455: She Beheaded Her Ex…And Married His Son | The Johnathan Willette Case

In 2023, Johnathan Willette was found brutally murdered inside his Henderson home, but what investigators discovered at the scene was only the beginning of this bizarre case. Johnathan had been decapitated, his head was nowhere to be found, and investigators couldn’t figure out how someone could have carried out the crime without anyone hearing or seeing them. As detectives dug into his final hours, they uncovered an incredibly complicated family dynamic and a timeline that didn’t seem to add up.

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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• 0:44Annie Elise?

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• 1:07Speaker 01

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• 1:37Speaker 02

  On August 7th of 2023, a woman called police to say she found her son Jonathan Willett dead.

• 1:42Speaker 03

  Shame. That's terrible. Get her killed, I'll kill this man dead. Oh, seriously? I didn't die!

• 1:49Speaker 02

  When police responded, they found Jonathan's body in his bed, but his head was missing.

• 1:53Speaker 03

  To be here thinks is wrong. They should not be able to do it.

• 1:58Speaker 02

  Knee cleaver was missing from her kitchen.

• 2:00Speaker 03

  This is amazing. You sit here and say that.

• 2:07Annie Elise?

  Hey, true crime besties. Welcome back to an all new episode of Seriallessly.

• 2:31Annie Elise?

  Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to an all new episode of Seriallessly. With me, your host and your true crime bestie, Annie Elise. Now, I hope you are ready. I know you just came off of a long weekend, or maybe not a long weekend, but a weekend nonetheless. It's Monday, if you're listening to this on Monday. Man, I'm just like crushing myself left and right here. But it's Monday, and so I know you just had a happy weekend, but I'm about to dump all over it. And I just hope you're in the mental space today to listen to the case that I have to share with you because it is so twisted, so disgusting, and like the fucking audacity, okay? That's like all I can really say. It's a wild one.

• 3:14Annie Elise?

  So whether you are listening to this on your commute into work, maybe you're listening to it while you're cleaning the house, maybe you're listening to this at work with your work bestie, wherever you are, I just hope that you are getting your mind right, getting prepared, because we're about to go down the rabbit hole together. Now, before we do, do me a quick favor. If you're listening to this on the podcast, make sure you're following the podcast so that you don't miss any future episodes. It's also a free way to support the podcast and help with discoverability. And if you are watching this on YouTube, press subscribe because it is also a way to help other true crime connoisseurs like us find the channel. Also, really quickly before we get started, wanted to let you know that our fall merch

• 3:56Annie Elise?

  collection is officially on sale. And you guys have been asking, you know that at the start of my episodes, sometimes I say, I hope you're having a nice day, but I'm about to ruin it. It's officially on merch. Also, lots of seasonal stuff, lots of spooky stuff, our classic make it make sense with the eyes in a hoodie version, lots of stuff. So you can grab all of it while it lasts. It's at annieelise.com. Quantities are limited, though, and the merch shop is going to be closing very soon. So put those orders in now, whether it's for you, a gift, holiday gift, whatever. You can go shop now, annieelise.com. Now with that, let's get into this, okay? August 6th, 2023, had been a completely

• 4:38Annie Elise?

  normal day for Yoko Willett. She was living with her son, 46-year-old Jonathan, and his family in Henderson, Nevada, which is not too far outside of Vegas. And nothing about the day stood out. She had just been home, showered, and settled in for the night. But then, at around 1:00 AM, Yoko woke up and she quietly headed downstairs to grab a glass of water. However, when she got to the kitchen, she realized she wasn't the only one awake. Jonathan's ex-girlfriend, Devin Michaels, was also downstairs. She was just there washing dishes in the middle of the night at 1:00 AM. She and Jonathan shared two daughters together, and even though they had split up, they still co-parented very closely with one another. So Devin had mentioned that the next morning, she and Jonathan were supposed

• 5:23Annie Elise?

  to register the girls for school. So it was this completely normal interaction, normal conversation. Nothing felt off besides the fact that she was washing dishes at 1:00 AM. But even that could have been explained away, like a long night, right? So Yoko drank some water, she headed back upstairs, and she went to bed. But she had absolutely no idea that when she was going to wake up just a few hours later, she was going to walk into something absolutely horrific. At around 8:00 AM, Yoko woke up once again, and it seemed like she was the first person awake in the house. This time, nobody was downstairs, nobody sounded like they were in a shuffling around in the hallways. But almost immediately, she noticed that a few

• 6:04Annie Elise?

  things did feel strange. The dogs were outside in the backyard. However, the door was locked, and nobody else was downstairs, which was odd. The doggy door also that the family normally kept open had been shut. So it seemed as though these dogs were left outside, the door locked to lock them out, and then also the doggy door shut down so they couldn't get back in. And it didn't look like they had just been let out to, you know, quickly use the bathroom and come back in. They were, again, like locked out. Still, Yoko didn't think too much of it at first. That is, until she looked out the front window and noticed that Jonathan's truck was still sitting in the driveway. And Yoko remembered that conversation from the night before, or the middle of the night, I should say, when Devin

• 6:47Annie Elise?

  was doing the dishes. She mentioned that Jonathan and her were going to be taking the girls to register for school that morning. She also had mentioned that Jonathan had been drinking that night. So Yoko figured, okay, maybe he was hungover, maybe he overslept, maybe Devin took the girls, who really knows? Which, okay, he's an adult, that's on him. But even though Jonathan was pushing, what, 50 years old at that point, the truth was, Yoko was still his mother. She still looked out for him, and she didn't want him missing the school registration for his daughters. So she headed back upstairs toward Jonathan's bedroom. But before she even could open the bedroom door, she noticed a smell, and not

• 7:27Annie Elise?

  necessarily a strange smell, but a very strong smell. And that split second that it took to open Jonathan's bedroom door, it was the last moment of peace that Yoko would ever know. Because once she stepped inside, the room was completely still, quiet. Now, the smell was growing even stronger. She could also tell that somebody was lying on the bed, but as she got closer, she realized something was horribly wrong. Jonathan was lying there, or at least his body was. But Yoko immediately knew that he was dead. And the reason that she knew he was dead and that he wasn't just asleep or in a deep drunken trance where

• 8:09Annie Elise?

  she couldn't, you know, jolt him awake, is because his head was missing. He had been decapitated. Right in front of her now was her son's lifeless body, beheaded. And sitting nearby, there were two bottles of cleaning solution, a bottle of ammonia and a bottle of bleach. So Yoko panics, right? And immediately called the police. And even the first responders who arrived on the scene reportedly were like sick to their stomachs when they got inside that bedroom. Jonathan's death, obviously, was immediately treated as a homicide, and investigators quickly realized that this wasn't some random sloppy murder or, you know, quick spur of the moment type violence. Whoever did this had put a lot of thought

• 8:53Annie Elise?

  into it. So let's go through some of the things that the investigators noticed right away about this crime scene and also about Jonathan's body. There weren't any obvious signs of forced entry. No shattered windows, no kicked in doors, nothing like that at all. But Yoko did point out a few things that the investigators found interesting. The door leading from the house into the garage was wide open, which she said that was very unusual. Even if the main garage door itself was shut, the family normally kept the interior garage door closed, you know, to keep bugs out, keep the dogs contained inside the home, things like that. Yoko also pointed out that the garage door itself was cracked slightly open, which you could actually see that in the body cam footage. There was

• 9:38Annie Elise?

  obviously a lot of blood at the scene as well, but I have to say, too, honestly, not nearly as much as you would expect in a case that involves a decapitation. There was blood on the bed where Jonathan's body was found, but first responders specifically noted that there was no blood spatter throughout the room. Investigators also noticed what appeared to be ammonia and bleach Poured around Jonathan's neck area, the area where his head should have been. And by the time that first responders arrived, there was already a chemical reaction happening to Jonathan's body, all the way to the point where it looked like smoke was visibly coming from his neck area. Now, this may already be common knowledge, but you know, roll with me on this.

• 10:21Annie Elise?

