Two days before Thanksgiving 2000, 19 police arrived at a townhome in Rexburg, Idaho, high, you only worry about police department, are you?

You've got to meet.

The woman the detectives encountered was attractive, late 40s.

If she was flustered about having police in her house, she didn't show it. She was.

Matter of fact, the cops had a simple question.

Where was her little boy? Laurie answered right away.

Of course, she knew where he was, where both of her kids were.

Her daughter Tirelli was in college, now was at BYU, Idaho, just up the hill from where they were standing.

BYU, yeah, she lived here.

And JJ, the seven year old boy whose grandparents had called police in the first place, he wasn't home, said Laurie Jayjay was in Arizona with her friend Melanie. Thing was said, Laurie Jayjay had autism and he had not been doing well in his new school. She figured he'd do better back in Arizona. She joined him there soon.

She said, I'm going to go back to Arizona. I'm going back in the special needs school. And the school here is too hard for him. He would scream and cry, came to school. The principal have to come out, try to drag him out of the car like this. This is too hard.

Laurie said she wasn't really surprised Gage's grandparents had called the police. Laurie had been having all sorts of trouble with grandparents, Kay and Larry. She'd been trying to avoid dealing with them much as she could anyway. They just called in this welfare check as a stunt of play for custody and the cops seem to buy it. People in general tended to buy whatever Laurie was selling.

See, and we hadn't heard any of that. As far as I was saying, she's doing this as part of that. My understanding and our only concern in this whole thing is this is a child that you know and I understand now that the producer of the story, it's awful at this very moment, she said.

JJ was probably at the movies down in Arizona with her friend Melanie.

So she said, go ahead, call Melanie if they're at the movie that's happening to you right now, because that's one thing I'm going to say.

It sounded like Laurie had them eating out of the palm of her hand. The cops even apologized for their visit. But they don't need to be a that people are constantly knocking on my door looking for me and I just don't want to be there.

The police left made a call to Lori's friend Melanie in Arizona, and she didn't answer right away, probably at the movies. Right. But from their home in Louisiana, those troublesome grandparents kept pushing Yalgoo. Put us on day day. Y'all better do it. Y'all got to do it.

So detectives wanted to talk to this. Melany confirmed the boy was with her. And when she finally called back, she said, no, JJ wasn't with her. In fact, she hadn't seen him in three months. Of course, detectives went looking for Tyler, too, and discovered she wasn't registered at BYU and nobody had seen her around town either. The next day, police went back to Lori's house with a search warrant this time. But Lori was gone.

Vanished. JJ grandparents fears were confirmed. Something was very, very wrong.

But getting that news that they they've gone to the house. There's nobody there. There's no sign of any children. It was it was worse. JJ was JJ, where's JJ? The grandparents call led to an FBI investigation and from there, a big Rexburg snowball. This story is about a woman, about people around her dropping like flies, it's about a fringe religious group, it's about the end of the world and zombies. It's about lazy beaches and kōichi, the desert of Arizona, a frostbitten pet cemetery at a six month search for two missing children.

Thank you for listening. Search for mommy doomsday, wherever you're listening now to hear the first two episodes and subscribe.