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The Bakersfield three is proudly part of the Acast creator network. There was once a time, not that long before Bailey Despot's face was plastered on missing flyers, that the most important man in her life was a pig. He was a few hundred pounds and named after a character from the movie mean girls, glenn Coco. Bailey raised him from a piglet as part of the program future farmers of America. You want to say hi to the camera? Hey, you.

Hi.

Okay, just walk away.

That's Bailey trying to get his attention. She'd wake up long before the sun came up and spend most of her free time with him, often just laying down with him in his pen. She probably didn't think of it then as a teenage girl, but it'd be one of the more stable male relationships in her life, certainly one of the more innocent ones. I'm Olivia Lavois, and this is the Bakersfield Three. It's interesting and sad to see the evolution of Bailey through her social media posts.

Today.

So many of our instagram pages are carefully curated, but in those early days, when there were no filters to make people's faces look perfect, no social media influencers, there was something pretty genuine about instagram and what our pages said about us. Bailey's account a few years before her disappearance looks something like a scrapbook of her favorite things. There's a lot of photos of elaborate glittery manicures, big frappuccino drinks, trips to Disneyland, photos of Miley Cyrus family barbecues, camping trips, and going to prom.

Obviously, everybody has their soulmate when it comes to a husband or a wife that you love, but we definitely have soulmates as friends as well. And she was mine.

Her best friend Maddie, is in a majority of her photos.

She was very spunky and full of life and attitude.

While many of us go through awkward stages, the two girls blossomed early on. In high school, we did definitely get.

A lot of attention. Know, the older males, I should say a lot of the juniors and seniors were always fawning over us. But it was something that she took with a grain of salt.

The attention from boys didn't seem to have the same hold on Bailey as it does many teenage girls. She loved makeup, but oftentimes she was bare faced, wearing leggings and baggy sweatshirts that swallowed up her tiny frame.

She just kind of dressed how she felt, and she still got attention for it, that's for sure. But her natural beauty was the best.

She was a good student. And outside of school, when she wasn't caring for various different animals she kept as pets, she worked at a pizza parlor. After graduation, she started college. She wanted to be a veterinarian. Things seemed to be going well, but there was a major shift in her family dynamic, to say the least. See, there was another family that Bailey's family was very close with. Let's call them the Joneses. The bond between the two families originated from the close relationship bailey's dad had with Mr. Jones. Here's bailey's mom. Jane to explain.

Best friend from life. They did everything together. Best man at each other's weddings, so our wedding and his know they grew up together.

The Joneses had daughters, too, so it was a natural fit for the families to be close. Evidently, Bailey's dad got very close to his best friend's wife, Mrs. Jones. The two had an affair and ultimately left their spouses for each.

Blah, blah. But I probably should have left him a long time ago hindsight's 2020. And it was terrible what he did to the girls.

Bailey's sister Caitlin says they really had an idyllic childhood. Raised in a nice house in a nice neighborhood with two loving, attentive parents, bailey would even post on social media when it was her parents'wedding anniversary. I'm not sure most high schoolers ever stopped to think about their parents'anniversaries, but Bailey did. Caitlin says the news of the affair with their family friend and her parents'eventual divorce devastated Bailey. But it wasn't just their family unit.

That was lost after they separated. He didn't want anything to do with either one of us.

It was a series of life altering changes all at once. Of course, the hardest, Caitlin says, was their father, blocking them out of his life. In the five years I've been reporting on Bailey's case, I've never heard from him, and he didn't want to speak with me for the podcast after they.

Divorced, and he wanted nothing to do with us. It upset her that she didn't have her dad, and she desperately wanted her dad around. She wanted dad's approval. She wanted to make dad proud. And so that's where we all think her downward spiral started.

As Bailey was grappling losing the life she had known for 18 years, her best friend Maddie was also going through something.

I had just gone out of a very toxic relationship, and so her and I were kind of going on like a little bit of a bender.

Like many 18 year olds, before them. It seemed like a pretty great idea to use partying to help cope, and initially, it seemed pretty typical anyways. Lots of college kids party. But then one night, someone brought out cocaine. The girls tried it and liked it.

We would start drinking, and then whoever's house we would be at normally tended to have it. So we would go in the room with the older crowd, and we would do a few lines here and there, but we would all go back out to the party and have a good time. But I started noticing that I would look around and I wouldn't see her anywhere, and I would always find her back in the bedroom again. It became something more serious and a lot quicker than I anticipated as well. I thought it was just something know, we were going to dabble in and have a little bit of fun here and there.

