Janet Abaroa

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised.

Hello everyone and welcome to episode 430 of the Criminology Podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson.

And this is Mike Morford.

Mr. Mike Morford, what's going on this week, buddy?

Busy with sports. My son made a very competitive flag football team and my daughter made the varsity soccer team. So I'm very proud of them. Proud father moment. So I've been caught up with that this week. What's new with you?

Yeah. Oh, man, that's awesome. That's great news. We're doing fall things. My wife's got all these, you know, festivals planned, corn mazes. She likes the fall.

Yeah, I like the fall too. It's my, the thing I miss about being in the Northeast is those leaves falling and the pumpkin spice stuff and that, that's not the same down here in Florida.

Yeah, no, everything's pumpkin spice, everything. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shout outs. We had new support from Bob and Cindy Blitz. So that's amazing support. We really appreciate it.

Oh, Bob and Cindy, we really can't thank you enough. And to everyone else that helps support the show, it means a lot to us. And if you want to get started, head over to patreon.com/criminology.

All right, Morf, we're jumping right in. And in this week's case, we're talking about the brutal 2005 murder of a 25 year old woman named Janet Abarro, who was found dead in her North Carolina home. Her husband frantically called 911 to report finding Janet dead. And for a while, police were stumped as to who could have murdered such a friendly and well-liked mother of a young son who was at the time pregnant with her second child. Over time though, a series of little clues and details, when put together, painted a picture of just who it was who had killed Janet. And that ultimately led to their downfall.

At around 11:00 PM on April 26, 2005, police in Durham, North Carolina were called to the Abaroa home on Farron Drive. Inside the house, in a bedroom upstairs, 25 year old Janet Abaroa was dead. She was covered in blood. Her husband Raven had called 911 and frantically tried to explain what he was seeing. He told the dispatcher, she's been shot or something. There's blood everywhere. Thankfully, their six-month-old son, Kayden, wasn't harmed during the attack. He had been in the nursery sleeping soundly when Janet was killed. Detectives soon arrived and began to assess the scene while Janet's body was taken away. An autopsy revealed that she hadn't been shot by her killer. She had been stabbed three times.

The fatal injury had been a stab wound to her neck, which severed an artery and punctured one of her lungs. She had also been stabbed in the chest and the hand. It was a truly savage attack that had ended Janet's life. The autopsy also revealed that she was pregnant at the time of her murder.

Police needed to question Janet's husband Raven. All right, first of all, he was the one who found his wife. He was also the person that made the 911 call. At that point, it was basically his story of what had happened up until then and no one else's. On top of that, as we know, spouses are very often responsible for the murder of their partner. And at the very least, Morf, they have to be ruled out, right? They're looked at first. Everyone who follows true crime knows that. Police also set out to find possible witnesses that may have seen someone coming or going.

But one issue they encountered is that the Abaroa home was pretty secluded. There were neighbors nearby, but they couldn't really see the home well, because there are so many trees and the houses are set back pretty far from the road. The home had a long gravel driveway. So it's not surprising that there really were no witnesses who saw anything that night.

Despite a lack of witnesses, investigators were quick to rule out a random robbery as a motive. All that had been reported missing by Raven was one knife and one laptop. Other than that, everything looked exactly as it should have. Expensive items seen in plain view were untouched. Janet's wedding ring and engagement band were on the kitchen counter. There weren't even any signs of a struggle. The only thing amiss inside the home was the fact that Janet was dead. According to Raven, he had been out playing soccer, thinking that Janet and Kayden were fine at home. When he got back, he walked into a nightmare.

And obviously this is something that police detectives, you know, look at in a case like this, they're looking at the scene, right? The scene tells a lot. They're also looking for motive. Motive is huge in any murder case. So what does this scene tell us? How could this be a robbery when there's so many expensive things and nothing was taken? I always think more of like, you know, if you're a burglar, whether you set out to kill or not, if you go to that level where you are going to kill someone in the home,

why would you then not take as much as you could? If that was your whole reason for being there?

Yeah, I guess one explanation could be that, you know, if something went wrong and this turned into a struggle or, you know, the killer thought that he was going to be identified and panicked and just wanted to get out of there, then he might forget to take something or just take what he could gather really quickly. But at the same time, you know, it, it does seem like it's, that's not a real motive and the fact that they would take off with a knife and a laptop seems pretty minimal. And then they're bigger and bulkier things when he could put, you know, assuming it's a, he could put jewelry in their pockets that, that was there and probably score more money that way.

So that robbery motive doesn't seem like a motive at all. And then there's no sign of a sexual assault or anything like that. So I think when you rule out major things like that, then there's, you start whittling down, well, what's the true cause of this? What's the true motive?

