238: The Facebook Killer: Murder or Self-Defense? | The Twisted Case of Derek Medina

On August 8, 2013, Derek Medina shocked the world by posting a photo of his wife Jennifer's lifeless body on Facebook. But was this an unthinkable crime, or was Derek truly acting in self-defense? As the investigation unfolds, dark secrets about their tumultuous relationship, Derek’s social media obsession, and violent confrontations come to light…Get ready for another deep dive with your true crime bestie @_annieelise! Join our True Crime Club for access to BTS, Bonus Content, Our Private Group Chat, Giveaways and More! Shop Our True Crime Merch Follow the podcast on: IG, Facebook and TikTokFor Business Inquiries: [email protected] AnnieToday’s Sponsors:Hiya: Go to https://hiyahealth.com/ae and get 50% off your first order! Better Help: Visit https://betterhelp.com/ae to get 10% off your first month. Ollie Pet: Head to https://ollie.com/ae and use code AE to get 60% off your first box of meals when you subscribe today! Factor: Visit https://factormeals.com/ae50off to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box! Sono Bello: Schedule your free consultation now at https://sonobello.com/ae Episode Sources:LA TimesCBS NewsMiami HeraldLocal 10Daily DotDaily MailNews 4NBC MiamiCNN

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Annie Elise?

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• 0:42Annie Elise?

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• 1:39Annie Elise?

  Hey, true crime besties. Welcome back to an all-new episode of Serial Sleuth.

• 2:02Annie Elise?

  Hey everybody, welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialishly with me, Annie Elise, your true crime bestie, and I am here to break down another case for you. Now, if you've been listening to me for a while, you know what I love more than anything. You know I love when these criminals are so freaking stupid that they either get caught up because of their Google history, because they're posting on social media and trying to like gloat, maybe they're bragging to a friend. I just love to see it. I love when criminals think that they are so smart, that they can get away with the perfect crime, that they will never get caught, and then they do something so stupid and so reckless that it really like blows the whole

• 2:46Annie Elise?

  thing up on them. And that's what we're talking about today, particularly with social media coming into the fold. And it's a wild one. So I'm gonna shut up and we are gonna just kind of jump right in.

• 3:00Speaker 02

  With the five wounds on her left forearm.

• 3:02Speaker 03

  Is that this was a defendant who was all about him. His rules, his way, he wins, he shoots when he wants.

• 3:12Speaker 04

  I cannot put it to words. The loss that I feel.

• 3:17Annie Elise?

  Okay, so I think we can all agree that whenever we go on social media, we expect to see photos of, you know, friends, family, maybe some influencers, some memes, maybe a cute little animal here or there. But I want you to just for a moment, imagine scrolling through your feed and then seeing that one of your family members posted a photo of their dead spouse. And I don't mean like a picture from happier times with a message like, you know, rest in peace, I love you, or something like that. I mean a photo of their spouse who was literally alive this morning, and then posting an image of the fresh corpse of their spouse. Pretty disturbing, right? Then, a few seconds after that post, they post something else. This time, it's a status update telling everybody, just proudly announcing,

• 4:03Annie Elise?

  They were the ones who killed them, and even more than that, that now they're going to jail. Well, in 2013, this exact scenario happened to the people who knew Derek Medina and Jennifer Alfonso. On August 8th at 11:11 a.m., Derek posted on his Facebook profile saying, quote, "I'm going to prison or death sentence for killing my wife. Love you guys, miss you guys, take care. Facebook people, you'll see me in the news." I mean, pretty unbelievable, right? And a little like nonchalant. I mean, if I read that from somebody that I knew very well, I would maybe think that this was all some sort of like weird joke. Maybe they were saying like, "Oh, my husband or my wife like left the dishes out again," or something like that. Like, "I'm going to jail now because I'm gonna kill him."

• 4:48Annie Elise?

  Or like, even though I get it, like, that's not really that funny because there's unfortunately so much truth in cases that lie beneath that. But you know, maybe people would see that and think it's a joke, not so serious. But it was clear that Derek was not joking at all. Because then, just a few seconds later, he posted a photo of his wife Jennifer with the caption, "Rest in peace, Jennifer Alfonso." Now, in this photo, she was wearing black leggings, pink socks, and she was kind of like sprawled on the ground with her legs bent underneath her. There was also blood everywhere, and it looked like she had been shot. Even though it would be absurd to post somebody's corpse, I could maybe kind of imagine if maybe somebody like passed away in their sleep,

• 5:30Annie Elise?

  and so they looked nice and peaceful, they were in their bed, they were cozy, and somebody like posted and said, "Rest in peace." Even that's kind of weird, if I'm gonna be honest, but like, I could maybe give a little bit of leeway to understand that. But this was not that. This was the complete opposite of that. She was literally on the ground, her body kind of like spread out weird, blood everywhere, and it looked very clear as day that she had been shot. And Derek posted this photo in two places. One, his own Facebook page, and then the other on Jennifer's personal page. Now, as you can imagine, everyone who saw this and commented on it was just like in complete shock, disbelief, disgust. And a lot of people were asking what happened, kind of suggesting-

• 6:13Annie Elise?

  That this photo wasn't real, like what's going on here? Again, people thought that it was just some very odd, very weird, very insensitive prank. So for five hours, this photo was shared over 100 times before Facebook finally stepped in, or maybe it was reported so many times, I'm not really sure, but they eventually took it down and then they also disabled Derek's profile. But still, everybody was just blown away. I mean, everyone was confused, trying to figure out, is it real? What happened? How could all of this happen? What's going on here? Now see, Derek and Jennifer had been married for a few years at this point. They both lived in South Miami in an area known for, honestly, it's great neighborhoods. They have historic buildings, a lot of parks, it's truly beautiful. And they had met sometime before 2010.

• 6:58Annie Elise?