  I'm still going to say it because it's important. You should never mix ammonia with bleach, because together, they do create a toxic gas that can absolutely make somebody lose consciousness, if not kill them outright directly. And in this case, investigators believed that these chemicals likely had been poured onto Jonathan and onto his neck area after he had already been killed and beheaded. So I really don't know the intended purpose there, what that was. Maybe it was to get rid of any evidence or whatever tool was used to perform the decapitation so that it couldn't be traced back to clean it up. I don't really know. But the biggest issue that the investigators were dealing with now was the fact

• 11:05Annie Elise?

  that Jonathan's head was nowhere inside the home. It was completely missing. Now, all of the people inside the house that night can get a little bit confusing, so I want to break it down clearly for you. Jonathan had three children. His oldest son, Deviere, was 27 years old and was from a previous relationship years earlier. He was grown, he was living on his own. He also shared twin daughters with Devin, who were preteens at the time, although their exact ages have not been really made public. And like I mentioned earlier, Jonathan and Devin were no longer together romantically, but because of the twin girls, they still communicated, they saw each other often, and they co-parented together. However, Devin didn't live in that house with Jonathan. And while Jonathan had full custody of the girls,

• 11:50Annie Elise?

  the twins happened to be with Devin that night after she left Jonathan's house, which I know that that's really complicated because we know that Devin was washing dishes at 1 a.m. So, you know, leaving after that with the girls, it's complicated, which you shouldn't be keeping preteens up that late. Whatever, not going to go into it. So my point is that when Yoko discovered Jonathan's body the next morning, the only other two people physically inside the house were Yoko herself and her boyfriend, Yoshida. Her boyfriend also lived there at the time. And they are both seen on the body cam footage from first responders, but nobody else is. And I'm going to play this body cam footage for you intermittently throughout this episode. So if you're watching this episode, you'll see that. If you're listening, feel free to hop over to YouTube after

• 12:34Annie Elise?

  if you want to get the visuals.

• 12:38Speaker 04

  That's what it sounds like, but it's...

• 12:43Annie Elise?

  So investigators cleared Yoko and Yoshida fairly quickly. They were both a lot older, although their exact ages haven't publicly been specified. That obviously also doesn't automatically mean that they couldn't have committed a crime. But according to investigators, there wasn't anything suspicious about either one of them. Not anything about their behavior or their backgrounds. Nothing. Still, though, because they had been inside the home and so close to Jonathan's body, detectives needed a very clear timeline of what they had done over the previous 24 hours. And this is what Yoko told them. The last time that Yoko saw Jonathan was at around 10 p.m. the night before. Jonathan and Devin had both been at the house together, and then Yoko went upstairs to bed. We know that at around 1 a.m., Devin was downstairs washing dishes,

• 13:28Annie Elise?

  but Jonathan wasn't with her. Then sometime around 3 a.m., Yoko said that she woke up because she heard the dogs barking, which she thought was unusual, but not alarming enough to get out of bed and go investigate. So then, the next thing we know is it's around 8 a.m. and Yoko is waking up and finding Jonathan's body upstairs. But there were also some additional follow-up questions that the investigators wanted to ask Yoko. However, there was a bit of a language barrier because Japanese was her first language, and they knew that they needed to get this right. So they wanted to like get the answers, but they wanted to be clear. They wanted to dot all of their i's and cross all of their t's. Investigators also started speaking with neighbors, especially neighbors who had security cameras outside of their homes.

• 14:12Annie Elise?

  So one neighbor went back through her footage, but she said that she didn't notice anything that happened that was suspicious overnight. However, she did mention something else that caught the investigators' attention. She claimed that a day or two before Jonathan was killed, she noticed a work truck that was slowly driving through the neighborhood with two or three men inside. According to her, they seemed to be driving very slowly past houses, possibly looking at house numbers or security cameras. The men were reportedly wearing bright-colored work vests as well. Now, whether that was a disguise or whether they were actually workers, who's to say at this point? The neighbor couldn't provide a detailed description of either the truck or the men themselves. So the detectives documented the information, but the truth was, at that point,

• 14:57Annie Elise?

  they weren't really even sure if they had anything to do with Jonathan's murder or not. So at that stage of the investigation, the detectives believed that the last confirmed time that Jonathan was alive was around 10 p.m. And because Devin had still been at the house after that, the investigators knew they obviously needed to speak with her next, even if she hadn't personally seen or heard anything suspicious. She still was in the house. They needed to build the timeline. Now, when Devin was notified and learned that Jonathan was dead, she was shocked and distraught. Just like Yoko, she described the day before as feeling completely normal. According to Devin, she and Jonathan had spent August 6th back-to-school shopping for their daughters. And she described that day as pleasant,

• 15:40Annie Elise?

  or in her direct quote, pleasant for the most part. She also explained that they had driven Jonathan's truck around that day because it had branding for his business on the back. So he liked driving it around whenever he could as a, you know, source of free marketing. But as the night went on, she said that things started getting a little more complicated. Like I mentioned earlier, Jonathan and Devin had separated after being together pretty long-term, though they had never officially married. Jonathan lived in Henderson, at the same house from the incident and that you saw in the body cam footage, while Devin lived about 15 or 20 minutes away in Las Vegas. According to Devin, the night before Jonathan's death, they had been moving some of their daughter's belongings over to her place,

• 16:22Annie Elise?

  including things like a dresser, a bunk bed, and clothing. Because even though Jonathan did have full custody of the girls, he still wanted the girls to be spending time with Devin, their mother, spending the night over at her place as well. So moving some of their things into her house, it made sense. They would feel comfortable that way. They'd have some of their own stuff, their own environment, right? And it would make that transition back and forth between the homes a little bit easier. However, according to Devin, it also seemed like Jonathan was slowly moving some of his own things into her place.

• 16:53Speaker 05

  John was moving the girls' stuff to my house. It wasn't until he had actually moved everything over until I realized he was moving some of his things over. John had been telling me he was going to move, but that had been on the back of Florida that he hadn't actually moved anything. So I didn't put any stock into it.

• 17:16Speaker 05

  So when he moved some of his things over, that's when I realized he was actually

• 17:22Speaker 05

  moving his things.

• 17:27Speaker 05

  Yes, I remember talking to John about it. Yes, I remember talking to other people about it. But until that moment, it really wasn't something that was going to take place. Because at one point, a few times, he said he wasn't going to move.

• 17:47Speaker 05

  It had happened more than one time, so I just took it as a plus.

• 17:51Annie Elise?

  So this is where things start to get complicated. Devin said she did not want to get back together with Jonathan. She was just fine co-parenting and even being friends, but that was it. From her perspective, though, things between them were still working pretty well. They tried to continue doing things together as a family because they didn't want their daughters struggling with the separation. And so in her mind, really, the only real difference now was that they lived in two separate homes. But they still acted kind of like a family unit of sorts.

• 18:22Speaker 05

  I didn't want to be in a physical, sexual relationship with John. Me hanging out with John was fine. We got along well enough for that. Like, we went on picnics together. We did all the shopping together. We watched movies together. We got along just fine for that.

• 18:43Annie Elise?

  So the original plan was really just about helping the girls settle into Devin's place. But apparently, underneath all of that was this growing issue of Jonathan seemingly wanting to move in as well. And the problem was Devin had already moved on. Not only was she in another relationship, but she had actually gotten married, which makes this situation incredibly messy. Now, what's strange is that during the interview, Devin initially acted like she had no idea that Jonathan was planning to move in with her. But then later, in that same conversation, she admitted that she had already worked things out with her husband so that Jonathan could move in. And according to Devin, her husband was not happy about it at first.

• 19:27Annie Elise?

  But eventually, she said that he accepted it because it supposedly was what was best for the girls. Which I'm not going to lie, when I first read that detail in my research, I kind of had to stop and reread it a couple of times because most people are probably not going to willingly move out so that their spouse's ex can move in, especially when the ex is also the father of the children. It's like reunification. It's reuniting the family together. Wouldn't that feel, I don't know, threatening? But there was one more detail in all of this that Devin included, and it made everything even more complicated in all of this. Because Devin's new husband? Her new husband was Deviere, Jonathan's oldest son. You guys know I am all about finding easy ways

• 20:12Annie Elise?

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• 20:56Annie Elise?

  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.

• 21:21Annie 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.

• 22:06Annie 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. Okay, can we just talk about holiday gifting for a second? There's nothing like having those pieces in your closet that you absolutely love, that you know you can count on for any occasion. For me, it's like this nice little silk two-piece jumpsuit.

• 22:49Annie Elise?

  It's like a pant and a nice little like top blouse, because I'm not really a dress person. And I feel like the best part is like, maybe give somebody else that feeling, having that staple to go to in their closet that is high-quality, that looks great, that they can wear for any occasion. So this holiday season, I've not only found those pieces for myself in the past at Quince, but I am paying it forward and I am gifting the gift of Quince this season. Everything there is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands, because they work directly with ethical factories and they cut out the middleman. So you're giving luxury quality, but without that luxury price tag. I've told you before, too, if like you want to maybe not branch out and do clothes, because

• 23:31Annie Elise?

  that's a little bit personal of a gift, their cashmere throw blanket, I'm telling you, you will be the favorite daughter-in-law, favorite son-in-law, favorite friend. It is the best gift you could give. Cashmere throw blanket, mark my words. So go ahead, go check it all out at quince.com. Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know that it was Serial Sli that sent you. It is the best way to support the show. Now, I feel like we probably all collectively need a second to process that, because it's a lot.