As Bailey's partying was quickly taking over her life, maddie says she met a guy who wasn't into that at all. Which changed Maddie's mindset, causing her to fade out of the party scene. Young love can have quite an influence on someone both bad and good. Sadly for Bailey, the boys she was falling for weren't the type to encourage her to party less. It seemed quite the opposite. This was summer 2017, when things truly took a turn for the worse. For Bailey, first it was the partying, then signs of an eating disorder.

She was never diagnosed with that. But when you see three different piles of puke out in the backyard from when she just ate, you could go out and tell what it was. Just broke my heart that she would do that. Or you could hear her in the bathroom doing it. She's like, Mom, I'm okay. You know, she would deny that it was a problem.

Jane also noticed Bailey's taste in men was not the best. That July, she got a domestic violence restraining order against a boyfriend. This was the time that Bailey told her mom she had a friend named Micah who was a good guy and helped her out by picking her up from the abusive boyfriend's house when she needed help. The next time Jane heard Micah's name was after she got a call from the cops that Bailey was picked up for drunken disorderly conduct in front of Micah's house. You might remember Micah ended up calling 911 on her.

There's a woman that will not stop.

Coming in my house, jane says.

This was rock bottom for her daughter, at least for a brief period. Bailey agreed to seek counseling, to work to get her life back on track. And for about a month, she did, until the day that changed everything, really.

So on August 23, bailey had a counseling appointment with Behavior Health with a counselor there.

That morning, Bailey told her mom she made plans with an acquaintance before the counseling session.

She goes, so and so called and wants me to come over and go swimming.

Bailey insisted she was just going to go lay out by the girl's pool for a couple hours in the morning before it got too hot out.

And I couldn't get a hold of her after lunch. Her phone just would you know how it goes when it's dead or turned off.

A few hours went by as Jane anxiously waited for Bailey at her counseling appointment.

She never showed. Know. So I went home. By this time I'm like, I know something bad's happened to her.

Bailey came home late that night and told her mom she didn't feel well and needed to go to sleep. Jane, drained from the stress of the situation, didn't fight her on it, deciding she'd speak with her the next day. When Jane got up early that morning, she saw Bailey was already awake.

When I saw her set out on the back porch shaking, like know, and I could see bruises all over her arms and legs. And I asked her if she thought she'd been assaulted. And she shook her head yes. And I go, okay, we have to go. She's like, mom, I don't want to. Can I shower? I go, no, you can't shower. We have to go. You have to go turn this in so we can stop it.

Jane says the experience of getting the rape kit done was agonizing.

We were there. Oh, my God. I think it was six or 8 hours. The nurse goes, it's going to take a little longer than usual. She's got bruises everywhere. I was crying. It's still hard to hear that.

Jane says Bailey was drugged, so the events of the night are foggy at best. She says Bailey told her she remembers a group of guys coming to the pool where she and her girlfriend were swimming and they offered her a drink. I've never been able to read the police reports, but a friend of Bailey's told me that Bailey said after blacking out at the pool, she woke up handcuffed to a bed where multiple men raped her while someone recorded it on their phone.

And she wouldn't talk about it to me. I was told she'll do it in her own time.

Jane says Bailey met with the detectives multiple times and they shared with her that the rape kit came back with three different DNA profiles. The story I have always heard is that Bailey didn't know who the men were who raped her, so she couldn't give any names. In terms of the DNA, it's unclear if police have matched the profiles to any suspects, but no arrests have ever been made.

She was never the same after that.

Bailey's friend Maddie, who at this point wasn't seeing Bailey as often, reconnected with her a couple months later and picked up immediately on how the sexual assault changed her.

It was a little hard, definitely, because she was different.

Bailey seemed to clearly want to numb herself from the trauma of her assault. And jane says bailey's counselor. Was deeply concerned about the effects it had on her mental health, which seemed to be deteriorating. Her family felt like they had no control. They're still not positive exactly what was going on in her life around this time, but it was clear it wasn't good.

One time, I found all these hotel room keys in her backpack, and I'm like, what are these? Oh, they're know to go to parties and stuff.

Jane wasn't sure if it was just her daughter partying way too much or if there was something more sinister going on.

By then, it was starting to get really bad in the people she was hanging out with. And that's when the cars started picking her up.

Jane says anytime a car would come to pick up bailey, she would write down the license plate number. She says she'd beg bailey not to go. She didn't know where bailey was going or who she was going with. Sometimes she'd even resort to trying to physically restrain her. It's a difficult thought what to do with your child, who in so many ways is still a child. A child deeply struggling, but legally an adult, a powerless, terrifying feeling. Bailey'sister caitlin remembers one night in particular.