  Now, at the time that they met, Jennifer was a waitress at the diner Denny's, you know, the one, the Grand Slam, for me, it's Moons Over Miami. But she worked there and she worked the graveyard shift. And almost every day of the week, Jennifer would be there waiting tables from 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM. And let me just tell you, she was a great waitress. I mean, she was always friendly, no matter how tired, how exhausted she was, or how stressed out she was. And she had a lot of regulars, people who came in during her shift just to see her, whether they were truck drivers working the night shift, whether they were people who stay out late partying, whatever it was, she definitely had like a core group of regulars. And seriously, these people didn't necessarily go to Denny's for the food, but they went there to see Jennifer. She was just always happy, always smiling, always telling jokes,

• 7:43Annie Elise?

  and always making people feel comfortable. And one of those regulars who always came in was Derek. Now, he had Jennifer as a waitress one night, and then after that, it was like game over. He just kept going back to see her. And whenever he went to Denny's, he would specifically ask to sit at one of Jennifer's tables. And it wasn't just a one-way thing. I mean, she definitely liked seeing him at her work as well. The two of them almost had instant chemistry, so much so that within a few months of meeting one another, they ended up getting married. On their wedding day, Jennifer was 23 years old. She had just had her 23rd birthday a little more than one month earlier, and Derek was 27 years old. Now Jennifer had one daughter from a- Previous relationship. Her name was Isabel and her daughter was her absolute pride and joy.

• 8:28Annie Elise?

  I mean Jennifer doted on her. She was such a great mother. Now Derek, he didn't have any kids and unfortunately, from the sound of it, he just didn't have what it took to really step up into Jennifer's life and be a great father and husband like she really needed him to be. So things took a turn for the worse pretty quickly and the two of them ended up getting divorced in 2012, just a couple of years into their marriage. But then a few months later, they actually got married again. Now, I don't know the full details of how all of that happened, but like what factors really made them decide to get a divorce, then get back together, then get married again, you know, right after getting back together. But it does sound like a lot of back and forth. Now I can take an educated guess on what one of those factors was though, because according to some people,

• 9:13Annie Elise?

  Derek was just a little bit weird. He was constantly posting on Facebook, constantly posting on social media and just like would not ever let up. And I mean, back in 2010 at like the heyday of social media, there were always people taking photos of like their meals, their plates, every single dish they ate. It was kind of like, this is a brand new thing. We're really excited about it and everybody was posting everything. I get that. But Derek took it to an extreme. On his YouTube channel, he was always uploading videos of himself going out and doing things all over the city. There were videos of him going to Miami Heat basketball games, a few videos of him kickboxing. I mean, just documenting and archiving every moment of his life.

• 9:54Annie Elise?

  He even told people that he was a boxer with a perfect record of 25 wins and no losses. He also said that he had gone professional in the boxing space a few years earlier, but I'll be honest, there really isn't a whole lot of evidence out there to back that up. It could be true or he could have been lying. It's really hard to say. But on top of all of that, Derek acted like he was an up and coming movie star. And that's because he had appeared in two episodes of the show Burn Notice. Yet as he appeared in those, he didn't have a speaking part. He was just an extra who was, you know, briefly seen in the background. His name didn't even appear in the credits. The first time one of those episodes aired, he ended up posting a video on YouTube saying, quote, "Put on USA." I'm coming out on the episode right now. I'm on USA. I'm going to come out soon.

• 10:38Annie Elise?

  This is the episode that I filmed. That's me right there. You saw me? Now, don't get me wrong, okay? There is absolutely zero wrong with being proud of your accomplishments. Certainly not. And I can understand where if you're getting a couple of parts as an extra, maybe you're like excited that it's going to give you more momentum forward into like some speaking roles, for sure. But this guy, it just to me seemed like he's clearly full of himself. I mean, his accomplishments were, yes, fine. Nothing wrong with being on TV or being good at boxing. My husband was a boxer as well. But he talked everything up like it was much bigger than it really was. And like it was a much bigger deal than it really was. And sure, you could chalk that up to maybe insecurity or lack of self-confidence,

• 11:19Annie Elise?

  so he feels like he needs to sell himself. But it kind of ended up becoming a constant threat in his life like that. He also had a website called EmotionalWriter.com. And there, he would complain about the state of the world and he would act like he was the one who knew all of the answers. He knew how to fix everything. He also presented himself as an expert at communication. And also someone who was apparently really good at giving advice and that he was practically a marriage counselor. He also self-published six eBooks.

• 11:48Speaker 05

  All right, we're gonna start with EmotionalWriter.com. As you can see, it's the main website. Six books have been created in six months.

• 12:00Speaker 05

  Let's go down.

• 12:01Annie Elise?

  Now, I will just say, these eBooks had the craziest and the longest titles. I'm gonna read them for you. One was, "How I Saved Someone's Life and Marriage and Family Problems Through Communication." Another, "If the World Ended Today, How Would You React to Saving the World or Helping the World? Or Would It Be All Over for You?" Another, "Just Ask Yourself Why We Are Living a Life Full of Lies and How I, an Emotional Writer, Made All My Professional Dreams Come True, Blocking Society's Teachings." I'm telling you, these are really long. It's like full statements as a title. Another was, "Humans Who Are Gifted and Can See the Supernatural Spirit Ghost World. We Live in Called-Ghost Haunted Adventures."

• 12:43Annie Elise?

  Another, "How a Judgmental and Selfish Attitude Is Destroying the World We Live In Because the World Is Vanishing Beneath Our Eyes." And then another, lastly, was, "Attention, World. Save Yourself." Now, like I said, all but that last one, pretty lengthy. It feels more almost like... I don't know what another word is for statements, but like, it definitely feels more like a thought bubble, not a book title, but you know, I've never written a book, so what the hell do I know? But the intro of one of these books said, quote, "My goal is to instruct on how we need to work together as a team and overcome the negative people destroying our world, and how we can battle it with those who are destroying our world."

• 13:23Annie Elise?

  In another book, he also wrote about his experiences with, get this, aliens. He also said that people needed to work on a time-traveling machine for what he called, quote, "an evacuation plan." Now, I'm not sure what's being evacuated, if people are traveling forward or backward in time to get away from something. I mean, honestly, it just kinda sounds a little bizarre and insane to me, but to each their own. But he would go on at length about how, according to him, he even once met a couple in New York, and he saved that woman from a ghost. And I'm just gonna read one last passage for you here about that, but he says, "He was with his wife in New York, and his wife was attacked by a ghost. She was seeing a ghost and was being taunted and messed with. She informed her husband, and he told her to go to sleep and that he would watch over her.

• 14:08Annie Elise?

  Minutes later, he was attacked by a demon ghost, and she was sick and throwing up." So Derek claimed that he somehow saved this woman from this ghost attack. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe it's true, guys. I don't know. That was just one of his many, many, many accomplishments. I mean, again, assuming you take him at his word. But to hear him tell it, Derek was a ghost hunter, a boxer, a TV star, and a, quote, "emotional writer," whatever the heck that means. He was also a rapper, which I'm not joking, guys. He really was. His rap music is also on YouTube.

