Wicked Ever After

Obsession Gone Wrong: The Murder of Lauren Landavazo (Kody Lott)

March 28, 2024 Stephanie Moram Season 2 Episode 19
Wicked Ever After
Obsession Gone Wrong: The Murder of Lauren Landavazo (Kody Lott)
Show Notes Transcript

Obsession is a word we often use to describe something we really like. Obsession is an idea or thought that continually preoccupies or intrudes on a person's mind. This is where someone's obsession went too far and resulted in the murder of the beautiful Lauren Landavazo and the injury of Makayla Smith.

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This Podcast is executive-produced by Alecia Harris
Research Provided by Stephanie Moram
Writers: Alecia Harris and Stephanie Moram

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Obsession is a word that we often use to describe something we really, really love. By definition, obsession is an idea or thought that continuously preoccupies a person's mind. Our little obsessions over a new song, a late-night snack, or even that new friend we met can be harmless for most people.

They're just something we love so much that we gain great pleasure when indulging in it. But sometimes obsessions aren't simple or innocent. Sometimes, those intrusive thoughts slowly poison one's mind until the only ending is simply death. 

I'm Stephanie Moram, and this is Wicked Ever After. 

Since this also goes on YouTube, there are a lot of words I cannot say, such as sexual assault, sexual abuse, rape.

So I just wanted to give a heads-up that as you're listening, , you might hear something a little bit different and that's only because I want to be able to post this on YouTube.

Please consider clicking the thumbs-up button on this episode to help get this story out. Also, please subscribe My YouTube channel or podcast. It really helps the algorithm when you like, subscribe and share. If you wanna see my face and all my reactions, be sure to head over to YouTube to watch this episode.

And lastly, I have Invisalign. So if I mispronounce a word, I am apologizing in advance. Our story today takes us to Wichita Falls, Texas, known as a gateway to Texas. This charming town sits on the border with Oklahoma about two hours northwest of the Dallas and Fort Worth area. Visitors come for the thriving art scene, historic architecture, and gorgeous parks.

This is where we find the Landavazo family. Vern and Bianca had three children, two boys, Jordan and Tim, and on October 14, 2002, they welcomed their beautiful daughter Lauren into the family. Many parents described their children as angels. But for those who knew and loved Lauren, that was the perfect description.

She was kind, happy, goofy, always smiling, and looked at the world around her through a lens of constant positivity. Bianca, Lauren's mom, described her friendliness. She talked to everyone and knew so many people. She was always amazed. About how many people she actually knew. She was a social butterfly. Her dad described her as one of the most popular girls in school.

Not because she was in the popular crowd, but because of who she was. One of her dad's favorite stories was when there was a new kid in school and he was nervous about lunch because he had no friends and nowhere to sit. He remembered sitting down alone and Lauren came right over and invited him to sit with her and her friends.

She seemed insistent on making sure no one ever felt alone, unhappy, or unwanted. Lauren was Bianca's mini-me. The only real difference between them was Lauren's height. She grew to be taller than her mom, a fact her mom remembered fondly, saying how great it was to finally not have the same shoe size since Lauren would always steal her shoes.

When she was younger, Lauren loved to make her parents laugh. She hid in her room late in the day, before her dad got home from work. And when he came through the door, she would run from her room in some sort of crazy costume or pyjama, with a face full of wild makeup and devilish hair. It was a daily greeting that always had everyone rolling in laughter.

As she got older, Lauren spent a lot of time nurturing and helping others. She stayed up late at night in her room helping and counseling her friends. She spent much of her time just making sure everyone was okay. One of those friends was Makayla Smith, daughter of [00:04:00] Shamika and Rodney Smith. She was born just a couple of months after Lauren on December 20th, 2002.

She liked to read, listen to music, and hang with her friends. She, too, was always smiling, and she was described as bright but soft-spoken. She was funny and a happy child, a daddy's girl who always put others first. So, it's no surprise that she and Lauren became fast friends around grade 3. They loved each other's company and were often seen in school talking and laughing together.

Often, they walked home together down an alley from school. And this isn't one of those dark, creepy alleys you're probably picturing that you see in horror movies. This was a well-lit, bright alleyway that was often used as a main walkway to get from point A to point B, and a lot of students used it. In 2016, both girls were 13 and attended McNeil Junior High as 8th graders.