There were two vehicles parked across the street from our house that were there to pick her up. And I know one was a black car, and then the one behind it was a black SUV. And she had gotten into the backseat of the first car. We couldn't physically make her stay, but you could tell by the look on her face she didn't want to go.

Jane also told me about a night that sounds similar.

One time, it was these black SUVs, and with the really black windows, you couldn't see. And then, like, a fancy mercedes car, all black, pulled up. And bailey had just been home for a couple hours, long enough to shower. She was going to eat, and she got a call, and she goes, I have to go. They're here. And I'm like, bailey, don't go, telling her, bailey, don't get in the car. Stay.

Stay.

And she's like, mom, I got to go. You need to go back in the house. I don't know who was in these.

Cars, but would she say, like, these are my friends?

No.

Okay.

So she never really sugarcoated it, then?

No. She just said, I have to know. You can't talk about it.

And then jane found shocking videos of bailey on her.

You know, she'd be, like, passed out naked in hotel rooms.

Jane describes these horrifying videos in a calm, collected manner because it's what she's been trained to do through years of therapy.

These guys in there snorting cocaine off her stomach.

Despite her tone now, at the time, jane was in shock, then furious, then deeply saddened. She said bailey would tell her when the videos were taken, she was passed out and had no idea what was going on or that anyone was recording her. Until the videos were sent to her Snapchat account, jane felt utterly powerless.

She's like a different personality. After her assault, I don't know if she wanted to change her personality or if it was a side effect from it, because it's a coping skill, because she would go from Bailey that everybody knew and loved, who was fun, to some gangster girl. And I'm like, Bailey, what's going on? And then she'd just leave. Somebody would come pick her up. I just couldn't I couldn't keep her at home. And she wouldn't let me take her out because I would say, Bailey, just let me take you to go get help. We can go somewhere. I'll figure out a way.

Less than a year before mysterious black SUVs were coming to pick up Bailey, she and her family were every bit a typical, normal, happy family. Jane never dreamed her daughter would be involved with anything like this, not even close. And now she was having to navigate it as a single mother with her husband and their father abruptly out of the picture. It's something I'm not sure Jane or anyone can put into words. Her sister Caitlin says it was very painful to watch.

You would never think on this side of town and then a girl who had a great upbringing in life would just go down this path.

Caitlin says she and her mom had different views on how to handle Bailey's downward spiral.

It started getting real bad between me, her and our mom. I couldn't take the enablent anymore. And that's when I decided to remove myself from that situation, because the problem wasn't leaving, she was staying, which I get as a mom. You're not going to kick out your kid who desperately needs help but doesn't want it.

Caitlin got a job in Texas and with the issues at home, decided to take it. Her last conversation with Bailey is one that haunts her.

I told her, as far as I'm concerned, you're not a sister to me, you're not the person I used to know. You're a whole different version of the girl that I grew up with. And the last words I said during our argument was, if you keep continuing down this path with these people, you're going to end up either dead or you're going to go missing. That was the last I ever spoke to her.

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Caitlin moved away, and not long after, Bailey met a new guy, matthew Queen.

I never considered them dating. Bailey never said they were dating.

To this day, I know it makes Jane uncomfortable to hear me or anyone say that Bailey and Matthew Queen were in a relationship.

Well, the first time I met him, he brought Bailey home on the back of his motorcycle. And she goes, oh, my gosh, that was so fun. I had so much fun shooting a gun. And I go, a gun? You can't be shooting a gun.

As if taking her daughter out on a motorcycle to shoot guns in the desert wasn't unnerving enough, jane says, and.

Then he sat in the chair and took his helmet off. And I'm thinking in my head, I'm going, oh, my fucking God. He's like a 40 year old man. What's he doing with my daughter?

This is around the time Bailey met her friend Jessica, who lived just down the street from Matt Queen. Jessica still remembers the first time she saw the couple together.

The age difference was what threw me off.

Queen was 21 years older than Bailey. He had three children, one of whom was just a few years younger than Bailey, but his youngest child was just a toddler. At the time, jessica says, Bailey was often with the young boy, who was the same age as Jessica's son, which is how the two of them hit it off.

And then when I went over there to have a playdate at their house, the fact that his wife and his mom and everyone lived there, and Bailey lived there.