• 24:16Annie Elise?

  Jonathan and Devon had been long-term partners for years and years and years, and they shared twin girls together. Then, after their breakup, Devon married Jonathan's oldest son from a previous relationship. So Devon's ex-boyfriend and father of her children was now technically, what? Her father-in-law? I mean, that's wild, right? And once you hear that, it suddenly makes more sense why Deviere would agree to move out for the girl's sake. Like, he wants the younger girls to have a good life, not be overly complicated or be traumatized by what she's seeing. I mean, those were his younger half-sisters, so of course he wanted what was best for them. So upon hearing this, obviously, the investigators' heads were about to explode.

• 25:01Annie Elise?

  They were spinning, but they tried to stay as professional and unbiased as possible about the relationship dynamic that was going on here. Although, I think it's fair to say, it definitely did raise some eyebrows. So Devon was 45 years old. Deviere was 27 years old, which means that he was only around 25 years old when the two of them got married in 2021. And beyond this age gap, remember, I mean, he was Jonathan's son. This is bizarre. This is weird. A lot of the details about this whole love triangle are a little unclear, but by all accounts, Jonathan was very uncomfortable with it. And hello, obviously, I get it. It caused a lot of tension and a major strain within the family.

• 25:43Annie Elise?

  And it also sounds like the relationship between Jonathan and Devon was already pretty messy even before all of this. And then there was another detail that started showing up in headlines that were surrounding this case. Apparently, Devon had previously worked in adult films. Now, to be clear, most reports never really went into depth about that part of her past. A lot of outlets just referred to her as an ex-porn star, you know, adult film worker, which honestly, might be even overstating things a little bit, I don't know. But either way, it became another layer in an already very complicated situation. Now, before Devon could continue walking the investigators through the night that Jonathan died, she said that she needed to clarify something else.

• 26:25Annie Elise?

  Devon acknowledged that her relationship with Deviere looked really bad from the outside, but according to her, there wasn't actually a romantic relationship between them anymore. She claimed that the marriage was primarily for medical reasons. She never fully explained what those medical reasons were, but according to Devon, being legally married would make things easier, because Deviere could then help her and access information as her spouse. She also claimed that because of these medical issues, she was unable to have sex. According to Devon, she and Jonathan hadn't been intimate since 2018. And while she admitted that she and Deviere had been sexually involved before, she said that they hadn't had sex in quite a while.

• 27:08Annie Elise?

  So honestly, I mean, instead of clearing things up, this now new revelation and explanation, it just raised even more questions, at least for me. I don't know for you, but certainly for me. Because if you're watching this on YouTube and you're seeing the photos and the videos, the photo I showed earlier of Deviere in a tux and Devon dressed in white, apparently, that was from their wedding day. So even though the marriage was supposedly only for medical reasons, they still seemed to fully commit to the wedding itself. Now, look, to be fair, it could be to fraudulently obtain health insurance, to sell the lie, to do whatever. I mean, we've seen that happen a million times, right?

• 27:46Speaker 06

  You and Deviere were married, but you guys have been married for two years, you said?

• 27:53Speaker 02

  Almost two years, but Yoko does not know that.

• 27:56Speaker 06

  But are you guys, but talking to Deviere, it's kind of like, it sounds like you guys got married, but not because you guys are like in love with each other?

• 28:07Speaker 02

  No, it's convenience. Like, I have a lot of medical issues and he's been taking care of me and all girls.

• 28:14Speaker 06

  So I guess, so what was your reason for getting married to Deviere?

• 28:18Speaker 02

  Because legally, as my spouse, he has more rights and access to things than someone just as a random person.

• 28:27Speaker 06

  So like pick up prescriptions and other things?

• 28:29Speaker 02

  He can do anything as my spouse. Like, he can, he actually, I had to go into the hospital in the ambulance and he was the one that took care of all of that.

• 28:37Speaker 06

  Okay, so are you guys like intimate together?

• 28:40Speaker 02

  No.

• 28:41Speaker 06

  No, does he, does he sleep in your room?

• 28:44Speaker 02

  Sometimes, like he'll fall asleep when we watch TV, but he usually sleeps on the couch.

• 28:49Speaker 06

  And right there, in there? Okay. So you guys aren't really, when you say married, you're not like, you're not dating? And you're not doing stuff together, you're not intimate together, things like that?

• 29:00Speaker 02

  No, and that's why John was okay, because John knew, and that's why he was kind of okay with everything and being able to move in.

• 29:08Speaker 06

  Gotcha.

• 29:09Annie Elise?

  But it was a lot for these investigators to take in. But eventually, even as their heads are spinning, trying to make sense of it, they knew they had to get back to the actual timeline from the night that Jonathan was killed. So Devon said that after dropping off the last load of belongings at Devon's house in Las Vegas, she and Jonathan returned to his place in Henderson for the night. Devon said that they ate together and that she saw Jonathan drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana. According to her, Jonathan had planned to drive back to her place afterward, but she said she didn't want him driving under the influence. So instead, she said, you know, just stay at your own house for the night, we will meet up the following morning, and we will register the girls for school. Now, if you remember, his mom, Yoko, told the investigators that the last time that

• 29:52Annie Elise?

  she saw Jonathan was around 10:00 PM. But according to Devon, she actually saw him later than that. She explained that when Yoko came downstairs at around 1:00 AM and saw her washing the dishes, Jonathan was awake as well and was outside in the garage smoking. Then, after she finished the dishes, Devon said that she went into the garage, she told Jonathan that she was leaving, and she said that she would see him the next morning. And according to her, that was the last time that she ever saw him alive. Which honestly, it could explain why both the garage door and the interior garage door had been left open. Maybe Jonathan cracked the garage door for airflow while he was smoking, then maybe he forgot to shut the door into the house because he was drunk and intoxicated, who knows?

• 30:35Annie Elise?

  But that still leaves the biggest question unanswered in all of this. Who killed him? And how did somebody get into that house without anybody hearing or seeing anything? And how is somebody so quiet during a decapitation? I mean, how, is there not more evidence or clues here? I mean, sure, someone could have come through the partially opened garage door, but if that's the case, how would they have known that Jonathan was going to leave it open that night? So detectives started asking the obvious next question. Did Jonathan have any enemies? Was there anybody who might have wanted to hurt him? And at first, Devon's answers were pretty vague, but eventually, she started bringing up parts of Jonathan's past.

• 31:16Annie Elise?

  According to Devon, years before they even got together, Jonathan apparently had been involved in selling drugs. She said she didn't know exactly what kind, whether it was just marijuana, or if it was possibly something more serious, but as far as she knew, that lifestyle was long, far behind him.

• 31:34Speaker 02

  I just don't know anybody of that nature. I know names.

• 31:38Speaker 06

  Anybody that comes to mind, where he was talking about, I owe this person some money, or hey, just be on the lookout, because this guy's looking for me, type of thing?

• 31:49Speaker 02

  No, sir, people owed him money. Like, he said, this guy, this one right here owed him money, so.

• 31:56Speaker 06

  And then, you know, you say he used to do drugs. Does he do anything, like, has he ever sold marijuana or sold?

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Long time ago. That's what most of his charges were for, like, years ago.

• 32:12Speaker 06

  And like, what kind of stuff was he, what was he doing back then?

• 32:16Speaker 02

  Um, I do not know the specifics. I know he did time for them years ago, but from what I understand, he's not doing anything.

• 32:25Speaker 06

  But what, what was he doing?

• 32:28Speaker 02

  Um, he would just like sell, I guess. That was before I knew him, though.

• 32:34Speaker 06

  What did he sell?

• 32:35Speaker 02

  I don't know, sir. I know he served time for it, but I really do not know.

• 32:44Speaker 02

  Like, all of that took place before we met.

• 32:50Speaker 06

  Which things like marijuana, like, did he have, did he talk about like who he sold for? And did, like, when he did that, did, did he piss peo- anybody off when he was doing that?

• 33:01Speaker 02

  I feel so, I don't know any of it. Like, when we met, he had just gotten out, and it was, he's trying to start his life over, you know, a first start.

• 33:12Annie Elise?

