The Searches

In June 2020, park rangers at Gifford Pinchot State Park in York County, Pennsylvania found an abandoned car, a dead dog, and two missing campers — Jolie Harris and Lauren Gallagher. One of them would be found dead. What investigators pulled off the other woman's phone took four years to turn into a guilty plea for a charge most people have never heard of: causing suicide as criminal homicide. View source material and photos for this episode at: parkpredators.com/the-searches

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Traditional home security only alerts you after a break in, and that's too late. SimpliSafe is changing that.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Stop. This is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way.

• 0:09Speaker 00

  We don't just alert, we help stop crime before it starts. Plans starting around a dollar a day. Right now, get 60% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com/truecrime. SimpliSafe, ahead of crime, in real time. Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com/licenses for alarm license information.

• 0:30Speaker 02

  Hi, park enthusiasts. It's Delia. If you listen to Park Predators, you already know that sometimes the most beautiful places can hide the darkest secrets. But what happens when the danger isn't miles from civilization? It's in your community, and sometimes even in your own backyard. On Crime Junkie, hosts Ashley and Britt dive into real cases every week, from missing persons to unsolved murders, breaking down what we know, what we don't, and the details that still don't sit right. If you care about the stories behind the headlines and the victims at the center of them, you'll want to check out Crime Junkie. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:10Speaker 02

  Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia Deambra. And the case I'm going to tell you about today takes place in Gifford Pinchot State Park in southern Pennsylvania. According to the website for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, this full-service park makes up nearly 2,400 acres of scenic attractions and farmland that's been left abandoned to reintroduce local wildlife and vegetation. The main attraction is Pinchot Lake, a 340-acre body of water that you can boat on, swim in, fish at, and picnic around. The park was officially dedicated in 1961 in honor of a former state governor, Gifford Pinchot, who was a lifelong conservationist and forester. He was also a personal friend of the conservation goat, Theodore Roosevelt.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  And together, these guys managed to get more than 200 million acres of national forest under scientific management, aka untouchable to commercial developers. One place that visitors can stay while enjoying the park is a designated campground in York County, aptly named the Gifford Pinchot State Park Campground. And it was there, in the late spring of 2020, that the eerie discovery of an abandoned vehicle, a dead dog, and two missing women got the attention of park rangers and Pennsylvania State Police troopers. But as authorities would soon find out, nothing that officials found at the scene was as it seemed, and the truth was far darker than anyone could imagine. This is Park Predators.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  Shortly before 11:30 on Monday morning, June 8, 2020, park rangers at Gifford Pinchot State Park in Pennsylvania were making their rounds through the campground when they noticed something unusual at campsite number 236. Pulled into the area was a 1998 blue Ford Taurus sedan, which rangers assumed likely belonged to the two campers who checked into that campsite the previous Friday, June 5. The guests were 40-year-old Jolie Harris and 37-year-old Lauren Gallagher. But when rangers checked the women's camping reservation, it showed that they were due to check out the day prior, Sunday, June 7. So their vehicle still being parked at the campsite on Monday morning, the 8, meant they were overstaying their allotted time at the campground.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  And as the rangers looked around, they noticed some other things were kind of off. A few of the women's personal items were still there, indicating that they didn't appear to be in the process of packing up or about to leave. Even stranger, they were nowhere to be found. So likely sensing something was amiss, the rangers contacted troopers with a Pennsylvania State Police Station in York County to come to the scene and check things out. According to an affidavit of probable cause a trooper would later file in this case, when police arrived on scene, they discovered what they described as suspicious items in the Ford Taurus. And when they ran the registration for that car, it came back as belonging to Lauren's dad, Ron Gallagher.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  So there was no more doubt that Lauren and Jolie were likely the people who'd abandoned the vehicle at the campsite. But the questions were, why? And where were they now? To try and get some answers, troopers executed an exigent search on the car to see if it held any clues. An exigent search, by the way, just means that due to the emergency nature of the situation and the fact that Lauren and Jolie were both missing, police were allowed to enter their car without a formal warrant to hopefully learn more information about what had happened to them. Once inside, troopers found an assortment of stuff that belonged to the women, along with a black iPhone. They also discovered several receipts for purchases, like gas and food, that indicated Jolie and Lauren had made their way from the Philadelphia area to York County, starting on June 5.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  All the receipts tied back to a bank account that was in Jolie's name. Also amidst the items in the car, troopers came across the pair's deceased pet, a Shiba Inu named Sashi. When authorities reviewed the women's campsite reservation, they learned that Jolie was the main point of contact for it because she listed her name and phone number on the paperwork. And I say paperwork, but in actuality, according to what troopers explained in their probable cause affidavit, the women booked their campsite online, using Jolie's bank account information. So technically, there was no physical paper trail for their reservation, but you get my point. Anyway, after that, or maybe around the same time, authorities conducted what they described in their affidavit as "an extensive search for both women."