As discussed in a previous episode, the living situation was odd to most people. Along with his children, queen's wife lived in the home, in another bedroom, as did Queen's mother. But Bailey claimed the situation worked for everyone, and she was enjoying her new life with Queen.

He had a really nice house, nice things, and let her drive his car, and I thought she liked that. I thought she liked Know housewife because she would make dinners and we would look up stuff on pinterest and cook dinners. And I thought she liked that whole pretending she was a homebody like her housewife. And she loved his kids.

Bailey's friend Maddie, they lived in a.

Very great neighborhood, beautiful homes, nice people. And I feel like that's kind of Know steered her towards him is, oh, he's got all this money in this big, nice house. I think he's the good one for know. He'll protect me. He'll take care of me.

Within less than a year, bailey had gone from hard working college student to party girl, dealing with some serious trauma. From her sexual assault to now essentially a housewife. She was taking care of matt queen's children. While he and his wife went to work, she tended to the home and went to playdates with the kids. Certainly she was not living the life of most 20 year olds. Even though her new friend jessica thought it was all pretty strange. She loved spending time with bailey.

She just loved life like, loved animals, loved saving little creatures, and wouldn't even kill a know.

Bailey was the type to bring in strays, find sickly animals, and nurse them back to health. Jessica says she raised two ducklings, insisting they got to take over the master bathtub.

She was the funniest, just like best with the kids, just joy to be around, and she just tried to mask everything with this tough persona.

It seems there were almost two sides to bailey. One that was very sweet and gentle, and one that many people felt was an act she put on as a result of her sexual assault.

She had so much anger built up in her from that incident, just something she could not let go.

Jessica says it often seemed that bailey's sexual assault consumed her, and it certainly compounded the hurt and resentment she already had with the negative male relationships in her life. I have no idea if this is true, but someone said she had a list of men that had hurt her.

Yeah, because I told you, she wrote a lot in journals and her little notebooks and stuff. And just would write poems, and they were kind of dark poetry. There was something even in there about her dad. I don't know too much about her and her dad, but she had a lot of spite towards her dad, too. But she did have a list. And I know a few of those names that were on there, but I guess those were everyone that hurt her in the past.

What was the point of the list? Did she say, this is a list of men who have hurt me, and I want to hurt you?

Yeah, and I think she wanted justice. She wanted justice and felt like no one cared or believed or took it serious, because I think they did file a police report, and it was just one of those things that just got overlooked, I think. And because of that, she felt like they got away with ruining her or destroying her, embarrassing her, just all the things that come with that sexual assault.

Several people told me bailey wanted to come off as tough, particularly to men, which they told me was unexpected to see from a young, beautiful girl. She's crazy. Beautiful, but crazy. Here's Jeremy bell, who knew bailey, micah, and james she talked like she was.

A fucking kingpin or like she was.

You know what I mean, a leader of a gang or some, like she was some badass. But she wasn't.

And so it's kind of hard to take her seriously.

Several people say she was all bark and no bite. Jessica says she only saw this side of Bailey when her sexual assault was brought up.

She would just be so mad, just fuming that there's no justice. She's living with pain and know out partying and happy and probably doing it again, or just that they got away with everything they'd done to her.

Jessica believes Bailey's coping mechanism was to give off a certain image. Bailey appeared to never want to be fearful again, or rather, to never let a man think he could scare her. She didn't post much on her instagram in the months before she went missing. The year before, her posts were often puppy pictures. A video frolicking at the county fair with a friend.

I missed my boo.

A video of her doing a ballet twirl with the caption talking about her love for ballet and yoga. Flash forward to 2018. One of her only two posts for that year before she vanished is a video of her putting a knife across her lips with the caption dangerous. The other post is a video of her lying on a bed with Matt Queen. He's laying on her chest as she mouths the word to this song. There's laser looking lights flashing across them. There's something trippy but dark about it.

I don't think she ever had the intentions to actually hurt someone, but she wanted them to know, like, look, you're not going to mess with me again. I knew she did want to scare them and that's why she felt like Matt was a safe place, I think, because no one would mess with her again. Because of the whole gun thing. Because the gun thing was known. Everyone knew about the gun thing.

The gun thing. What she's referring to by that is Matthew Queen supposedly having an extensive gun collection and participating in building high power assault rifles, which numerous search warrants I found went into, if you remember, warrants connected Bailey, Queen and Micah to this alleged illegal gun ring. Jessica says Queen seemed to be someone who had his life together with a good job and whatnot, but was open about making and selling guns, something Queen has always denied to law enforcement. And Jessica says Bailey seemed to like being around them.