• 14:43Speaker 06

  I sit back with the shit that gives me the heat to spit, but my boy DJ Rick is going to be sick. I did my thing with Sony. My girl makes me so horny. Don't act like you know, cuz you're bony, like my Uncle Tony. Tell your chick to stop. Wanted to bone me, I would knock your ass out in my pro basketball because I'm real with that million dollar deal. I won't stop till I get my last meal. Jay-Z's that deal, his music's so real. I represent my pro basketball team, Florida ballers to the first, we put chanting teams to the test, y'all gonna rest.

• 15:16Annie Elise?

  So like I said, overall, a very strange guy. Not a crime, but I wanted to give you guys some context so that you can kind of understand a little bit more about like who Derrick is as we get into more of like the thick of it. So, fast forward, and in 2013, he had a real job. I mean, on top of his alleged ghost hunting, emotional writing, all of that stuff. But he was working at a condo as a security supervisor. It's not clear how long he worked there, but reports say that Derrick was constantly changing jobs because he just could not hold one down. But in spite of all of that, he still managed to buy a condo in March of 2012. He bought that condo for $107,000. And that also became the condo where he lived with Jennifer. Now, according to one of their neighbors, Derrick

• 16:00Annie Elise?

  was the self-proclaimed neighborhood watch guy. He liked walking around the block, you know, carrying a concealed gun, acting like he was sort of an unofficial security guard. Nobody had asked him to do it, but he kind of just appointed himself to this position. It was almost like he was trying to be this big, tough, security guy. So needless to say, Derrick had a bit of a reputation. Everyone in his neighborhood knew who he was, you know, by his face, if not his name. But when it came to Jennifer, most of the neighbors really knew nothing about her. Derrick was the guy who would walk up to anybody and just strike up a conversation. And in fact, according to rumor, he was one of those guys who, once you started talking to him, it was really hard to get him to stop talking. But Jennifer was the opposite. She really just kept to herself. One of their neighbors

• 16:45Annie Elise?

  even said, "She never spoke to us. She kind of always stayed behind him, and I never saw any kind of confrontations or violence between them. But it gave me the impression that there was something going on in their home, that maybe there wasn't a good relationship there." Which obviously, yes, now in hindsight, we know that they were right, but it gets even stranger than that.

• 17:11Annie Elise?

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• 17:52Annie Elise?

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• 18:35Annie Elise?

  So that neighbor wasn't the only person who thought that something weird may have been going on between the two of them. Jennifer's boss at the Denny's Diner also said that Derek was just very controlling. At one time, he had even tried to convince her to quit her job, all because he didn't want her to work the night shifts. One of Jennifer's coworkers also said that at one point, quote, "He wouldn't even let her talk on the phone. He always waited for her outside while she was working." One time, he went storming into the restaurant and he was looking for her, telling her to get outside. Jennifer's boss also said that she would come into work with bruises, and she was announcing that she was finally done, she was going to leave Derek, it was over, all of the things, but then Derek would just come in during one of her shifts.

• 19:18Annie Elise?

  He would make this big show about how sorry he was, that he wanted her to take him back, and sadly, she always did. And as weird and as socially awkward and honestly arrogant as Derek could be, Jennifer, for whatever reason, still loved him. She wanted to make things work. So that was her life, as near as we can tell. But it also wasn't hard for people to figure out that things weren't great in their relationship, not only because of what Jennifer would say and the way she was when she would come into work, but Derek was definitely an oversharer, which I think we've established pretty well by now. But his social media was full of all kinds of like gripes and complaints, things that he probably should have just kept to himself. And one time, he even wrote

• 20:01Annie Elise?

  some really nasty stuff about Jennifer on Facebook. Now, this was during the first time they were married, before they got divorced, before they got remarried, and they were separated at this time. And clearly Derek was not taking it very well. Because in his post, he went on and on just about how terrible of a person she was. He also didn't change any of his privacy settings so that he would only make this post visible to like, you know, a few trusted friends or family members or anything like that. I mean, it was public. Everyone could see what he wrote. All of Jennifer's friends, all of her family, her coworkers, you name it. And Jennifer wasn't the only person that Derek would do this to. Anytime one of his friends or even one of his acquaintances did something that

• 20:42Annie Elise?

  just in the slightest annoyed him or bothered him, he would make this huge public show about how badly he had been wronged, how he was just such a victim. And then came the death threats. One time Derek even wrote on someone's page that he was going to kill them, just straight up threaten them in a very public setting on a public forum. But according to Derek's post, this threat was justified because, as he put it, quote, "they weren't real friends." Which, that absolutely makes no sense. You can't threaten someone whether they are a friend or not. It makes no sense, right? But it gets even worse. According to an old friend of Derek's, he once even pulled a gun on a woman at a concert, all

• 21:24Annie Elise?

  because she accidentally spilled a beer near him. Seriously, she spilled a beer, which is yes, annoying for sure, but clearly it was an accident. She didn't decide to like dump it over his head intentionally or even like throw it at him. But even if it was on purpose, that certainly isn't a life or death situation. But still Derek's reaction to all of this was to draw a gun and aim it directly at her. He also had a long disturbing history of stalking. He was in an adult softball league and for whatever reason, he felt like because of that, he needed to keep tabs on all of his teammates. Seriously, on an adult softball league, he literally would hide in the bushes at places where he knew they were going to be. Then he would record them in secret, without them noticing, and he would start

• 22:06Annie Elise?

  posting these videos online. Now, I don't know if that could be, I'm not a psychologist, so guys, I really don't know, but I don't know if that could be considered like some type of voyeurism, or if that's like some sort of fetish, but like, or if it's just creepy and he's just like stalking these people because he wants to intimidate them. But adult softball league and you're hiding in the bushes, recording your teammates, not at the game, at private places that they go to, and then you're posting those videos online? That's really unsettling and pretty scary. So all to say, Derek was kinda just like a weirdo through and through. And that's why people were so unsure about how to act when he posted that picture of Jennifer and her body on Facebook saying she had died.

• 22:49Annie Elise?