  So now, investigators obviously had to consider whether or not Jonathan's past could somehow be connected to what happened to him. That lifestyle, I mean, it is scary in and of itself, but especially if you owe somebody money or you make enemies along the way. But before detectives could really process everything that Devon had told them, she contacted them again, this time with another detail. According to Devon, one of the twins had just mentioned that the day before Jonathan disappeared, a strange man had approached her and Jonathan while they were at a store. And apparently, this man told Jonathan he was, quote, "coming for him", which is obviously an incredibly alarming thing to hear after somebody turns up murdered, right?

• 33:55Annie Elise?

  So the detectives immediately went over to Devon's house so that they could interview her daughter directly. Because if this story was true, I mean, it could be huge, it could be a huge break in the case. So while detectives were walking up to the house, they noticed something that was sitting near the driveway: a black cellphone. Now, at the time, they just kind of mentally clocked it, noted it, continued going inside, and they didn't immediately stop or ask whose phone it was. But then, before the detectives could even start the interview, the two twins came running inside, holding the exact same black phone. Except, they weren't treating it like it belonged to them, it wasn't a toy, it wasn't something like that. They handed it directly to the investigators, and they said that it was Jonathan's phone.

• 34:39Annie Elise?

  Which, once again, this immediately raised more questions. I mean, why would Jonathan's phone be outside of Devon's house? Especially when his body had been found back at his house and he didn't go back to Devon's house that night. Investigators also noticed that the phone was cracked, and even more, that there appeared to be a dark-colored stain near one corner of the phone. A stain that looked like it possibly was consistent with blood. So detectives asked Devon whether Jonathan normally left things lying around like that. And according to her, yeah, he did. So she didn't seem shocked or surprised that his phone had apparently just been sitting outside of her house.

• 35:18Annie Elise?

  Yet, still, leaving your phone behind is one thing, leaving it cracked on the ground, possibly with blood? Uh, that's a whole nother thing. So the detectives collected the phone as evidence, and they moved forward with what they had originally come there to do: interviewing one of these twin girls. However, that interview itself was never really detailed in court documents, so we don't fully know what was said. What I do know, though, is that while the investigators were there, they decided to interview one more person: Jonathan's son, Deviere, who, remember, is also now Devon's husband. Deviere was cooperative and confirmed that, yes, he and Devon were legally married.

• 35:59Annie Elise?

  But just like Devon had claimed, he said that the marriage was mainly to help her with medical issues. Now, from everything that I read, nobody ever really explained exactly what that meant. Devon had mentioned that by being married to him, it allowed him to help access medical information and assist her more easily. But honestly, that also feels like a pretty extreme step. So, I know I alluded to this earlier, but I really do wonder whether it maybe had something to do with health insurance or medical coverage through Deviere's job or something along those lines, just like cheating and working the system. And I don't know if any of that is for sure, so I don't want to speculate too much, but it would at least make a little bit more sense in all of this, right?

• 36:41Annie Elise?

  So when detectives then asked about his relationship with his dad Jonathan, he admitted it was not good. Which honestly, probably isn't really surprising, given the circumstances, right? According to him, the issues between them went back way before he even married Devon. He claimed that Jonathan hadn't really been present during his childhood, and that he wasn't a good father to him. The two of them apparently weren't close at all. In fact, he told the detectives that the last time he and Jonathan had even spoken was a couple of months earlier. And out of everyone that the investigators had interviewed so far, his son definitely had the most negative things to say about Jonathan. Not to mention, if detectives were looking at potential motive, I mean, there were a lot of different directions that they could go.

• 37:25Annie Elise?

  Maybe there was resentment over his childhood, maybe possible financial motivations if Jonathan died, maybe tension over having to move out of the home that he was sharing with Devon, his now-wife. Maybe even jealousy and possessiveness, considering he had married his father's ex-girlfriend. Even though, again, both he and Devon insisted that their relationship was mostly platonic. And then there was the issue of Deviere's alibi. According to him, on August 6th, he had mostly been home alone packing up his belongings so that Jonathan could move in. Which, look, that could absolutely have been true, but the investigators also couldn't really verify it. Aside from the times when Jonathan, Devon, and the twins had stopped by with belongings,

• 38:09Annie Elise?

  Deviere claimed he had been there just completely alone, by himself. He did have a more solid alibi for the morning of the 7th, though by then Jonathan may have already been dead, so who's to say, right? He claimed that he was at work when he got the call that Jonathan was found. And according to him, he went home afterward and he started drinking, because he was just consumed and overwhelmed with emotions. At that point, though, everyone that investigators had interviewed had technically been cooperative. They weren't hiding anything, they were forthcoming, they were answering questions. But what nobody inside the house realized was that once the detectives confirmed that that black phone belonged to Jonathan,

• 38:51Annie Elise?

  they immediately started working on a search warrant for Devon and Deviere's home. Because that detail, that phone, it was way too strange to ignore. And meanwhile, as all of this is unfolding and going on, the investigators were still missing one major, major piece of this case: Jonathan's head still had not been found. Now, the search warrant, it ended up leading investigators to a few pretty interesting discoveries. And look, finding Jonathan's DNA inside the house, that obviously would not have been shocking. Neither would finding some of his belongings there. Detectives had also already recovered his phone outside the home before the search warrant was even executed, so like, that wouldn't have really been a, like, hallelujah moment, finding his DNA or his belongings.

• 39:34Annie Elise?

  Like, they already found his belongings, they also knew his belongings would be inside, we know he was in the house, like, fine. But what the investigators apparently did not expect to find was a plastic bag hidden inside Devon's room. And inside that plastic bag was Jonathan's wallet, his ID, his cards, his social security card, and the keys to his truck. So while the detectives continued searching the house, they also asked Devon if she would be willing to do another interview. This time, though, they spoke with her inside one of their patrol cars. And because of the topics that they were about to get into, the detectives read Devon her Miranda rights. Although, they also made it clear that she was not under arrest at that point in time.

• 40:16Annie Elise?

  So Devon said that she understood her rights and she still would agree to speak with them. The interview itself was actually pretty short, but detectives mainly wanted answers to two things. First, why was Jonathan's phone outside the house in the driveway? Which Devon didn't really seem offended by the question. According to her, Jonathan often smoked cigarettes in that area, so maybe he had been there outside the night before while they were dropping things off, dropped his phone, and simply didn't realize it. And as for what looked like it could be blood on the phone, Devon claimed that Jonathan had cut his hand earlier in the day while they were moving things around. So, a pretty simple explanation and a plausible explanation.

• 40:56Annie Elise?

  And the truth was, investigators actually had found cigarette butts in that same area where the phone was recovered. So I mean, part of that explanation, it certainly lined up. The second thing, though, that the detectives asked her about was that plastic bag that contained Jonathan's belongings. But again, Devon's answer, it sounded fairly straightforward. She claimed that Jonathan had asked her to hold on to those items for him. Though she also said she didn't realize that the keys inside were actually for his truck. She thought that maybe they were for something else, or maybe even a spare, who knows? Now, obviously, investigators couldn't verify whether that conversation had really happened, because Jonathan was dead and he couldn't confirm. But it also wasn't impossible. Jonathan was supposedly preparing to move in, and he had planned to meet Devon again the next morning,

• 41:41Annie Elise?

  so maybe he did say like, "Hey, hold on to all this, I'm gonna see you in the morning anyway, I'll just get it from you then." Although, honestly, the truck keys do stand out a little bit, because you would of course think that he would need those if he planned to drive himself to the school the next day, or over there to Devon's house the next day. But again, Jonathan had reportedly been drinking that night. So maybe Devon kept the keys intentionally to stop him from driving intoxicated.

• 42:04Speaker 06

  Where are you guys at when he hands you, like, that stack of stuff?

• 42:08Speaker 02

  In his room area.

• 42:10Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:11Speaker 02

  And he had me the little square thing. He says, "Hold on to this," and he had me the other thing, he goes, "This is my social." He says, "Just keep it safe." And that's all I was gonna do, so I wrapped it up, and I was gonna put the social in the security box, and I just didn't have a chance to do it.

• 42:26Speaker 06

  What else? Did he give you anything else?

• 42:29Speaker 02

  He gave me his guns.

• 42:31Speaker 06

  Anything else? Like, there's a set of keys in that bag, too?

• 42:38Speaker 02

  The keys are for Andrea's stuff.

• 42:42Speaker 06

  The set of keys are in that bag?

• 42:46Speaker 06

  Like, the bag that-

• 42:47Speaker 02

  No, the keys are my keys.

• 42:50Speaker 06

  What do those go to?

• 42:51Speaker 02

  My car.

• 42:53Speaker 06

  So you have a bag that you put, a plastic bag that you wrapped his ID in that he gave you?

• 43:00Speaker 02

  Uh-huh.

• 43:00Speaker 06

  Had a set of your keys in there?