• 5:48Speaker 02

  Coverage by the York Daily Record explained that the effort included quite a few troopers and search and rescue dogs. Investigators also spoke with several people in the area, one of whom said they'd seen a heavyset woman with dark hair walking back and forth between campsite 236 and the blue Ford Taurus. Unfortunately, though, that description wasn't the most helpful because "a heavyset woman with dark hair" actually described both Jolie and Lauren. So without any further specificity, it was hard for police to know which one of them this witness might have seen. And as far as any standout clues, there weren't many. No one had reported hearing any kind of disturbance or argument at the women's campsite in the days prior to June 8,

• 6:32Speaker 02

  and no local police or park rangers had been called to the area during that time. So while some troopers continued to scour the campground, others made plans to travel about two hours east to where Lauren's parents, Ron and Georgiana Gallagher, lived in Delaware County. Per my interview with Georgiana, she and Ron first spoke with investigators on Tuesday, June 9. They'd not been home on Monday because they'd actually been at an area hospital where Ron was scheduled to have a stent surgery, which was going to require him to stay overnight Monday into Tuesday. While they'd been gone, one of Georgiana's nieces had watched their house for them. And she'd actually been the person to answer a phone call from Pennsylvania State Police troopers on Monday, informing the family that Ron's car had been found at the state park.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  Georgiana told me that she learned about the car being found while at the hospital with Ron on Monday. But because of everything that was going on with Ron and his surgery, life just got busy. So it wasn't until Tuesday, while waiting for Ron to come home, that police showed up to their house, where she returned to on Monday night, and told her what was going on. When her husband eventually arrived, she had to break the news to him that something big had happened. And by that time, there was a lot to share because in between Monday morning and Tuesday, when authorities met with the Gallaghers, they'd made some major headway in the case. They'd gathered a lot of important evidence. And most crucial of all, they'd found Jolie and Lauren. According to the police's affidavit of probable cause that I mentioned earlier,

• 8:01Speaker 02

  a Monday night around 8:30 PM, so this was several hours after Jolie and Lauren were designated as missing, a guy camping in Gifford Pinchot State Park had called 911 to report that he'd found what he believed was a body underneath a blanket in a wooded area near his campsite. As he was speaking with a dispatcher, he walked over to take a closer look and figure out if the person under the blanket was hurt. But as he was doing that, a woman pulled the blanket down and uncovered her face. There, looking up at him, were two women, one alive and one dead. The woman who'd uncovered her face said her name was Jolie Harris. And she claimed that she and the dead woman, who was lying next to her,