Well, and the other thing to me is the lack of any sign of a struggle. Okay, well, what does that mean? Does it mean that Janet knew her killer, wasn't afraid of them? I mean, I think that's what would probably go to investigators right off the bat. So we have this alibi from Raven that he's playing soccer. And it turned out that soccer was a shared hobby between the couple. In fact, it was more than a hobby for them. It was a big part of their lives. When they met in August of 1998 at Southern Virginia University, they both played soccer. Janet was a standout star on SVU's inaugural women's team.

And Raven was also a great player. When they got together, Janet talked to her sister about how their children would be star players, since both she and Raven were so good. Janet also swam and played basketball. She was an all-around athlete, even after their college careers ended. The couple was still drawn to sports and they both took jobs with Eurosport, a major soccer and sporting goods retailer based in Hillsborough, North Carolina. And we'll talk more about this employer later on.

In 2000, the couple got married at the Mormon temple in Washington DC. Not long after the wedding, they moved to North Carolina for their Eurosport jobs. In August of 2004, they moved to the home on Farron Drive in Durham. Two months later, Kayden was born. They seemed like a very happy young family. According to millennialstar.org, Don Ekloff, who sometimes babysat Kayden, said, "They seem to be a happy couple and good parents." But not everything was as picture perfect as it seemed from the outside looking in. Raven seemed to come between Janet and her family almost immediately, and they saw it right away. Janet's brother, Mark, told Good Morning America, "After I met Raven, we started drifting

apart a little bit because I just didn't support her marrying him." Friends and family members also recalled that Janet became a lot more quiet and less playful after she married Raven. And that when he wasn't around, she was much more like the Janet they knew. Janet's sister Erica told wral.com that by the time Kayden was born, Janet's personality was gone. Her friend Brittany Romita said, "The loving, charismatic Janet that I knew no longer existed after being in a relationship that was so abusive for so long." So it was clear to those that knew Janet, this relationship had changed her.

And to me, Morf, this is never a good sign. And we talk about it quite a bit. When a couple gets together and it seems as though, and to be honest with you, it normally tends to be the male, is trying to separate their partner from their family, their friends. It never turns out well.

Yeah, much troubling to me is that this isn't just like one person who maybe has a personality clash with Raven and they just don't get along. This is a lot of people now coming forward to say that. He changed her for the, for the worse and they could see how she acted when he was around versus when he wasn't. So clearly something was troubling here.

So no doubt Raven was having a negative effect on Janet, but he was also a cheater. Sometime in 2003, Raven admitted to Janet that he had been cheating on her. He wasn't asking for her forgiveness. He was telling her because he wanted to end their marriage. He actually left their home. Shortly after this separation, Janet realized she was pregnant with their first child. Understandably, she was shaken by this. Her husband was leaving her. She finds out, you know, she's pregnant. Kathy Cheek, a friend and coworker of Janet's, told WRAL.com that Janet cried when she learned she was pregnant with Kayden.

Because Raven wasn't going to be happy that she was pregnant because he didn't want a child at that time. This was a really tough situation.

Looking back, people wondered whether Raven ever truly loved Janet at all. In 2007, Raven told the TV show North Carolina Wanted, Janet was beautiful, attractive. I just felt so much comfort when I was with her. He also mentioned to WRAL.com that Janet made him feel important all the time. He went on to say she was a good listener and he was a big talker. He also liked that she loved to do laundry. None of this was about how smart or funny or interesting Janet was, or what a good partner or mother she was. Just that she made him feel good, didn't interrupt him, didn't mind doing domestic chores, and she was beautiful.

And we often analyze what people say, you know, especially in interviews, media interviews. And I don't know what I would say if I was in this position. I, it's hard to say, right? Because you don't know if you haven't been there. But I'd like to think, one of the things I wouldn't say, Morph, is that my wife loved to do laundry. I mean, that seems like such a strange statement to make. And, and obviously, he is turning every statement, every part of this conversation, back to him. It's not about her, it's about how she made him feel.

Yeah, I'm, I'm with you. I, I don't think my wife would appreciate me saying that she liked to do laundry. I think most people are the same. They want to be mentioned for the things they do, you know, that are meaningful to help the family, to help their lives be better. The support they give each other, those kinds of things, not the, the chores they do around the house. So that seemed kind of cold and callous to me.

But is it also maybe showing that he's a narcissist, right? Everything's about him. Despite the affair and Raven saying he wanted to leave Janet, she didn't want to separate from him. She wanted to work through the issues in their relationship. She certainly didn't want to be a single mother. Just four months before Kayden was born, Raven decided to give their relationship another shot. As to why Janet would even take Raven back, LaVerdi Dow, a friend of the couple, told WRAL.com that she was willing to overlook his infidelities, his embezzlement, and his controlling nature. She wanted her marriage to work because she loved him and she valued marriage.