September 2nd of that year was just a regular day. The girls had only been in school a couple of weeks and Makayla had met another friend to begin her walk from school to home. As she was walking, she spotted Lauren, called out to her and the two continued the rest of the way by each other's side.

Around 3:05pm, the girls entered the alleyway that they had used hundreds of times before. They were chatting about how they didn't have any classes together this year when Lauren started walking ahead of the group and veered off towards her boyfriend's house when a black car pulled up near Lauren with the driver's side facing the girls in the alley.

The car came to a stop, so the girls naturally halted. Before anyone could stop and process, the man in the car started firing a gun. Mikayla watched as Lauren immediately fell to the ground, and within seconds, felt a searing pain in her own chest. At that point, Makayla remembered running away. Her final memory of Lauren was seeing her lying on the cement, lifeless.

In her attempts to escape the gunfire, Makayla looked down at her chest and noticed all the blood coming from it. She was shot as well. Later Makayla told her mother that after she realized she too had been shot in the chest. She was screaming to the other friends to get out of the way, and she started to run back to Lauren.

The gunfire ceased, the car drove away, and chaos started. This shooting took place in front of several kids and in a very public area, so people ascended onto the scene very quickly. One witness reported rushing to the scene and found Lauren not moving, still clutching her binder in her arms. She asked Lauren if she was okay, but already knew she would receive no response because Lauren was already dead.

As she was dialling 911 for help, she noticed a wounded Michaela trying to get to her friend, bleeding and distraught. Ambulance, may I help you? I need an ambulance to 5143 Kingston. There is a young lady who is lying on the ground and bleeding. She does not appear to be conscious [00:07:00] or have any, um, lights or blood in her.

There were gunshots fired at her. Okay, go ahead and sit first. Ma'am, can you tell where she's bleeding from? Yes, your head. However, um, I can't really tell. ambulance. Is she breathing right now? No, there's no call. Okay. Do you know her? No, I was just driving home from school and I saw her laying in the ground.

Okay, do you know how long she's been laying there now? No.

Can you touch her and let me, tell me if she's cool to the touch or if she's warm? If you call her, is she warm? We have an ambulance coming. I don't know, I just pulled up. Do you see her moving? No. Another witness, Jamie Lopez, an RNA, approached and saw Lauren lying in the alley as well. Her eyes were open, but they were void of life. Jamie initially thought Lauren had been hit by a car because she noticed broken fingers. She attempted to administer aid so she turned Lauren over from her stomach to her back.

That was when she noticed one of the bullet holes around her heart. She felt for a pulse but there was none, and was unsure about doing CPR because of the gunshot wound. It was around this time Jamie noticed Makayla running down the alley yelling she had been shot. Blood was all over the front of her shirt and she was clearly scared.

Being a nurse, Jamie had some gauze and dressing in her car and ran to get them for Makayla. She put gauze and bandage where she could and got the help of another witness to put pressure on Makayla's other injuries, hoping to prevent her from bleeding out. In the chaos of the moment, Jamie noticed that many people had gathered and were staring at Lauren's body.

So she grabbed a blanket from her car and covered up Lauren as best she could to prevent people from staring. Parents had gathered quickly, and the screaming and shouting got louder and louder. I can only imagine what that was like. Everyone was confused and was just trying to make contact with their kid by phone or in person.

No one wanted the body that was under that blanket to be their child. Back at Lauren's house, it was 3. 30 p. m. and Bianca was waiting for her daughter to arrive home from school. One of Bianca's friends pulled up in a truck asking if Lauren had returned home from school yet, to which Bianca replied, quote, no why, end quote.

Her friend replied, quote, kids are down, kids are down. End quote. Lauren's dad Vern was inside and saw Bianca run out the door and down the street. Not knowing what was going on, he hopped into his truck and started to follow. Soon Bianca came upon hordes of people, sirens and crime scene tape. Desperate to find her daughter and make sure she was okay, Bianca searched the area and hoped to find Lauren somewhere in the crowd.

But it didn't take long for Bianca to make it to the front of the crowd. Look down and see her daughter's lifeless body lying on the cement in the film Murder at first sight Bianca said I knew she was Gone, I can't explain it. I just knew she was gone I know I was screaming just really loud and horrible screams, but I know I was calling her to come back I felt like she was going to the light and I was trying to get her to come back I was saying don't go please come back and quote Vern recalled feeling a state of shock after seeing his daughter.