• 8:43Speaker 02

  had been assaulted and that she was bleeding, quote, "everywhere." When state police troopers got to the scene a short time later, they examined Jolie and the area where she and her companion had been found under the blanket. But they immediately noticed two things that stood out. Jolie didn't have any injuries that were actively bleeding. But the other woman, well, she was in far worse shape. State police wrote in their reports that the deceased woman was later identified as Lauren. She had a large bloody bruise on her forehead, and she also had a deep cut across her neck. In the same general area where her body was found, police collected a black rock that they described as a geode. And it was the only rock like it in the area, meaning it seemed sort of out of place.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  And that makes sense because, for context, a geode is a spherical-type rock that has a hollow inside filled with crystals like quartz or amethyst. Sometimes the insides of these rocks are super colorful. I often see them for sale online or in stores. They're usually pretty shiny and sparkling on the inside, but fairly dull-looking on the outside. Anyway, after examining the geode at the crime scene, officials realized there was what appeared to be hair hung up in the crevasses, as well as some dried blood. When authorities had gone through the women's car, they discovered several more rocks just like it. Also back at the crime scene, they located a Cobalt brand utility knife that had apparent traces of blood on it.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  Meanwhile, Jolie was taken to an area hospital and treated for minor injuries. According to the police's probable cause affidavit, she had a superficial scratch on the front of her neck, a few more scratches on her left wrist, a cut on her left wrist, and a bruise on her left hip. Overall, though, she was fine. She told authorities that she had no memory of what had transpired over the last few days. She claimed the earliest she could recall anything was from Wednesday, June 3, nearly a week before she and Lauren were found in the state park. However, she said that she was sure they'd been attacked by people they didn't know. As far as details of said attack, though, that's information that authorities didn't include in their probable cause affidavit.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  So I don't know if Jolie didn't provide those details, or if the police just left them out, or what. What I can tell you is that, other than the geode, none of the women's other personal belongings were found near where Lauren and Jolie had been under the blanket. And there were no indications in that immediate area that a struggle had occurred. Still, investigators had to keep pushing ahead because they needed to figure out if there was any credence to Jolie's story. However, they couldn't get very far because she also said, due to her recent amnesia, she couldn't even remember booking her and Lauren's reservation for Campsite 236. To determine whether she'd suffered some type of head injury that had affected her memory, staff at the hospital had her undergo a CAT scan.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  But she was never treated for a head injury. And after about 12 hours, she was discharged from the hospital and free to go. When police asked her if the black iPhone that had been found in Lauren's father's car was hers, Jolie confirmed that it was, and she agreed to let authorities search it. About two days later, on Wednesday, June 10, investigators sent the device to the state police's Computer Crimes Task Force, where it was forensically analyzed. And what they found changed everything.

• 12:09Speaker 03

  One day last year, detectives knocked on the door of a multimillion-dollar mansion in Los Angeles County. Inside, they found a strange scene. A dining area converted into classrooms with children and toddlers seated at rows of desks. The couple that lived there had 21 kids.

• 12:29Speaker 04

  It's a house that looks like a castle, but it's under investigation for being a possible factory, a baby factory.

• 12:36Speaker 03

  Where had these children come from? Almost all of them were born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived.

• 12:44Speaker 05

  Me and my coworker, we named her the surrogate pimp.

• 12:47Speaker 06

  That's the one time that we called the cops because she was screaming. And then he pulled out a gun. I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into?

• 12:56Speaker 03

  I'm Ava Kaufman. The Journey is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark feed, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  According to the police's probable cause affidavit, forensic analysts who'd combed through Jolie's phone discovered several internet searches and screenshots that suggested someone had made a variety of suspicious inquiries in the days leading up to Lauren's murder. The device's history showed that around 6:00 PM on Saturday, May 30, which would have been about nine days before Jolie and Lauren were found, someone had searched the phrase, "What percent of murder in the U.S. is domestic violence?" Eight days after that, at 10:55 AM on June 7, which was one day before the women were found, there had been several more internet searches, one of which contained the phrase, "Does antifreeze have a taste?"

• 13:55Speaker 02

  That search was then followed by visits to several websites which discussed the topic of antifreeze poisoning. There was also a screenshot found in the phone's photo gallery of a webpage that talked about the length of time it could take for antifreeze to kill a person. Then, that same morning, so still June 7, there was another online search for the phrase, "Windpipe location." That search was followed by a review of several Google Images that showed diagrams of what a person's upper torso, head, and neck looked like. One of the diagrams even designated exactly where someone's trachea would be located. Whoever made that search then took a screenshot of that diagram and saved it to the phone's photo bin.

• 14:40Speaker 02

  The same day the phone was analyzed, a forensic pathologist at an area hospital conducted Lauren's autopsy, and they determined that her windpipe had been cut. She also had cuts to her left carotid artery, jugular vein, and thyroid. The doctor labeled her official cause of death as "sharp force trauma to the neck", with her manner of death being ruled homicide. So for police, all the contents of Jolie's phone, combined with the fact that Lauren's injuries perfectly aligned with the most recent web searches from Jolie's cellular device, prompted them to formally draft a probable cause affidavit seeking her arrest for Lauren's murder. That paperwork was filed on June 10, but state police investigators didn't find Jolie and take her into custody until the

