Ashley Flowers

And Tara declined to speak with us for this episode.

Emily, who we talked to, said that she believed it was for treating anxiety, which given everything that was going on with Laura at the time, like it didn't surprise Emily that she might have taken something like that.

So now this brings me to early December.

Laura took the kids to San Diego for Thanksgiving.

So when they got back on December 1st, the boys went to stay with their dad for a full week, including the weekend.

So they're with him on Monday, December 9th, the morning that Laura Sweetman was found dead.

That morning, it was pretty obvious that something had happened to Laura.

She was a no-call, no-show for work.

And I've worked with doctors before.

For any good doctor, that is unheard of.

So pretty early in the morning, one of her co-workers started making calls to check on her.

When she didn't answer, they called Stacy and asked her to go check on Laura.

This was shortly before 9, 10 a.m.

When Stacey got to Laura's, the metal gate door on the front door, it's like what we would call like a screen door, right?

That was locked and the front door, both locked as usual.

So she had to use her key to get inside.

She was greeted by both of Laura's dogs, but she didn't see Laura anywhere or hear anything when she called out her name.

Before she could even go up the stairs to check Laura's room, she saw the first sign that something was off.

Right at the base of the staircase.

The plastic gate that was usually in place to keep Laura's smaller dog from getting by was laying on the floor in this like diagonal position a few feet away from the staircase.