• 43:06Speaker 02

  I'm so lost.

• 43:07Speaker 06

  I'm just wondering, like, when he handed you a bunch of stuff, he only gave you the wallet? With the ID in it?

• 43:16Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:17Speaker 06

  Did he hand you anything else?

• 43:25Speaker 05

  The social security card.

• 43:28Speaker 06

  Okay, cuz in that bag that you that it was wrapped in that you say you wrapped it in,

• 43:33Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:33Speaker 06

  there was also a set of vehicle keys in there.

• 43:38Speaker 05

  I don't remember him giving me keys.

• 43:41Speaker 06

  Because I guess that's my question. Like, why would he give you, why was he, why would he give you his wallet, social security card, what she, like Detective Skinner was asking also, and then also a set of keys?

• 43:52Speaker 05

  I don't remember the keys. I just know the wallet and the social security card.

• 43:58Annie Elise?

  That same day that the investigators were searching Devon's house, they also received another phone call from Jonathan's mom, Yoko, and what she told them was incredibly important. At this point, it had been about two days since Jonathan's body was discovered. And it's not totally clear when investigators officially released the crime scene, but based on the documents, it seems like Yoko and Yoshida had been allowed back inside the home. So Yoko was explaining that she and her boyfriend were getting ready to make lunch together when they reached for the knife block in the kitchen and realized that one of the knives was missing, specifically a meat cleaver. So we're not talking about a small kitchen knife here, or a paring knife, or anything like this. This was a large, large, heavy

• 44:43Annie Elise?

  blade. And according to Yoko, the night before Jonathan was found dead, Yoshida had actually used the meat cleaver while making dinner. Afterward, it had been left sitting in the sink before they went upstairs to bed. So this knife couldn't have been lost, it couldn't have been borrowed, it couldn't, nothing like that. They used it, it was in the sink just the night before. But now, the cleaver was gone. It wasn't in the sink, it wasn't misplaced in a drawer somewhere, and according to them, it had completely disappeared. So as soon as the detectives heard that, they immediately had to wonder whether this missing meat cleaver could have been part of Jonathan's murder and also used as the weapon to decapitate

• 45:24Annie Elise?

  him. Which also kind of shocks me a little bit, because if you find a decapitated body, wouldn't one of your first thoughts be to go look and see if any tools are missing from the garage, or any knives are missing from the knife block? I don't know, maybe that's just me. So eventually Jonathan's autopsy results came back, and the investigators learned several more important details. The medical examiner determined that Jonathan's head had been removed post-mortem. His official cause of death was listed as homicidal violence, with no anatomic or toxological cause determined. Which basically means that the medical examiner could confirm that Jonathan had been murdered, but could not identify the exact injury or

• 46:06Annie Elise?

  substance that killed him. So unlike cases where they can point to a gunshot wound, or strangulation, or an overdose, the investigators here could only definitively conclude that Jonathan's death was a homicide. The autopsy also determined that Jonathan's body had not been moved after death, meaning he was killed right there on the bed where he had been discovered and decapitated. And lastly, investigators believed that both a hand-powered knife and a mechanically-powered saw had likely been used in this decapitation. Which, if that's the case, how did nobody hear this saw? I mean, I get even small saws sometimes are quiet, but like, how do you not hear that, right? And again, how was there no blood

• 46:50Annie Elise?

  splatter in all of that? So during Devon's third interview with detectives, they asked whether or not she would be willing to take a polygraph exam. And she agreed. So on August 15th, Devon came into the station and she went through with the test. And according to the reports, she seemed very calm, very ready to get it over with. However, the results that came back, they raised some concerns. At one point during the polygraph, Devon was asked point-blank whether or not she had participated in Jonathan's death in any way. And investigators noted that she had a significant reaction to that specific question, which this obviously became a major red flag. And Devon also knew that it looked really

• 47:32Annie Elise?

  bad, too, because the very next day, she reached back out to the detectives herself and asked to speak with them again. And she said that she wanted to better explain why she hadn't passed the polygraph test cleanly. And I have to say, honestly, investigators were probably pretty curious at that point. In most cases, detectives are like chasing people down, trying to get answers. But here Devon was, and she just kept voluntarily coming back to them with more information. So during this next conversation, she started opening up more about her relationship with Jonathan. And this version, it sounded a little bit different from what she had originally described. According to Devon, yes, there were times when she and Jonathan got along, but there were also periods where things

• 48:17Annie Elise?

  were not good between the two of them at all. I mentioned earlier that Jonathan had full custody of the twins while still allowing Devon to spend time with them. And from the way that Devon described things, she felt that Jonathan used that custody arrangement to maintain control. According to her, if something wasn't going his way, he would threaten to take the girls away from her. But then, whenever it benefited his own schedule or made his life easier, he would allow her to come and be with the girls.

• 48:47Speaker 05

  He wasn't keeping them from me, but he always kept trying to threaten that.

• 48:51Speaker 03

  So that was always an option he had?

• 48:54Speaker 05

  He was threatening it, yeah. But it seemed like he wanted me to keep the girls because it made it easier for him to work. Because I had him so he could work.

• 49:08Annie Elise?

  Devon also claimed that for months, Jonathan had repeatedly asked her for sexual favors. And according to her, she turned him down every single time. She reiterated that she was no longer interested in a sexual relationship, and again, had claimed that they had not been intimate in years. So then, Devon described what she said happened the night that Jonathan died. According to her, after Jonathan had been drinking and smoking a little bit of weed that night, he started coming on to her again. She said that she still didn't want to do anything sexual with him. She was over him, it wasn't like that, they were just co-parenting. But she did agree to give him a back massage and like, crack his back

• 49:49Annie Elise?

  as well. So Jonathan laid down on his stomach while Devon leaned over him and started massaging his back.

• 49:56Speaker 03

  So he's asking for sex, you say no?

• 50:00Speaker 05

  As usual.

• 50:02Speaker 03

  Okay. And then, from there, what, what happens?

• 50:08Speaker 05

  I gave him a back massage, popped his back.

• 50:14Speaker 03

  How did, it's, obviously you're quite smaller than he is. How did you pop his back?

• 50:20Speaker 05

  He was laying on the ground, and pushed, and pushed again, pushed again. Fourth one, he breathed out, and supposed to pop.

• 50:31Speaker 03

  Okay, so it's, your trembling is lower back area or something like that, or standing up or something?

• 50:38Speaker 05

  Standing up, yes.

• 50:39Speaker 03

  Okay. And you're just pushing his back, he breathes out. Okay. And where was that? In the bedroom, or the?

• 50:45Speaker 05

  Floor, yes.

• 50:46Annie Elise?

  Now, according to Devon, something changed during that massage. She claimed that while she was rubbing Jonathan's back, he started touching her as well. And not in a casual way. According to Devon, he started grabbing her in a sexual way, a way that made her feel incredibly uncomfortable. So furious and uncomfortable, she said that that's when she got up from the bed, walked over to the fireplace in the room, grabbed what she described as almost like a candle holder or a candlestick, and hit Jonathan over the head with it.

• 51:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, he was trying to get on my nerves, because he kept grabbing on me. I'm like, I've already said, no, stop touching me.

• 51:27Speaker 03

  Okay. Uh, then what happens?

• 51:32Speaker 05

  I hit him, and he stopped touching me.

• 51:35Speaker 03

  What'd you hit him with?

• 51:36Speaker 05

  Some staff thing that was on the fireplace.

• 51:39Speaker 03

  Okay. So the fireplace in the same room?

• 51:41Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 51:42Speaker 03

  So you, he's laying on the bed, you get off the bed?

• 51:46Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 51:47Speaker 03

  Walk over to the fireplace?

• 51:49Speaker 05

  Mm.

• 51:51Speaker 03

  What do you grab?

• 51:52Speaker 05

  The staff?

• 51:53Speaker 03

  The what?

• 51:53Speaker 05

  I don't know what it's called, it's a thing.

• 51:57Speaker 03

  Describe it.

• 51:59Speaker 05

  It looks like a candle holder type thing.

• 52:02Speaker 03

  A candle holder?

• 52:03Speaker 05

  I don't know, it was square, I was, I can't make the shape, but I don't know how to describe it.

• 52:11Speaker 03

  Okay. So, oh, so is it, it, how, how long is it? Are we talking short?

• 52:18Speaker 05

  No, shorter than that.

• 52:21Speaker 03

  Shorter than that?

• 52:22Speaker 05

  A little bit, oh, this part, the inside of this.

• 52:27Speaker 03

  The width of your chair?

• 52:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, the inside.

• 52:29Speaker 03

  How's it?