• 15:25Speaker 02

  following day. According to coverage by Penn Live and the York Daily Record, she was held without bail at the York County prison pending her first appearance. Around that same time, officials went back to the Gallaghers' home in Delaware County to take formal depositions with Lauren's parents. Georgiana told me that at that point, they were very much in the dark about what was going on. They'd been informed Lauren had been killed, but they didn't know many details other than that. When they spoke with police, though, they discussed their daughter's years-long relationship with Jolie Harris and who Lauren was as a person. Georgiana explained to me in her interview that she and Ron had adopted Lauren when she was just five days old. Growing up, it had never been a secret in their household that she'd been adopted.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  Lauren seemed to fully embrace that fact about her life, and according to Georgiana, she never talked about wanting to know or reconnect with her bio mom and dad. Georgiana described Lauren as a happy kid, well-liked, and someone who had lots of friends and an amazing laugh. She was smart and played basketball throughout grade school and was even talented enough to be recruited by St. Joseph's University. But about a week into attending there and playing for that team, Lauren's mom said that Lauren had a change of heart and instead joined the university's rowing team. After graduating from college in 2005, she worked in Pennsylvania for a few years before eventually moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to study a type of therapy known as polarity therapy.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  According to what I found on WebMD, polarity therapy is a "energy medicine" that practitioners use to treat people experiencing things like stress, depression, pain, fatigue, and anxiety, among other mental health conditions. Polarity aims to alter a person's energy flow and energy balance so they can better fight off disease and manage symptoms of a condition. Georgiana said the polarity therapy program Lauren was part of in Santa Fe only lasted one year, and by 2010, she was done there but decided she wanted to continue studying polarity at a school in San Francisco, California. It was around that time she'd reconnected with Jolie, who'd actually been part of her friend group in Pennsylvania at the tail end of college,

• 17:34Speaker 02

  but they hadn't spent much time with one another in the years after Lauren graduated. According to Georgiana, when Lauren moved to San Francisco, she and Jolie began a relationship. Growing up, Lauren's parents had never really talked much with her about her sexuality. Looking back now, though, Georgiana told me that Lauren did always seem to surround herself with friends or people who identified as part of the LGBTQ+ community, and that was something that was always welcomed in the Gallaghers' house. When Lauren moved to California, Georgiana wrote her an email asking, seemingly out of curiosity, if Lauren identified as gay. But Lauren's response was that she identified as queer, and she told her mom that if she needed any help understanding her identity, she was happy to help her. However, Georgiana didn't really need to hear anymore.

• 18:19Speaker 02

  She and Ron accepted Lauren for who she was, and that was that. Unfortunately, though, not long after moving to San Francisco and beginning her relationship with Jolie, things in Lauren's life went, as her mom described it, downhill. And that's because Jolie was actually already in a relationship with another woman when Lauren moved to California. Lauren didn't go there to be with Jolie, but once she was there, they did start seeing one another. It's unclear, though, if Jolie's other girlfriend was aware of the nature of Lauren and Jolie's relationship as it progressed or what. But whatever the deal was, Georgiana told me that Jolie and her other partner also had a business together, which I'm sure just made the whole situation that much more complicated.

• 19:03Speaker 02

  According to Georgiana, around the end of 2013 or early 2014, Lauren and Jolie took off together and left California. For several years, Lauren's family didn't know where she was and didn't have regular contact with her. They hired a private investigator twice to try and find her, but they never did. The Gallaghers didn't report their daughter missing either because she was an adult, living her own life. And the last thing that Lauren had told them was that she and Jolie were going to live off-grid. Which is something a lot of people do. Eventually, though, in September 2017, after about three years of radio silence, Lauren called her mom from Washington State and said that she and Jolie were going to come back to Pennsylvania to live with her and Ron.

• 19:45Speaker 02

  The Gallaghers paid the women's way to travel across the country, and when they arrived, Georgiana said Lauren and Jolie showed up in an SUV with a U-Haul trailer filled with their possessions. They'd also brought along three dogs, a Shiba Inu and two Chihuahuas. They moved into Lauren's childhood bedroom in the upstairs of Ron and Georgiana's home and lived there rent-free for the next two or three years. From pretty much the start, though, Georgiana didn't like what she saw in Jolie. She told me that in her experience, she perceived Jolie as passive-aggressive, and there were several times when Jolie just straight-up lied to her about petty things. For example, the Gallaghers only had one rule in their house: no food in the bedrooms.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  Georgiana didn't like bugs, and she didn't want them coming around, so the one law she laid down firmly was keep food out of the bedrooms, period. But in time, she noticed that Jolie and Lauren slowly stopped joining her and Ron for dinners. Several times, late at night, she'd see Jolie go into their kitchen and prepare food, and then take it upstairs to her and Lauren's bedroom. Georgiana also caught Jolie fermenting kombucha in one of the upstairs closets after she'd explicitly told her not to, and Jolie had agreed to stop. So there were those kinds of coexisting issues going on. But more than that, Georgiana didn't like how it was Jolie who seemingly controlled everything in her and Lauren's relationship.

