:42] Oh, I wish I could remember. I believe she met Charles in Austin also.

Mindy Caldwell [02:55:47] Okay, so it could have been.

Megan Conner [02:55:48] Charles was cutting his hair, and that's how they met.

Mindy Caldwell [02:55:52] That's how they met. That's right.

Megan Conner [02:55:54] And. And I seem to remember that. Well, yeah, because he got baptized. I. I seem to remember being there for his baptism and meeting him briefly. And so that would have had to have happened in. In Texas, In. In Austin, most likely. But also my memory is a little fuzzy in those years because I was going through my own terrible stuff.

Mindy Caldwell [02:56:17] Yes. Yes.

John Dehlin [02:56:21] Okay, so Joe dies. Does Joe die before she marries Charles?

Megan Conner [02:56:28] I don't know.

John Dehlin [02:56:29] And was there a long time between Joe and Charles or. Not that long.

Megan Conner [02:56:32] I don't remember. Okay, I'm sorry. This is the part. This is the part that gets fuzzy for me because I lost touch with her at this point, you know, and she wasn't coming to all the family functions and things like that that were happening in San Antonio, so I didn't. I just didn't really see her very often after this point.

John Dehlin [02:56:52] Okay, so at some point she marries Charles. At some point they moved to Arizona. Correct. Okay. And it would have been while married to Charles that She learns about Chad.

Megan Conner [02:57:05] Yes. So this part I do have a little bit more information about. So I know that she and Charles had been living in Houston and that's where his business was, and they had adopted JJ at this point. And then. Yes, this is when. About around 2018, when the family says that she started getting really interested in these prepper podcasts and starting becoming. She started becoming more involved with the end times kind of prophecies thing. I mean, that was something she talked about a lot anyway. But I feel like that was when the family said she started really diving into those kinds of things, and she started going to the temple every day at this point. And there was a time where she was. She and Tylee had gone to Hawaii, and she was, you know, basically away from Charles for an extended period of time.

Mindy Caldwell [02:58:08] A couple of months, I think, when Charles had jj.

Megan Conner [02:58:11] Yeah.

Mindy Caldwell [02:58:12] Yeah. So she. She went to Hawaii with Tylee. It was in the 50 something days. 56 days, 59 days. Yeah, it was a long time that they weren't like, officially separated, but she just took off with Tylee and left Charles with jj.

Megan Conner [02:58:27] Yeah. And when she came back from that, I believe, is when they started talking about getting divorced. And Laurie started saying weird things that Charles didn't understand. And then he went on a business trip, and while he was gone, she cleared some money out of the business account and took his truck away from the airport. And, you know, when I heard about that, I thought, well, that sounds pretty on brand for Laurie. If she's upset with her husband, she's gonna doshe's gonna act out in that way.

Mindy Caldwell [02:59:01] She's gonna be vindictive.

Megan Conner [02:59:02] Yeah, be vindictive and try to get what she wants and needs, you know, before things go south. And then Charles actually rented that home for her in Arizona. And I think they chose that spot because by this time, Janice and Barry are living there, Summer's living there, and, you know, she wanted to be around the rest of the family.

John Dehlin [02:59:23] So Janice and Barry moved to Arizona. So they all kind of left Texas at some point and moved to Arizona.

Megan Conner [02:59:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:59:32] Okay.

Mindy Caldwell [02:59:33] One interesting thing about this time frame is that Laurie is putting out there all these accusations about Charles and my husband and I call this. You spot it, you got it. Like, so she's accusing him of having affairs. She's accusing Adam of wanting to kill her for her life insurance. And perhaps that was later on in the timeline, but she's. So her brother. Yeah, her brother Adam, who was actually one that Charles confided in and was seeking poor Charles, he was seeking help. He knew that Laurie was talking crazy, you know, when she was saying that he had been taken over by these evil spirits that had names, you know, Ned Schneider and Hipplos and Garrett. And I mean, she. And he's trying to get help, and he's trying to tell people that he feels like his life is in danger, and he just. It just falls on deaf ears, and it's really sad. And so he arranges on, actually, on the morning that he was killed, he had arranged to meet with Adam, Laurie's brother, to try to talk some sense into her. And meanwhile, she's lodging these accusations at him for being unfaithful. And, you know, some of the same things that she's engaged in herself.

John Dehlin [03:00:49] Kind of like she did you when you first came to Austin.

Megan Conner [03:00:53] Right. Which is a very, very narcissistic thing, right, that narcissists do, where they will accuse other people of doing the very things that they're doing in order to deflect attention away from them and to

John Dehlin [03:01:05] project on others what they're doing.

Megan Conner [03:01:07] Right. And at this time, I actually was living in San Antonio still, and my oldest daughter was living in Rexburg. She had gotten married already and her husband was going to school there. And it was summertime, and I was on my way up to go visit my daughter, but we were driving and I needed a place to break up my journey because it's like a long. It's like a 26 hour drive from San Antonio to Rexburg. And so I contacted Summer and I said, hey, is it okay if I come and stay with you guys overnight while I'm on my way up, you know, to Idaho? She said, sure, we would love to see you, you know, come on over. And I sent another message a few days before we were going to leave and didn't get a response. And so the day before we left, I said, you know, hey, if you guys are busy, it's totally fine. I can stay somewhere else. But I would still really love to see everybody, and we'd love to just come through and, like, have dinner with you or something like that. And got no response. So I went ahead and stayed with another friend in Gilbert and then went and drove up to Rexburg. And it was just like two days later that a family member texted me and told me Charles had been killed.

Mindy Caldwell [03:02:23] Oh, my goodness, Megan.

Megan Conner [03:02:26] So it was.

John Dehlin [03:02:27] So you could have been in town when that all went down.

Megan Conner [03:02:31] And I'm really grateful that I wasn't. But it was shocking, to say the least, to hear that Charles had been killed. And when I started to learn some of the circumstances, Adam's wife, Nicole, reached out to me to talk to me about it. And she. She indicated the same as you, that Charles had reached out to Adam for help because he really thought Laurie was going crazy. And she had said by this time that she was going to kill him.

Mindy Caldwell [03:03:01] Right.

Megan Conner [03:03:01] And she had said all those crazy things like, I could shoot you and I would have an angel to destroy your body or to dispose of your body, you know, And I was learning all of this from Adam's wife. And she also told me that, you know, Alex lived nearby. There was no reason for him to be staying the night at Laurie's house. He had just bought a gun three days prior.

Mindy Caldwell [03:03:26] Oh, it was a total ambush.

Megan Conner [03:03:27] Very clearly set up, planned. Very clearly planned in advance and very clearly set up. And that was so incredibly shocking and disturbing to me that they'd done this, you know.

Mindy Caldwell [03:03:44] So you learned initially that Alex was the shooter and that there had been. Because some family members, it sounds like they heard these really vague details in the beginning about, you know, Laurie lied to Charles Sons about how he died, and, you know, Chad lied to Tammy's family about how Charles died. And so there's all these, you know, stories that aren't. Don't sound as bad that we're floating around. But you did hear the real story, it sounds like from the very beginning, from Adams later.

Megan Conner [03:04:14] Yeah. Several days later. And Laurie had even lied to her own nephew who was staying there, you know, with them.

Mindy Caldwell [03:04:22] Oh, it's Zach.

Megan Conner [03:04:23] Zach, yeah. And had told him that Charles had a heart attack.

Mindy Caldwell [03:04:27] Wow.

Megan Conner [03:04:28] And then he, you know, found out from Alex that, no, Alex actually shot him. And so, I mean, this was just beyond anything to me. It was like, okay, there's always been this weirdness. There's always been, you know, some strange stories and some strange behaviors and some definitely unhealthy dynamics and all that kind of stuff. But this is like the next level of something that I never, ever expected was gonna happen.

John Dehlin [03:04:56] You probably already mentioned this, but did you ever meet Charles?

Megan Conner [03:05:00] I think I met him when he got baptized.

John Dehlin [03:05:02] Okay. Other than that, though.

Megan Conner [03:05:03] But that was it.

John Dehlin [03:05:04] Didn't ever hang out with them or get to know them?

Megan Conner [03:05:06] No.

John Dehlin [03:05:06] And so who all was in Arizona at the time of the murder? Did we say Barry and Jamie?

Megan Conner [03:05:12] Janice.

John Dehlin [03:05:13] Janice were both in Arizona?

Megan Conner [03:05:14] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:05:15] So, like, it's Barry, Janice, Alex, Adam and Laurie. They're all there.

Megan Conner [03:05:23] So Summer was living in Arizona also.

John Dehlin [03:05:26] Also Summer.

Megan Conner [03:05:27] So Barry, Janice, and Summer were There, Laurie was there, Alex was there. Adam was actually living in another state at the time, but he was traveling

Mindy Caldwell [03:05:37] to Arizona to help with this intervention to try to help Laurie.

Megan Conner [03:05:44] Charles had contacted him because he felt like Adam was a really level headed person.

Mindy Caldwell [03:05:51] Maybe he could speak some sense to Alex and Laurie.