Oh my gosh, I don't like this.

Well, I, I had a, we had a, like, since it just came out of the blue, I had to think of some, because it would be like, huh? What embezzlement? So I needed to explain it somehow.

And this statement about Raven being an embezzler, it's a huge part of this case.

In late 2004, soon after Kayden's birth, Raven was fired from Eurosport after being accused of stealing at least $9,000 worth of merchandise from them. It seems that he sold all the stolen goods on eBay. Because of this, it wasn't only Raven that lost his job, but Janet did too. She resigned because she obviously couldn't keep working for the same company her husband had been stealing from. Even if she was welcome there, she couldn't get past the shame of what her husband had done. But she stayed by his side. Their landlord, Peter Green, actually gave them two free months of rent after this and ended up renegotiating their lease with their cheaper rent. According to the millennialstar.org, Peter did this because of the little baby and their situation.

He said, "I considered, okay, we can probably do something." Members of their church ward covered a third month for them. So despite the theft and the shame from it, the couple had a support system willing to help them.

And I don't know, Morph, about this situation. I don't know if you've ever worked with your wife, but my wife and I actually met at work. That's where we first met. We fell in love. Now, we ultimately left that job, right, and went on to do other things. But I can't imagine a husband and wife working for the same company. And the husband being fired for embezzling money and the wife staying. I mean, what an odd situation would that be?

Yeah, I agree. Even then, if she had nothing to do with it and had no knowledge of it, just she'd probably feel constantly that people were looking at her and wondering if she had anything to do with it. So, you know, unfortunate for her that she felt that she had to leave as well.

At the very least, you would think, you would feel like people are talking behind your back, right, all the time.

Yeah, and the, the embezzlement itself, to me, on top of the cheating and the, the changes that Janet experienced after getting with Raven, all of that's just coming together for me to paint a, a not so nice picture of this guy.

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A few months after Janet was killed, Raven pled guilty to the embezzlement charges and told the court he had stolen the merchandise to help pay mounting bills. He was ordered to pay back roughly $10,000 in restitution and was sentenced to two years of supervised probation. After Janet left Eurosport, she was hired as a bookkeeper for Martin Marietta Materials. And Raven ended up working as an admission specialist at a company that sold online courses. His job security was based on how good he was at sales. And he took the job at a loss of $10,000 a year compared to his previous salary.

From what we can gather, it sounds like he was on his way to losing that job because his sales weren't good enough.

So to this point, it was clear that there's a lot more going on behind closed doors than anyone knew about. An affair, embezzling, financial issues. All of this was starting to make Raven look bad in the eyes of investigators. And Raven was known to collect knives. In a video the couple sent to loved ones for Christmas, Raven showed off a knife he bought for himself, saying his dad would be proud to know he had his own knife collection. The knife used to kill Janet was apparently one that Raven said was missing from the house, and it was never recovered.

Also troubling to investigators was that there was no sign of forced entry at the scene. It seems as though when Raven got home from soccer, he had to unlock the door as he normally did. He said the lights were off, and he first went into Kayden's room to check on him before he realized that Janet was in the office. Police wanted to verify that Raven really had been out doing what he said he was doing and where he said he was doing it, playing soccer. Police found witnesses who saw him half an hour away from the crime scene. And none of the forensic evidence seemed to implicate him either.

A bloody shoe print found near Janet's body at the scene didn't match any of Raven's shoes. There was also a fingerprint found on the closet door in the office that didn't match Raven's prints. And DNA found in a blood stain on the frame of the side door downstairs wasn't hit. There was some of Janet's blood in the car Raven had drove to the soccer game, but just trace amounts. And Raven had an answer for this. He told investigators that he had to run back to the car to get his cell phone to call 911. So some of the clues seemed to point away from Raven.

But police weren't convinced he wasn't involved, and they asked him to take a polygraph test. He initially agreed, but then backed out. And this only caused detectives to look into him more closely. So to this point, we've talked a lot about Raven, right? We haven't painted a real good picture, Morph. It doesn't seem like he was a, a good guy at all. But I want to throw out a scenario, right? You come home, you find your wife dead. Let's say you had nothing to do with it at all. There are going to be some issues regardless, right? Obviously, your fingerprints are all over the house.

Could it be possible that you tracked some of your wife's blood back to the car to get your cell phone? I mean, there are some things that would make you look guilty that could potentially have a very benign explanation. I'm not saying that's the case here, but that could happen.

