Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. We left you on a cliffhanger at the end of the last episode, a real-time development in the story of Laura Owens. Would she take the plea deal? The deadline came and went, and I didn't hear anything. So I called Clayton to see if he had any news.
Chapter 2: What happens with Laura Owens' plea deal?
Nothing. We have no idea. We are still waiting for an answer. In a shock to no one, we still don't have an answer. At least, not at the time I'm recording this. Laura could be in plea negotiations, or she could be doubling down and refusing to take the plea. I mean, is it anything that we're surprised about? I didn't really expect an answer because Laura's tactics are delay, delay, delay.
And that's just the way that she operates. It's like, let's drag this out as long as I can. So we have no information, which means like from here, I will wait with everybody else for a docket update. Clayton's seen this pattern so many times, he's exhausted by it. There's thousands of loopholes in the court system. She could do this until her face turns blue.
Chapter 3: What insights do Clayton and Mike share about recent developments?
And she will. Laura will just go, oh, loophole. Oh, another loophole. Oh, another loophole. Okay, that's my 50th loophole. Let me slug this monster energy drink and go for my 50 first. And that's what she does. All right, loophole 100, loophole 150, loophole 300. That's where we're at right now. We're on loophole 300.
Just because this plea deal expired, it doesn't mean her window to plead guilty is closed. She can plead up until the day of the verdict. And between now and then, there's an untold amount of loopholes. The plea deal that expired on April 30th was the prosecution's first offer, and likely its most lenient one. If she does not take this, it's only going to get worse for her.
But with that being said, the plea comes with the fact that she has to admit wrongdoing, which we know Laura does not like to do. So again, will she take the plea? I mean, this is in her best interest to do so, but I don't know if she's capable. The state usually tries to avoid going to trial. It's expensive. Only 2% of cases go to trial in Maricopa County.
I asked Clayton what he thinks is going to happen from here. He started with a disclaimer. I don't think I've been right about Laura once. With every single prediction that I make, I'm always wrong. So keep that in mind.
If I had a crystal ball and I was to tell you where we go from here, I feel very strongly that she will not take the plea deal and she will go to trial and she will end up with worse charges and she will face prison time. And that would be best case scenario for everybody, including Laura. Laura, I know you're going to listen to this. You are trapped. Wake up.
This might be the final episode, but I promise we're not just going to leave you hanging. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. There's a word we've avoided using throughout this entire podcast. God damn, this lady's crazy.
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Chapter 4: How does Laura's plea negotiation strategy affect her case?
It's just some crazy woman. Crazy. Crazy. She's crazy. So crazy. This is the crazy girl you're talking about, right? The crazy woman. The woman who brings false allegations of sexual assault. The woman who fabricates pregnancies. The woman who spins a victim narrative at every turn, leaving a trail of destruction behind her. She's a kind of folk villain in our society.
And what she's done can be weaponized against all women. Apparently, these kinds of stories are pretty popular. They can also be dangerous. As women, a lot of us remember the times we've been called crazy. I've been called crazy. You double text. You call too many times. You say I love you too quickly. You want to have conversations about the future.
You want to process something that hurt your feelings. You've been gaslit and you react. Or, worst of all, you've been abused and you tell the truth. And then all of a sudden, you've been assigned the label crazy. I've thought about this word a lot. We've all seen it used to discredit women. I was cautious about taking on a story where the antagonist is such a polarizing figure.
I also didn't expect the facts to speak as loudly as they do. After just a few weeks of reporting, I had a realization similar to what Reality Steve described.
I think it was reading the dating contract. That's when I knew we were not dealing with a person that was living in reality. And that was the most shocking thing to me.
I've said this before and I'll say it again. Fabricated claims like the kind alleged here are incredibly rare. Since the very start of this production, my team and I have been talking about the larger impacts of sharing this kind of narrative. If just retelling it perpetuates this negative stereotype about women and how we can minimize that. In the end, this is what I've come to.
I've reported on the facts. I've utilized public records, many of them submitted by Laura Owens herself. I've also relied on multiple accounts of people who experienced this firsthand. I believe their stories deserve to be told. I've heard this described as a cautionary tale. I want to challenge that a bit. I think the cautionary aspect really falls on each of us.
How we interpret it and retell it and why. It's our responsibility to see it as what it is. One single story. When I first talked to Clayton, I didn't expect him to have thought about these repercussions and nuances. But to my surprise, he had. And he brought it up to me.