• 52:33Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 52:34Speaker 05

  Something's small.

• 52:35Speaker 03

  So about, about like that?

• 52:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, something's small.

• 52:37Speaker 03

  And same, same thickness throughout the length, is that correct?

• 52:40Speaker 05

  The most part, it just had like a square, like a top and square thing at the top.

• 52:45Speaker 03

  Okay, so was it a candle holder, something that you can put on the ground and the candle sits on?

• 52:49Speaker 05

  Something, that's what it looked like, yeah.

• 52:51Speaker 03

  Okay. And what color was it?

• 52:55Speaker 05

  Wedding, dark wedding card.

• 52:58Speaker 03

  Like a black, or was it like a dark brown, or a black? Did it have like a black coating on it?

• 53:04Speaker 05

  I'm assuming it would be a black color.

• 53:06Speaker 03

  Okay. And just out of the middle of the massage, you get up and you walk over to the fireplace. Does he say anything to you?

• 53:15Speaker 05

  No.

• 53:16Speaker 03

  Still laying in the bed, did you say, hey, I'll be right back? Don't move?

• 53:20Speaker 05

  No.

• 53:21Speaker 03

  You just got up and walked over?

• 53:23Speaker 05

  I got up and walked back.

• 53:25Speaker 03

  Okay, and then what happened after that?

• 53:27Speaker 05

  I don't know.

• 53:28Annie Elise?

  Now, one of the strangest parts of this entire confession is just how casual Devon sounds while describing it. The way she answered some of the detectives' questions, it almost came across like, well, yeah, obviously, obviously that's what I did. Like, just very cavalier. She also minimized the entire thing. She framed it more as like this simple act of self-defense, not as an attempt to kill Jonathan, but rather just enough force to stop him from touching her.

• 53:57Speaker 03

  So you hit him somewhere around the ear or something like that, you believe, correct? Is that safe to say? Um, how many times did you hit him?

• 54:05Speaker 05

  One.

• 54:06Speaker 03

  Okay. How hard did you hit him?

• 54:13Speaker 05

  I'm not sure how to answer that.

• 54:14Speaker 03

  Okay, so... As hard as you could? Did you use all of your force?

• 54:19Speaker 05

  Oh, God, no.

• 54:20Speaker 03

  One hand, two hands, right hand, left hand?

• 54:23Speaker 05

  My right hand.

• 54:24Speaker 03

  Your right hand, okay? Did you say anything before you hit him?

• 54:29Speaker 05

  Stop.

• 54:30Speaker 03

  Stop? Why didn't you say stop?

• 54:32Speaker 05

  Because he kept touching you.

• 54:35Speaker 03

  What did he say?

• 54:37Speaker 05

  He didn't say anything. He just stopped moving.

• 54:41Speaker 05

  But he was still breathing.

• 54:43Annie Elise?

  According to Devon, she didn't even hit Jonathan that hard. But at the same time, she admitted that she did hit him hard enough to knock him unconscious. And she kept emphasizing one very specific detail over and over again. That he was still breathing afterward. So Devon insisted that after hitting him, she immediately left the house. According to her, she knew that Jonathan wasn't dead, but she also didn't want to stick around waiting for him to wake up and be super pissed off and possibly even attack her. However, investigators already knew that there was a major problem with this timeline. Based on surveillance footage from the neighborhood and GPS data, detectives determined that there was roughly an hour unaccounted for

• 55:26Annie Elise?

  between when Devon claimed she hit Jonathan and when she actually left the house. And when the investigators confronted her about this missing hour, she just continued sticking to the same story. Although by that point, I mean, the detectives clearly were not buying it. Not to mention, there were already multiple inconsistencies throughout her version of events. So at this stage, investigators were pretty pissed and they stopped handling her with kid gloves. The timid, soft-spoken demeanor that Devon had initially presented during her interviews, it didn't really seem to be working anymore. And you could tell that the detectives were getting frustrated with her answers, too.

• 56:04Speaker 03

  Okay, so what did you do with it?

• 56:08Speaker 05

  It was on the bed or on the floor. I don't know. I got out of there.

• 56:12Speaker 03

  Okay. You did? Well, I know you got out of there, so let's try again. Hey, this shit's about to get real, okay? I'm gonna explain something to you. There's about 40 years of law enforcement experience in this room right now. And that doesn't include you. Does that make sense? Okay, don't play the... What's going on, okay?

• 56:29Speaker 05

  I'm not.

• 56:29Speaker 03

  Okay, well, I'm just being direct with you. All right? We're talking about your father's kid, or the father to your children, is no longer here. And you were the last person that was with him. You were the last person to use force on him. Does that make sense? So the shit's getting real.

• 56:50Speaker 03

  I'm not trying to be disrespectful to you, but the games are over. And you should look at that picture, because that's the last position you saw him in. And that's the position we saw him in when we went to that house. Does that make sense?

• 57:07Speaker 03

  So cut the shit and let's get down to the nitty-gritty and start answering some questions for us. Don't tell us the same bullshit that you tell Detective Ozawa.

• 57:20Speaker 03

  You have the rest of your life ahead of you right now. You have a big decision to make right now. A huge decision that could ultimately affect your two little girls. The whole time that we've been sitting here and having this conversation with you, you've had this defeated look.

• 57:37Speaker 03

  This can go one or two ways. When we write this report, we're gonna say Devon was, uh, non remorseful. Not even emotional.

• 57:48Speaker 05

  Sir, I, um...

• 57:50Speaker 03

  You don't have to call me sir, all right? We're beyond that, all right?

• 57:53Speaker 05

  I don't know your name.

• 57:55Speaker 03

  It's Rick Christopher. Okay? My apologies, because I assumed that he introduced myself even though I wasn't in the room. All right?

• 58:05Speaker 03

  So as we move forward, my question to you before we even get into details is if there's no light in that room, you described something to me that you picked up. So there's only... That means one thing. When you left, you took it with you. Or you hit it, you saw it in light. So somehow there came light and you saw the object. Because we know it was not on the bed and we know it was not on the floor. So that's the stuff that I'm talking about.

• 58:31Annie Elise?

  The main thing that Devon kept insisting on was that she was not a murderer. According to her, she did not kill Jonathan. Although the detectives obviously had a very hard time reconciling that claim with everything else that she had already admitted to. Because according to Devon herself, she was the last person who was known to see Jonathan alive. She also admitted to striking him in the head, striking him hard enough that it knocked him unconscious. She also admitted to just leaving him, lying there in the exact same position that the investigators later found him in. So what? The boogeyman came in and decapitated him? Like, what do you mean? So detectives basically pushed back with the obvious question. If she didn't kill Jonathan, if she didn't decapitate him,

• 59:15Annie Elise?

  if she didn't pour chemicals onto his body, then who the hell did?

• 59:20Speaker 03

  So you're there for an hour and four minutes. You didn't just get out of there?

• 59:26Speaker 03

  They talked about the cleaning supplies, the ammonia and stuff like that, that you said that you saw and you're like, "Oh, yeah, I just saw it."

• 59:34Speaker 05

  I didn't put any cleaning supplies on John.

• 59:38Speaker 03

  Okay, who did that?

• 59:40Speaker 05

  I don't know anything about cleaning supplies on John. She did ask me. I don't really think about that. And I did say that before.

• 59:48Speaker 03

  Okay, so you saw the cleaning supplies?

• 59:51Speaker 05

  Yes, there were some on the floor by the bathroom in the laundry room area, yes.

• 59:57Speaker 03

  Okay, so John's right here. You hit him.

• 1:00:03Speaker 03

  He lays there. You go out. Now we have an hour where you don't re... You just don't remember what happened? What did you go back in that room and do?

• 1:00:15Speaker 05

  I was just cleaning up the dishes and things.

• 1:00:18Speaker 03

  Cleaning up the dishes in his room?

• 1:00:20Speaker 05

  That's what I was doing when I gave everything to Yoko, yes.

• 1:00:23Speaker 03

  No, after Yoko.

• 1:00:25Speaker 05

  No, I was just cleaning.

• 1:00:27Speaker 03

  What were you cleaning?

• 1:00:29Speaker 05

  The dishes and everything.

• 1:00:30Speaker 03

  Stop. What's that everything?

• 1:00:34Speaker 05

  Just cleaning.

• 1:00:36Speaker 03

  What were you cleaning?

• 1:00:39Speaker 05

  I was literally just cleaning up the area. When I left,

• 1:00:48Speaker 05

  and I hit him, he was breathing. I didn't...

• 1:00:52Speaker 03

  How do you know he was breathing?

• 1:00:54Speaker 05

  Because you could tell when a person was breathing.