I think those guns made her feel safe almost, or untouchable, like, hey, come mess with me now.

The couple's alleged involvement in guns seemed odd and unexpected. Here's Bailey's sister Caitlin.

I guarantee their neighbors didn't think anything like that of either one of them. Thought that they were just normal American couple, not knowing the type of underground world that they were living in and.

The things that they were doing jessica says the guns seemed to empower Bailey. She says Bailey would take photos with them and would sometimes go test fire them with Queen. But then something happened.

They did end up discussing the gun thing with me about how she tipped the gun charges, because that's what they thought about all the time.

It would become a defining moment in Bailey's loved ones lives. Just before Christmas 2017. Here's Bailey's. Mom.

Jane you know, she called me and goes, mom, I've been arrested for guns, and I'm, like, freaking out. What what happened?

That December night, Bakersfield police officers were out searching for suspects that had just robbed an ice cream store. A witness described the getaway car as a dark SUV. At this time, Matthew Queen and Bailey were passing through the area in a silver SUV. So officers pulled them over, and, according to police reports, could see a gun in plain sight. While Bailey and Queen were not the ice cream shop robbers, police found four guns in Queen's car, three handguns and an AR 15 rifle with no serial number, making it a ghost gun, which is illegal. And as it turned out, Matthew Queen was also convicted of a felony over a decade ago in San Diego, so he wasn't allowed to have any guns. Whether they were made legally or not, it was shocking to Jane. Bailey had come in contact with police before when she was arrested for drunken disorderly conduct at Micah's house, which had horrified Jane. But getting arrested with guns seemed unthinkable.

I had called the emergency number for Behavior Health and said, what should I do? And they said, well, if you can leave her in know, we can get to her eventually and get her on her meds and get her faster into a program.

Jane had often been told by mental health officials that if Bailey didn't want help, there was nothing they could do, unless perhaps she got arrested. So Jane thought maybe that was the silver lining in all of this, until she heard a loud rumble of an engine outside of her house.

Matt Queen came over on his motorcycle after he bailed out where's Bailey?

Queen's bail was high $350,000. He would have had to pay the bondsman 10% of that 35,000. He got out expecting to find Bailey already back at home, jane explained she hadn't bailed her out yet. At the advice of behavioral Health counselors.

He goes, I'm going to go get her. And I'm like, I told him, please do not go get my daughter. Do not bail her out of jail. I'm trying to help her.

Queen didn't listen, and soon called Jane to let her know he'd paid Bailey's bail. And she'd be getting out soon.

And I thought, well, I'm going to go down to the police department and get her when she comes out, before he has a chance to. But right before she was getting ready to leave in he walks Jane.

Begged Bailey to come home with her, begged her to see this as a wake up call. And Bailey agreed. But before she could leave, queen told her she needed to sign paperwork from the bail bondsman. Bailey asked Jane to wait in the car.

And then as they were leaving, walking out, know, she signed her bell. Know, he pulled her real close and was saying something to her. And when she got in the car, I go, what did he just say to you? And she goes, I can't talk about it. And that's what she would always say. I can't talk about the guns, mom.

But she did talk to Jessica about it.

She would even say, like, I don't want to go to jail. I don't know how to fix this, but I don't want him going to jail, too. I know for a fact that she took the blame, and they would fight about that.

Jessica says the entire situation seemed to cause a lot of stress and turmoil between them.

He thought that her mom was going to convince her to not take those charges because they weren't hers. And that's why he never wanted her going to her mom's, because her mom didn't want her owning up to that. Her mom knew those weren't her guns.

If you met her yourself in person, you would say, there's no way. She's very nice. She's small, so she's not anything that would strike you as someone who would normally do stuff like this.

After his arrest, Queen hired one of the priciest defense attorneys in town who came with the Bulldog investigator Dave Brown.

I was tasked with conducting an investigation into the matter, which included meeting with Matthew, meeting with Bailey, conducting a scene investigation where the stop occurred, and some other things related to those charges.

To be clear, Dave Brown was not part of Bailey's defense team. Bailey had her own defense attorney who got her a plea deal early on after the arrest. So all the information Bailey gave to Brown was specifically for Queen's defense.

So on March 9, 2018, I interviewed her. I conducted a recorded interview with her regarding this incident. And one of the things that she did tell me, among others, was that the firearms were hers and that Matthew didn't know they were in the vehicle at the time of the stop. The reason she told me she had taken the firearms was because she had been raped by four guys, and she was in fear, so she was going to accept responsibility for the firearms. She didn't come across as pressured, but my opinion, I knew she wasn't telling the truth. That was my opinion.