Megan Conner [03:05:54] That was his hope, I believe that, that Adam would come in and try to talk with Laurie. And Janice had said famously at this point, oh, Laurie's not hurting anybody with these beliefs. Just leave her alone. You know, she's going to the temple every day, she's obviously fine.

John Dehlin [03:06:12] And this is a hard question, but like, clearly, I mean, Stacy had died and she wasn't well before she died. We know Alex and we know Laurie were Adam and Summer among sort of more normal, healthy of the five siblings. And I guess that's an impossible.

Megan Conner [03:06:30] Well, from what I observed, yes, but there, I mean, there's always going to be some unhealthy stuff that comes out of a family like that. And if you don't go work on those unhealthy issues, you're going to perpetuate them. But I did perceive that Summer's marriage relationship seemed to be relatively normal. And, you know, her mothering seemed to be relatively normal. She seemed like a normal, good mom to me, you know, and that was one of the reasons we kept in touch because Laurie seemed to be like all over the place doing her own thing. But Summer was in the, in, in one place, you know, and then Adam, you know, going around to different radio stations and stuff like that. But other than that, he and Nicole seemed to have a good relationship for the most part.

John Dehlin [03:07:18] He remained a dj.

Megan Conner [03:07:19] Yeah. Oh, yeah, okay. And he seemed to be a good dad and they seemed to have a relatively normal family life.

John Dehlin [03:07:26] Have Summer and Adam done interviews, like about Laurie and all that?

Mindy Caldwell [03:07:31] I think Summer only did one interview with her mom, Janice, on one of the News programs, Dateliner 2020 or something before the bodies were found. And she mentions that in her phone

John Dehlin [03:07:41] call while she was believing.

Mindy Caldwell [03:07:44] While she was believing that Laurie's story. And so when she's blasting her on the phone call and saying, we defended you on tv, that's what she's referring to. But to my knowledge, I don't think that Summer has done any other interviews to this point.

Megan Conner [03:07:56] I don't think so. Adam did appear in something. I didn't watch it or see it, so I don't know exactly what it was, but it was some sort of date line or 2020 something that was focused mainly on his story and I

Mindy Caldwell [03:08:11] know that Adam's son Zach, who had some exposure with Charles and Laurie's family, he. He has given a couple interviews as well.

Megan Conner [03:08:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:08:20] Is Summer still married to her original husband? And is Adam still married to his original wife?

Megan Conner [03:08:26] I believe they're divorced now.

John Dehlin [03:08:27] Okay.

Megan Conner [03:08:28] I think that's really recent.

John Dehlin [03:08:30] Okay, so when Laurie was getting into the prepper Chad Daybell stuff, did you catch wind of that prior to Charles's death, when she was kind of going down that road?

Megan Conner [03:08:43] No. The only thing that there were. There were a few social media posts that Janice made and that Summer made that Laurie was going to the temple every single day. And I thought that was very odd, but other than that, I didn't hear anything.

John Dehlin [03:08:59] Okay, so you and Laurie weren't in

Megan Conner [03:09:01] touch as she was, and she wasn't on social media, and that's probably the main reason, because that's how Summer and I kept touched, was through Facebook and Instagram, and Lori really wasn't involved in that, and so I didn't see updates from her.

John Dehlin [03:09:16] I mean, this is a stereotyping narcissist, but you would think a narcissist would be all over Facebook.

Megan Conner [03:09:21] You would think so. Yeah. You would think so.

Mindy Caldwell [03:09:24] She is a goddess at this point. She doesn't need social media. She's got a bigger mission to fulfill.

Charles Vallow's Death and Its Aftermath

John Dehlin [03:09:32] Okay, so once Charles dies, then do you have any interaction with Laurie?

Megan Conner [03:09:39] No. At this point, I was so horrified with what had happened that I wanted to distance myself even more.

John Dehlin [03:09:50] Did you reach out to Summer and go, what's up with Lori? Kind of thing?

Megan Conner [03:09:53] I actually. I don't think I reached out to her immediately when Charles died. I did reach out to her once the kids were missing. And most of the information that I got came to me from Adam's wife, Nicole, because she was in regular contact with Kay and Larry Woodcock, who were JJ's grandparents, and she knew that side of the story, and so she was the only one in the family system who knew both sides of the story.

Mindy Caldwell [03:10:25] That's interesting. This is Nicole, Adam's wife.

Megan Conner [03:10:27] Mm.

Mindy Caldwell [03:10:29] So she. Did she reach out to the Woodcocks, do you know? Or did the Woodcocks reach out to her to try to get some help from the Cox family?

Megan Conner [03:10:35] I think there may have been some just mutual going back and forth there, because Charles did reach out to Adam, and then once Charles was killed, I think that there was already that connection there. There was that connection there, you know? Yeah. So I think that's. That's how that all happened. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:10:52] Do we know approximately the time between Charles's death and Lori and JJ and Tylee's death is that year?

Mindy Caldwell [03:11:00] Yeah.

Megan Conner [03:11:01] Charles was killed on July 11th.

John Dehlin [03:11:04] What year?

Mindy Caldwell [03:11:04] 2019.

Megan Conner [03:11:05] 2019. And then JJ, his last known date of being alive was September 9th, and then Tylee's was September 22nd.

John Dehlin [03:11:16] Okay, so the kids were killed within

Mindy Caldwell [03:11:18] a few months of Charles, and then Tammy was. Was gone on October 19th of the same year, 2019. So between July and October, Tammy, then Tylee, then JJ. Excuse me. Charles, then. Then Tylee, then JJ, then Tammy, and

John Dehlin [03:11:39] then what about Alex?

Mindy Caldwell [03:11:40] Then Alex dies in December of 2019.

John Dehlin [03:11:43] So is that six deaths within a five, six month period?

Megan Conner [03:11:49] Yeah.

Mindy Caldwell [03:11:49] Yep.

Megan Conner [03:11:51] And I remember it's a trail of death. Yeah. Jeez. I remember getting a phone call from Adam's wife asking me if my daughter was still in Rexburg. So at this time, Charles had been killed. And it was before we knew the kids were missing. And Nicole called me and she said, is your daughter still in Rexburg? And I said, yeah, she's. You know, her husband goes to school there. And she said, you need to make sure that she stays away from Lori and Alex because they're in Rexburg now.

John Dehlin [03:12:22] So your daughter was in the same town as.

Mindy Caldwell [03:12:26] And so they're getting intel that things are getting dangerous and they're afraid for the safety of the family.

Megan Conner [03:12:32] Yeah. So I asked her. I was like, what is going on? And that's when she. She started telling me about Chad's teachings and the darkness system, the light and dark system. And that was when she told me that Chad has a list of everybody in the family and whether they're light or dark. And I think I went out the next day and put a security system on my home. I, that day called my daughter and said, if they reach out to you, please do not answer their calls. If they come to your house, don't answer the door. I said, don't have anything to do with these people. There is something horrible going on here.

John Dehlin [03:13:09] So did your daughter have a relationship with Aunt Lori?

Megan Conner [03:13:13] She did.

John Dehlin [03:13:13] In Rexburg?

Megan Conner [03:13:14] Well, no. I mean.

John Dehlin [03:13:16] Cause Lori moved to Rexburg after Arizona.

Megan Conner [03:13:18] Right, right. That's where they went as soon as Charles was killed. They moved to Rexburg because that's where Chad was. So my daughter did know Aunt Lori very well. They got along great. She was, you know, Colby's mom. So they, you know, loved each other. And, you know, I was really scared that Lori would reach out to her and. And that she would respond because they knew each other and, you know, had a Happy relationship up to that point.

John Dehlin [03:13:44] So your daughter and Colby were friends?

Megan Conner [03:13:46] Yeah, yeah.

Mindy Caldwell [03:13:49] One person I want to talk about is Melanie Pawlowski. Yeah, Melanie Boudreaux Pawlowski. What can you tell us about her and what are your thoughts about, you know, what she might know or if you just have anything interesting about Melanie that I just.

Megan Conner [03:14:08] The last time that I saw her was at Stacy's funeral.

Mindy Caldwell [03:14:13] So she was young.

Megan Conner [03:14:14] She was very young. And, you know, her dad had kind of secreted her away from the family for a really long time, and she was away from all of us. And Steve didn't really let her have a lot of contact with the family until she was much older. And then I think she sort of re. Established contact with the family. So the Melanie that I know is not the Melanie that is in this story. You know, I just. I know I remember her as a little girl.

Mindy Caldwell [03:14:46] Melanie, we call her.

John Dehlin [03:14:47] Yeah, Stacy's daughter.

Megan Conner [03:14:48] Stacy's daughter, yeah.

John Dehlin [03:14:50] Oh, I wonder. I thought. Oh, that's. I've heard that Melanie name before. That's the same one.

Megan Conner [03:14:54] So there's two Melanie's in this story that are of importance, and one is Melanie Gibb, who is Laurie's friend, who's testified, and she was in the townhouse the night that. The night that JJ died. And then Melanie Pawlowski is Stacy's daughter, Laurie's niece. Laurie's niece, yeah. And her husband was shot at by

John Dehlin [03:15:18] Alex because why do we think, you know, why?

Mindy Caldwell [03:15:21] Well, do you want to answer that?