And I give the investigators credit because even though, you know, the, the spouse is often responsible for these crimes, they didn't just get tunnel vision and lock in on him. They also considered these other clues that seemed to point away from them. Shoe print that's not his, DNA, a fingerprint that's not his. So I, I think they had to keep option, all their options open at this point in the investigation. Unable to remain in the home that Janet died in, Raven took Caden to stay with his family in Utah. They ended up moving to Salt Lake City. On the one-year anniversary of Janet's murder, Raven filed for bankruptcy. His financial problems clearly had followed

him to Utah, and the court fines and restitution didn't help. While living in Utah, Raven met a woman named Vanessa Pond. Their children went to the same daycare. Vanessa liked that Raven was taking his role as a single father seriously. They started dating and soon moved in together. Early on, Raven opened up to Vanessa about the death of his first wife. According to ABC News, he told her that there was an intruder, and that she was killed, and that he'd found her. Vanessa was so sad for Raven and Caden when she learned this. It only brought the couple closer, as they talked about such tough emotional things he was dealing with. It wasn't long before he ended up asking her to marry him.

When Janet's family learned that Raven was engaged, they tried to warn Vanessa. They wholeheartedly believed that Raven had killed Janet, and that he might be willing to do it again. Janet's family thought that Vanessa could be in danger if she went through with the marriage. Janet's sister, Deana, told ABC News, "We just wanted her to make sure she was aware of things that had been in the news about him, that she would know what she was getting into, and that we were fearful for her." Vanessa started looking Janet's name up online, trying to find out more about the situation. Even her parents brought it up to Raven. All he would tell them was that he had loved Janet. Vanessa soon began to

wonder if Janet's family was right. But when she talked to Raven about the murder, he was able to convince her that they were wrong. Vanessa later would say in court, "He had me convinced that everyone was trying to frame him. Everyone was out to get him, and he had me there on his side." And I don't know what this situation would be like, Morf. You meet someone, you start a new relationship, and the family of this person's wife, who's deceased, starts reaching out to you and badmouthing this guy, and saying, "Hey, stay

away. We want you to know what you're getting into. We think he's a murderer." I mean, that's a weird situation for the beginning of a relationship.

Yeah, it's not typical of someone coming into a new relationship to find out that your new partner, their spouse, was murdered. But then to hear from that person's family that we think the person you're now with is the one that did it, it had to be unsettling for her. And I wonder how, to what degree she actually, you know, tried to research and say, "Okay, let me see if there's anything to this."

But all the while, you have Raven, who's telling her, you know, "Oh, don't worry, they're out to get me." You know, I feel as though this guy was a pretty good manipulator.

Despite Vanessa's initial support for Raven, something happened right before her bridal shower that scared her. Raven got upset with her, pushed her into a wall, and used two fingers to poke her in the chest so forcefully that she was sore for days. He started screaming in her face with their noses literally touching. He told her that he wanted to hit her. Then he raised his fist and swung at her, but stopped just before he actually made contact with her face. Then he started laughing at her because she had cowered. It took her so long to calm down after this, that she was almost two hours late to her bridal shower. But she decided not to call things off, and on September 6, 2008, Raven and Vanessa got married. But soon after the wedding, the sight of himself that Raven showed to

Vanessa before their wedding started to come out more and more. Vanessa testified in court, "He wanted the perfect wife. If I didn't act the way he wanted me to at church or with his friends, or if our house wasn't exactly the right way, then there was hell to be paid. He would say the most horrible things, and then moments later, act as if nothing happened." It was hard to gauge when he was going to lose his temper. He could go back and forth within seconds.

Vanessa also claimed that Raven once shoved her into a wall, causing her to fall, and then tried to convince her that she had just tripped. He trapped her in their bathroom during an argument, and when he finally left the house that day, he grabbed Caden and said, "Come on, mommy doesn't want us anymore." It was cruel to her, and it was cruel to Caden, who was just a child. But Vanessa explained that he thrived on cruelty. She said, "To him, when he sees a woman cry, or he sees weakness, he feeds on it." Within a few months of saying, "I do," Vanessa had seen enough and wanted out of her marriage.

In January of 2009, just four months after the wedding, Vanessa started making a plan to safely leave Raven. The marriage was annulled. After he and Vanessa separated, Raven and Caden moved to Idaho. That same year, Detective Charles Soule took over the investigation into Janet's murder, and started giving everything a second look. So we've talked about this relationship between Raven and Vanessa. Obviously, it wasn't good. But as is often the case, Morf, I think Raven was a good enough talker, a good enough manipulator, to kind of keep

Vanessa in the relationship, even though she was starting to see signs. And then, you know, he was able to get her to go through with the wedding, but it wasn't long, right? Just four months after the wedding that she was like, "I gotta get out of here."