• 1:00:57Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:00:57Speaker 05

  The chest goes up and down.

• 1:00:59Speaker 03

  Okay, you said it was dark, though.

• 1:01:01Speaker 05

  You could still know when someone was breathing.

• 1:01:04Speaker 03

  In the dark?

• 1:01:05Speaker 05

  It's not pitch dark, but yeah, it's not...

• 1:01:08Speaker 03

  So you can't see an area on his head because it's so dark? But you can see his chest moving? You can't see what you grab off the shelf because it's so dark and then you walk over? But now you can see him breathing?

• 1:01:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, you could see if some person breathing. Your eyes can adjust.

• 1:01:24Annie Elise?

  There are definitely parts of Devon's story that don't really add up. Like the detectives pointed out, according to Devon, she stayed long enough to do the dishes and even clean up parts of the area afterward. Yet somehow didn't notice or participate in any of the other horrifying things that happened to Jonathan? She also claimed that the room was so dark that she couldn't really see the object that she used to hit him. Yet at the same time, she said that it was bright enough that she could clearly tell that he was still breathing afterward. So, which is it? And then there's the position of his body itself. According to Devon, after she hit Jonathan, he collapsed unconscious onto his stomach,

• 1:02:07Annie Elise?

  which investigators later found him in that exact same position the following morning. Except now, he had also been decapitated. Which is obviously just a very difficult detail to ignore.

• 1:02:17Speaker 03

  He's found in the exact same spot, dead? And you'd be like, "Oh, I don't know."

• 1:02:24Speaker 05

  No, but the hitting him didn't feel real. Like, I don't...

• 1:02:32Speaker 03

  I understand, so you're not in the right frame of mind. Maybe because your medications, that will make it feel like it's not real.

• 1:02:40Speaker 05

  No, everything, like, all of this feels like a nightmare, like a dream. Like, I remember being with him and him, us talking and everything like that. But the actual...

• 1:02:57Speaker 05

  It does not feel real. I don't feel I was there that long. I remember being there, Yoko, pharmacy, home. I thought I was home at like 2 something. You guys are saying it was...

• 1:03:14Speaker 03

  2:42.

• 1:03:15Annie Elise?

  As the interrogation continued, Devon started giving investigators even more information. At one point, she began talking about the medical issues that she had supposedly been dealing with. According to Devon, she was taking so many medications that her perception of time sometimes felt distorted. So this is where investigators now finally started getting closer to what they believed was the truth behind everything. Although honestly, I'm not even sure that, you know, "truth" is the right word here. Because what Devon said next, it became heavily debated. According to Devon, one of the twins had confided in her about disturbing behavior involving Jonathan.

• 1:03:58Speaker 02

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• 1:05:05Annie Elise?

  already exists. Action items, owners, deadlines. Go to monday.com, the AI workspace platform. Now, I want to be very crystal clear here. This entire allegation came from Devon. Whether it was true or not has been heavily disputed, and there is no actual evidence proving that it happened. But according to Devon, one of the girls told her that Jonathan had repeatedly made her uncomfortable while she was in his care. Devon claimed that her daughter told her that Jonathan had forced her to shower in front of him. And according to Devon, this allegedly was not an isolated incident. She claimed that it happened multiple times. Devon said that she was so incredibly disturbed by this

• 1:05:48Annie Elise?

  because the girls were older by that point, and they no longer needed help bathing. So why would this have been happening? And according to her, she felt like she needed to step in, and she needed to protect them somehow. Even with that explanation, though, Devon still maintained that when she hit Jonathan in the head, she only intended to injure him. She claimed she wanted to hurt him badly enough that he might end up with a concussion or maybe require a short hospital stay, but not dead. But I also just want to pause here really quick because if you're saying, first you say it's because he got grabby during a massage. Now you're saying it was done to protect your daughters. If you're trying to protect your daughters, and that's where this is stemming from, don't you think that you're talking out of both sides of your mouth?

• 1:06:31Annie Elise?

  Because you're also allowing him to move in with you and your daughters? And maybe, I mean, I guess the argument could be so that you could have a more watchful eye on things and things like that, but why would you, like, and you would be involved more since he had full custody? But like, it still doesn't really make a whole lot of sense on the surface. According to Devon, the goal was simply to get him out of the picture temporarily so that she could then figure out what to do next and keep the girls safe. So now, this new explanation, it was changing the supposed motive for why she hit Jonathan. But even still, she wasn't admitting to murdering him or decapitating him. At the same time, though, detectives now had what they believed could be a very strong motive. It's also important to note

• 1:07:13Annie Elise?

  that Devon herself was already dealing with accusations involving abuse. Jonathan had full custody of the twins for a reason. And shortly before Jonathan's murder, Devon had actually been in court on a separate child abuse case after one of the twins reportedly told a teacher that Devon had given her, quote, "a whooping", which this obviously complicates things even more. Because now you have someone who was herself accused of abusing one of the children, also accusing Jonathan of abusive behavior. So on August 15, 2023, Devon was officially arrested and charged in connection with Jonathan's murder. And from the moment that she was arrested, Devon maintained that she was innocent. So it really wasn't all that surprising

• 1:07:56Annie Elise?

  when she pleaded not guilty and pushed for a trial. But despite continuing to publicly insist that she was innocent, and despite claiming that the only thing that she was guilty of was hitting Jonathan over the head and then leaving him there, Devon did eventually accept a plea deal in 2024. She pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. And under the terms of the deal, she would become eligible for parole after 15 years in prison. Which honestly, for a murder involving decapitation, parole eligibility after 15 years is pretty shocking. I mean, obviously sentencing involves a lot of different legal factors, but the idea that she could potentially have been released in under two decades, it definitely stood out to a lot of people.

• 1:08:41Annie Elise?

  And apparently, it stood out to Devon, too. Because instead of accepting the plea agreement and serving her sentence, she decided she wanted to withdraw her guilty plea altogether. And the timing of all of this was wild because it happened right as she was about to be sentenced.

• 1:08:58Speaker 05

  But I can actually prove my innocence. I actually can. And I'm not going to stop fighting to prove my innocence. I have more than enough. And Jonathan deserves to have the actual person who's guilty behind bars. I was helping Jonathan. I have...

• 1:09:23Speaker 05

  That I can show that I was trying to help him. And this, I know, is hurting the family. And I can see it in your faces. And I know your hearts are angry, and they should be. And I'm angry for you. And this is not fair to you. This has been dragging out for almost two years. It's not fair to you. And it's not fair to his children, any of them.

• 1:09:58Speaker 05

  And it's not right. It really isn't. It's not. I've seen so much that it's just terrible. The way that they manipulated and altered and targeted things is wrong. They should not be able to do it, and they have. And for you to be able to look me in the eye knowing that the things are altered and...

• 1:10:32Speaker 03

  You plead guilty, man.

• 1:10:33Speaker 05

  Mr. Michael, you are not to address the state. You are to address me. I'm not addressing the state. You are. The person is your daughter. You were going to address me. What do you want me to say? What do you want to say to me? My apologies. I wasn't trying to address the state directly. It's just, I was told.

• 1:10:54Speaker 05

  I just told one thing after another. And I truly believe that we were going to do the right thing, and it just didn't happen.

• 1:11:14Speaker 05

  I am so sorry for all of this.

• 1:11:22Speaker 05

  I'm so sorry that I didn't do this. And I, and I didn't know this would end up like this. I really didn't.

• 1:11:34Annie Elise?

  So once that happened, everything reset. And now Devon was heading to trial, trying to prove her innocence. Her trial finally began in November of 2025, more than two years after Jonathan's death. And this trial was messy. The prosecution argued that Devon murdered and decapitated Jonathan because she wanted full custody of the twins, and also because she wanted freedom to pursue a real romantic relationship with his son, Deviere. Prosecutors also argued that after killing Jonathan, Devon transported his head back to Las Vegas and disposed of it in a dumpster, where it was then likely taken away during trash collection. And even now, Jonathan's head has never been recovered.

• 1:12:19Annie Elise?

  The defense, however, argued something completely different. According to them, Jonathan's son was actually the person responsible for murdering him and decapitating him.

• 1:12:31Speaker 03

  Maybe it was the door closing. We don't know. That's her testimony. You have to evaluate her testimony. But again, this is really kind of giving a shedding light on this timeline.

• 1:12:42Speaker 03

  She previously testified that she hurt dogs at 3:00 a.m. She brought it up three times during her police interview. Apparently, she felt it was noteworthy. And she testified to that September 14 before the grand jury. Yeah, the dogs are barking. It's 3:00 a.m. Someone's put the dogs outside.