Megan Conner [03:15:24] Well, I mean, Melanie's. She was right in there with Laurie and all these teachings and that whole movement and everything. And, you know, I had actually, I knew that Melanie had married Brandon and, you know, they had invited me to their wedding. I sent him a card, I think, and. But I didn't actually go. So I'd never met Brandon, but I did keep up with Melanie on social media, so I kind of got her posts. I saw her kids grow up a little bit. And the next thing that I heard, she was accusing Brandon of being homosexual, having an affair. And she was. Yeah. And she was trying. And he had taken the kids and she was trying to get them back.

John Dehlin [03:16:12] And so was he probably just worried about.

Megan Conner [03:16:15] He was probably just.

Mindy Caldwell [03:16:16] Oh, I'm sure he was terrified. He took his kids to his parents house in Utah to try to protect them from Melanie and Alex. And the one thing about the trial that I found really interesting is the police investigating the shooting of Brandon, which was likely for if he and Melanie were still technically married and if he died, then they would get the money, the insurance money for Brandon. But the investigation into Brandon shooting was really instrumental in everything getting started in Rexburg, which I didn't realize as much. That coupled with Kay trying to find J.J. and discovering that through an Amazon account that Lori lived in Rexburg. And so I just. I wasn't aware of the connection to the Brandon Boudreaux shooting and Rexburg. So there were a couple different avenues that were converging at the same time to point the spotlight on Chad and Laurie and Alex and Melanie. All in Rexburg at the time.

Megan Conner [03:17:18] Yeah. So when Brandon got shot at, they found out that the vehicle that he identified was Tylee's Jeep. And so they were reasonably certain that that was Alex that was trying to shoot at him. And they started to put pieces together

John Dehlin [03:17:34] at that point, because he was getting in the way.

Mindy Caldwell [03:17:38] I think they just wanted his money.

John Dehlin [03:17:40] Yeah.

Mindy Caldwell [03:17:40] And she had already found a new husband at that point. Melanie had Ian, who's also in the small group of people.

Chad Daybell's Influence and the Missing Children

John Dehlin [03:17:50] Okay, so Chad had coded all your family members as light or dark. Is that what you said?

Megan Conner [03:17:57] Yeah.

Mindy Caldwell [03:17:58] Do you know how far out?

John Dehlin [03:17:59] Like a hit list?

Megan Conner [03:18:00] Exactly. That's exactly the way that I saw it, because they, you know, knowing what they had said about Charles, that he was dark, that he was possessed, and then they killed him. And then there's a list of family members with dark and light ratings. And I was like, well, I definitely got to be on the dark side, because at one point, I did. We did have, you know, crossways, me and Laurie, you know, over the whole apartment thing. Like, that came back into my mind, and I was like, well, maybe she really doesn't like me that much, and maybe I should be worried, you know.

John Dehlin [03:18:32] So you were afraid.

Megan Conner [03:18:33] Yeah. And also, I was there when Stacy died and, you know, could potentially implicate Alex. And I didn't put all of that together until all this happened. And then I just sort of slowly had realizations, and I was like, oh, no. I bet that's what happened. But, yeah, I was very scared when that list came out. It turns out I was not important enough to be on it, thank goodness. But it's still. I think every one of us in the family system had to go, okay, where do we stand with these people?

John Dehlin [03:19:02] Is that list public? Yeah, I've never seen it.

Mindy Caldwell [03:19:07] Yeah, it is.

Megan Conner [03:19:09] It turns out that it was really just Chad and his family. It was Lori's immediate family, the kids. I think Chad's kids are on there.

Mindy Caldwell [03:19:20] There were a few other random People on there, but it wasn't super extensive.

John Dehlin [03:19:24] Lori's parents.

Megan Conner [03:19:25] Yeah. Barry was dark for sure.

John Dehlin [03:19:28] Really? What'd Barry do?

Megan Conner [03:19:32] I have no idea what we've been talking about.

John Dehlin [03:19:37] I mean, do we know. What if he got crosswise with them at some point?

Mindy Caldwell [03:19:41] I don't know. We do know that in the. In this, like, patriarchal blessing that's become public during the trial, when Chad gave, you know, a patriarchal blessing to Alex, they mention. I know. He says he has the authority of, like, John the. I'm going to get it all messed up.

Megan Conner [03:20:03] He did claim to be the Holy Ghost in a past life.

Mindy Caldwell [03:20:05] No, he did. He said he was. He was a brother of Jesus, and then he was also the Holy Ghost in his past probations. So he claimed that he had. Whatever authority he claims he had in the Church of the Firstborn. He gives Alex a patriarchal blessing, which, honestly, if you didn't know the context and you're just listening to it, it sounds like a very typical LDS patriarchal

John Dehlin [03:20:27] blessing or father's blessing.

Mindy Caldwell [03:20:28] Yeah. And he's very emotional. Your sins are forgiven.

John Dehlin [03:20:32] You.

Mindy Caldwell [03:20:32] You can hear Alex sniffling. There's other people in.

Megan Conner [03:20:34] In the room.

Mindy Caldwell [03:20:34] They're quite emotional about this blessing. But he does make reference in that blessing to Laurie and Alex's upbringing having serious challenges and that they had overcome a lot. So I don't remember going into detail, but he does make reference to. That they had a bad upbringing, or he might even mention their parents in the blessing. I can't recall exactly, but there's reference, too, that. That there were problems with Alex and Laurie's parents.

John Dehlin [03:21:05] So Barry escaped by the skin of his teeth, looks like.

Megan Conner [03:21:09] Apparently. Yeah.

Mindy Caldwell [03:21:10] It's so interesting that we're talking about this. You know, it's not a fairy tale. It's not like a cheap novel. You know, this is like, lives that they were playing with, and people had very, very strong reason to be scared for their lives. It's just astounding to me.

John Dehlin [03:21:33] Well, that's. I mean, because I've never seen or been in the same room with any of these people. I'm just learning about them now. You knew all these people.

Mindy Caldwell [03:21:40] Exactly.

John Dehlin [03:21:42] So, I mean. Yeah. What's. What's. So when people start dying and the kids go missing, what's that like for you?

Megan Conner [03:21:51] I think as soon as Charles was killed, I realized that there was, you know, that they were just. They were terrible people. And when I started hearing about these teachings, I just started thinking, you know, I realized that they were capable of, you know, of horrific things, But I had no earthly idea that they would ever hurt the kids, you know, and so when the kids went missing, I found out about it just like everybody else. Like, I think I heard about it on the news and saw some posts on social media and, you know, saw that Kay and Larry were offering a reward. And at this time, nobody knew where Lori was either. And so there was a space of several months. I think it was several months, maybe my timing is off on that, where everybody was looking for Lori. Everybody wanted to know, where's Lori? Where are the kids? And I called the FBI and I was like, have you tried Hawaii? Really? Because that's where they always escaped to, Hawaii. There were always, you know, they were always going to Hawaii for whatever. For whatever reason. By that point, I'm pretty sure they already knew she was there. But it was like, why would you say she's in Hawaii? You know, like, do I need to be suspicious of you? Because, you know, something kind of thing.

Mindy Caldwell [03:23:10] Oh, that's an interesting point.

Megan Conner [03:23:12] So I did have a couple of interviews with the FBI, and I didn't know anything that was useful. I just was trying to say whatever I knew, whatever I did know, to provide some comfort, I wanted to say, because I was afraid that something else horrible was going to happen. I think that for a long time, I hoped that the family rumor was true, that she was secreting them away somewhere and trying to prevent them from being taken away from her. But even before the kids were found, I lost hope relatively shortly because I thought, you know, of my own kids who are that age, and what's the likelihood that they would allow themselves to be secreted away in a bunker somewhere, away from their friends, away from their family members who love them, away from their school. And I really had to go ahead and grieve and process that before they were even found, because I just didn't have any hope that they were going to be found alive.

John Dehlin [03:24:25] How much time had you spent with Tylee and jj?

Megan Conner [03:24:28] I never met jj, and I only knew Tylee when she was, like, three years old. So I hadn't spent any time with them. But it was the implication of these people that are part of my family, that I share DNA with, are capable of killing children. It was just, well, people you grew up with. Yeah, and people that I loved and devoted time and energy to.

John Dehlin [03:24:55] And a bridesmaid at your wedding.

Megan Conner [03:24:57] Right.

John Dehlin [03:24:57] Yeah.

Megan Conner [03:24:58] Would have. Would have done just about anything for any one of them if they had asked me, you know,

John Dehlin [03:25:06] when Lori's in Hawaii, after the kids are missing. Was she with Chat at that point?

Megan Conner [03:25:11] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:25:11] How long were Lori and Chad in Hawaii together?

Megan Conner [03:25:14] A long time.

Mindy Caldwell [03:25:15] Months.

Megan Conner [03:25:16] Several months.

John Dehlin [03:25:17] Because you hear about the. You know, they get married and they dance, and some are screaming about photos of them dancing, but they were there for quite some time.

Megan Conner [03:25:27] Yeah. So just to recap the timeline. July 11, Charles is dead September 9. Tylee's dead September 22, JJ's dead. October 19, 19th, Tammy's dead.