And I'm happy that she recognized that her situation wasn't good, and what this guy was doing to her, and left it. And I also give credit to Janet's family for maybe giving her the heads up and, you know, maybe putting what he was really like on her radar. She probably recognized it sooner than she would have, and maybe she would have stayed there longer if she didn't know that stuff up front, and maybe she could have wound up getting hurt, or maybe even killed, if she stayed. Looking through crime scene photos, Detective Soule noticed an empty contact lens case that had been found on the bathroom counter at the scene. Friends and family noted that Janet always took her contacts off before she went to sleep. Raven said Janet was already

in bed when he left for his soccer game. Both of those can't be true at once. Either Janet didn't always take off her contacts before she fell asleep, or Raven was lying. This jumped out to the detective. There was only one way to find out for sure what the case was, and in July 2010, Janet's body was exhumed. A judge had to order the exhumation, because Raven refused to sign the paper that would allow it to happen. An examination of her body found that she was still wearing her contacts when she was killed, and when her body was buried. This was further proof that Janet had been killed earlier than Raven wanted it to seem. The contacts seemed to be the piece of the puzzle that investigators had been missing. Now they had pretty strong proof of a timeline that heavily implicated Raven.

Detectives carefully reviewed the timeline. On the day Janet died, she picked Caden up from daycare, then she and Raven hosted one of their friends from church, who left the home around 7:00 PM. Raven's soccer game started at 9:00. One of his teammates recalled that Raven missed the warm-up and showed up late. It was only, you know, a matter of minutes, but still, if Raven had been getting ready to go around 7:00, and the game was only about half an hour away, it's odd that he was late at all. Investigators believed that Raven killed Janet before he went out to play soccer, leaving six-month-old

Caden completely alone. If he had waited for Janet to take out her contacts and get in bed, he wouldn't have been able to use the soccer game as an alibi.

On the kitchen counter, peanut butter and jelly had been left out next to a lunchbox. Investigators believe this showed Janet had not been in bed, ready to go to sleep when Raven left for the soccer game. That timeline was wrong. Janet had still been getting things prepared for the next day. This is more of an after-dinner activity than a before-bed one. Her rings on the counter next to the dish drainer made it obvious. She had cleaned up after dinner and was getting things ready for the next day when Raven called her from the office upstairs, luring her to her death. Then he likely stabbed her in the neck from behind, maybe so that she didn't see it coming, or possibly so there would be less blood to clean up before heading out for his alibi at the soccer game. These little details seem

strong enough to authorities for them to arrest Raven for Janet's murder. And on February 1, 2010, Raven Aberro was arrested in Montpelier, Idaho, and extradited to North Carolina to stand trial. He was held on a bail of $5 million. Janet's family members were relieved and told ABC News that the extensive evidence will speak for itself. Raven's parents took custody of five-year-old Caden.

And my feeling, Morf, is that, you know, we've talked about a lot of details that detectives felt, you know, didn't add up. But this isn't like one big bombshell thing that proved Raven killed his wife. It's a bunch of little things. And I feel like, by and large, this is what most trials come down to, right? It's not often that the prosecution has the big, like, one smoking gun type of bombshell evidence. It's a whole series of things, right? Bricks stacked on top of bricks.

It seems that the investigators really thought that this contact lens deal gave them just what they needed to make the arrest. But I don't know, to me, it's kind of flimsy. I mean, I don't wear contacts. I never have, but I know people that have, and I, I remember them saying that they forgot to take them out. They didn't always take them out and leaving them in too long would bother their eyes and they'd have to get eye drops and things like that. So to me, it doesn't seem like it's a slam dunk that she, you know, things didn't happen the way he said he did, just because she was wearing contacts. But, you know, we don't know. But I also still have questions about this other evidence. You

know, we had a track in blood that didn't match any shoes that he had. We had a print DNA that wasn't his. So what about that other stuff? You know, how would the, they explained this at the trial? This can be interesting.

Yeah, I'm with you. I mean, I don't think this is a slam dunk. And, you know, those things that you just mentioned, that is going to give the defense team something to work with. Right? In a lot of these cases, you think, well, what does the defense team have to work with? And, and a lot of times, it's not much. They're throwing different things out to the jury, but they don't have a lot. In this case, I feel as though the defense team does have some things to work with. Raven's first trial ended in a mistrial due to one juror who could not vote guilty. But it revealed a lot about Janet and Raven's

relationship. According to Janet's mother, Janet told her that Raven used to make himself feel better by talking down to her, but that as far as she knew, there hadn't been any domestic violence. Janet also told some members of her family that she suspected Raven had bipolar disorder. Her friend Kathy recalled that on multiple occasions. Janet had called her from a payphone and asked her to come get Kaden because Raven was, quote, "in one of his moods." The fact that Janet had to call her friends from a payphone suggests that Raven was extremely controlling, perhaps not even letting her have a phone of her own.