• 21:11Speaker 02

  In the years leading up to the murder, Lauren had been working on and then self-published an ebook, and during that time, she'd really had no source of income. Jolie, on the other hand, claimed to teach online classes to first-year law students in California, which apparently provided some funds for the couple to live off of. But at the end of the day, Georgiana said that Lauren didn't have her own bank account or her own cellphone. It was Jolie who had all those things, and because of that, she seemed to have the most control in the relationship. Come Friday, June 5, 2020, things in the Gallagher's house hit a fever pitch when Georgiana and her husband Ron found out from relatives that Jolie had sent a multi-page

• 21:52Speaker 02

  letter to Georgiana's brother, who was the executor of her will, and had sent one to their nephew, who was Ron's executor. This letter reportedly accused them of all manner of terrible things in an attempt to have them both declared incompetent. Jolie had also tried to give copies of this letter to Georgiana's attorney and primary care physician, but those letters had never made it. And as soon as Ron and Georgiana's relatives got this letter, they immediately told the Gallagher's what was going on and showed them the document. Georgiana told me the letter basically said that Jolie and Lauren wanted to become caretakers for her and Ron, and they wanted to be paid $500 a month to do so.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  They also stated that they should be allowed to live in the family home rent-free while Georgiana's brother would front all the bills. By Friday night, June 5, the Gallagher's decided enough was enough, and they needed to have a meeting with Lauren and Jolie. When they called the pair down from their bedroom and said they needed to talk, Jolie acted surprised that the Gallagher's had even found out about the letter. During that conversation, Georgiana said Jolie did all the talking, and Lauren said nothing. Ultimately, things ended badly when Ron had to call the police after he and his wife told Lauren and Jolie they had to leave the house. When officers arrived, Jolie argued that Ron and Georgiana had no right to kick them out without at least giving them a 15-day notice.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  But of course, Ron and Georgiana weren't the women's landlords. This wasn't a formal eviction. Jolie and Lauren weren't paying them anything to live there, so no formal eviction notice was needed. The Gallagher's were well within their rights to give Jolie and Lauren the boot, especially after that stunt they'd just pulled with the letter. After that night, Georgiana said her daughter and Jolie left, and she never saw either of them again. Like I mentioned earlier, it wasn't until the following Tuesday that she and Ron learned from police that Lauren had been murdered. While initially speaking with investigators, the Gallagher's shared all this information about what had been going on with the women. So by the time charges were brought against Jolie, the state police had a lot of incriminating

• 24:01Speaker 02

  circumstantial evidence against her, on top of the physical and digital evidence that they'd already discovered at the crime scene and in her phone. In early July, she had a preliminary hearing where a judge ultimately decided she would stand trial for Lauren's murder. Her arraignment was then scheduled for early August, but it would take several more years before the case made it back into court. And by that time, Jolie was spinning an entirely new narrative about what she claimed had happened between her and Lauren. One day last year, detectives knocked on the door of a multimillion-dollar mansion in Los Angeles County.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  Inside, they found a strange scene: a dining area converted into classrooms with children and toddlers seated at rows of desks. The couple that lived there had 21 kids.

• 24:55Speaker 04

  It's a house that looks like a castle, but it's under investigation for being a possible factory, a baby factory.

• 25:02Speaker 02

  Where had these children come from? Almost all of them were born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived.

• 25:10Speaker 05

  Me and my coworker, we named her the surrogate pimp.

• 25:12Speaker 06

  That's the one time that we called the cops, because she was screaming. And then he pulled out a gun. I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into?