John Dehlin [03:25:44] So Tylee would have been buried in Chad's backyard while he was still married

Mindy Caldwell [03:25:49] to Tammy and she was alive and

John Dehlin [03:25:52] a month or 2 Before JJ.

Mindy Caldwell [03:25:56] Six weeks.

Megan Conner [03:25:56] Yeah. Six weeks before JJ. Yeah. So Tylee was September 9th, JJ was September 27th.

Mindy Caldwell [03:26:01] So both kids were buried back there while Tammy was still alive.

John Dehlin [03:26:05] And wasn't there something about Chad saying there was a raccoon he killed or something? Was that with Tylee or jj?

Megan Conner [03:26:10] Yeah, that was Tyler.

Mindy Caldwell [03:26:11] That was Tylee.

Megan Conner [03:26:12] He texted her and said that he wanted to burn some limbs before the storm came, and then he found a big raccoon on the property and shot it and buried it in the pet cemetery.

John Dehlin [03:26:22] So Tammy was living with a murderer.

Megan Conner [03:26:24] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:26:25] Yes, for at least a month or

Megan Conner [03:26:26] two

Mindy Caldwell [03:26:28] with those sweet kids in her backyard.

John Dehlin [03:26:34] Okay, so that timeline happens. JJ is killed, last of the two.

Megan Conner [03:26:40] Right.

John Dehlin [03:26:41] Killed. What month?

Megan Conner [03:26:43] September 22nd.

John Dehlin [03:26:44] And then.

Megan Conner [03:26:45] And then Tammy on October 19th, and then on November 5th, they're in Hawaii getting married.

John Dehlin [03:26:53] Okay. And then do Alex dies.

Mindy Caldwell [03:26:57] So Alex dies in December. And the timing is what's super suspicious, and I would love for you to talk about this.

Megan Conner [03:27:03] So in light of everything that happened, you know, Chad leaving and marrying Laurie two weeks after. How many weeks?

Mindy Caldwell [03:27:11] It was two.

Megan Conner [03:27:12] Two weeks after. Just over two years after his wife's funeral, they started to get suspicious. The kids were missing. You know, Charles had been killed, and so they decided to go ahead and exhume Tammy's body, and they exhumed her on December 10th, and Alex is. Alex was dead one day later.

John Dehlin [03:27:34] What do we make of that?

Megan Conner [03:27:37] Well, I have some theories.

Mindy Caldwell [03:27:39] And he was on the phone. His. His wife Zulema, who we talked about on the other podcast. She testified that he was on the phone with Chad and Lori, who were in Hawaii at the time. And I believe there was a part of the conversation that she wasn't allowed to. Either she wasn't there, she wasn't allowed to hear part of the conversation, or she won't say or she won't say. That's a good point.

John Dehlin [03:28:02] So talk me through your suspicions of the Timeline.

Megan Conner [03:28:05] Okay, so after Tammy was killed, October 19th, and then at the end of November, right before Thanksgiving is when Alex and Zulema get married. And then they exhumed Tammy's body on December 10th.

John Dehlin [03:28:26] Who does?

Mindy Caldwell [03:28:26] The Springville, Utah place? With the help of Rexburg police.

John Dehlin [03:28:32] At the request of Rexburg police.

Megan Conner [03:28:34] Rexburg, yeah. Yeah. And then Alex is dead one day later. So what I make of this is all conjecture, right? Please don't anybody, you know, take this as you know anything that I know for sure. But. Alex had wanted to get married, and Chad and Laurie were insistent that Zulema marry. Sorry, marry Alex. Zulema was a part of Chad's inner circle, had told her that she had special important mission. And so she was part of the trusted group of people. And then so they get married. The person who marries them in Las Vegas says that the ceremony is super weird. There's like no attachment, no happiness.

Mindy Caldwell [03:29:29] Yeah. There's like no feeling.

Megan Conner [03:29:30] No feeling. It was super quick. Just very sterile, very businesslike. And then Alex says that he's going to take Zulima's last name, which is odd. And then we have Zulema saying that on their honeymoon night that Alex wants to stop and get something plastic to cover the bed because he's going to give her a massage and he doesn't want to get the bed dirty, but the plastic turns out to be actually a tarp. And Zulema is suspicious. Rightfully so. And then Alex is on the phone with Chad and Laurie quite a bit, and nothing ends up happening.

John Dehlin [03:30:14] So Alex was contemplating killing Zulema.

Megan Conner [03:30:18] Possibly. Possibly, we can speculate. And also, I don't know if Sulema is a trustworthy person in this. I don't know her at all. But if she was that close to Chad and Laurie, stands to reason that she may have known more than she's willing to say on the witness stand,

John Dehlin [03:30:34] you know, so Chad and Laurie might have wanted to get rid of Zulema because she knew too much.

Megan Conner [03:30:39] Maybe. Maybe that's a possibility. But also my feeling is too, that if Alex were to die and not be married, his body would be returned to his parents. And given the suspicious circumstances of everything else, most likely there would have been an autopsy done. But because he was married to Zulema, she gets custody of his body and he was immediately cremated.

Mindy Caldwell [03:31:15] That kind of blows my mind. Megan. That's a really good theory with the whole marriage thing.

Megan Conner [03:31:20] Yeah, I don't know. And also, you know, if Zulema and Alex were married, then Zulema, you know has access to Alex and can take care of something if something needs to be taken care of. If Alex starts to regret his actions or if he starts to say that he's gonna tell people what happened or anything like that, then, you know, Zulema,

Mindy Caldwell [03:31:45] then they have an insider track.

Megan Conner [03:31:46] They have an insider who can help out with that situation.

Mindy Caldwell [03:31:49] And Zulema testified that Alex did confide in her around this time that he was worried that he was going to be a lord call guy. Yeah. So he maybe had some conscious moments or conscience challenges sneaking in there.

John Dehlin [03:32:08] So it would have had to have been Zulema that killed either Alex killed

Mindy Caldwell [03:32:11] himself or perhaps Suleima. But I think it's really important to note that he. It was deemed natural causes or a pulmonary embolism.

Alex's Death and the Unraveling of the Family

Megan Conner [03:32:20] They did do an autopsy and it was deemed to be a pulmonary embolism. He did have the same blood tinged foam coming out of his mouth that Tammy had coming out of her mouth when she died. And so it's entirely possible that there was something undetectable. Because when you do a tox screen, from what I understand, you have to. You have to ask for very specific things. You can't just do a panel and it'll come back almost just a blanket panel.

Mindy Caldwell [03:32:48] Right.

Megan Conner [03:32:48] So you have to be very specific about what you ask for in that. And then he was cremated, so there's no possibility of going back if we find something out later and testing to see if that was indeed what killed him. So I know the official cause. I know medical people have said it's not uncommon for there to be blood tinged foam when there's a pulmonary embolism, but you will never be able to convince me that Alex died of natural causes. Not ever. The timing of it is just way too suspicious.

John Dehlin [03:33:21] So either Zulema killed Chad.

Mindy Caldwell [03:33:24] No, Alex.

John Dehlin [03:33:24] Alex. Either Zulema killed Alex or Alex killed himself. And either one of those likely would have been at the direction of Chad and Laurie.

Megan Conner [03:33:33] Yeah, I believe so. When I talked to Larry, he said that patriarchal blessing was that man's last rites.

Mindy Caldwell [03:33:41] That is an interesting observation.

Megan Conner [03:33:44] Yeah.

Mindy Caldwell [03:33:45] Because the patriarchal blessing happened shortly before. Right. Wow. Wow.

John Dehlin [03:33:55] Okay. And again, this is the Alex that you would spend summers with hearing him tell jokes, Right?

Megan Conner [03:34:04] Yeah. Super inappropriate jokes. Nothing like, nothing that he would.

Mindy Caldwell [03:34:10] That you would want to repeat.

Megan Conner [03:34:12] Sort of like nervous laughter, not. Not genuine belly laughs. I don't know if you've heard the portion of his standup routine regarding his interaction with Joe, but it's.

Mindy Caldwell [03:34:24] Oh. Where he talks. Yes, I have heard That I couldn't recall it enough to.

Megan Conner [03:34:28] Racist and horrible.

Mindy Caldwell [03:34:29] And then he. Yeah, and he. And he. Yeah. Where he talks about the different people he met and. Yeah, just really, really racist comments and just doesn't seem aware at all that what he's saying is inappropriate.

Megan Conner [03:34:42] Right.

Mindy Caldwell [03:34:42] Yeah.

Megan Conner [03:34:43] He just thinks it's funny.

Mindy Caldwell [03:34:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:34:46] Okay, so, like, wow.

Megan Conner [03:34:50] So when Alex d. I sort of had this moment where I was like, oh, no, is there going to be a family funeral? Am I going to be expected to go, you know, show up and pay my respects to someone who I don't respect at all? But turns out we didn't have to worry about that because Janice didn't tell anybody about a memorial for him outside of the family. And her comment later was that they only invited people to the funeral who didn't think he was a murderer. So there was a very small group of people.

John Dehlin [03:35:30] And what are Barry and Janice thinking when, like, their grandkids have disappeared, Laurie's taken off, Laurie's ex husband. One to two of Laurie's husbands have been killed, and then Alex dies. Where's freaking Janice and Barry in all this?