• 1:13:03Speaker 03

  The facts, taken as a whole, and not this little piece here and this little piece there, show that this murder... And you know, it's silly to say a murder didn't occur. Obviously, it did.

• 1:13:16Speaker 03

  It happened after Devon left. The facts, taken as a whole, bear that out.

• 1:13:23Annie Elise?

  The defense also argued that investigators failed to properly examine evidence that could have potentially helped prove Devon's innocence. For example, they pointed to a fresh boot print that was found in the backyard of Jonathan's house that was apparently never even tested.

• 1:13:38Speaker 03

  When you look at the photo, you can see that they're fresh. They wanted to argue whether they're male or female. They didn't do any follow-up. There was no footprint comparisons to anybody's shoes in this case, much less Deviere's. You recall Yoko's testimony. There were four dogs in the backyard. If that footprint had been there for very long, common sense would dictate that the dogs would have walked through it. They would have been sullied. They weren't. They were fresh.

• 1:14:06Speaker 03

  Again, they were not analyzed or tested.

• 1:14:11Speaker 03

  There it is.

• 1:14:13Speaker 03

  And Detective Ozawa just kind of discounted that and said, well, we don't know how long they were there, but no one really looked at Yoko's testimony and Yoko's statements. Four dogs were out there for most of the night.

• 1:14:26Annie Elise?

  Then there's also the missing meat cleaver, the one that Jonathan's mother had reported. That knife was never recovered either. In fact, no confirmed murder weapon was ever found. Now, one of the biggest witnesses during the trial ended up being Jonathan's son, Deviere himself. And during cross-examination, the defense pushed really hard on the fact that he had not been truthful with the investigators about the nature of his relationship with Devon, or truthful about the feelings that he had toward her. They also highlighted the major tension between Jonathan, Devon, and him.

• 1:15:02Speaker 03

  And you agree with me that Detective Soff was kind of confused in the same, wait a minute, she had kids with him, but you're his son, correct? Yes, sir.

• 1:15:15Speaker 03

  And it is clear Yoko didn't know, correct? Yes, sir.

• 1:15:27Speaker 03

  Page seven, Detective asks, again, trying to clarify this relationship and what's really going on. So, I, he asks you, so I didn't know, but you're saying that you guys are married more and more out of convenience, not like you guys actually love each other? And you respond, yeah, we don't. It's not like that. It's out of convenience, correct? Yes, sir. That was a lie, wasn't it? No, sir.

• 1:15:51Speaker 03

  So you're telling us that you were telling this detective the truth?

• 1:16:01Speaker 03

  Then the detective asks you, but you guys, do you guys sleep in the same room? And you say, no, correct?

• 1:16:16Speaker 03

  Yes, sir.

• 1:16:18Speaker 03

  You guys actually did sleep in the same room. You slept in the same bed, didn't you? Yes, sir.

• 1:16:24Speaker 03

  But when he asked if you two slept in the same room, you said no, correct?

• 1:16:30Speaker 03

  Then he asks you, are you guys intimate at all? And you say no, correct? Yes, sir.

• 1:16:39Speaker 03

  That wasn't true, was it? No, sir.

• 1:16:52Speaker 03

  Fair to say that you were downplaying your feelings for your wife when this detective came to ask you about the murder of your father?

• 1:17:02Speaker 03

  Yes, sir, because I didn't know what actually happened to my father.

• 1:17:07Speaker 03

  Please say it again.

• 1:17:10Speaker 03

  Yes, sir, because I didn't ask her what happened to my father. Okay. But you're lying to the police officer about your relationship with your wife, correct? Yes, sir.

• 1:17:21Annie Elise?

  There was clearly a lot happening behind the scenes in this family dynamic. During the trial, it came out that Devon and Deviere absolutely did have a sexual relationship, and that relationship reportedly began even before the two of them were married, back when he was only 19 years old. The defense also brought up that Deviere worked at a company called Hometronics, where employees installed home entertainment systems. And according to the defense, that meant that he potentially had access to cutting tools, tools similar to the ones that the investigators believed may have been used during the decapitation. The defense also repeatedly focused on the lack of noise and blood evidence, because

• 1:18:03Annie Elise?

  if a mechanically powered saw really had been used, how did nobody hear it? And why wasn't there more blood splatter throughout the room?

• 1:18:11Speaker 07

  You have the lead detective on the stand yesterday saying, there's no blood splatter. I mean, you could imagine what you would think a crime scene would look like after someone's head was dismembered. That's not what it looks like. Does that create inherent reasonable doubt of, wait a minute, they don't know how this happened or where it happened?

• 1:18:33Speaker 07

  Good morning, Ted. Good morning, John. I love the segue. Listen, I don't think that matters, Ted. You know, where it happened, the bottom line is, it's about who did it? And we have a dead person, and that's really what the ultimate issue is. And I know there's a lot of questions about how the actual death happened, because it appears to be after the death, the individuals beheaded. But again, that's insignificant. I think they have a very strong case.

• 1:18:59Annie Elise?

  But even with all of those arguments, there were still a lot of suspicious circumstances surrounding Devon herself. And at the end of the day, she also had admitted to striking Jonathan in the head and then leaving him there unconscious. So her trial finally wrapped up on November 14th, 2025. And this was the final verdict.

• 1:19:20Speaker 05

  District Court, Clark County, Nevada, State of Nevada plaintiff versus Devon Jade Michaels, AKA Devon Woollett, AKA Nikki Fairchild, AKA Tracy Baker, AKA Tracy Nicole Tabarez, defendant. Case number C-23-3772391, Department 10. Verdict: We, the jury in the above entitled case, find the defendant Devon Jade Michaels as follows. Count one, murder with use of a deadly weapon. Guilty of first degree murder with use of a deadly weapon. Date this 14th day of November 2025. Signed, Erin Gilden. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is this your verdict as read? So say you one, so say you all? Yes.

• 1:19:59Annie Elise?

  Even after trying to distance herself from everything and shift blame onto the son, it wasn't enough. Which I bet Devon regretted withdrawing that earlier plea deal, because now, instead of parole eligibility after 15 years, she ended up receiving a much harsher sentence. 28 years to life in prison. After sentencing, Devon was given the opportunity to address the court, and her statement was very short and pretty underwhelming, in my opinion. Take a listen.

• 1:20:31Speaker 05

  Ms. Michaels, what, if anything, would you like to say before I've been out sentenced against you?

• 1:20:37Speaker 05

  At this point, I just feel that

• 1:20:44Speaker 05

  anything I say

• 1:20:48Speaker 05

  is wrong.

• 1:20:55Speaker 05

  The family's looking for certain things, and I can't deliver what the family's hoping for. And they're here, and I just want them to get their, at least part of their anger out. I know no matter what I say, they're still gonna feel the same way. So just let them have their fun, and that's all I can say.

• 1:21:29Annie Elise?

  I think that one of the strangest parts of this entire case is just how many major pieces are still missing. I mean, like I said, Jonathan's head was never found. The murder weapon was never found. The exact tools that were used in the decapitation never found. Now, that doesn't mean that I personally think that Devon is innocent, not by any stretch. There is still a lot of evidence pointing to her involvement. But I do also understand why it leaves a lot of people with questions and with possible doubt. So I guess my question for you is, do you think that Devon acted alone? Do you think that his son was more involved than the investigators believed? Or do you

• 1:22:10Annie Elise?

  think that there is some sort of other explanation entirely that never fully was introduced during the trial? Because even now, this case, it just still feels incredibly unresolved in a lot of different ways. So I'm curious to know what you guys think. Let me know in the comment section, the Apple review section, or the Spotify Q and A section. All right, now, really quickly before you go, just a reminder, all of our fall merch is officially on sale, but it will not last, and the merch shop will be closing soon. AnnieElise.com. Get all of your merch while you can. The Make It Make Sense, the I hope you're having a good day, I'm about to ruin it, stay spooky. It's true crime documentaries

• 1:22:51Annie Elise?

  or Christmas movies. There is no in-between. So many different pieces of merch. So go grab it, AnnieElise.com. But, warning, some of it is already starting to sell out, so grab it quickly. All right, guys. Thank you again for listening to an all-new episode with me today. As a reminder, subscribe if you're watching this on YouTube. It's a free way to support the channel. Follow the podcast if you're listening to this so that you don't miss new episodes. And I will be back on the mic with you very, very soon. Until the next one, be nice, don't kill people. I know they were never married, but just get a divorce. And, I don't know, I guess be a good human, which I keep saying that, so maybe that's a new tagline, too. I don't know. All right. Bye, guys.

• 1:23:47Speaker 02

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