A transcript of her interview with Brown shows that Bailey said about a month after she was raped, she went out and purchased the four guns found in the car, including two assault rifles. She told Brown she wanted to feel protected, especially after reporting the rape to law enforcement and no arrests were made. In addition to claiming the guns were hers and that she secretly put them in the car, bailey's story was that she and Queen were on their way to go talk to someone she said she thought might have information about her sexual assault case.

Bailey had even made the comment interview, which was spontaneous, that, well, we weren't going over there for revenge or something to that effect. I would never do something like that. But yet they were armed to the teeth with firearms because it was my opinion that they were going to this house for retaliation for the rape.

In addition to the four men she says raped her that summer, bailey says a month before she and Queen were pulled over with the guns, she and a group of friends went to a guy's house she didn't really know, but the guy knew her friends. Here's a quote from the interview transcript. I woke up in the bathroom with another female and he opened the door and threw crackers at us. And I lost consciousness again and woke up with him on top of me, end quote. Bailey says eventually she was able to break free and run out of the house. The interview transcript shows that Bailey said after that incident, quote, I made it a mission to go out and get weapons to protect myself, end quote. Even so, Brown says he didn't believe those guns were hers.

Well, my personal opinion is, if you want it, is that she was going to accept responsibility because the charges for her with little or no record would know not as extreme as they were for Matthew Queen. You know what I mean?

Just your time with both Matthew and Bailey, what observations do you recall having?

Well, I think with her, she was 20 years old. She's very young. I think she was heavily influenced by Matthew and he was way older than her, so he was able to manipulate her to no end.

To be clear, no one who considers themselves a loved one of Matthew Queen has ever said anything negative to me about his relationship with Bailey. But their neighbor and Bailey's good friend Jessica says here are some of the things she observed.

Anytime me and her would have a girl's night and have a couple of drinks at my house and we would bake and look up stuff to bake on pinterest, he would always show up.

Jessica says it seemed he didn't want Bailey alone with friends and tried to keep a close eye on her.

I remember I walked her to her car and he was parked down the street watching, like and I saw his Suburban parked down the street. I'm like. Is that Matt? And she was like, oh, my God, it is.

Jessica says overall, she just thought they were your textbook toxic couple, trading off antagonizing situations, fighting, then making up. Bailey's mom, Jane says she kept hoping the relationship was just a fling.

I did ask one time. They were in the house, and Matt queen was there. And I go, well, do you guys love each other? And Bailey goes, I don't know. And he goes, well, I love her. And I'm like, fuck.

And then there was a st. Patrick's day party. In 2018, just a little over a month before Bailey would disappear. Bailey's family was getting together for dinner and reluctantly told bailey she could bring queen.

And then I was out back, and I came in, and I forget if it was my sister or somebody, but they're like, oh, my god, that Matt queen's all over Bailey. Like, kissing, like a teenager would know inappropriate stuff in front of family. And so I went in there, and then that's when he, you know, bailey's pregnant.

Before queen dropped that bombshell, bailey had already walked out of the room. And subsequently left the house. She wouldn't answer any of her mother's calls or texts, so Jane started texting queen. Here's the first text from Jane.

If you have gotten my daughter pregnant after the last year she had, I hope Bailey is not having a baby. This is the last thing she needs. Queen responded, that is exactly what she is doing. We are going to have a beautiful little girl. That I hoped you'd be happy about. I love Bailey, and she loves me. If you don't understand that, then I'm sad for you. You're so focused on my age instead of what I am to Bailey.

A few days later, on march 23, 2018, queen, seemingly out of the blue, sent Jane this message.

At first, I thought you were simply an overprotective mother, and I respected that. But it is now clear that bailey was right all along. You have a mental disorder. Yes, Jane. I'm twice her age. Get over it. Find something else wrong with me. You're obsessed with Bailey, and it's not healthy. I'm in love with her. And if I'm not mistaken, she is in love with me. Keep trying to drive a wedge between us. It's only weakening the strength in yours and Jane. If you continue to suggest to her that she murder her unborn child, my.

Unborn child, it will be the end.

Of your relationship with her. Stop insinuating that you know what's best for her and focus on her happiness. Better yet, focus on your own life and all of its bad decisions. From what I can tell, it needs the attention. And for god's sakes, Jane, go out and get some dick. Stay off my nuts.