Megan Conner [03:35:49] Yeah. I will say that I do have some empathy for the situation of knowing that your children are complicit in murder and not wanting to be involved or to speak up or to be in denial about that. I get it. I get it. That's horrible. Nobody should have to go through that. But Janice, you know, she did make her one appearance

John Dehlin [03:36:20] on tv.

Megan Conner [03:36:21] Yeah. And that was before the bodies were found. And she said she didn't believe that Lori would ever hurt her children, which is, of course, I think what any mother would say would want to say in that circumstance. So I. I get it. I understand.

John Dehlin [03:36:37] And then since then, they've been silent.

Megan Conner [03:36:39] Silent.

John Dehlin [03:36:39] Has Barry given any interviews?

Mindy Caldwell [03:36:42] No, not to my knowledge. But I will say the IRS and his other things that he does.

Megan Conner [03:36:48] Yeah, we don't. I don't know if we. If you knew this or not, but Barry did serve time in federal prison for tax evasion. And he tried. He basically tried to sue the federal government and say that the IRS is an illegal organization. And so that just continues his narrative of superiority and his belief that he is above the law.

Mindy Caldwell [03:37:07] Grandiosity.

Megan Conner [03:37:09] Yeah. That he can practice law without a. You know, without passing the bar. He got a cease and desist from the state of Arizona because he was trying to do estate planning there and didn't have a law license, so.

Mindy Caldwell [03:37:22] But I do think it's been pointed out by many people that particularly when the, when the kids were missing, that. That Barry's lack of any statement or anything, there just wasn't anything from Barry.

Megan Conner [03:37:38] Right. And they're. They're certainly not going to show up in court to sit on Lori's side of the bench and, you know, be vilified in public.

John Dehlin [03:37:49] Even though they may still. I mean, by now they have to believe she's guilty, Right.

Megan Conner [03:37:54] I would hope so.

John Dehlin [03:37:56] In Arizona still. Do we know?

Megan Conner [03:37:58] No, they're living in St. George.

John Dehlin [03:38:01] St. George. What if they go to their ward?

Megan Conner [03:38:07] Well, I think they do.

John Dehlin [03:38:09] Holy moly. One of my listeners is in Janice and Barry's ward, I guarantee you.

Megan Conner [03:38:14] Wow.

John Dehlin [03:38:15] For sure. Or if not multiple. If so, reach out to me.

Megan Conner [03:38:20] Yeah. And let us know. Are they temple workers? What are they doing? You know, it's just.

John Dehlin [03:38:26] Just.

Megan Conner [03:38:27] Yeah, it's mind blowing.

Mormonism's Role in the Tragedy

John Dehlin [03:38:31] Okay. Well, to close out, I guess, the discussion of Lori and, you know, her, Barry and Janice and all, and. And Alex and all that. Let's just say there's. There's two extremes, and then it's always somewhere in the middle. There's. This is just unhealthy people in an unhealthy family system. And this could have happened as evangelical Christians or as Jehovah's Witnesses or let's just say as atheists. And it's just sometimes there are unhealthy family systems and sometimes there's unhealthy individuals in unhealthy family systems. And sometimes people do bad things and even murder. And this has nothing to do with Mormonism. This is just bad people doing bad things. Let's say that's one extreme. Another extreme is Laurie would have never, you know, Chad and Lori would have never been murders without these weird beliefs and beliefs in spirits and beliefs in the end of times and sexual shame and a culture of hiding things and of lying and of avoiding talking about things and all the pressure and then all the theological beliefs on top of that. It's Mormonism's fault. Right. And then there's somewhere where it's maybe a combination of the two. I think one of the reasons you reached out to me, if I'm right, Megan, is because you felt like, while it's probably both, that Mormonism does have a role to play in how this all shook out. Is that right?

Megan Conner [03:40:07] Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [03:40:08] And if so, yeah, I'd love to hear your theories on that.

Megan Conner [03:40:11] Yeah. And I. And I won't ever go to the extreme of saying that it's Mormonism's fault because there are individuals with their own free Will and choice, you know, involved in this. But I. The silence from Salt Lake City is deafening. And

John Dehlin [03:40:33] when should they. When should they have spoken out throughout this whole process in your mind? And how.

Megan Conner [03:40:41] I remember them issuing some kind of a statement that said that you shouldn't be doing energy work or energy healing. And that was as close as they got to it. I don't know what the right point would have been for them to come forward and say something, but the fact that they even now won't say anything about it, I think, is that's a really harmful stance to take, to just cower in the corner and say, we didn't have anything to do with this. These were evil people. You've got Laurie sending a text that says this was a Nephi and Laban situation, referring to Charles. You've got them tying together that Chad and Laurie visited the temple the day before each one of these killings happened. You've got Chad and Laurie secreting off to some room in the temple and getting sealed. There's a family rumor that they had sex in the temple. I don't know how possible that is, but it wouldn't surprise me at this point, you know, and you have this obsession with end of days. And when you've got somebody who doesn't believe that the world is going to continue rolling on, people will do almost anything. You know, it's like there's no consequences for anything if the world's about to end. And you've got Chad Dabel, who's just a regular guy, saying that he has visions, that heavenly beings have appeared to him, and that he has power and authority, and that's exactly the origin story of the church. Exactly. And also, you have this parallel where, I don't know if it was genius or just dumb luck, between Joseph Smith and Chad Daybell, where they're trying to get a movement going and they like the attention and power that they're getting. And so what they do is they have this little group of followers and they give each one of them some power and some responsibility. And they tell each of these people that they're instrumental in bringing to pass this great and marvelous work that's going to happen. And that's where you get loyal followers that will stay as long as there's power and as long as there's a recognition and attention. And so, to me, the parallels are just really striking. And I felt that way before the end of my faith crisis. But once I went through that faith crisis, I got really angry, because if the church is true, if the teachings of the Church are true, they're still harmful and there's still a harmful culture there, but we can deal with that if it's actually true. But knowing that it's not true and knowing that the Brethren have known that for a hundred years.

John Dehlin [03:43:54] Known what?

Megan Conner [03:43:55] That it's not true.

John Dehlin [03:43:56] So in your view, the Brethren know the Church isn't true.

Megan Conner [03:43:59] Right. And.

John Dehlin [03:44:00] No, now that's speculation.

Megan Conner [03:44:02] It is. It is a lot of speculation.

John Dehlin [03:44:05] What led you to believe that? So was it the Shana Caldwell Montez stuff? Knowing that they knew there were problems with the Book of Abraham in the early, early 1900s.

Megan Conner [03:44:15] Right.

John Dehlin [03:44:16] Knowing with the BH Roberts stuff that there are problems with the Book of Mormon, Is that what. What leads you to believe they've at least known that there were significant problems with the historicity.

Megan Conner [03:44:28] Right.

John Dehlin [03:44:28] Of the. Of the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham? Is that what you mean?

Megan Conner [03:44:32] Yes. So there's the. There's that. And then there was an interview that I saw, or not an interview as a lecture that I saw with Sandra Tanner where she describes an interaction that she had with a church historian and

John Dehlin [03:44:46] her question, Joseph Fielding Smith, probably, who became a prophet, maybe. Keep going.

Megan Conner [03:44:53] So it wasn't Sandra Tanner had an interaction with a church historian, was it Joseph Fielding Smith?

John Dehlin [03:44:59] I think, yeah, I think that was one of them. Because there was the whole question of the first vision and her trying to figure out what happened to the original 18. Was there an 1832 First Vision account? And it would have been Joseph Fielding Smith, who later. Who was an apostle church historian, who later became a prophet, who was the one that had ripped that account out of Joseph's journal and hid it. And Sander was trying to track that down.

Megan Conner [03:45:22] Right. In this particular conversation. I don't know if it was Joseph Fielding Smith or another historian, but she posed the question, how do you get around the fact that Joseph Field Smith is a sexual predator? And the historian's answer was, well, he was sincere, meaning Joseph really believed he was a prophet. He really believed that he should be practicing polygamy. He really believed that he was offering salvation to these young women. And so that excuses it. And that was a super disturbing comment coming from a church historian. And then his follow up was, well, the church does so much more good than harm. And to me, if that's your response, then that means, you know it was wrong, you know it, and you're trying to excuse it, you're trying to apologize for it. And so it was that part of it. And you know My own history of sexual abuse, thinking of a 14 year old girl. And I read her diary. Right. And what 14 year old girl?

John Dehlin [03:46:28] Talking about Kim Kimball. Right.

Mindy Caldwell [03:46:32] Helen, Mark.

Megan Conner [03:46:33] Helen, Mark.

John Dehlin [03:46:34] Helen Mark Kimball, who is one of the 14 year olds Joseph married.

Megan Conner [03:46:37] Right.

John Dehlin [03:46:38] Okay.

Megan Conner [03:46:38] Right. And I'm thinking to myself as a 14 year old girl, if I really believe that a man is a prophet of God and he tells me that I can secure the salvation of my family by marrying him, of course I'm going to do that. Of course. It would be so selfish of me to throw away my entire family's salvation just because I didn't want to marry somebody. Of course I would give my whole life for that. And so it's incredibly manipulative and I can't imagine in what world that's defensible. And to me that's no better than Warren Jeff's behavior.