Lauren was put in the ambulance, and he joined her inside. On the way to the hospital, paramedics reported they had a heartbeat, but it was an artificial heartbeat that is very common after someone has passed. Sadly, after arriving at the hospital, Lauren was officially pronounced dead. Autopsy results showed that Lauren was shot with a semi-automatic AR 15 style rifle from three feet away.

She was struck twice in the head with multiple shots to both hands, her chest, liver, spinal column, shoulders, and other areas. She also had abrasions on her face, which may have occurred when she fell on the pavement. A single bullet mangled her hand, entering and exiting through her ring finger and grazing her pointer finger.

She experienced three fatal shots, one to her liver and another to her left lung. The third and final shot was to the back of Lauren's head that hit her brain stem. A gruesome, senseless ending to such a beautiful life. As for Mikayla, she was undergoing life-saving surgery for the three bullet wounds in her chest.

Three holes she still carries around to this day. The investigation began immediately. After all, this had been a very public shooting with a lot of witnesses present. However, despite the public nature of the crime, the police had no leads. The entire crime made no sense, and the police as well as the community were [00:12:00] baffled by what had happened in that alleyway.

Investigators went to Lauren's home and tried to find some answers. They took her phone and computer and hoped perhaps her texts or online activity might lead them to the murderer. But after extensive searching, they came up empty-handed, finding absolutely nothing suspicious or harmful on her phone or computer.

Interviewing the witnesses was difficult considering most of them were 12 and 13 years old, who had just experienced a serious traumatic event. Many of them didn't have a ton of new information the police could use but Makayla was able to provide a piece of the puzzle That was about to give investigators their first glimpse of hope because of the proximity of Makayla to the truck She happened to get a view of the driver saying that she had literally quote locked eyes with the killer end quote She was able to describe him as having shaggy brown hair white skin, and she also mentioned that he was younger The police had finally something to go on and released this description as well as the description of the truck to the public.

Unfortunately, most of the men in the area matched that description which made it super difficult to nail down a viable suspect. Investigators decided to make a very unusual decision and contact a sketch artist to meet with Makayla and see if they could get a picture of the suspect drawn up. This was hardly ever done in Wichita Falls because crimes like these normally didn't happen and because this decision came with a lot of risk considering the eyewitness was a minor and could have easily been confused about what they saw due to the trauma.

Not long after the sketch of the suspect was released a woman by the name of Joanna Perez Ramirez and her fiance were on their way to the makeshift memorial that people in the memorial.

They stayed in their truck and noticed a gold SUV slowed down near the memorial. The driver was a young white male and he had a ball cap on but the hair outside of the cap was kind of curly and shaggy. Joanna instantly thought that the driver kind of matched the description of the suspect and so she and her fiancee decided to follow the gold SUV.

Super brave of them to do that. I would have just called 911 at that point. The driver turned right into an apartment complex and parked his SUV. Joanna noticed that the driver got out of the SUV and looked very nervous. She saw him go around the back side of the SUV to the passenger door, opened it, and the man grabbed an item and tucked it under his arm.

That item was long and wrapped in a blanket, and they believed the end of a rifle was sticking out of it. He was then seen walking towards the apartment complex, all the while looking around as if making sure no one saw him. Joanna and her fiancé watched him go into his apartment and then waited to see what he would do next.

Eventually, he came out empty-handed handed and that's when they called 9 1 1. 9 1 1, what's your emergency? Um, we were driving by the accident that happened at Trinidad and Kingston and we pulled into a certain road and it goes to the... And there's a kid that just showed up in a Tahoe with shaggy hair and hat, and he got, um, it looked like a rifle, um, and he had it wrapped in clothes and blankets and he was trying to get it off in a hurry and he just went into the apartment.

Do you have a description of the driver? He's a tall, skinny white boy with shaggy, shoulder-length hair and hat on with glasses. And it took him a while to get out of the backseat. He was standing there to get something out. And it was a long suction wrapped up in blankets and clothes. Okay. And you said it was a rifle or you just thought it might have been a rifle?

It was the way he was holding it, it looked like it was. Because he was trying to hurry up and it was kind of like he was suspicious. And you guys said you were [00:16:00] parked at Trenton Tower? Yes, we're facing the apartment entrance. Okay. Well, I'll just head out that way. Um, check the area. I'll come talk to you as well, okay?