Jane responded, seemingly shocked and confused, saying she never told Bailey to get an abortion. To that, queen sent a seemingly cryptic message that also made fun of Jane's job working with children in special education.

Seems you've made your bed. You'll have to sleep in it. Now, jane, I know you're in special ed, so I'll explain that. See, it's a metaphor about life. The bed is yours. You have made a decision about how you want to live your life with or without me in it. And Bailey has made her decision also. Now we must accept the consequences that go with that decision. We must sleep in our beds. Goodbye, Jane.

I found the choice of words interesting, that Bailey would have to deal with the consequences of her decision. It has a negative connotation to it, which seems strange given the context of Jane and Queen's conversation about Bailey having a baby. Queen said they were both very excited about it. So why would Bailey's decision have consequences? Jane wasn't sure what to make of any of it. And about a week later, bailey finally opened up to her mother about being pregnant, only to tell her she had had a miscarriage. Just a note here. Despite Queen telling Jane he and Bailey were having a girl, by all accounts, Bailey would have been much too early in her pregnancy to know that. The way Jane got the news was a tad startling. She'd been out of town for a couple of days and came home to some changes to one of her bathrooms. Bailey said she was in the shower when she began to miscarry, and as a result, broke the glass shower door and damaged the toilet.

She said she had a miscarriage and she was falling and grabbed the shower door and she was inside the tub. So if you're falling inside, how did glass get in the toilet tank? The lid was missing. So the whole thing just doesn't add up.

It bothered Jane that the story didn't make sense, but she was more troubled by something else.

Bailey told her mom, I should have never said those guns were mine.

It was the first time Bailey opened up to her about taking the blame for the gun charges Queen was facing. Bailey also talked to her friend Jessica about this.

She regretted it, she would say, and she was scared to go to jail for it. And when they would fight, she really regretted it. They were fighting so much towards the end that I can't be sure, but I think I heard her say something like, well, then why don't you own up and take responsibility and take your own charges?

Essentially, Jessica says, it seemed Bailey was at times considering going back on her decision, whatever that meant. Exactly. On April 24, 2018, bailey and Matt Queen went to court for Queen's preliminary hearing, which is basically a mini trial at prelims. The prosecutor presents evidence in the case, and the defense attorney works to refute it. And then the judge considers both arguments and decides if there's enough probable cause to go forward to a jury trial. Jane was hoping to see Bailey after court, but the plans fell through.

She said she couldn't come to dinner because court went real bad. And I'm like, what do you mean? And she goes, I can't talk about it.

Later that night, Jane proposed that they have a nice dinner together tomorrow. Bailey responded to her, yes, please. Today was a terrible day. The next day, Jane asks Bailey what time she can pick her up for dinner. Bailey responds that she is a doctor's appointment and will let Jane know when she gets home. Bailey also texts her saying she's trying to get treatment for her anxiety and she feels depressed. She tells her mom she's made an appointment with her behavioral health counselor. Then, over the course of a couple hours, several texts from Jane go unanswered. Jane keeps asking, Are we still having dinner tonight? Bailey finally answers, Hi. I'm just so stressed. And then sends another text that is hard to make out. This causes Jane to send her a plethora of messages that go unanswered for several hours, including telling her, bailey, I'm worried about you. Even on your worst days, you always had time to text or see me. Eventually, Bailey answers, I'm leaving Matt's tonight to hang out with friends. I'm no good for him, and he knows it. To that, Jane pleads with Bailey to come to her house. She tells Bailey, you're a good person.

You just need to come home. Bailey responds, he's going to jail and it's my fault. He didn't do anything wrong, and I ruined his life. I'm leaving. Jane responds, I know that those were not your guns. You did not ruin anyone's life. Please do not do anything that will ruin yours. Stay where you are. I will come get you. Bailey sends a text back, that's one giant typo, but it appears to spell out, you don't know me. Jane replies, yes, I do. I love you. You are strong, beautiful, and smart. At this point, Jane was concerned, so she drove to Queen's house.

So when I got there, Matt, Queen's oldest son, answered the door. And I'm like, is Bailey here? And he goes, no, she's left. And I'm like, what do you mean she's left? Well, she left. Somebody picked her up.

Queen wasn't home either, apparently. From there, you can sense the panic in Jane's messages to Bailey, especially when she realizes Bailey's phone is off. After 5 hours of getting no response from Bailey, jane received a text that would ultimately be the last message she'd ever get from her daughter. Jane had sent her many unanswered messages at this point, but Bailey's text back only responded to Jane, saying she went over to Queen's house to look for her. It reads leave him alone.