  They were like, is this real? He posts a lot of bizarre stuff all the time. Do we take this at face value? What's really going on here? However, given his history of violence against her, plus a whole bunch of other people that he knew, it did seem possible that he might have killed her and maybe now was bragging about it, like he bragged about everything else in his life. But like I said, it seemed equally likely that this was all maybe a hoax or a prank, because that was also very much the kind of thing that Derek would do. Well, ultimately, it wouldn't take long to figure out the truth. Shortly after he put that post on Facebook, Derek and his father went to the police department. And once he was there, Derek confessed to killing Jennifer. Now unfortunately, the quality of the interrogation, it isn't great, and it's a little bit difficult to hear what Derek

• 23:33Annie Elise?

  is saying. But according to him, he says that this whole thing was self-defense. See, Derek said that when Jennifer woke up that morning, she was extremely angry because he didn't wake her up earlier. She had overslept and because of that, she, according to him, blamed Derek. Apparently, they had been planning to spend the day getting some quality time in as a couple, just really, you know, having the day together, enjoying each other's company, and they were even gonna watch a movie together. But now, because she overslept, it was too late for that. A big chunk of the morning had passed, and Jennifer had, you know, slept through it. So he says that she was angry at him because she felt like, in general, he didn't value their relationship. That he wasn't doing the work to keep things good and keep things happy between the two of them.

• 24:17Annie Elise?

  And the fact that he let her sleep in so late just seemed like one more piece of evidence to support that idea, again, according to Derek. So according to him, Jennifer was pissed, and he says he was just defending himself, which I would imagine that his stance was that, you know, if it was so important to Jennifer to get up early that she should have set an alarm. But for whatever reason, they were both angry, and before long, they were fighting. They went back and forth between their bedroom upstairs and the kitchen downstairs. And at one point during the fight, according to Derek, she grabbed a tube of mascara and some towels and then threw them at him. So to defend himself, he grabbed a gun, which, let me just kinda level set that one more time. He says, "She grabbed a tube of mascara," which, to any men listening who don't understand

• 25:02Annie Elise?

  what that looks like or the size of it, it is literally like the length of a ballpoint pen and the width of maybe, I don't know, between a dime and a quarter, depending on the brand, and it's plastic. So grabbing that and some towels, to me at least, doesn't necessarily compute with such a danger that you would need to grab a gun to protect yourself. Literally, I could throw my entire phone at me right now that weighs more than mascara, and like, I wouldn't justify grabbing a gun, obviously, and that's such a frickin' stupid comparison, but like, I didn't know what else to come up with off of the top of my head, but like, that's what he says. She grabbed the towels and the mascara to throw at him, or she did throw them at him, and so he picked up his gun and aimed it at her.

• 25:46Annie Elise?

  Cause that math maths, apparently. Now, when he did this and picked up the gun, I guess Jennifer didn't really take him seriously. She didn't actually feel threatened, even when she saw that he was now armed. So according to what he said in his confession, she started making fun of him, almost kind of like taunting him, being like, "You're not gonna kill me, you're not gonna kill me, like, relax, calm down, guy." But then, she turned her back on him. Again, acting almost like she didn't take him seriously, thinking that he was actually a threat to her, or that it should be anything for her to be worried about. So she went downstairs, and Derek went down after her. However, he says he left the gun upstairs, he actually put it away at this point inside the closet. So they made it all the way to the kitchen, where then he says Jennifer pulled a knife out on him.

• 26:31Annie Elise?

  Again, this is according to Derek. He said that he struggled with her to get the knife away from her. Then, when he did get the knife away from her, he put it inside the kitchen drawer. He was trying to be safe, you know, in theory. But then, he did the least safe thing that he could do. He went back upstairs and he grabbed his gun again. He said that when he got downstairs again and Jennifer saw that he was once again armed, she began punching him. So again, in a move that to me feels like a huge overreaction, he quote-unquote "defended himself" from her punches by shooting her. Now that's not to say that if somebody is punching you and attacking you, you shouldn't shoot them in self-defense if the attack is like super severe. Of course, I'm not trying to like give her a pass because she's a female.

• 27:15Annie Elise?

  But what I mean by that is that, remember, he had boasted and bragged about how he was this professional fighter, he was a professional boxer, all of these things, and meanwhile, she was kind of more of like this timid, meek woman. So, again, I don't know what happened, like truthfully, I wasn't there. But you would think that if he was like this trained fighter, and his wife was kind of just like throwing these punches at him, that he could have either restrained her, gotten away from her, done something to defuse the situation, aside from grabbing a gun and shooting her to try to quote "protect himself." Again, though, I wasn't there, those are just my thoughts, I could totally be wrong, tell me what you guys think. Now, according to Derek, Jennifer had been hitting him in the arms and all around the chest area.

• 27:58Annie Elise?

  That's what apparently had him feeling so scared for his life. So frightened that he had no choice but to fatally shoot her at point-blank range. And if you're kind of like me and you're not really buying it, you're not alone. The police also felt like this, you know, in shape, buff, fit, adult man, an alleged professional boxer, mind you, should have been able to handle a few slaps from his wife without needing to kill her. So they pushed back on what he was saying, and he kind of then just started flopping back and forth. First, he said that he wasn't worried that she was going to seriously injure him. But then he said that he actually was worried. Which, mind you, he already had said that when Jennifer threatened him with the knife, he was able to get that knife away from her and put it back inside the kitchen drawer. So it was hard to believe that he really did have any reason to be afraid of her after that.

• 28:43Annie Elise?