Okay. Alright, thank you. During the 9 1 1 call, dispatchers asked Joanna to write down the license plate. A few seconds later, the man drove to the backside of the apartment and Joanna lost visual of him. Dispatch had contacted Officer John Gordon, who was finishing his lunch near the scene, and as he pulled into the apartment complex, the man in the SUV pulled out.

The officer then turned around in an attempt to catch up with the SUV. After following him for a little bit, Officer Gordon pulled over the man for a traffic violation in the parking lot of a shopping centre. He ran his plates and found the driver to be Cody Lott. The officer approached the driver's side and saw Cody clinging to the steering wheel.

He asked Cody where he was going, to which he replied that he was going to his mom's apartment to feed the dogs since she was out of town. The officer explained to Cody that they had received a call about a suspicious person and a truck and that his truck matched the description. He then asked Cody for consent to search the SUV to which he consented.

But unbeknownst to the police department, Cody had already cleaned out the SUV, so not much was found. But what they did find was a backpack, which they searched, and it contained brass knuckles, which at that time in the state of Texas were considered a prohibited weapon. That's all they needed to arrest him and bring him in for questioning.

How fucking lucky. Wow. That's insane. They also found a shell casing from a 22 caliber on the floorboard of the passenger seat. Later, police matched it to the shells found at the crime scene and the rifle they removed from Cody's mom and stepdad's home was a perfect match. Police took Cody  downtown to begin the interview process.

He didn't have to give a statement, but he did agree to talk to detectives. For the first 45 minutes of the four hour interview, Cody denied any involvement in Lauren's death. When asked if he did it, he said, quote, I did not, end quote. In the interrogation video, Cody's body language showed defensiveness and that he had something to hide, in my opinion.

Detectives are highly trained in interrogation techniques and body language, and they knew they needed to build some rapport with Cody so he would confess. Their theory did pay off because after 45 minutes, they finally had their confession, quote, Yes, I did it, end quote. When asked what happened, Cody said he pulled up and smiled at Lauren, quote, Lauren looked at me like I was joking, or she kind of looked at me like, oh please, you know?

She kind of just like turned her head, like, with the kind of smirk on her face, [00:19:00] right? And that's when I decided, end quote. He continued quote I fired at her first and then her friend was like right beside her when I pulled up I did aim at Lauren but not at her head I thought the gun would jam on me But I was just pulling that trigger as fast as I could it sounded like pow pow pow

As the interview continued, detectives were told that Lauren and Makayla  didn't know who 20 year old Cody Lott was, but he knew who Lauren was because he had been watching her for the past year. He said it wasn't a senseless killing and rather that he had talked to the devil before murdering Lauren.

He wanted the murderer to be reported as an assassination, a calculated assassination of that. Cody confessed he went to a field he was familiar with and hid the weapon in a place he knew he'd be able to find it later. He then went to Archer City, which is about a [00:20:00] 20 minute drive from Wichita Falls, met up with a girl he knew, and together they went to her house to do drugs.

It wasn't until that following Sunday that he went back and retrieved the weapon to take back home to his stepdad's gun locker at the apartment because he didn't want his stepdad to know that the gun was missing, right? During the interview, investigators noticed that his entire confession was all about him.

He was selfish and showed no remorse for his actions. He was almost animated in how he presented the facts of the murder, almost like he was proud of what he did and excited to tell a story. After the interview was over, the police chief scheduled a press conference and announced to the public, quote, we've arrested a suspect and his name is Kody Lott, end quote.

So who was Kody and how did Lauren come into this stranger's crosshairs? Cody was born on January 7th,  1996 to Christy Rowland and David Lott. His parents divorced when he was around 4 or 5 years old, and that is when the problems started to arise surrounding Cody, according to his dad. He started to exhibit aggressive behavior and violent outbursts, as well as extremely anti-social behaviour and became very reclusive.

As he got older, his behavior continued to worsen, and he turned to illicit drugs at the age of 13. In 2010, at the age of 14, he started dating a girl from his high school named Haley Clayton. They dated for about two years, and during that time, Haley said that Cody was very violent with her. She described an instance where he wrapped a seatbelt around her throat and tried to strangle her.

Another time, he pushed her down the stairs, and a time after that, he busted her head on the dash of his car. He sounds like a fucking stellar guy. Early in 2012, Hayley moved to Colorado to live with her mother, and Kody decided to move with her, but within a month of arriving there, the violence picked up again, even being violent towards Hayley in front of her family.

