UPDATE: Laura Sweetman
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What is discussed at the start of this section?
Happy Friday, crime junkies. I feel like someone down at the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office might have listened to our most recent episode, or maybe the timing is just a crazy coincidence. But a couple of hours ago this Friday, the sheriff's office finally fulfilled our records request and got us the audio from Dave and Laura Sweetman's domestic violence incident. And I want to do something a little out of the ordinary. While this episode is still top of mind for everyone, I want to share it with you. There are three things that you're going to be hearing, and I'm going to pop in between each. First, I'm going to play for you sound from the body cam footage of a deputy responding to Laura's call that she made to the sheriff's office.
Then I'm going to play you the entire audio file that she turned over to them of the incident that she was reporting. This is the almost hour and a half long recording she has of her and Dave inside their house when she says he refused to let her leave. And then I'm going to play you some audio from when the deputy arrested and questioned Dave. This audio answers so many questions and brings up a million more. And I think for those of you who have been in a volatile or abusive relationship, this audio is going to hit home in a hard way. But it is important to hear because these are some of Laura's last recorded words before she died later the same year that this was reported. So first, here is the deputy's interaction with Laura.
It has been edited for clarity.
Hello.
Who's Laura? I'm just going to tell her where my kids are so somebody knows. How are you? I'm okay.
Not injured or anything? No. Okay.
Did you want me to start from scratch? Okay. So recently I discovered that my husband has another family. And so over the past few weeks I've gotten ready to get divorced. And he was out of town this weekend, so I moved my things out of the house. And then he was with two of the kids, so when he got back I... took uh i told him i was taking the kids to walmart really quick and i just took the kids to a friend's house and i went back to tell him that i was leaving but while i was gone he must have figured that out and seen enough that enough things were missing from the house um he wasn't inside um so and i was looking for him so i decided to try to leave and so i had my car like parked ready to go out on the street because i knew i knew there was going to be an altercation with him because
That's his mode of action. Okay. But I ran into him like when I was coming out the garage door and he grabbed me by the shirt and shoved me back in the house.
In the shirt that you have on?
Uh-huh. And so then he proceeded to argue for about an hour and 20 minutes and I tried to get out of the house. three times, and he grabbed onto my neck.
Do you have any marks? I don't have any marks on me, no.
And then he had made threats during the conversation that neither of us was getting out of this alive, that he would kill me, he would kill himself. He did retract that he would kill me and only kill himself. Like you said, and I have recorded this because I knew this was going to happen, that he had a gun upstairs.
Have you seen any weapons?
Yeah, I've seen three weapons.
What kind of weapons are there?
What audio evidence is revealed about Laura's situation?
There's a gun that looks probably like a 9mm or something, a silver one. I looked for it yesterday so I could get rid of it, but I couldn't find it. There's a shotgun, but that isn't loaded. It's probably not even out of the box or loaded, but the 9mm probably is loaded wherever it is. And then there's in the garage, but not in the house, there's another gun that looks like a semi-automatic gun. It looks like 100 years old. I don't know if it has any people or anything like that. And then basically he went through the whole, for an hour, telling me that he loved me, he wanted to find a way to make this work out. And then after he realized that it wasn't, he basically just was telling me that I needed to get the kids back.
I told him that the kids were with the police because he knows I have hot friends.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is discussed at the start of this section?
0:00–3:57
2
What audio evidence is revealed about Laura's situation?
3:57–6:12
3
What details emerge about Laura and Dave's relationship?
6:12–12:54
4
How does the conversation address threats and safety concerns?
12:54–48:23
5
What personal insights does Dave share with Laura?
48:23–50:43
6
How does Laura respond to Dave's emotional pleas?
50:43–51:41
7
What are the implications of their children being involved?
51:41–52:23
8
What new questions arise from the recorded conversation?
52:23–1:44:04