  He already had disarmed her once while, mind you, she had a weapon with her. He was able to overpower her then, so why wasn't he able to overpower her now that she didn't have a weapon? Now, according to Derek, for a while before this fight, Jennifer had wanted to take her own life. Again, according to Derek. He made it sound like that was a factor in why he shot her too, because she was so reckless, she didn't even care who she hurt during the fight. If it was herself or someone else, she wouldn't care. So, that's why he did it. And he tried to make it sound like she attacked him with the knowledge that she wouldn't stop until she was dead. That she didn't give Derek any choice in the matter. Now, I will say, a lot of Jennifer's friends and family members have pushed back against

• 29:25Annie Elise?

  that explanation. They've said that of course Jennifer didn't want to die. She was overall a happy person. She loved her daughter and she certainly would never leave her behind. But sadly, there are cases where people do a very good job of hiding their emotional problems. People can be happy and love their family, but still end up taking their own life. But there were a lot of other reasons to not really believe Derek or take him at face value. I mean, besides the fact that he was weird and kind of always telling these crazy lies, he had also just shot Jennifer to death. So, he had a motive to want to make himself look good in all of that. I mean, besides everything else. Derek was also claiming that Jennifer had been abusive toward him while she was still alive, which I gotta say is pretty rich, given that she was the one who would show

• 30:08Annie Elise?

  up to work with bruises and was acting scared enough that the neighbors even noticed. And of course, when the police asked him if he had any evidence of this alleged past abuse that was against him, Derek couldn't come up with anything. He had never filed any reports in the past, never had taken any photos, and that doesn't necessarily say it did or didn't happen one way or another, but there wasn't any evidence to prove or, you know, bolster his claims. So, anyway, whatever you believe, Derek made it sound like he had absolutely no choice but to kill Jennifer. He was just in a bad situation. And after he did it, he acted very calm and very collected, not like how you would expect if this really was, you know, some unforeseeable but sadly necessary moment in self-defense,

• 30:52Annie Elise?

  something that you had to do. In fact, he changed into some clean, fresh clothes, he left the condo and walked right out the front door. But there's one other person who we haven't talked about yet in any of this. Jennifer's 10-year-old daughter Isabel, because she was there.

• 31:13Annie Elise?

  You guys know I am all about finding easy ways to get more nutrition into my day. Between recordings, school pickup, after-school activities, you name it. My schedule gets really busy. I definitely don't have time to like cook a meal. And so I love Kachava because I can just quickly grab a shake. It is so easy and also tastes like a little delicious treat. With just two scoops, you're getting protein, fiber, greens, and so much more. And it's all in one delicious shake. Plus, what I love is there are no artificial flavors, colors, or sweeteners, and it is completely plant-based. So, I mean, hello, good for everybody. And can we talk about the flavors for a second? They have everything from chai and matcha to chocolate mint and even their new salted caramel,

• 31:57Annie Elise?

  which that has become my new favorite, especially in the morning. I know you're not supposed to have dessert in the morning, but for me, it feels like I am having a little sweet treat to start my day. And I think it's great when you're craving something sweet and salty, but for me, it's like a great way to start my morning routine. I love it. Embrace your salty side. Go to kachava.com and use code AE for 15% off your first order. That's kachava, K-A-C-H-A-V-A, dot com, code AE. Now, this is just awful, but when Derek left the murder scene, he also left Jennifer's 10-year-old daughter Isabel home alone. Isabel was home the whole day when her mother was shot to death. She was there for the fight. She was there for Jennifer's murder.

• 32:40Annie Elise?

  And then she was there with Jennifer's corpse, just lying there and no other adult around. Apparently, before he left, Derek told Isabel to not go downstairs, which sounds to me like the absolute, honestly, like bare minimum that you could do to try to protect her and shield her from that trauma. But he said, you know, "Don't come downstairs." He left and he went to a relative's house. And then when he did that, he told his family what happened. Now, again, this was all according to Derek and according to his confession. But I'm going to say right now that the story doesn't really fit the timeline of what we know to be true. See, Derek said that he shot Jennifer early that morning at around 7:30 or 8:00 a.m., but he didn't go to the police station until close.

• 33:21Annie Elise?

  or to 11:30. So to hear him tell it, he killed her and he confessed to what he had done to his family right away. But then for whatever reason, it still took three and a half or four hours for him to come clean to the authorities. And that whole time, Isabel was still home alone. No one was watching her, nobody was taking care of her, let alone protecting her from the sight of her mother's dead body. Now, I do wonder, and this is only speculation, but I think it is worth throwing it out there, but maybe his family didn't believe it when Derek told them what he had done. Maybe they were just as confused by his erratic behavior as everybody else. And it's possible that when he said he had murdered Jennifer, they just kind of shrugged it off as him lying, or just another one

• 34:04Annie Elise?

  of his, you know, bizarre moments. Kind of like the exact same reaction all those people had on Facebook. And speaking of Facebook, by the time Derek gave his confession, the police knew what he had posted online. They knew he had confessed already to the entire world. And naturally, they wanted to know why he did that. According to Derek, he did this to notify Jennifer's family. He wanted them to know that she was dead and also that he had done it. He also wanted to set the record straight and to make sure that the world knew his version of why he committed the murder before the story could be spun in the media. Now, I'll just say, I don't think there's ever a good way to tell someone that you have murdered a person that they love. But I could think of about a million

• 34:47Annie Elise?

  different ways that are better than posting a picture of a crime scene on Facebook, along with some, you know, unhinged rant coupled next to it. But either way, the police were now in a really weird position. Because on one hand, Derek had come into the station and he had confessed, right? I mean, he straight up admitted that he had killed Jennifer, and he even had shared that proof of it on Facebook. But he was also trying to make it sound like it was self-defense. So they knew that if they wanted to know the real story, they needed to go to the crime scene for themselves. They needed to gather evidence. Not to mention that Jennifer's daughter was still there, unattended. So of course, the officers also had to make sure that she was okay and taken care of. So once they got to the condo, the police found Isabel in her room upstairs. She was

• 35:31Annie Elise?

  huddled in her bed under a blanket. She told them that she hadn't heard any gunshots, but she did hear her mom and Derek fighting. And then she said she heard some banging in the kitchen afterward. She just assumed that either Derek or Jennifer was maybe throwing something and the noise was the crash of something heavy landing somewhere. It hadn't even occurred to her that it could have been a gun. She also said that Derek had told her to stay inside her room, so that's what she had been doing all morning. She listened to him. She never went downstairs. The whole time, those hours that she had been there alone, she just stayed in her room. She also hadn't seen anything around the crime scene, which I've gotta just say is a blessing. So the police, of course, wanted to keep it that way. They still wanted to protect

• 36:12Annie Elise?

  her from seeing her mom's body. But this was going to be a problem, because they would have to go past the kitchen to get from her bedroom and out the door. So one officer stood in the doorway trying to block the scene, while another one wrapped Isabel in a blanket and carried her down the stairs and out of the house. Now as for the actual scene in the kitchen, it was clear right away that Jennifer had died of multiple gunshot wounds. That right there was pretty clear evidence that this was definitely not self-defense. I mean, there was no way that Derek was in so much danger that he needed to shoot her multiple times. Several of those wounds were on her left forearm, one was in her chin, and she had another bullet wound near her ribs. It

• 36:53Annie Elise?

  was later determined by the medical examiner that Jennifer was shot at point-blank range, and that she had likely been using her arm as a shield before she was shot, which explains the bullet hole in her arm. The investigators also found three guns, ammo, and the knife that Jennifer had supposedly gone after Derek with. So they took all of those items as evidence. And they also found something that would really help them get to the heart of how this murder had happened, because they found security camera footage. The good news was that this house had multiple security cameras, not just on the outside, but on the inside too. One camera was pointed toward the front door, and another one filmed the kitchen door and part of the kitchen sink.