Haley's mom bought him a one-way ticket back to Texas, and he and Haley broke up. However, it didn't end as seamlessly as everyone had hoped. Haley stayed in Colorado for a full year after the breakup, scared because Kody had continued to threaten her. In 2013, she moved back to Texas to start a new relationship.

She ended up having a baby with this person, and Kody's harassment continued. He started to threaten her. her boyfriend, and their child. He threatened to create a scenario where he would cause a car accident, kill them, and torture them. Every few months, Haley and her family received harassing texts or calls from Kody.

She blocked him from her phone and on social media, but he somehow always was able to find a way to contact her. In these messages, he said he wanted to kidnap her and her baby and torture them both in front of her boyfriend. That's fucked up. Haley lived in constant fear for her and her family's life, always looking over her shoulder, unsure of what to expect.

Ironically, the last threatening message Haley ever received was at 10. 22 in the morning on the day that Lauren was gunned down. Kody's troubles continued after his breakup with Haley. He had a hard time holding down a job, and when he was working Chipotle, it wasn't for very long. He was still a loner, doing drugs, and was highly dysfunctional.

In 2014, he was convicted for possession of drugs and theft. He received a three-year probated sentence as punishment. At 19, a year before the murder, Kody was involved in a police standoff hostage situation. He was at his grandmother's home with a gun and was threatening to shoot people. When the police arrived, Kody dealt with the negotiator on the scene, who was able to talk Kody out of the house peacefully without any shots being fired.

A criminal trespass warning was issued. But no charges were filed against him, which seems really odd to me. Anyways, however He did stay in a mental health facility in Houston shortly after this incident from June 2015 to August 2015. It's unclear if it was mandatory or if he volunteered to go to this hospital, but it's there that he was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, a combination of schizophrenia and affective disorder.

Schizophrenia is a state of psychosis where people typically hear voices or have paranoid delusions. An affective disorder is related to mood. Therefore, people who suffer from schizoaffective disorder are either quite depressed or they're quite manic. where they can be overexcited. After Kody received the diagnosis and his hospital stay, he was discharged and went back to his drug use.

He refused to take the medications that had been prescribed to him. Instead, he experimented with heroin, meth, MDMA, and GHB. During this time, I believe he was living with his mother and stepfather in their apartment near the McNeil Middle High School. This was where Lauren and Mikayla attended classes.

He spent a lot of time looking out the window and this is when he first noticed the 12 year old Lauren. For an entire year, he watched Lauren walk home from school with her friends and oftentimes with her boyfriend. These afternoons, Perched by the window, soon turned into an obsession with a young girl he had never met.

But why the obsession and why the murder? According to Kody, he was angry he didn't have a girlfriend. And that he had never had much luck with girls. He reported he had a problem with females for a very long time and stated that his actions towards Lauren were like letting off a hatred for  all females that he had let build up.

He said that she was beautiful and that he was jealous and angry of what she had with her boyfriend. Her boyfriend enraged him and he set out to kill her to prove that he was a man and her boyfriend was a child. He became infatuated with Lauren. He wanted to assert his manhood. He told police the act wasn't spontaneous and that a lot of planning went into her murder.

To a degree, he had done it for the thrill of it. And made no real effort to conceal what he had done. Kody revealed that he believed that Lauren was an angel and that she couldn't die. Therefore, shooting her was just him merely sending her to another dimension. He believed there was this cosmic battle between God and evil and that he was working for the devil.

And that the devil had made him shoot her. He went on to say, quote, I knew this girl was going to end up getting  R8 here in a couple of years. And there's all kinds of evil going on. So in my mind, I saved her from the evil of the world, who was also a sacrifice to the devil because I've been talking to the devil a lot and he's the one that told me to do it.

Kody claimed he sacrificed himself for the betterment of the world but sacrificed Lauren to God so he could have a mansion and all the drugs he wanted as a reward. Over that year of looking at Lauren every day from the window, she had become Kody's possession and in his mind, he owned her. She was his to do as he pleased.

To a rational person, Cody's reasons seemed contradictory. Still, to someone with his level of mental illness, it seemed the weird web of devil sacrifices and God's reward made so much logical sense, so he acted upon them without immediate remorse. [00:28:00] Initially, Kody was deemed incompetent to stand trial.

