Not Over Yet | EP 15

Love Trapped

The podcast explores the ongoing legal battle of Laura Owens, facing 14 felony charges, as her plea deal deadline is extended due to her attorney's difficulty accessing terabytes of digital evidence. Victims and prosecut

Key takeaways

• Plea deal extension granted due to defense's access issues with digital evidence

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey, Portlandia fans. Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. The Dream of the 90s is alive in podcast form. We're launching Podlandia, AEO, rewatch, our brand new podcast where we revisit every episode of Portlandia together, breaking down sketches, going deep on our iconic characters, and pulling back the curtain on how it all got made. And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life. Guest stars, collaborators, and friends, including director Jonathan Chrysler, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more. Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised, not just words, but a song about it. Well, I thought you were all going to write a song. I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia. A.A.O. Rewatch on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the host of everyone watches women's sports. It's a new podcast from Together in I Heart Women's Sports. We're breaking down the biggest headlines. Naomi Osaka, showing out. Shout-houts to you, Naomi. The viral moments. I've been obsessed with Kashan Rock's boxing journey. She looks good. Her combos are swift. And the stories everyone's talking about across women's sports. Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to everyone watches women's sports on the IHeart Radio app. Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Nick Titoro. You probably know me from NYPD Blue, the longest yard, or Spike Least Black Landsman. And on my new podcast, Delivering Happiness with Nick Tatoro, I deliver pizza to a new guest. I've shared a slice with everyone from Seth Rollins. What are you doing, my belt? To Bill Burr. I don't think I've ever met somebody so exactly out of their mind as I am. And now, we even have more great guests coming up, including the great John Tuturo. It's called Happiness, Delivering Happiness. And many, many more. Open your free High Heart Radio app. Search Delivering Happiness with Nick Tutro. And listen now. This is Chelsea Handler from Becer. Dear Chelsea, every week the news gets worse. The world gets crazier, and Yamanika is here to tell whoever's responsible, you're the problem. Do you know I just found out who Sidney Sweeney was? If he got a bunch of women, then I should have a bunch of men. Do better or do less, so I don't have to do so much. I'm Yamanika, and I'm out. Listen to You're the Problem with Yamanika on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. It's Friday, June 26th, and I am heading to the courthouse right now for a hearing on whether or not they extend this plea deal out again. Clayton sent me this voice note as he headed to the Maricopa County Superior Courthouse. He was hoping for a resolution, one that included jail or prison as part of Laura's sentence. And Clayton is determined to go to all the pretrial hearings. he can, so he can let the judge know that. At every hearing, he's been trying to catch Laura's gaze to let her know he's not afraid of her. She usually won't look him in the eye, but at this specific hearing, Clayton says she looked right at him. I made eye contact with Laura and she looked away and then looked right back, stared at me for a couple seconds and did that about four times as I stared at her for a solid 20 seconds. Look, it felt different. I almost saw in her eyes like a sadness at what she's done. Maybe it's hit her that it's very real possibility she's going to get locked away. It really felt like she's defeated. Clayton wasn't the only victim who showed up in court that day. Greg Gillespie was there too. He's the one who went on a few dates with Laura back in 2020. and is now named as the state's other primary victim. And I could have let me and Greg showed up that she realized, like, oh, fuck, these guys are not just going to, like, move on. They're here to make sure that I face accountability. I'm Stephanie Young, and this is Love Trapped. There's no way out. You'd better believe. I'll be raising hope. Hell, my love, if you ever, ever, ever, ever try to leave. Last week, on Monday, June 29th, Laura was back in court. She's facing 14 felony charges, including fraud, forgery, perjury, tampering with physical evidence and theft by extortion. She'd been offered a plea deal by the state, and we thought that on June 29th, she'd either have to accept the plea or begin the trial process. Instead, the deadline for her criminal plea was extended, once again. I don't like to be the person who brings you this news. I feel like the boy who cried wolf. I believed, like a lot of my sources in this story, that we would finally have an answer on Monday. But we didn't. So I'm going to walk you through what happened. Let's go back to Friday, June 26th. That's when there was a settlement conference in her case. It's basically a meeting where a defendant can have a more transparent conversation with a judge about how this case can be resolved without trial. We were told these meetings are typically private, behind closed doors, so I didn't plan to attend. But to our surprise, this one was open to the public. Two of the victims listed in this case, Clayton Eckerd and Greg Gillespie, were both in attendance. I caught up with Clayton and his attorney Woodnick right after the hearing, and you'll hear from them throughout this episode. Thankfully, the hearing was recorded and posted on YouTube. And the court will call the matter on the calendar state v. Laura Owens, case number is here in 2025-007-905. Can have appearances please, starting with the state. Good afternoon, Your Honor, Christian leaders on behalf of Laura Owens, who's president, who's president, with me of the defense table. This hearing was presided over by a commissioner, not a judge. And Commissioner Jonathan Simon was pretty thorough. Part of his job is to explain the criminal process to the defendant. In this case, that's Laura. Ms. Owens, my name is Commissioner Simon, and I've been asked to do the settlement conference in your case today. This is an informal setting where you'll have the opportunity to talk about your case if you want to and just see if you can get a resolved. We're going to discuss and you can ask questions about the plea agreement that you've been offered in this case and the options that you have in this case and the potential range of penalties. Commissioner Simon made it clear that he won't be the one making a ruling on her criminal case. But it's important to have the commissioner explain all the options on the table for the defendant. This has to be on the record. It's part of due process. I'm just going to help you get as much information as you can about your case while you still have some options, and I know that there is the current plea offer on the table. He then detailed what would happen if Laura doesn't take the plea deal. If you do decide to go to the trial and you don't want the plea agreement in this case, there is a possibility, obviously, that the jury finds you not guilty on these charges, which would be, I think, your best case scenario, right? But if the jury finds you guilty on any of these charges, then the judge would have to impose the sentence. And you are probation eligible. So if the jury finds you guilty on any of these charges, the judge at sentencing could place you on probation for each of those counts. With any probation term, a judge can impose up to 12 months of jail as a term of probation. Do you understand that? Yes, thank you. Okay. And if you don't get probation, the judge may sentence you to prison. Laura is being charged with 14 felonies. Here's the breakdown. 