• 37:36Annie Elise?

  Unfortunately, it was set up to only film a part of the kitchen, not the whole room. So when the police watched the footage, they didn't see the fight that led up to the actual shooting. They did see Jennifer walking around on the first floor, starting around 7:30 a.m. She was crying, she grabbed some tissue to wipe her face. The assumption is that she was down there midway through the fight, and Derek had said in his confession that the fight had began upstairs and then they went downstairs. And given how upset Jennifer looked in this footage, the police figured that that was true. That Jennifer had a fight with Derek upstairs and then she went downstairs where she was filmed crying. At one point, Jennifer walked to the front door and she opened it and then closed it right away. Now, this would have triggered the alarm, so the police's theory was that she opened

• 38:21Annie Elise?

  and closed the door to get his attention, because Derek was still upstairs at this time. And I guess Jennifer wanted to keep talking to him, so she pretended like she was leaving to get him to come down and confront her, like if he heard the alarm, he'd be like, "No, you're not leaving, I want to still talk to you," and he would run downstairs. So while she was waiting for him to come down, Jennifer then went to the kitchen and started making breakfast and washing some dishes. Eventually, Derek walked in and they started fighting again. Derek then went back and forth between upstairs and downstairs, again, just like what he said in his confession. He was down in the kitchen, then he left, then he came back again. At one point, Jennifer hit Derek and he went upstairs again. Now, I'm guessing that that's when he grabbed the gun, because when he came down again,

• 39:05Annie Elise?

  that's when he shot Jennifer. Which does, again, match with Derek's confession, I mean, sort of. He said that he had to kill Jennifer in self-defense because she was hitting him, and she was hitting him, but not at the moment that he shot her. He removed himself from the situation, he got to safety and went upstairs. But then, that's when he decided to open the closet and get the gun out again. I mean, there were so many steps he took. Getting upstairs, opening the closet, taking out the gun, walking back downstairs. At any point, he could have just left. Jennifer didn't follow him up the stairs, he was never in any danger. But still, he coolly, calmly, and purposefully took the gun back downstairs.

• 39:46Annie Elise?

  He walked into the kitchen where Jennifer was, and he shot her over and over again. A little while later after the shooting, the footage also showed Derek walking out the front door, wearing a different set of clothes. So that was enough to charge Derek with murder, also with illegally firing a weapon inside a dwelling and child neglect. During his bond hearing, he pled not guilty to the murder and child neglect charges, but he didn't enter a plea for the illegally firing a weapon charge, and he was denied bond. His trial was set for 2015. By that time, Derek still said, though, that he was innocent, and surprisingly enough, his family stood by him. They said he was innocent, too. And was he? Was there going to be some sort of hail mary that would prove

• 40:31Annie Elise?

  this really was self-defense? He was innocent, and he would get off scot-free? Well, there's still a lot we need to talk about.

• 40:43Annie Elise?

  All right, I feel like we need to just have an honest conversation here in the circle of trust. Can we talk about how literally everything seems to be getting more expensive? Groceries, gas, rent, you name it. And apparently, your wireless bill wants to join in on that party, too. But here's the thing: it doesn't have to. Mint Mobile is making it so much easier to stop overpaying for wireless with plans starting at just 15 bucks a month. And you're not sacrificing quality either. All plans include high-speed data, unlimited talk and text, and access to the nation's largest 5G network. You can also use your current phone and your current phone number. You just sign up online, and you are good to go. Now, I changed carriers probably a year and a half ago at this point to Mint Mobile.

• 41:28Annie Elise?

  And when I tell you, not only was it the best decision of my life, I now have, like, service in places my husband doesn't even have service, but it was so easy. It took me 15 minutes, kept my phone, kept my phone number. It was the best. So for a new wireless plan starting at 15 bucks a month, go to mintmobile.com/ae. That's mintmobile.com/ae. $45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. So Derek's family is standing behind him. And Derek's father made a statement to the news reporters about Derek and Jennifer's marriage, saying, "They had a very rough relationship when they were married. He was always scared of her. He reported to me that she always beat him up.

• 42:13Annie Elise?

  As a man, he didn't want to tell too many people because it's a manly thing. They're making my son out to be a monster, and it was the other way around. She pushed him to the point of insanity." Meanwhile, as you can imagine, Jennifer's family was just in absolute shambles.

• 42:28Speaker 02

  He chose to do what he did, and then, like, gloating, took picture of my dead daughter, and then had the... The audacity to go on Facebook. To me, in my opinion, that's clear cut that this guy is a psycho. I hope he gets the death penalty.

• 42:45Annie Elise?

  Jennifer's daughter Isabel was really struggling as well. I mean, not only was she dealing with the death of her mom, but she also felt a lot of guilt. She blamed herself for listening to Derek when he told her to just stay inside her bedroom. Apparently Isabel thought that it might have been possible to get Jennifer help or even maybe save her life if she had called 911 at some point in those first four hours. And since she didn't do that, she felt like she was partially responsible for her mom's death. And I know, if you're thinking, "Not at all, not at all, Annie, like, that poor girl", you're right, it's absolutely not logical. But she was just 10 years old. That would be a lot for even a grown adult to deal with. So imagine a 10-year-old and, you know, your mother. Of course, she's going to be reeling at any possible outcome. And what could I have done?

• 43:29Annie Elise?

  What could I have done differently? It's just heartbreaking. Well, I should say, it's heartbreaking to most, not all. Because when Derek heard about how Isabel was struggling, his reaction was typically self-centered and self-serving.

• 43:43Speaker 07

  Is there anything that your stepdaughter could have done that could have stopped the shooting?

• 43:51Speaker 08

  No, not at all.

• 43:52Speaker 07

  You know, that she feels guilty.

• 43:54Speaker 08

  Why does she feel guilty?