Raven's ex-wife Vanessa Pond testified as a witness for the prosecution. She backed up what Janet's friends and family claimed that Janet had experienced with Raven. Even those he worked with, some of whom played soccer with him, were concerned about his temper. Raymond Wilson, executive director of Eurosport, told the court, "He was definitely a bit of a hothead." He recalled that Raven was taking their games way too seriously, and he had to have a talk with him about calming down, saying, "It's a coed Parks and Recreation League, not the World Cup." The jury also heard about Raven's admission to Janet, that he had been cheating on her. Multiple people had stories about odd and boundary pushing behavior from Raven.

One woman, Charlotte Revel, testified about a time in 2003, that Raven invited her over to the apartment he shared with Janet, when they were living in Charlotte, North Carolina. Janet was at work, which was fine with Charlotte, because she was just going over to talk to Raven about some work problems. But it seems like Raven had other plans. He asked her to sit on his lap, and ended up trying to show her a video of him and Janet having sex. Charlotte was very uncomfortable with this, and was trying to find a way to leave, when Janet came home from work to have a quick lunch. Raven pushed Charlotte into a closet, so that Janet wouldn't see her. Charlotte testified that she was

completely freaked out, saying she didn't know what to do. And more, if I feel like, you know, we did paint a picture of Raven, obviously, it wasn't a good one. And now, more things are coming out in court. This is a very odd situation. Obviously, when he invited this woman over, he had much different plans than she did. She thought they were gonna, you know, talk about work. But to show her a video of him and Janet having sex, seems like such a strange way to make a move, for the lack of a better term.

And he's doing it in his own home, when his wife is about to come in, which is, just, it seems like he has some impulse control issues. But the more things that are unveiled with this guy, the more troubling picture it paints. More disturbing things came out of the trial. Janet's friend Megan Dowd Council recalled a time that Raven tried to get her to sit on his lap, so he could show her something on his laptop. Another woman, a former coworker, who was a minor when she met Raven, came forward with a similar story. Since she was a minor when it happened, we aren't using her name. But she testified, "He was definitely a charmer, very flirtatious, and with me being so young in age, I was very naive to

it." Once she was in college, she found herself alone with him in a car at night. He was supposed to be giving her a ride to Charlotte, but he made an unexpected stop. He pulled off the road at a rest stop, and started making sexual advances toward her. She told the court that they did end up having sex in the car, but she said she felt unsafe, and just wanted it to be over. Afterward, as he continued driving, she tried to leave strands of her hair in his car, as a way to plant her DNA, in case he was going to kill her. He didn't. He dropped her off. It was the last time he ever saw her until she testified in court. One neighbor told the court that she often heard Raven and Janet have very heated, very intense discussions. She also said that about two weeks before Janet was

killed, she actually saw Janet holding on to the hood of their car while Raven was driving it. This is chilling, but the neighbor said that both Janet and Raven said they were just joking around.

And we knew Raven was a cheater. Right? That was established pretty early on. But, you know, this story about this woman, who was a minor when she met him, and then later on, when she was in college, he made, you know, an advance on her. They ended up having sex, if, if you want to even call it that. Do you know how scared you have to be, to pull out strands of your hair and leave it in the car? Because you think this person might kill you.

So she testified that they did have sex. Now, maybe she felt pressured to do that, and was afraid, and that's the only reason she did it. But one thing's clear, that she wanted it to end quickly, and was already making plans of how to leave a trace of herself in that car, so someone knew that she had been there. So she was clearly getting some kind of dangerous vibe from Raven that made her scared.

It was revealed in court, that Raven had purchased life insurance policies totaling $500,000. And he did stand to profit from Janet's death. He may have known this would look suspicious, because he made sure his policy was worth more than Janet's. If something had happened to him, she would have received $1 million. This life insurance policy wasn't the only thing revealed at trial, because it turns out that items that Raven had said were missing from the home, the night of Janet's murder, a knife and a laptop, were never actually missing at all. Raven claimed to find the knife, among his things, after

he moved, and even got upset at investigators for not finding it. Sometime after the murder, he had called police, telling them, "I can't believe you're investigating my wife's murder, and you guys leave a knife at the crime scene." And as for the missing laptop, the hard drive appeared to have been copied onto multiple discs the day before Janet's murder. To investigators, this was proof that there was advanced knowledge that the laptop would go missing. All Raven needed was a new device, and he still had the contents of his old, stolen laptop. One of Janet's sisters found the discs in one of Raven's bags, when he stayed with her

family shortly after the murder. She made a copy of the discs, and held on to them. They made their way to the hands of the prosecution.

