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Chapter 1: What happened to Gloria Choi and who was involved?
Welcome back to Postmortem. I'm your host, 48 Hours correspondent Anne-Marie Green. And today we are discussing the case of Gloria Choi, who was shot in her car after being forced off the road by another vehicle in Lakewood, Washington. Now, Gloria alleged that her ex-boyfriend, Billy Rickman, was stalking and harassing her. And in a 48-hour period, two days before she was murdered...
Law enforcement was contacted four separate times about Rickman's escalating behavior. And Gloria's family believes the justice system failed her. So joining me today is 48 Hours correspondent Natalie Morales, who reported on this case yesterday. Natalie, it's good to speak with you again.
Good to be back with you, Anne-Marie. And, you know, I think Gloria Choi's story is sadly a cautionary tale. I think a lot of people can relate to, you know, falling in love with the wrong person sometimes.
Chapter 2: How did love bombing play a role in Gloria's relationship with Billy Rickman?
But from what we know, Gloria did everything she could once she realized this relationship was not good for her. She tried to end it and she thought that the police and that the law would protect her. Unfortunately, as you know, that was not the case in this tragedy.
Yeah, but I think there are a lot of lessons to be learned here. So we will get into this. I want to remind everyone, if you haven't watched or listened to this episode, it's called The Love Bombing of Gloria Choi. Go check it out right now and then come on back for our conversation.
So, Natalie, in watching the hour, I felt I got a real sense of just how hardworking, how beloved Gloria Choi was by her family, by her friends. You know, she had this great career in the family business running these hotels. She was really devoted to her son. It is hard to be a single parent. And so I'm always impressed when I hear about single parents succeeding.
Chapter 3: What warning signs did Gloria notice about Rickman's behavior?
And in May of 2021, she meets Billy Rickman, who is staying at the hotel that she's managing. He has this larger-than-life personality and immediately introduces himself to her. But what was it about Rickman that she was attracted to?
Well, I think it was that lifestyle of hers. As you said, she was a busy single mom. She worked really hard. She didn't have a lot of time to date. You saw her friend and her coworker, Brianna, in our hour. And she said that Rickman talked a big game, seemed to say all the things that Gloria wanted to hear. He was also very proud to have her as his girlfriend. He paid a lot of attention to her.
And he had formed this bond with her son.
Chapter 4: How did the police respond to Gloria's reports of harassment?
You know, we saw some of those texts and those exchanges where Rickman is professing his love and they're so over the top. You know, I want you. I can't wait to see what life has in store for us. My heart is yours. The Choi family attorney, Megan Driscoll, says Gloria was basically love bombed, that over the top expression of love.
Definitely. I think probably a lot of people have experienced love bombing and, you know, it feels wonderful. But there's always sort of a little bit of an edge where you're like, geez, we just we just met. I mean, but if they do it well and obviously he did, it's you can get lured in by it within weeks. Right. Gloria and Rickman, they became a couple.
He began staying at the Oyo Hotel because she stays there and works there. Gloria's parents do not approve of this relationship. They want Rickman out. And so they say to her, listen, you know, you can stay at the hotel and be the manager or you can leave. And she chooses to leave with him.
Chapter 5: What events led to Gloria's tragic murder?
In September 2021, Gloria moved to a new apartment with Rickman and her son and took a new job as a manager at the Holiday Inn Express. But it wasn't long after that that Gloria really started to realize that Rickman was not the guy that he was making himself out to be.
Right. Yeah. According to Gloria's friend, Brianna, Gloria told her Rickman was often mean. He was showing his angry side. He started to drink in excess and was using drugs. But when it came down to it, you know, how was he making money? It really, according to Brianna, was Gloria that was providing for him. And Gloria told her that Rickman just refused to get a job. Yeah.
Now, Gloria also, I think, suspected that Rickman was tracking her. And she told Brianna she found an Apple Air tag in her truck. She said that she feared he'd hidden more there in order to be able to track her. And, you know, that became more obvious once she moved out and tried to rid herself of him.
Hmm. Well, there's a theme here when we talk about living off a woman. You introduce us to a woman named Aja, who said that Rickman sex trafficked her when she was a 14-year-old runaway in California. Can you share any more details what we learned about Rickman's past?
Yeah, it's interesting because according to the prosecutors, Rickman, he did have some convictions for drug and firearms offenses in California. But it was when he was in California and in Oakland in particular that he met Aja Huall. Now, according to Aja, she met Rickman when she was just 14 years old. Rickman was in his 30s, so huge age difference there.