This is all my fault.

I told you I knew something bad had happened.

Jane reported Bailey missing that same day. She also tried to get in touch with Queen with no luck before. Days later, Queen texts back that he hasn't seen Bailey. He tells Jane she seems confused about.

What she wants and she feels guilty about what's happening to me. I'll let you read the letters she wrote before she left, if that helps.

A few days later, they texted again.

Queen tells Jane when she left, she was manic.

We both were torn up when she.

Lost the baby, only we grieved differently. She just wanted to go numb and hide behind drugs. I didn't like that and wouldn't support it, and that upset her.

Queen goes on to say he's been dealing with a lot of financial stress and other issues lately and that Bailey blamed herself for that. As their conversation continued, queen said Bailey hadn't been sleeping and sometimes would stay up for several days in a row just writing in her journals. Jane responded that Bailey needs help and that she, as her mother, won't stop fighting for her. Then Queen sent this message. It says, in part, bailey was really.

Expecting all the charges to be dismissed. When they weren't. She fell apart inside. She blames herself for all of it, and the guilt is eating her alive.

This brings us to what happened the day before Bailey disappeared. She was at court then for Queen's preliminary hearing, when a judge decided there was enough evidence for Queen to go to trial. From a legal stance, this isn't surprising, as most cases do not get thrown out at a prelim. But here, Queen seems to suggest that it was surprising to Bailey and possibly why she left.

In the beginning, I was really just I felt I was confused because I have a message from her to put you on speaker, and I could pull up the exact says I said, what's wrong with your phone? Are you okay? And she said, I effed up. I need to disappear for a little while. Can't use this phone anymore. I'll call when I get a new number. And that was April 27 at 08:00.

P.M.. Bailey had been a missing person for about 48 hours when she sent Jessica that facebook message.

And so I thought that was so weird because I'm like, normally she doesn't even write like that. I don't even know if that's her that wrote it the way she wrote it, like her spelling and just like how she talked. She was just a very expressive person. She would write paragraphs. She was never that short, especially with something that serious.

Reports show Queen was also sent a message that said, I'm far enough from your family that I can't do any more damage, and apologized for, quote, ruining his life. The message ended with saying it was time for her to disappear. When queen was first interviewed by investigators, he told police he last saw Bailey the day after she left his house. He said he'd met up with her on a street corner after she asked him to come bring her some of her clothes. He says from there, he watched Bailey get into a black SUV with a heavyset man, and he never saw her again. I asked Dave brown, who at the time was the private investigator on Queen's defense team. How he and Queen's then attorney h. A. Sala found out that Bailey was missing.

We didn't know until it broke and I contacted Sala and said, hey, Bailey's gone missing. That's how we discovered it. And I informed Sala and I shared with Know my thoughts at that time also that I had a bad feeling about it. She's our witness, as far know, taking responsibility for the firearms, so that would be something that you would think Matthew would have, you know, she's left me, I can't find her know, tell your investigator to go find her, you know what I mean? But that never happened.

Queen may have come off tight lipped some, but to others he wouldn't stop talking about Bailey's disappearance.

After Bailey went missing, that's when he started coming around more and more and more, just randomly.

Jessica says Queen kept coming over unannounced, oftentimes distraught and crying, asking her to help him find Bailey.

He thought she might have been kidnapped or pissed someone off because she wanted revenge for whoever sexually assaulted her and went too far because that whole sexual assault know? And then I thought maybe she did try to go get revenge or something. And it's just like Mind was coming up with all these scenarios, and I was like, well, maybe she did and ran into the wrong people. Maybe they were because Matt got me thinking so many different things could have happened.

Jessica said she could see the pain Queen was in and she wanted to be there for him.

And then one day Jane came over to talk to me after the detectives and so he lives down the street and I guess he saw her in front of my house and decides to come in, walk through my patio door and walk straight into my kitchen. After that point, that's when I started getting scared of him because the way he walked in and the look on his face, like, what are you telling? Like, what are you guys talking about Jane? What lies are you trying to convince her of? Stuff like like he was so rude to Jane all the time.

Bailey's mom. Jane knew at this point she and queen weren't going to work together to find Bailey. She never did get to see the letters he told Jane that Bailey left behind. But Jane wasn't going to wait around for any clues or any information into what happened to Bailey. She was going to find it for herself.

I knew right away something bad had happened to my daughter. It was just getting someone to believe me.

I went over and asked what's going on? To the family and they said their five year old daughter had found a.

Body part on the beach. That's next time.

You.

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