So that's interesting, the laptop details, that shows that the night before, you know, these copies are made of all the contents on it, so that they could still be used on a different computer. So it's, it seems like it is some pre-planning. But also, in that statement I found odd, was that one of Janet's sisters had let him stay with the family after the murder. We talked about how they didn't like him, how they felt he was responsible. So I found that odd, that they would let him stay with them after she died. And maybe that's because of, you know, this was her nephew, too, and she was letting him stay there for that reason, so he had a place to stay.

Yeah, I thought it was a little odd as well. But, like you said, it was, it was probably more for Kaden than it was for Raven.

Other problems arose for the defense. According to witnesses, Raven may have been trying to set up a timeline where he had just missed the intruder because he apparently told members of his church that he came home, went upstairs and found Janet on the floor, and he immediately grabbed her. And then she asked him, why am I hurting so bad? But he had told 911 that she was dead when he found her. His inconsistent stories had no end. He told one friend that he had found Janet laying in bed, but investigators found her on the floor in their office. Raven stopped by convenience store the night of Janet's murder. And security footage from the store proved that he had changed his clothes. And the sweater he was wearing barely had any blood on it, although he claimed to have

run to Janet to see if she was okay and hugged her when he realized she wasn't. It was like he claimed actions that would have easily excused any blood he had missed on his body. The bloody footprint found near Janet's body turned out to belong to one of the EMTs who showed up to try and save her life. One last thing to point away from Raven. There was still the unknown fingerprint and DNA. This unexplained print and DNA is what kept the lone juror from finding Raven guilty, and a mistrial was declared. But the prosecution was ready for a round two.

And we talked about all of this evidence early on. The bloody footprint. Okay, they figured that part out, ended up belonging to one of the EMTs. But there still was this unknown fingerprint, some DNA. And obviously, that was enough for at least one juror in that first trial to not be convinced.

Yeah, I have to, you know, side with the juror here. That's, you know, who, who does that belong to? You know, if it's, you know, if they went through the trouble of checking with all the first responders, the detectives that were there, the lab people and checked their DNA and prints against this stuff, maybe there's accidentally contamination. But if there wasn't, this could belong to somebody else that was in that house. So I think that's, to me, that's very troubling, and it seems like it was for this juror, too.

Yeah, but you know, it could belong to a friend or somebody who stopped by. But just the fact that it's not explained. I can see how a juror could call that reasonable doubt. In June of 2013, Raven turned down a plea deal that would have lessened the murder charge from first degree, which had only one possible consequence, a life sentence to second degree. Still, he refused to say that he killed Janet, and the prosecution was ready to move forward with a new trial. But just one week before his second trial was scheduled to begin, Raven decided to take an Alford plea.

This allows you to enter a guilty plea, but maintain your innocence at the same time. Basically saying, you have no other choice because a jury could convict you based on the evidence the prosecution planned to present. Raven didn't feel that he received a fair trial and knew that the second trial would also be unfair. He told the court that he couldn't risk the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison for something he didn't do. At the trial, his defense lawyer claimed that the focus was Raven Abaroa and his past sins and his future sins, and not about what was at the crime scene. As long as this continued, Raven had no chance.

Janet's family agreed with the decision to allow an Alford plea because, as her statement noted, that initial trial was extremely hard on the family and all those who love Janet. Raven was sentenced to just under eight to 10 years in prison and given credit for the four years he had already spent in jail. Janet's mother ended up receiving the $500,000 from the life insurance policy. After the sentence was passed, Raven's ex-wife Vanessa told ABC News, I was lucky enough to get out. Janet was not. I don't want to see that again. According to wral.com, Janet's younger sister Erica asked the age-old question, why kill her? Why not just get a divorce? Janet had already been upset that Raven didn't want to have kids yet, and that was

when she learned she was pregnant with Kayden. A second child may have been too much for him to deal with, especially if he didn't want to stay with Janet. If he wanted to be the one to end the marriage, he would almost certainly have to pay child support. And $500,000 may not be a fortune, but it would have been enough to keep him comfortable for a while and take care of some of the debts that were likely stressing him out.

And, and the question that Erica asked, right? That's the one that really comes front and center in so many cases, especially when it's a spouse murdering their significant other. In this case, why kill Janet? Why not just get a divorce? But that comes up all the time. Morph, you know, so many men seem to want it all. They want to be able to do whatever they want to do without consequences. Sometimes that involves cheating. Maybe they want to be with someone else, but they don't want to do the stand-up thing, which would be, you know, get a divorce, pay alimony, pay child support, whatever that

is. They end up killing their wife because they don't want to go through all that, and they don't want to have to pay that money.