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Chapter 6: How did Billy Rickman evade capture after the murder?
But Aja told us that when she met him, he knew that she was being trafficked. But by somebody else, he seemed as if he wanted to get her away from her trafficker. But he ends up becoming her trafficker. And really, you know, Aja's story is so remarkable in the hour because he even though she missed a lot of high school, she managed to go back and get her GED when she was 17 years old.
She went on, got her master's degree from UC Berkeley, from the Public Affairs School, the Goldman School, and she's now working as a consultant. That's amazing. She is such a success story. She really is.
That is truly inspiring. And to think, like, she had gone through all of this and, you know, transformed her life. Meanwhile, Rickman, Clearly hasn't changed his ways at all. But, you know, Gloria figures this out. It takes about six months after meeting Rickman and she ends the relationship.
Chapter 7: What was the outcome of Rickman's trial?
She moves back in with her parents, but Rickman refuses to return her truck, which he had borrowed. So she reports him to the police. In that first incident, the officer responds very quickly. Rickman is arrested. He is thrown in jail for a couple of days before a judge then slaps him with a very strict no contact order. But after his release, Rickman continues to harass her.
And it seems like after that, the police response sort of slows.
It's much weaker. Why? Well, this is a case of two different police departments at the time. You know, there was the city of Tumwater Police Department and Lakewood. And so Gloria and Rickman, where they were living, was Tumwater. And that's where, you know, Gloria reported that Rickman refused to give back her truck.
It was the Tumwater police officer who recognized that Rickman seemed to be a danger to Gloria. And so he asked the judge to issue a domestic violence no contact order. Gloria then moved. She switched jobs to the Holiday Inn Express. That happened to be in Lakewood, where a lot of those other incidents happened.
For example, when she was meeting with her friend Jacob and her car was broken into and the laptops were stolen, she reported that to Lakewood police. And Gloria said that she suspected it was Rickman because when she was meeting with Jacob, she got this email instantly from Rickman that said, wow, you left me for another guy. And, you know, the Lakewood officer said he was going to call Rickman.
He said he left a voicemail. saying police wanted to speak with him. Lori and her friend Jacob Blue, they go back to the Holiday Inn Express and they see, you know, Jacob's car. Now they discover his car tires had been slashed as well. They called Lakewood police again. And because she worked at the hotel, she was able to show the responding officers surveillance footage.
And it showed, you know, the shadowy figure of a guy apparently slashing the tires. But because the surveillance footage was a little bit grainy and you couldn't make out his face very clearly, Lakewood police said it was too unclear. They couldn't see him and they couldn't identify, in fact, that it was Rickman.
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Chapter 8: How are Gloria's family and son coping after her death?
Now, all of these instances are examples that Megan Driscoll, the Choi family attorney, says were clear violations of the no contact order. In fact, Driscoll says Gloria would eventually give Lakewood police a seven page document that listed all the ways she said Rickman violated the no contact order.
Here's the thing about it, too, is experts will always tell domestic violence victims to document everything. And here Gloria is writing it down. She is basically taking the investigation into her own hands. What else did she note in this document?
This is an important lesson that we can all take away from this story. I mean, she really did document everything in that seven-page list, including screenshots with text messages, numerous missed calls that she kept getting from his friends, from blocked numbers or numbers that were not identifiable.
And by the way, according to Megan Driscoll, that seven page document, the prosecutors never even saw it because it was found later in a sealed envelope in a police file. Prosecutor Greg Greer said he had never even seen it. It wasn't opened or found until after the homicide conviction.
So I thought this was really interesting in the hour. 48 Hours spoke to Russ Hicks. He's an expert hired by the prosecution who worked as an instructor at the police academy and taught the three Lakewood officers that were involved in this case. I absolutely thought he was going to defend them. And then he did not.
He was surprised to learn that the officers did not seem to follow the training, the very training and guidelines that he gave them. I want to play a clip from that interview.
The training specifically states that they should recognize escalating behavior. And this was escalating because there were four incidents in a 48-hour period. So having that he's armed with a deadly weapon, that he's slashing tires repeatedly in the same location,
and that nothing's being done, they should have recognized that this is a pattern of escalating behavior and they should have intervened.
Megan Driscoll told us this was sadly as foreseeable a tragedy as it could possibly be. We should point out the Lakewood Police Department said they couldn't really identify Billy Rickman as the man slashing the tires and walking away. But Russ Hicks said the official training says that in domestic violence cases, you know, they generally do escalate in nature.
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