John Dehlin [03:47:21] Tell me if I'm understanding right. It sounds like you start seeing Joseph Smith in Chad's behaviors. Is that what you're saying?

Megan Conner [03:47:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:47:31] That basically Chad just kind of like believed a lot of the same things Joseph did and behaved in a lot of the same ways Joseph Smith. Sorry, Chad. Believed a lot of the same things Joseph Smith believed and behaved in a lot of the same ways Joseph Smith behaved.

Megan Conner [03:47:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:47:50] In terms of fooling people, using his power, manipulating people with spirituality and sexual escapades and hiding, lying about it and hiding and that sort of thing.

Megan Conner [03:48:01] Yeah. And telling people that he got a revelation from God that you should do this thing. And that thing was always something that benefited him.

John Dehlin [03:48:13] Hmm. Wow.

Megan's Faith Transition and Leaving the Church

Mindy Caldwell [03:48:18] So, Megan, timeline. Excuse me, Timeline wise, was. Was your processing through this whole Chad and Laurie case, was it. Was it instrumental in you finally kind of taking a hard look at your faith or. And maybe you don't. If it's too personal. You don't have to have to answer if it's too personal. But I'm just curious if there was a connection between. Because you did say that your faith transition has been fairly recent, correct?

Megan Conner [03:48:49] Yeah. And it's together and it's separate. It's sort of coincided. The end of it coincided sort of at the same time. But I really started losing my faith during my divorce process. And this is kind of what I said we would get back to later in 2015. My dad and I had sort of been on autopilot for, as I said, for a lot of my marriage, just kind of checking the boxes, trying to do my thing. And my dad called me up one day and said that he wanted to talk to me about the kind of father that he had been, and to sort of maybe apologize. He didn't use that word, but that was sort of what it felt like. And my, my immediate reaction was that, no, no, hell no, I don't want to have that conversation. I was like, I'm out. We're good. We have a decent relationship. Let's just move on, shall we?

Mindy Caldwell [03:49:49] You just want to go back there and.

Megan Conner [03:49:50] And that conversation really. Forced me to confront the reality that I had been dissociating from all, all of that time. And I started. I started having panic attacks. Whenever I had to spend time with my parents. I would have panic attacks during sacrament meeting. It was just a really destabilizing event for me. But it turned out to be a good thing because I finally confronted with all of those physical symptoms, had to go and get help because I couldn't function. And so I sought out a therapist that was not an LDS therapist for the first time in my life and started to work through some of those childhood issues and through the process of doing. I did talk therapy for about three years. And then we got to a point where she couldn't really help me much anymore because there was a lot of trauma that hadn't been addressed. And her idea was that, well, you're just always going to have triggers. You just learn to manage them and you'll be able to get along okay. And I said, absolutely not. That's not the way I want to live my life. I don't want to. You know, she painted this scenario for me. It's like, what if you're at a party and you and your friends are talking and something comes up and it triggers you and you have a panic attack, Just excuse yourself to the bathroom, have a good cry, come out a few minutes later and say, I'm really sorry. Something about that just triggered me and I needed a minute and I was like, no, I don't want to be that person.

Mindy Caldwell [03:51:36] I don't want to live that way.

Megan Conner [03:51:37] I don't want to live my life being afraid that somebody's going to mention something random and it's going to send me off the deep end. Absolutely not. So I started researching trauma based therapy and came across EMDR therapy. And I started doing that and it was miraculous for me. I was able to process through all of my childhood trauma and, you know, everything that had happened in my home growing up and my sexual abuse and my sexual assault and all of that over the course of a few years. But the fallout of that is that when you start to reframe those things in your mind, you start seeing everything in a very different way than it was before. And I started systematically removing things from my life that felt abusive or oppressive. And so I got divorced. And after my divorce, I really felt isolated. I felt like even more of a. Now I felt like a third class citizen in the church culture, you know, because now I was a divorced woman's

Mindy Caldwell [03:52:48] husband doesn't go to church, husband doesn't

Megan Conner [03:52:49] go to church, who's never been sealed in the temple, who's bisexual, who's bisexual. And two of my sons came out as LGBTQ as well. And I was begging for help and support of some kind, and my bishop literally laughed at me. I sat down with him and I said, I think everybody assumes that because I'm coming to church and bringing my kids to church and checking the boxes and doing all the faithful things, fulfilling my callings, that I'm doing great. And I feel like people are on the shore, like, waving to me, and I'm out there and they think I'm swimming, but I'm actually drowning and I need help. And he sat back in his chair and chuckled and said, what do you expect us to do for you? And the implication there was like, you chose to get divorced, you know, you were married to a non member in the first place. You made these choices, so what are we supposed to do about it? And I said, all I really want is for some people to shepherd my children to be interested in their lives, to help them have a safe place and for my home teachers to come and visit me when they're supposed to, you know, and they didn't. Nobody showed up. And so I wrote a letter to my stake president. And I said, I talked to the bishop, I asked him for some very specific things. I said, if my husband had died instead of divorcing me, I would have been encumbered with help and support from my ward. But there was nothing. And he said, you know what? You're right. Let me make sure that you get assigned a really good home teacher and I'll talk to your bishop and we'll make sure to get you taken care of. And nothing changed. Nothing. So from the time that I was divorced in 2017 until this very day, not a single person came to ever visit me, ever. So, I mean, that's not a reason to leave the church. It's not a reason to have a faith crisis. But I started doubting, like, are these men inspired or not? Are they going to live by the words that they preach or not are they going to take care of people or not?

John Dehlin [03:55:19] And you think they flagged you because you chose to get divorced and so you were on their bad list?

Megan Conner [03:55:24] I don't know. I don't think. I thought that. I didn't think I was on any bad list. I thought people just didn't care. And I had always heard that we take care of the widows and the fatherless. And my children were now fatherless. You know, they had a dad who was not involved in their lives. And, you know, are we going to live up to those things that we say or are we not? You know? So I started to have these creeping doubts and I resigned from my callings because I was a single mom and I was barely surviving. And so the one calling I kept was to play the organ once a month. And that was it. I was like, I can do that. I could show up once a month. But I had even told them my mental health is suffering and I get up on a Sunday morning and have a panic attack and can't show up to play the organ. What's going to happen? You know? So I was like, once a month, I can probably handle it. If I, like, psych myself up for it in advance, I can probably do that. So I really started to doubt about whether the brethren were inspired or not. And I started sort of pulling myself away from the extra activities and all that stuff because it was just too painful. I got left out of social circles all the time because I didn't have a husband who participated. And so it just was. That part of it was painful for me. And I was also trying to figure out, where do I fit in this? And then the pandemic hit, and it was a miracle because church stopped. And I got to just sit at home and teach my children about Jesus Christ sitting around our kitchen table instead of going to church and listening to all those things that were hurting me. And that was also around the time that the George Floyd incident happened. And I started examining the racism in the church, the inherent in the church, and my own possible racism, and where did I fit in that? And I seem to remember when I was teaching gospel doctrine that there were some black men ordained to the priesthood. And I started thinking, well, when did they stop doing that? Because I think Joseph Smith did. And then I remember that the women were admonished for not using their priesthood authority. And I was like, where did we stop? Where do we get this wrong? Where did we go wrong? And I started thinking, well, maybe it was Brigham Young when he took over and he started, you know, implementing policies that favored his own predisposed notions about society and all of that. And around the same time, my daughter came forward as a victim of sexual assault. And she. And I started having more regular conversations about those things. And she told me about Natasha Helfer, and it was before the excommunication. So I started digging into what she was teaching, and I was having these conversations with my daughter, like, yeah, the way that we teach about sex and sexuality in the church is really harmful. And I had experienced that, certainly as a kid. And, you know, I started listening to Natasha's story, and that was actually the first time that I saw you or heard of you, John, because of your vigil. And I really, really wanted to dig into it more, but the podcasts were, like, four hours long, and I was like.

John Dehlin [03:59:04] Like this one?