11 class 4 felonies, one class 6 felony, and then the most serious. Two, Class 2 felonies. Arizona has guidelines for prison terms for each kind of offense. And within each guideline, there's a wide range of sentencing. You'll see for the Class 2 felony, the lowest sentence is three years, and the aggravated sentence is 12 and a half years. For the Class 4 felonies, that would be a mitigated sentence of one year, and the maximum would be three years on those. And for that Class 6 felony, the mitigated, the low. lowest would be four months and the aggravated, which would be the highest, would be two years. So if you found guilty on multiple counts in your sentence, the judge can have those run concurrently, so those prison sentences at the same time or consecutively, which means they'd run one after the other. Do you understand that as well? Yes, thank you. I guess if you took this to trial, and it was the absolute worst day that you could have at trial, but it's just assuming for today's hearing that they'd all have to run consecutively, one after the other, for the class four felonies with the 11 of those, that would be over 37 years for those. And for the class twos, it would be over 25 years for those. And for that class six, it would be two years on that one. So if you add those up, it would be a significant amount of time. The commissioner said he didn't think that was likely to happen, but wanted to make sure Laura understood what was at stake here. I asked Clayton's attorney, Greg Woodnick, about this moment. Does that mean she's going to prison? No. But it's really fucking scary. I mean, if I were Laura, I would have been anxious hearing that read out loud, even though she's probably read the supervening indictment hundreds of times. After the commissioner explained the whole process, the state prosecutor, Ed Leiter, was given the opportunity to address the plea deal on the table. Your Honor, the plea agreement, which was sent to defense counsel over a month ago, it does expire today. One of the issues, and I do want to express, and I think one of the victims, wants to address the court, the frustration, and this is often a frustration that all parties, but often victims specifically feel in terms of how long the justice system often takes. In this particular case, Mr. Luters is now her third attorney. Whenever additional attorneys come onto a case or a new attorney, that tends to drag the case on further. And certainly I understand, and victims rightfully so, are deeply frustrated about how long this is taking. And then Mr. Leiter addressed the amount of evidence they're working with in this case. One of the issues, and it provides the crux of the state's case against Ms. Owens, is the vast majority of our evidence against her, is digital forensic evidence derived largely from her cloud account, cell phone extractions, among others. As a result, that evidence is voluminous. I think we're multiple terabytes of data. The state has moved as quickly as we can to get that information in front of Mr. Luters, but as I understand it, he can explain in more detail, but there has been some issues in terms of his ability to review some of that evidence. According to the prosecutor, Laura's attorney is having difficulty accessing some of the digital evidence, which seems to be causing a delay. Here's how the commissioner responded. I do understand the frustration that this case is taking longer than you'd like, but Mr. Luters does have an obligation to properly advise his client on how to proceed. And in order to do that, I think he has to review all of the evidence. So if you were going to trial without having to review all of the evidence where the court didn't give him that proper time to do that, The case wouldn't be closed as quickly as maybe you would like because I think it would open the case up for potentially an appeal and possibly going back to trial on that. So I think the idea is that if we can give Mr. Luters the opportunity to review all of the evidence here, you can properly advise Ms. Owens and then prepare for trial. Given the terabytes, I would think that that would take some time to go through. So I'd be inclined to give. And it wouldn't be, again, me ruling on this, but any judge would be inclined to give Mr. Luter's time to review that. Laura's attorney is telling the courts there are terabytes and terabytes of evidence, and he needs more time to go through it all. We've only heard about a sliver of what's in that digital evidence. So when I hear there's so much more digital evidence, my mind is racing, trying to imagine what the state might have found. There was one moment where the prosecutor revealed more details about the charges and the listed victims in this case. I haven't spoken about this, but there's also. Stormy Mitchell, who is the woman whose ultrasound was used by Ms. Owens. That is actually a third victim, and she feels very strongly about being exploited by Ms. Owens. Then Laura's attorney asked the prosecutor about the specifics of the fraudulent scheme charge. And in the middle of that question, he said something interesting. Listen, you know, the evidence of perjury is strong. You and I have talked about that. I was surprised Laura's attorney admitted on the record that the evidence of perjury is strong. So I asked Greg Woodnick about it. I heard Christian's comment on the recording. I don't know if that's what he meant, but I heard what he said. Is it possible that he's already looked through some of it and seen some very damaging data? Yeah. I think there's probably more than a lot of evidence against Laura. I think we all think that. I think that's probably the genesis of a lot of the frustration. Because this settlement hearing is informal, the victims were allowed to speak. Clayton went first. He questioned Laura's attorney's request for more time to review the evidence. The big thing I want to focus on is not allowing an extension of the plea deal simply because she has a history of delaying and it's just going to continue. My understanding is he's come into the case a few months ago, and this feels like an 11th hour push to say I can't access the material. You know, to me, if you couldn't access the material, you should have accessed it day one. And every single day, you should have been