• 25:23Speaker 02

  I'm Ava Kaufman. The Journey is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark feed, wherever you get your podcasts. According to court records I obtained from York County's Court of Common Pleas, on April 30, 2024, nearly four years after Lauren's murder, and just days before Jolie was set to go to trial, she pleaded guilty to one count of causing suicide as criminal homicide, with an enhancement for using a deadly weapon, which was a very different offense than what she'd originally been charged with.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  Turns out, at some point during those four years that had passed between 2020 and 2024, Jolie had provided more information about what she said happened between her and Lauren. She claimed that together, they'd formed a suicide pact, and she'd been unsuccessful in attempting to take her own life after assisting Lauren. That's why Lauren had died, and she had not. In exchange for her admission, the district attorney's office agreed to dismiss the first-degree and third-degree murder charges against her. In Pennsylvania, the act of causing suicide as criminal homicide carried a maximum 40-year prison sentence. But as part of Jolie's deal, the DA's office agreed to cap her prison time at just 15 to

• 26:46Speaker 02

  30 years, and give her credit for the roughly four years she'd already served while awaiting trial. A few weeks later, in late August, she was formally sentenced to 15 to 30 years in prison, followed by one year of probation. She was also ordered to pay $6,500 in compensation to a Pennsylvania Victim Assistance Program, and $13,000 in restitution to Lauren's family. Georgiana told me that to this day, she still has so many questions about her daughter's murder. She wishes in some ways the case had gone to trial, because at least then, she'd have a better sense of what really happened. She's also thought a lot about what exactly went on between her daughter and Jolie when they disappeared between 2014 and 2017.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  For example, when the women came to live with Georgiana and Ron, Georgiana said that Jolie had Lauren convinced she was very sick with multiple sclerosis. But in Lauren's autopsy report, it was confirmed she'd never had MS. Still, it seems that for a good portion of their relationship, Lauren was certain she was suffering from that diagnosis. Georgiana told me that she often wonders if Jolie had some sort of control over Lauren, to the point where her daughter was either incapable of or afraid to make her own choices. As far as Georgiana knew, Lauren wasn't a drinker. She didn't use drugs, and she hated smoking. She also wasn't formally diagnosed with any kind of mental illness.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  And as far as Georgiana saw, there weren't any explicit signs of physical domestic abuse, just what she suspects was psychological abuse. So that's why Georgiana is convinced her daughter was severely manipulated by Jolie for years. Georgiana told me that at some point in the investigation, police had told her Jolie claimed she and Lauren had mutually decided to kill their Shiba Inu Sashi before going through with their supposed suicide pact, which is something Georgiana simply cannot believe. She told me that Lauren would never do something like that because she deeply cared for animals and would never harm her own pet, unless Jolie had provoked her to do so.

• 28:54Speaker 02

  I won't get into the upsetting specifics of how Sashi died, but it definitely wasn't a slow process based on what Georgiana said the police described to her. So that's one of the reasons why she suspects Jolie's claim that Lauren was complicit in the dog's demise was likely a lie. Georgiana told me that Jolie's story of her and Lauren wanting to die by suicide never made sense to her either. She doesn't believe it's true, because she said Lauren would never take her own life, period, end of story. Jolie's narrative that the incident was a case of assisted suicide only came years later, and was actually something the family and the district attorney had a lot of discussions about. Georgiana and Ron really wanted Jolie to have a trial to learn more about how the

• 29:39Speaker 02

  evidence either fit or refuted that story. But the DA explained that if jurors didn't vote unanimously to convict Jolie of first-degree murder, there was a chance she could get acquitted. So in the end, the Gallagher's opted to go through with the plea deal to at least ensure Jolie would serve some time in prison. After her sentencing, Georgiana and several of Lauren's relatives read victim impact statements, in which they expressed the immense impact her murder had had on their family. Unfortunately, by that time, Lauren's dad had passed away. But Georgiana said when they crafted their statement together prior to his death, they hadn't fully grasped yet how deep Lauren's death affected them. She told me that a big part of her statement was about how she felt Jolie was a dangerous

• 30:24Speaker 02

  person, who was a manipulator. And she asked the court staff, who'd interviewed Jolie, to not be swayed by whatever responses she'd given or would give them, or else, in Georgiana's opinion, there would be more victims. Some of Jolie's family members spoke as well, and according to Georgiana, they shared mostly positive things about Jolie, how she'd been raised, her education, and so forth. Some of them expressed that, from their point of view, Jolie was someone who just wanted to help Lauren. Jolie herself echoed something similar when she spoke in front of the court. According to what Georgiana remembers, Jolie cried most of the time she gave her statement, to the point where it was difficult to understand what she was saying.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  However, Georgiana does remember one specific thing Jolie said, which was something to the effect of, "I don't believe Lauren would want me to be incarcerated any longer." However, the judge said to her at some point, quote, "You're pretty smart, but you did a very stupid thing," end quote. Today, Georgiana says she lives with one regret: asking Lauren to leave their house. She wonders if maybe her and Ron hadn't kicked their daughter and Jolie out, if Lauren would still be alive. In hindsight, she's not sure if giving them so much privacy while they were living with them was the best thing. She wishes she and her late husband could have had an opportunity to speak with Lauren one-on-one during that timeframe, but it was impossible to ever do that because Jolie