Megan Conner [03:59:05] Like this, meanwhile? Yeah, exactly. And so I was like, okay. I was like, okay, maybe I can't. Maybe I can't do all of that. But it started me asking questions about my own sexuality and that it was the first time that I had really confronted it and said, I am bisexual. I can't just push that away anymore. And there is no place for a divorced bisexual woman in this church. I don't belong here. I don't fit here. And I started trying to figure out, is there a way for me to do Mormonism or not? And ultimately came to the conclusion that probably. Probably there isn't. You know, So I remember my daughter got married in 2018, and I had had my temple recommend interview in 2016, so it was, like, almost the last day that my recommend was valid. And I went to her wedding, her sealing in the temple, and I remember walking out the door and thinking, I will probably never set foot in a temple again. So it was kind of this long thought process that happened over those few years. And I had written a book about my healing experiences and my trauma and everything. And I wrote the chapter on Mormonism at the time that my daughter got married. And so I was still very much at the time disaffected with the church and the church culture and the harm. And, you know, certainly Natasha's story contributed to my feelings about that and race in the priesthood and all of that. And so I sort of tweaked that chapter and rewrote it during that pandemic time. And then I got my book ready to be published, and I wanted somebody to read that chapter who had never been in the church and ask them, have I said everything that I needed to say? And So I gave it to my partner, Samuel. And he's never been in the church and has honestly been horrified of the Church teachings and everything that he's learned about the church. And I gave it to him. And I said, I want to know if I've said everything that needs to be said. And he couldn't even get through the first couple of pages of it where he started getting angry and asking me questions and like, is this real? Did this really happen? This kind of stuff? And so we came to the conclusion at the end of finally going through that, that, no, I had not said everything that needed to be said, and I needed to go back and write it where I am now instead of the apologetic viewpoint that I had back then. And I wanted to make sure that I got some things right. And so right. Maybe two months before this, I had gone to a business conference on investing, and we were talking about different kinds of investments and how to tell if an investment is right for you or profitable or whatever. And we were in this roundtable discussion, and we had been given a prospectus by somebody who wanted our money. And our job was to go through the prospectus and determine if this was a good investment or not and why. And when it came to my turn to talk about this investment prospectus, I gave my reasons for why or why not. I thought it was good. And then he said, if you had to give your money right now, today, would you do it? And I said, no. And he said, why not? And I said, because I would never invest in something where the only information I had about it came to me from the source of the person who's asking me for the money. And this little distant bell rang in my head. I was like, I have only ever read what the Church writes about the Church. I have only ever seen what the Church puts out about the Church. I've consumed all the propaganda. I kept the council to read only the best books. All of my time was consumed with the Scriptures and the conference talks and everything else. And I had never once read anything negative about the church. Even when the CES letter came out, I was like, I don't need to read it, you know? So I finally allowed myself to do research that was not put out officially by the Church. And that was when I came across the Shannon Caldwell Montez thesis of the Secret Mormon meetings of 1922. And that was a watershed moment for me. It was so just blatant to me that a church historian who worked for the Church had gone and done all of this research and found all of these problems with the historicity of the Book of Mormon and presented it to the brethren and their response was to stand up and bear their testimony. And so he then took it to other people whose response was like, this is probably a problem, but nobody did anything about it. And then all of those things were shoved away and put away. And I was so angry to think that I had given 40 years of my life to this organization and all my money. Even when my husband and I were declaring bankruptcy under crushing business debt, I was paying my tithing faithfully. And I was so angry that I felt like they have known this whole entire time that Joseph Smith made it up. So Book of Mormon is a work of fiction that he didn't see what he said he saw. And then I started to see all of the different ways in which the system perpetuates itself because the people in power want to stay in power. And then I started tying it together with the Chad Daybell stuff and I got angry all over again. And then there were more killings and there's more murders and there are more people who are poisoning their spouse because they don't want to get a divorce or whatever the case is. The problem is. Yeah, this is different. Yeah, different. Different stuff. I think, I think when I wrote to you, it was about the dentist who had poisoned his wife.

Mindy Caldwell [04:05:49] Colorado.

Megan Conner [04:05:50] In Colorado, yeah. And finding out that he was a member and knowing the implications of probably the reasons why he didn't want to get a divorce, he just, you know, and then tying together all of these Mormonisms of the Chad and Lord.

John Dehlin [04:06:03] There was a guy in St. George, or Saint.

Megan Conner [04:06:05] Yeah.

Mindy Caldwell [04:06:05] And Enoch that killed himself and his whole family and his mother in law.

John Dehlin [04:06:11] There's something about middle aged white Mormons offing their spouses both for insurance money and to get out of a marriage they don't want to be in. It's a thing.

Mindy Caldwell [04:06:22] It is recently at least. Right.

Megan Conner [04:06:24] And it has so much to do with the shame and the secrecy in the culture of the church. And the thing that my partner Samuel said to me that really just drove it home was I kept talking about the culture, the culture, the culture. And he said to me, the doctrine determines the culture. And that really hit me hard because he's right. He's absolutely right. If we didn't have the doctrine that we did, we wouldn't have the culture that we do. And therefore these splinter groups and spin offs and crazy people would not exist. And I would love it if somebody from the church would tell the truth. If somebody would come forward and say, no, there was no vision, or maybe it was a dream, or maybe it was just inspired. But there's no such thing as justifiable homicide. I would love it if the church would say that. But that causes so many problems because then they have to discredit the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [04:07:34] And the Bible.

Megan Conner [04:07:35] And the Bible, yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:07:39] So in your view, someone who knew Laurie and Alex growing up, can you see these murders and these deaths happening without the doctrine and the theology that Chad and Laurie ended up adopting and running with?

Megan Conner [04:07:59] I think there's an off chance possibility that Laurie may have gotten here at some point because she did talk often about how easy it would be for us to just raise our kids in the millennium instead of now. You know, wait till Jesus comes, you know, or let's just go to heaven now and then raise our kids later when Christ is reigning on the earth.

Mindy Caldwell [04:08:22] Wasn't there an incident where she spoke about being tempted to like, drive the kids off a cliff or something for that same reason? Exactly.

Megan Conner [04:08:30] So there was that idea for her, which I think just was maybe the spark behind all of tying what Chad Daybell said together with the things that she already sort of thought and believed and wanted to believe. And so, you know, I don't think that necessarily it would have ended up in this long trail of bodies, but I think there would have been some kind of something that happened if it was Laurie by herself. But it's also this. This desire in the culture and in the family system to be perceived as living everything correctly on the outside, but having all this sickness on the inside that we don't talk about because the stakes are too high.

John Dehlin [04:09:18] And the pressure to appear perfect and to not admit mistakes and that sort of thing.

Megan Conner [04:09:25] I often said it's okay for us to talk about mistakes if we've already overcome them. You know, how many times did we get counseled as teachers of the gospel to not share personal stories or to not out our personal sins or to talk about them. But it was okay to say at one point I struggled with the word of wisdom. But even saying that would have been pretty shocking because people look at you differently, you know.

The Church's Complicity and Final Reflections

John Dehlin [04:09:55] So if we were to sort of conclude with your assessment as to whether or not the Mormon churches somehow in some percentage complicit in the. In the deaths that ended up occurring, it sounds like you're. You're saying at least a little bit complicit. Is that what you're saying?

Megan Conner [04:10:13] Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think that there are so many. There are just Too many parallels. For. For the Church to be able to look at a situation like this and say, that has nothing to do with us is incredibly arrogant and dangerous, I think. And it would have been, even now, if somebody would come out and denounce Chad Daybell and his teachings. I know he's been excommunicated, but Laurie hasn't, and she was teaching the same things. And this is what's dangerous about it. In that patriarchal blessing, Chad is talking about the Church of the Firstborn like this is a real church that he is forming, and those ideas are still out there, and his followers are still out there. There are still people out there who believe these teachings. Now, they may not think that it's okay to murder people, but some of them might. Some of them might use these teachings to justify other things. And now you've got yet another splinter of Mormonism called the Church of the Firstborn, where you can be possessed by demons, and the only way to get rid of that demon is for the body to die. It's incredibly harmful teaching, and the Church needs to come and say something about it and denounce it.

John Dehlin [04:11:39] So I'm hearing you say that some of the ways the Church might be complicit are. And the parallels between Joseph Smith and Chad Daybell in the. The. The doctrines and the theological concepts that Chad and Laurie adopted to be able to end up justifying the things that they did. And through the Church's silence and unwillingness to nip all this fundamentalist prepper Mormonism in the bud, are those the main three ways you're seeing the. The Church is being complicit.

Megan Conner [04:12:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:12:15] And lacking the spirit of discernment to stop it all when they claim the gift of discernment.

Megan Conner [04:12:19] Exactly. And it's just stunning to me that, you know, Laurie and Chad used the temple, too, for some of these rituals. And, you know, people going to the temple for purposes other than it was intended, I would think that would be a huge slap in the face to the leadership of the church and that they would want to do something about that, because now you have all these faithful, believing members for whom the temple is a solid place, because what other people are there using the temple for nefarious purposes, or at least for odd spiritual practices that have no place there?

John Dehlin [04:13:02] Yeah. Mindy, is there any other.

Mindy Caldwell [04:13:08] I'm just thinking, where does the Church start with this? You know, I just feel like there are just so many tentacles that have just branched out. I just feel like it's gotten a little out of control. And the moment maybe to try to put the hammer down on some of these things. I just think it's going to be tricky for them to, to put a stop to some of these groups. And I'm not sure how they do that or what that looks like. It seems like they are. They more eagerly go against, as you were saying on another podcast, John, they more eagerly go against maybe those who are fighting the church in a different way, you know, just maybe more liberal or different things that they see threatening. But I don't know what it looks like for the church to go against, against these types of groups, other than maybe other church members having the courage now to be more vocal. If they see, you know, if they see things that maybe are brewing that, that seem dangerous or that, that seem like they could possibly blossom into something that's, that's, that could be harmful, you know, or even deadly. And maybe this experience, this case has taught leaders to listen because there were warnings that were given. You know, there were a few people in this circle that were reporting to their leaders that they were nervous about some of the things that were going on. And perhaps just the exposure of this will maybe wake people up to take these types of things a little more seriously.