• 43:56Speaker 07

  Because she feels that she could have stopped it, done something to stop it.

• 44:01Speaker 08

  Well, maybe you need to tell her that I protected her. If my wife would have gone, you know, if she would have killed me...

• 44:08Annie Elise?

  In the lead-up to his trial, Derek had to appear in court multiple times. And each time that he would show up before the judge, he looked rougher than he had before. He grew out his hair really long. He also had this really long beard. And in one hearing, Derek kept trying to interrupt the judge. It was bad enough that eventually the judge threw him out of the court entirely.

• 44:28Speaker 09

  What is our...

• 44:29Speaker 10

  What's your... I was going to do this on...

• 44:31Speaker 09

  Mr. Medina?

• 44:32Speaker 10

  We had, um, video evidence.

• 44:33Speaker 09

  Mr. Medina? Mr. Medina? I will have you to cease recording. Please speak out of turn, sir. Please be quiet.

• 44:41Speaker 09

  Mr. Medina, it's not that I don't care what you have to say, sir, but anything you say is being taken down by a court order.

• 44:47Speaker 10

  I understand the law, but it's because you came forward and I just...

• 44:50Speaker 09

  Sir, I think you need to speak to your attorney first. Please take a seat. This is the discovery stage of the case. You're speaking prematurely. You need to speak to your attorney.

• 44:58Speaker 10

  It's not premature. Video evidence of Jennifer called to attempting to murder.

• 45:01Speaker 09

  Mr. Medina, please speak to your attorney.

• 45:03Speaker 10

  We are in slow motion of her attempting to murder.

• 45:05Annie Elise?

  Derek's trial began in November of 2015, and by this point, he had shaved, he had cut his hair, and he looked a lot more presentable. The prosecution argued that Derek wasn't abused. He didn't act in self-defense, and there was no way that Jennifer could have seriously hurt him or overpowered him. And they argued that Derek killed Jennifer because she was threatening to leave him. Once and for all, she was gonna be out, and he was not about to let that happen.

• 45:30Speaker 03

  25-0.

• 45:33Speaker 03

  25-0. It's a good record. Perfect record. That was the defendant's record as an amateur boxer.

• 45:45Speaker 03

  He never lost a fight. Ever. 25-0. And that wasn't gonna start on August 8, 2013. He wasn't going to lose to his wife. He wasn't going to lose by letting her leave, as she had said she was going to do. And he wasn't going to lose to his wife after she called him a pussy during an argument. And by his own admission, every shot hit. Every shot hit his target.

• 46:18Speaker 03

  And what did he do then?

• 46:21Speaker 03

  He did what people do when they win. He told people about it.

• 46:27Speaker 03

  He didn't tell 911 in the hopes of maybe getting her help because he had just done this. He didn't run out of his house to call for help for his wife, who was laying on the floor with 21 bullet holes in her. He didn't call her family and say he had to shoot her because she was attacking him. Nope.

• 46:49Speaker 03

  He did what was good for him. Because that's what he does. He went upstairs, put on a pair of pants. He went upstairs to get dressed while she lay there bleeding and dying on the floor of the kitchen. And he left.

• 47:07Speaker 03

  But before he left, he did two things.

• 47:10Speaker 03

  Number one, he took a picture. He had just killed his unarmed wife. And what did he do? He took a picture of her bent backwards from being on her knees, cowering in the corner of the kitchen while he was shooting her.

• 47:30Speaker 03

  And he posted it on Facebook.

• 47:34Speaker 03

  And what was the post? "I'm going to prison or death sentence for killing my wife. Love you guys, miss you guys. Take care, Facebook people. You'll see me in the news. My wife was punching me. I'm not going to stand anymore with the abuse. So I did what I did. I hope you understand me."

• 47:57Speaker 03

  He killed his wife, supposedly in self-defense, but minutes later, he's talking about being on the news. And you will get to see the post. He told the detectives that he posted because he wanted her family to know about what had happened. That's how he wanted them to know? He told a different story to somebody else.

• 48:22Speaker 03

  He said he wanted to say goodbye to his friends. He shoots when he wants, and he leaves when he wants. And he tells the world about it on his terms.

• 48:34Annie Elise?

  The defense argued that Derek was not guilty because he had shot Jennifer in self-defense. He was in an abusive relationship. He had been suffering from abuse for years, and now he finally stood up for himself. They claimed that Jennifer was a drug addict who worshipped Satan. Which, I gotta say, so far as out there defenses go, this one is pretty close to the top of the list. Now, they did say that they had proof that she used drugs, but they weren't allowed to introduce this "proof" into evidence. And as for that supposed Satan-worshipping, their main argument for that was that Jennifer was into horror and dark things. And that apparently meant that she was into devil worship. That was it. That was literally all of their evidence, which I could say if... We were going off of that alone, I would say anybody listening to true crime,

• 49:19Annie Elise?

  worship Satan, if that's the rule, like if you're into dark things, or if you're curious about dark things, but that was it. That's their argument, and that's what they were going with. They also read from Jennifer's journal to try to show that she was the violent one, that she was the dangerous one. One of the entries that they read, she had written, "I love him. I just wish we had a better way of showing it. When we love each other, it's great, but when we hate each other, we hate each other. Derek told me that I'm never happy for him in anything and everything. I've had my fair share of crazy bitch moments, like when I thought he was having an affair, and he didn't even do anything. I just find myself uncontrollably jealous, like tried to murder type of deal." So with that, they were really trying to create this story that Jennifer had violent

• 50:04Annie Elise?

  tendencies. But overall, the defense mostly focused on the theory that Jennifer was coming at Derek with a knife, and because of that, he was just acting in self-defense. And in fairness, in one of the CCTV clips from the day of the murder, you can see a glimpse of Jennifer holding a knife in the kitchen. But also, you have to remember that she was making breakfast when he came down and confronted her. There were plenty of non-dangerous reasons that she would have a kitchen knife while she was preparing food or washing the dishes. Also, Derek said that he took the knife from Jennifer before he killed her. He grabbed the knife, he put it away inside the drawer, then he shot her. And when the police searched the house, they found that knife inside the drawer. It wasn't on the floor where it would have been if she maybe had it in her hands and was attacking him when she got shot.

• 50:49Annie Elise?