However, after six months of mandated mental health treatment, the judge allowed the case to proceed. Kody had initially hoped to plead not guilty by reason of insanity, and from the outside looking in, it seemed like he just might get his wish. But during his mental health treatment, psychiatrist Dr.

Brian Falls, who did his initial evaluation, held up the diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder. He said that Kody had prominent delusions and visual and auditory hallucinations. These created beliefs in Kody that others don't necessarily hold. Dr. Falls also saw prominent disordered thought which manifested in Kody rambling a lot and going off on tangents.

So during their conversations, often it made their conversations very difficult to follow. He also noted a small degree of depression on top of everything else. Kody reported hearing voices outside of his head at times. The day before the murder, the voices said, quote, Enjoy murder, it'll be worth it, end quote.

He told Dr. Fowles of his fascination with occult, satism, and the supernatural. Repeating what he had told police about thinking he would get some sort of satanic award if he submitted. Despite this evaluation and clear mental illness, the judge allowed the case to proceed because the definition of insanity in Texas reads, a person has to be suffering from a mental disease or defect and then, as a result of that mental disease wrongfulness

of their conduct at the time of the alleged offense. End quote. Spoken in the simplest terms, Kody would have had to not know what he was doing at the time he shot Lauren. But as we know, that wasn't the case. Cody was able to recount in detail what happened. Showing his very careful and thought out plan to murder when he talked about shooting her in the head.

He said quote I knew that I killed her, end quote, which showed that he knew what he was doing and the consequences of those actions. In the end, Kody pleaded guilty to the murder of Lauren and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for wounding Mikayla. On September 19th, 2018, two years after the slaying, the jury deliberated for only 40 minutes before landing down a guilty plea for the murder of Lauren.

For her death, he was sentenced to life in prison but will be eligible for parole after serving 30 years. He was also found guilty for the shooting of Mikayla and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. On top of prison time, he was also ordered to pay 20, 000 in fines. In honour of Lauren's life and Makayla's ongoing struggles, a statue of a black horse was erected on the grounds of McNeil Middle School.

The monument featured positive messages such as love and live, as well as purple and blue paw prints to honor the girls favourite colors. Unfortunately, on October 1st, 2020, Vandals made off with the statue after forcibly removing it from its foundation. But with the help of friends and neighbours, Lauren and Makayla's families were able to commission a replacement statue.

On May 27th, 2021, a second memorial was placed in front of the school. Hopefully, this one will truly be forever. On June 11, 2019, Texas passed Loren's Law, which makes the deliberate slaying of a child under the age of 15 a capital offense. At the time that Loren was murdered, the law only applied to children 10 and under, making Kody ineligible for the death penalty.

Loren's parents, who worked extremely hard to get the law in the books, hope that the stricter guidelines will deter individuals from preying on the most vulnerable among us. The law isn't retroactive and won't affect their particular case, but they take comfort in knowing it might help and save future families from experiencing such horrendous pain.

As for Mikayla, she has had many struggles after watching her friend get murdered. For a long time, she had a hard time detaching from her phone, constantly checking up on her friends and family, worried she was going to lose one of them. Despite her traumas, she is steadfast in her resolve to live for her friend Lauren because quote, I know it could have gone a very different way, end quote.

In these gruesome cases, the victims and the perpetrator are often connected, whether it's a family connection, a friend, a lover, or a co-worker. There are many times red flags or small warning signs that we can piece together. But then on much more tragic occasions, we have cases like this where life is taken by complete stranger, making it difficult to make sense of it all.

Kody Lott was on nobody's radar. Lauren had never met him, her family had never met him. They may have lived in the same town, but were as much strangers as anyone can be. Yet he took the long and vibrant life she had planned for herself in one single second, ending her dreams and aspirations and forever shattering her family.

I'm not sure how we can actually make sense of these actions. I think we will forever wonder why these horrible things happen, especially at random, but I think this case can remind us of the long-spoken lesson that we are never guaranteed tomorrow. We are never promised another minute in the day, so hug your kids, your partner, and your friends, and live each moment with the brightness and happiness that Lauren did.

Let me know your thoughts and opinions on the case in the comments. Please hit the subscribe button on YouTube or whatever podcast platform you're listening on. You can stay connected with me on Instagram and TikTok @thisisstephaniemoram. You can share your case suggestions with me by email me at steph@stephaniemoram.co or send me a DM on Instagram. 

Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, stay safe out there. 

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