And it's ironic because they want to be free from their wife, but then they wind up losing their freedom altogether and they go to prison more times than not. So it's, it's kind of strange that that even goes through people's minds. But I guess that's why we have so many cases to talk about because people just do stuff that most of us wouldn't do.

Yeah, yeah, stuff that to us just doesn't make sense. And you have on top of that, the $500,000, right? And life insurance. And I'm going to go back and talk about the life insurance. He had the $1 million on him. He had half a million dollars on Janet. Why? Because I think he wanted to make it seem as though it wasn't about the money, right? He had more on him than she had on her. But I think the money played a big part.

Well, I'm glad that at least Janet's mom received that and not this guy.

Ultimately, Raven served just under the minimum sentence. On Christmas Day in 2017, he walked out of prison a free man. And his ex-wife Vanessa told ABC News, that's not justice at all. In 2025, Raven agreed to sit for a polygraph test filmed by the network A and E for the show Lie Detector, Truth or Deception. The test was administered by a former FBI agent. And Raven, who never once admitted to being responsible for Janet's murder, said he only took the Alford plea to be home sooner with his son. Apparently, there were some signs of deception, but it's not fully clear what the overall results were.

Kayden, now an adult, also appeared in the program, sitting next to his father. Raven said on the show, the hardest thing for me is he becomes guilty by association when he's just a kid. And Kayden added, never once did I ever think, oh my God, my dad killed my mom. In just a bit over five years, Kayden will be the same age his mom was when she was murdered. And he seems to this point, at least to be standing by the side of his father, the man who was convicted of her murder. And, you know, as we wrap this one up, Morph, I think we have to talk about this Alford plea.

If Raven killed Janet, as I believe most people think he did, the Alford plea was actually a pretty good deal for him, right? He didn't spend all that much time in prison. He got credit for the, you know, time he had already served. It's a far cry from the life sentence he could have got. Now, obviously, if he was innocent, that would be horrible to take the Alford plea because you thought there was a good chance you would be convicted and you would get life. That has happened. We know it has.

But if he killed her, he had a pretty good deal.

Yeah, if he murdered her and this was what he got as an overall sentence, it is just a, you know, a miscarriage of justice to me. It's, you know, such little time for such a heinous crime, you know, killing your wife and the mother of your children in your home, just it's, I can't wrap my head around this kind of sentence, but I understand it's an Alford plea. I think personally, why they offered this kind of sentence was because they started thinking about that lone juror on the first trial. And if they questioned this DNA and this fingerprint, which he had no explanation

for, maybe at another trial, the jury would think about it even more and they might find him not guilty. So part of me thinks maybe that's why they decided to offer him this and at least give him some kind of punishment.

Well, I think you made a good point earlier, right? This wasn't a slam dunk. They had some evidence, but there were some lingering questions, I think, that couldn't be answered. So although I do believe most people think he killed Janet, obviously, the prosecution had some doubts about whether they would get a conviction. And I'm sure that played a big role in allowing the Alford plea.

And now he's walking around a free man. And at this point, you know, Janet has been dead all this time, and she had so much of her life ahead of her, didn't get to see her son grow up, never, unfortunately, was able to escape the situation that maybe his second wife was fortunate enough to get out of.

But let me ask you this. If you were in Raven's situation, would you go on a show and take a lie detector test? Now, maybe he got paid for doing that. I have no idea. I don't know. I just, I feel like I would just try to stay out of the spotlight as much as I could. I don't know that I would be going on a TV show. Now, maybe he thought he could beat this lie detector test and he would come out clean and people would think, oh my gosh, he really didn't do it.

And to me, that makes me wonder even more about him because he originally didn't want to take one that the police wanted to give him, but now he's going to take this one. So if the original test with the police would have helped maybe clear his name in their minds, you know, for him to not do that, but to do this, just to me, doesn't make any sense.

Unless, again, the motivation was money. But that's it for our episode on Janet Abaroa. As always, if you love the show, but you haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, leave us a review, leave a rating. Also, keep telling your friends. Word of mouth about the Criminology Podcast really helps us out.

If you want to find us on social media, we're on every major platform. Just search for Criminology Podcast on your favorites. And for news about the show, old episodes and more, head over to criminologypodcast.com. And if you want to join a discussion about the show and the cases we discuss, head over to Facebook and join the Criminology Podcast discussion and fans group.

So that's it for another episode of Criminology, but Morph and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So until then, for Mike.

And Morph.

We'll talk to you next week.

Take care, everyone.