  Derek also claimed that after he shot Jennifer, she still kept trying to punch him. So because of that, he had to shoot her a few more times. But a medical expert testified that this wasn't even possible. The bullet that hit Jennifer's arm would have made it impossible for her to throw a punch. The medical professional also testified that it was highly likely that Jennifer was on her knees in a very submissive defensive position when the shooting occurred. This was based on the trajectory of the bullet and where the gunshot residue ended up settling on her body. So they say Derek was standing over Jennifer while she was kneeling, not while she was hitting him. That would also explain why her body was found in this like slumped over position. I mean, imagine if you were on your knees and then you fell backward from that position.

• 51:33Annie Elise?

  You would land pretty similar to how Jennifer's body was positioned when it was found, right? Plus, according to one detective who also took the stand, there were no injuries on Derek's body. No sign that he had been in any kind of fight or in any kind of danger. He also said that in the days after Derek's arrest, they found him picking at his skin. It came across like he was almost trying to create injuries so that it would look like Jennifer had hit him or scratched him. Derek never testified during the trial, which in total lasted three weeks. Ultimately, the jury found him guilty of second degree murder, as well as child neglect and illegally firing the gun. During his sentencing hearing, Jennifer's family asked the judge to send Derek to prison for the rest of his life.

• 52:16Annie Elise?

  And Derek, well, of course, he had his thoughts about that.

• 52:19Speaker 02

  I expected compassion and leniency when he showed none for Jennifer. His request by the Alfonso family that the maximum penalty of life in prison be imposed for the murder of my daughter Jennifer. And in addition, the notion that my daughter was violent or abusive is an insult to me and my family. That's a fantasy that he created and the counsel. Thank you very much.

• 52:47Speaker 04

  So, I just wanted, I know you, you saw and heard a lot of things about Jen during the trial, but I just wanted you to know that she wasn't just a victim, she wasn't just a body on the floor to be discovered. She was a wonderful, amazing person. She was very forgiving, funny, smart. She had so much to give.

• 53:13Speaker 04

  And now, unfortunately, that's gone. She was turning into the woman that she was gonna be.

• 53:22Speaker 04

  And that's not gonna happen now.

• 53:25Speaker 04

  My kids are the most beautiful thing in the world to me.

• 53:31Speaker 04

  I cannot put it to words. The loss that I feel. There are no words.

• 53:41Speaker 04

  I experience joy every day and I'm thankful to God for everything that he gives me to try and be the person that I need to be. But every day I suffer. I miss my daughter. I wish she was back with me, but she's not. She's never gonna be. I miss everything about her. I miss braiding her hair for work. I miss giving her advice. I miss taking her advice. I miss laughing with her. All the things that we did together.

• 54:22Speaker 04

  And I just... I'm not gonna tell you how to do your job. I don't envy you your job. But just keep in mind, while you're doing your horrible task that you've been through, that Jennifer is not gonna come back to me in 25 years. I mean, she's not gonna come back to me in 40 years. I mean, she's not gonna come back to me at all. Just please keep that in mind. Thank you.

• 54:51Speaker 10

  Focus Barack Obama President on this corrupted world that I will be suing. Focus again, presidents and future presidents of the world, okay? I will be suing this world. Not only that, unfriended the movie by Universal Pictures, came out with a movie before my trial, which was unfair, okay? Which was biased. And, um, pretty much the point that I'm trying to make is I did not get a fair trial. And I will be taking action, I will be suing. And I want Barack Obama, the President of the United States of America, to focus on corruption.

• 55:34Speaker 10

  Corruption is a big problem that we have in the United States of America and all over the world.

• 55:40Speaker 10

  Nothing further. And oh, God knows the truth, and nothing further.

• 55:44Annie Elise?

  In the end, the judge sentenced Derek to life in prison. He will be eligible for parole after 25 years. Then in 2018, Derek tried to appeal based on a few reasons. His first argument had to do with the defense's claim that Jennifer was a drug addict, because you'll remember that they said that they had proof of this alleged addiction, but they weren't allowed to admit it into the court. The actual evidence, if you can even call it that, was that two months after Derek's arrest, investigators found a pill bottle full of bath salts. So the argument was that during the fight, when Derek shot her, Jennifer was high on bath salts, and then because of that, it sent her into a violent rage. The evidence was considered inadmissible because nobody could prove that these bath salts ever belonged to Jennifer,

• 56:28Annie Elise?

  let alone that she had taken them, especially given that her autopsy showed that there were no drugs in her system at the time of her death. But still, in his appeal, Derek tried to argue that even if Jennifer wasn't on bath salts that day, she could have still been on them at other times. She could have been violent and dangerous on other days, besides the one when she died. And by refusing to let Derek's lawyers admit those bath salts into evidence, the judge prevented him from being able to demonstrate a pattern of abuse and mistreatment that ultimately led up to the shooting. He also supposedly found an expert who claimed that in the security footage of the fight, if you zoomed really close, like super close in, you could see reflections in the stainless steel sink that showed Jennifer attacking him. However, this expert actually wasn't an expert at all.

• 57:13Annie Elise?

  The person had no training and no background that made them seem reliable or trustworthy. So, the original decision was fully upheld, and Derek is still in prison today. And whenever he does give an interview, he still says that he is innocent, that he only killed Jennifer in self-defense.

• 57:30Speaker 08

  So if I didn't keep on shooting my gun, I would have been killed. I would have been deceased. And you would be doing the interview with her instead of me.

• 57:37Annie Elise?

  Now, I've gone into the Reddit threads and I've seen some other videos and episodes on this case. And there are a lot of conflicting opinions out there. A lot of people think that he really was acting in self-defense and that maybe she was a drug addict, which to me, it just, those things don't add up. I personally don't believe so. But I am curious to know your thoughts. So let me know what you think. Thank you guys so much for tuning into another episode of Serialistically with me. I'll be back on the mic with you first thing Thursday morning with headline highlights where we are breaking down everything happening this week in the true crime world. And guys, there is a lot. So make sure to check back on Thursday. If you're not following the podcast already, take a quick second.

• 58:19Annie Elise?

  Follow along. It's totally free, but that way you will not miss those episodes. All right, guys. Thanks again for tuning in. Until the next one. Be nice. Don't kill people. Don't join any cults. Don't post crazy things on Facebook or pictures of corpses on Facebook and just be a good human. All right. Seems easy enough, right? Seems easy enough. All right. Take care, guys. Bye.