• 31:49Speaker 02

  was always present. Georgiana's one piece of advice for anyone experiencing what she and Ron did is, don't be afraid to step in. Pay close attention to your loved ones, and maybe you'll be fortunate enough to recognize what's really going on. Also, check in with them to see if things are okay. I really admire Georgiana for sharing so much of her and Lauren's story with me. It took a long time for us to be able to coordinate our interview. But you know the one detail in this case that I found myself fixating on? Are those internet searches from Jolie's cellphone. Since the case never went to trial, it's not stated in the court records if police ever determined who made those searches.

• 32:31Speaker 02

  The Pennsylvania State Police denied my public records request for their investigative reports, so I can't say for sure what all they did or didn't determine about the phone's contents. I, for one, find the browser search from May 30th, 2020, very interesting, though. That was the one where someone looked up the phrase, "What percent of murder in the U.S. is domestic violence?" Part of me wonders if maybe it was Lauren who'd searched that. Was that her way of trying to determine if she was a victim of domestic violence? And if so, was she fearful Jolie was gonna harm her? I know from interviewing her mom, Georgiana, that Lauren and Jolie got kicked out of the Gallagher's home on Friday, June 5th.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  So why would someone have searched about murder rates linked to domestic violence more than a week before that? Then again, maybe it was Jolie who'd plugged that question in. Could that mean she was already planning to kill her partner and wanted to see if she could use domestic violence as a defense? I also can't stop thinking about those searches regarding antifreeze poisoning. Based on what police determined in their forensic analysis of Jolie's phone, those searches happened on the morning of June 7th, which was two days after Lauren and Jolie were kicked out of Ron and Georgiana's house. Were those searches related to the alleged suicide pact that Jolie said they were going to try and carry out? Was Lauren still alive at that point?

• 33:55Speaker 02

  I mean, based on all the documentation I found, officials were never able to say for sure when Lauren was killed. The best they could do was place her time of death as happening between June 5th and June 8th, which is a big chunk of time. So was Lauren still alive on the 7th when the phone was used to look up antifreeze information? Or could that have been a method intended for Georgiana and Ron? I mean, think about it. Lauren and Jolie had just had this huge blow up involving that letter where they were literally trying to take over the Gallagher's home. So it begs the question, could Ron and Georgiana have potentially become victims in this situation, too? That's a question it seems no one can answer.

• 34:38Speaker 02

  The reason I titled this episode "The Searches" is because that was the evidence that seemed to be the most damning to Jolie. Among many things, it was those internet searches that sealed her fate and gave authorities what they needed to secure an arrest warrant. And even though there's still a lot of mystery around the searches, in the end, they were good for one thing: justice. In the wake of her murder, Lauren's loved ones held her funeral at a church in Delaware County. This was right as houses of worship and other large gathering spaces were beginning to implement COVID-19 restrictions. But thankfully, Georgiana said the pastor conducting Lauren's service allowed the funeral to be open, and lots of Lauren's friends and former teammates attended.

• 35:21Speaker 02

  She was later buried at St. Peter and Paul Cemetery in Springfield, Pennsylvania. Instead of her family receiving flowers, they asked people to make donations in Lauren's memory to an organization in Philadelphia that assists individuals with mental illnesses. They also asked folks to consider donating to an animal center in Media, Pennsylvania, called the Providence Animal Center, which, I feel, are both causes Lauren would have championed. Links to those entities are listed in the show notes and blog post for this episode. Park Predators is an AudioChuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com.

• 36:04Speaker 02

  And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, @parkpredators. I think Chuck would approve.

• 36:18Speaker 02

  In the dark, even the most familiar trail can feel like it leads somewhere else. Every rustle becomes a warning, every shadow, a doorway. In Full Body Chills, those doorways open into worlds pulled straight from your nightmares. This spooky season classic returns with chilling details, immersive sound, and no promise that you'll find your way back. So step off the familiar path if you dare. Listen to new episodes of Full Body Chills every week, wherever you get your podcasts.