Megan Conner [04:14:51] Yeah, and maybe the church will say, we have come out and said, you know, you can't get revelation for anybody but yourself. You know, you can't get revelation for the whole church. You shouldn't be, you know, telling people that they have a mission or whatever the case is. But, man, I had a home teacher come to my house one time and tell me that he had a vision that my son was going to go on a mission to Brazil. And this was after he was out already, you know. And so after your son was out. After my son was out, yeah. And so you have these, like you say, they're little tentacles that. Where do you begin with it? But I think where you begin with it is by addressing this specific group at this specific time and denouncing this group and these teachings and saying that this is not right. And I feel like that's something the church has not done ever, is to address something head on. They will talk about it, but they will not speak directly to it. And that feels very familiar and very gross to me.

John Dehlin [04:15:51] Familiar meaning kind of like your family's of origin or what?

Mindy Caldwell [04:15:54] Yeah, interesting. So you're saying, going against like those that were in this actual inner group, making sure that at least, at least if they're gonna start somewhere, start with Melanie Gibb and David Warwick and I don't even know if some of them are still official members. I think they probably are Zulema and you know, and there's others, you know, that associated with this group that perhaps wasn't like part of like the trust circle or whatever.

Megan Conner [04:16:25] And I don't think they necessarily need to go and say individual people's names. But I guarantee you the leadership of the church knows about these teachings and knows the specifics and knows probably a lot more than we do about what's being taught and who's doing teaching it. And I would think that they. What I would hope is that they would come out and issue a statement that says the teachings of the Church of the Firstborn are apostate teachings. They are not part of mainstream Mormonism and they are harmful and nobody should be affiliating themselves with these groups. That would be a start.

Mindy Caldwell [04:17:00] I agree.

John Dehlin [04:17:02] Yeah. I think what's hard is the church can't condemn the idea of personal revelation. The church can't condemn the idea that these are the latter days, it's in the name. They can't condemn the idea that Jesus is coming soon, that we should get prepared for it. You know, that people can give blessings and have inspiration for others. Like, like there's so much in this that's so Mormon even the church can't even condemn that you shouldn't kill if the Spirit tells you to do so. Because. And it's in the third chapter in the Book of Mormon.

Megan Conner [04:17:35] Right.

John Dehlin [04:17:35] Like the church's hands are tied in just almost every way, doctrinally and theologically.

Megan Conner [04:17:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:17:44] That if they start clamping down on preparedness and end times and prophecy and personal revelation, what do they have left?

Megan Conner [04:17:54] And I feel like this is what we're all saying is that they can't denounce these harmful teachings because they originated.

John Dehlin [04:18:02] Because they're the authors of it.

Megan Conner [04:18:03] They're the authors of it. Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:18:06] And they're founded on it and they still rely on it on them.

Megan Conner [04:18:09] You know, and I think that that concept in itself should be a wake up call to people to say, okay, if the church can't denounce harmful teachings because they're rooted in the teachings of the actual church, maybe that should be a wake up call for people.

John Dehlin [04:18:26] Yeah. And I just have to get this in. We talked about this last episode. But like Sam Young advocates for the protection of children. He's axed. Natasha Alfred Parker advocates for healthy sexuality. She's Xed. Some of us, Jeremy Reynolds or I, who advocate for honesty in history or in My Case for LGBT Rights. We're X. Kate Kelly, Advocates for women's Rights. She's X. How long did Chad Dabo go?

Megan Conner [04:18:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:18:54] Without it, you know, how many of these people around him, all these preppers and all these extremists. Where was the church exing these people?

Megan Conner [04:19:03] Well, he wrote 25 books.

John Dehlin [04:19:05] Yeah. All the MDE stuff.

Mindy Caldwell [04:19:07] Right.

Megan Conner [04:19:07] But didn't get excommunicated until he got arrested. So how many years was he out there spreading this false information?

Mindy Caldwell [04:19:14] Like several. You know. When did he start publishing books? Like 2012, maybe 13. I could be wrong. Yeah, 12 or 13. Long time.

John Dehlin [04:19:23] It just shows how terrified they are, because I don't think they like this stuff, but they're just terrified to touch it.

Megan Conner [04:19:29] Yeah.

Mindy Caldwell [04:19:29] Yeah, I think you're probably right.

Megan Conner [04:19:31] They're afraid of what they're gonna lose if they talk about it.

Mindy Caldwell [04:19:36] I wonder if a way that they can. A way that they can start trying to prevent some of these more extreme things from happening. I wonder if they would talk about the conferences, just, like, the preparing of people or the. Because that's something that they could name the Firm Expo and some of these other things that could be a place where they could start. But who knows? Some of these people, I think, are in the camp that the mainstream church leaders have gone astray, and they may just carry on and keep doing their things and not really care if the top leaders of the church came out with an official statement about it.

Megan Conner [04:20:22] But then at least they wouldn't have access to temples and to mainstream Mormons.

Mindy Caldwell [04:20:26] That's a great point.

Megan Conner [04:20:27] And to pull more people away with them. That's a good point.

John Dehlin [04:20:30] Yeah.

Megan Conner [04:20:31] I think that the truth is the only thing that really matters, and it's harmful. The truth is harmful to people who have not confronted their own shame, and it's hurtful to people who haven't done their own work. And I think the church leadership is, in that camp,

John Dehlin [04:20:58] powerful. Well, Megan Connor, I'm. I'm sure, Mindy, you joined me in saying this. We're so sorry for this tragedy that's come upon your family, people you have known, people you have loved. And for us, it's like a new. A fascinating news story that is personal because it's Mormon, but not because we know the people. For you, it's personal because you grew up with these people. And we are so sorry that this has happened to you and your family.

Megan Conner [04:21:28] Yeah. Thank you. It has been really difficult. It's going to be a long time before all of us are really healed from all this.

John Dehlin [04:21:38] But we're also very grateful that you were courageous enough to reach out and to tell your story, because what's the opposite of these secrets and elephants in the room that we don't talk about? And the duplicitousness of the superficial appearance, but then the dark secrets, what's the opposite of that? It's bringing it all out into the sunlight and talking openly about it. Some of your family members will probably not really love that you did this, but how else are we going to heal and learn and grow if we don't? So we're. So. We're so grateful that you're willing to kind of share your perspectives with all of us.

Megan Conner [04:22:13] Yeah. Well, thank you for giving me the opportunity to tell the truth, because that I really do believe that is the most important thing.

John Dehlin [04:22:23] Well, thank you. And, Mindy, this would be a shadow of the podcast.

Mindy Caldwell [04:22:29] Oh, goodness.

John Dehlin [04:22:30] Without you.

Mindy Caldwell [04:22:31] Thank you, John.

John Dehlin [04:22:32] Thanks for coming.

Mindy Caldwell [04:22:33] I really enjoyed chatting with you, Megan, and hearing your story, and I think you're incredibly brave and wise, and I just wish nothing but the best for you going forward as you continue to heal and process this terrible tragedy and as you go forward in your own life. I just hope we can keep in touch.

Megan Conner [04:22:52] Yeah, of course. I would love that. I've really.

Mindy Caldwell [04:22:55] You've got some duets to sing. Yes.

John Dehlin [04:22:57] You guys have some karaoke?

Megan Conner [04:22:58] We do.

John Dehlin [04:22:59] To do together.

Megan Conner [04:23:00] That's right.

Predicting Verdicts and Closing Thoughts

John Dehlin [04:23:01] Do you see Laurie being convicted?

Megan Conner [04:23:03] I sure hope so.

John Dehlin [04:23:04] You do?

Megan Conner [04:23:05] I really do. I've been really nervous up until now that the evidence has been circumstantial and that there is going to be enough reasonable doubt for them to let her go. But I'm really hoping today was her announcement. Today was a big announcement. They found a hair of Lori's in the duct tape that was used to wrap jj. And even though there are some potential holes in that evidence, I hope that that's enough to sway the jury. And I really. I think that it would be a travesty of justice if she was not convicted. Even if she's not convicted here, she still has to stand trial for Charles. But JJ and Tylee deserve justice, and so does Tammy.

John Dehlin [04:23:57] All right, well, thanks, Megan Connor, thank you so much. Please stay in touch.

Megan Conner [04:24:01] Yes, I will.

John Dehlin [04:24:02] Thanks, Mindy.

Mindy Caldwell [04:24:03] You're welcome, John. Thanks for having me.

John Dehlin [04:24:06] And thanks, everyone, for joining us today on Mormon Stories podcast. We appreciate it. We appreciate Lauren Matthias and her podcast, Real Hidden True Crime. Please check her out as well. Subscribe to YouTube to the Mormon Stories podcast, YouTube channel, but also check out Lauren Matthias and her amazing hidden true crime YouTube channel because.

Mindy Caldwell [04:24:29] And her husband. And her husband John as well. Yes.

John Dehlin [04:24:32] Yeah. Yeah. And thanks for supporting us on Mormon Stories. And we couldn't do it without your support, so we always appreciate your support. You can go to MormonStories.org and become a supporter there. Thanks, everybody. Take care. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. Seek the truth. Stay away from harmful supernatural or theological beliefs that aren't grounded in reality. And we'll see all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.