That's the delicate balance with this whole story, which is why I do appreciate you being a woman and why I do appreciate the vast majority of the supporters of me during this whole fiasco being women. Because if it was just a movement of men, then it would be seen as misogynistic. Like, oh, if you get attached to this story, there's an ickiness to it. It's a men's right activist-led movement.
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Chapter 5: What is the significance of Laura's past relationships?
In episode two, I said the same thing. No one who knew Laura would go on the record for an interview. But that changed this week. One of Laura's childhood friends reached out to our show. She had something to say. She would only speak to us if we kept her anonymous and disguised her voice. We asked for verification of her friendship with Laura, and she sent receipts.
We didn't know what to expect, if she would defend Laura or not. but we agreed to the interview. We're going to call her Emily, which isn't her real name. What you're going to hear is a voice actor replicating Emily's tape word for word. We wanted to preserve her intention and emotionality. We started by asking her why she reached out to us.
It just felt like some background was probably needed. There's just no context to her anymore. She's just this rich horse girl, and she puts on this big, I'd say almost a facade that's just not who she was, at least when she was a child into early adulthood. We asked Emily to describe what Laura was like back then. Going back into like high school, middle school, Laura wanted to be famous.
Laura's parents were famous. She always wanted to be in the limelight. She was a country singer at one point in time trying to get famous. Laura, I would say, is best described as a keyboard cowboy. She was very popular behind a screen, but in person, not that popular. And just boy crazy. We wanted to know if she'd ever met Laura's mom, Jan. She had. She and her mom were besties.
Jan would drive her around every day. Laura didn't get her driver's license until she was like 18. Yeah. She and her mom just spent all day every day together and had this very strange relationship. Laura could do no wrong. Laura did what she wanted with full unbridled support of her parents. You want a new horse? You get it. You want a new saddle? You get it. You want this? Just order it.
I don't think she learned how to be rejected. I don't know if she ever really learned how to be told no.
Before Laura was publicly identified, Emily saw the headline about a former bachelor being in a paternity dispute with an anonymous woman.
And I was like, what a dick. Like, how rude of this guy to knock up some chick and then deny paternity in all this. Not that long later, I saw Laura post some article on Facebook, and I was like, holy shit, I read about this.
Immediately, Emily reached out to her childhood friend to check on her.
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Chapter 6: What do we learn from Laura's childhood friend Emily?
What will she pick next? My husband got diagnosed a few months ago and my five-year-old son got diagnosed last year. Neither of them would pull the diabolical crap that she did. This is utterly offensive.
Like we said at the start of this episode, we wanted to end this season by hearing from Laura directly. I would like to ask her more about how her alleged autism diagnosis explains everything. But Laura, much like her story, seems to be a moving target. When Laura's been questioned in the past, she turns to a familiar tactic. The angry email.
Most people you've heard from in this story have received one. Usually, more than one. And they all described the same feeling, a suffocating, all-consuming anxiety, every time they saw one in the inbox. It's hard to explain to somebody how the hairs on your neck immediately go up when you see you get an email from Laura Owens. She always tagged her emails with read receipts.
Laura had a propensity to use email tracking. And she would comment about how many times we opened her emails.
When I tell you 500 emails, it was just every freaking day. You have to understand, every email you'd get from Laura would mess up your day. It was a threat. It was like, at some point, you just don't want to open these emails. Laura's emails are so notorious that her usual sign-off, All the Best, has become an inside joke in the online community.
There's even a website dedicated to exposing Laura's alleged crimes. It's called All the Best Research. The content creators told me about how personal and vitriolic her emails can be. I sympathized, but I didn't fully understand it. That was until Laura started emailing me. When our production company first began developing this series, we actually had a meeting with Laura.
Our CEO, Nancy Glass, and executive producer Ben Fetterman talked to her for 43 minutes on a Zoom call. They discussed her participation in a potential podcast and documentary. That was nine months before the first episode of this podcast came out. In an email ahead of that meeting, Laura provided a timeline of her version of events for background.
All the emails you're about to hear are being read by a voice actor. Let me pull out some of the most illuminating points from Laura's initial timeline. I was intimate with Eckard. I didn't want to have sex with him, but he admits in his deposition on February 2nd, 2024, that he did.
I alleged non-consensual sex immediately afterwards to my family and friends, and in an email to content creators Dave Neal and Steve Carbone, who were harassing me on October 23rd, 2023. I also accused him of it in my deposition on March 1, 2024. My claim has been ignored by MCAO. MCAO stands for the Maricopa County Attorney's Office. They're the ones who brought the criminal charges.
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