Worst Roommate Ever (2022) s02e01 Episode Script

1
[unsettling music playing]
[Rachel] This was my house.
I decorated it. I weeded it.
I planted. I mowed. I did everything.
[unsettling music sting]
I was happy.
Ryder loved it here.
But seeing it, it just makes me angry.
I really have a hard time believing that
the person that I've known for 25 years,
my best friend and roommate,
could do what she did.
But it was diabolical.
It was evil.
It was plotted and planned so perfectly.
[unsettling music continues]
[Rachel] She found joy in tormenting me.
I don't think I was human to her.
I think if I had died,
she would have sat
in this house with my child,
and I don't think
she would have ever thought of it again.
[intriguing music playing]
[Rachel] I met Janie in 1995.
I was 22,
and she was four years older than me.
She was a very nice person.
Very sweet.
A little bit shyish and introverted.
When we met
and we started hanging out socially,
I had gone through a divorce
and, um, moved back to my parents' home.
[Richard] Rachel and I were very close
when she was growing up.
She's the sixth out of seven children.
Rachel's first husband
was quite opinionated.
He wanted things done his way.
And I think it was a bad start for her,
and I think that's why
it ended so quickly.
After Rachel's divorce,
I think she felt probably not as confident
as maybe she should have.
And that's when she met Janie.
[Rachel] I was so used
to being constantly criticized.
But she didn't judge me.
And it felt like I finally found somebody
who was letting me be me.
I lived at home with my parents,
but was hoping to get out.
And she had lived
in an apartment by herself
that had gotten broken into,
and she didn't want to live alone.
We'd only known each other
a couple months,
but we just looked at each other
and, "Okay, there's the solution."
[melodic guitar music playing]
[Rachel] When I first moved in with Janie,
I felt very safe.
I had never lived alone.
I went from my dad's house,
to college, to married.
Her strengths were the finances,
making sure bills were paid.
You know, we had my money and her money,
but she still made decisions
about what I did with my money,
and what I bought.
And so she just seemed so adult to me.
She just quietly taught me
how to do some of these things.
And my strengths
were helping her make friends,
but also helping her have fun.
Janie and I, we'd go, you know,
to bars or go dancing.
We'd sometimes pretend
like I didn't speak English
and she was my interpreter.
[inaudible]
We were immature and kind of silly,
but we had fun.
[laughter echoing]
When we first met Janie, we did not, uh
think she was as odd
as she ended up being.
I think Janie had not really had
very many girlfriends
or friends growing up,
and she attached herself to Rachel
and really, I think,
kind of tried to be like her
and and wanted to, you know,
dress like her and and be her friend.
[intriguing music playing]
[Robin] When I met Rachel,
initially, it was just in passing
because I was still a student
at the University of Utah
School of Medicine,
doing rotations through
the emergency department,
and she was a paramedic.
And so, you know,
you become friendly with the people
who drop patients off.
Rachel was fun and gregarious,
and always out and about,
and dating, and had friends
and a great job.
As gregarious and outgoing as Rachel is,
Janie was the yang to that yin.
So quiet, reserved.
Any time that we would
maybe go out dancing,
if someone would come to try to talk
with Rachel or maybe ask her to dance,
there was an air of resentment
that would come over Janie.
There was this undercurrent, always,
of possessiveness
that was directed toward Rachel.
[intriguing music continues]
I eventually met this guy.
He was dreamy,
and I was just head over heels.
Janie started to react differently.
She was very aggressive
in her, you know, opinions of him.
And something in her changed,
and it was very dark.
I'd never seen that side of her.
We'd be watching a movie,
and she'd stand
at the bottom of the stairs
and scream at the top of her lungs at me
about how loud the movie was.
It was embarrassing.
But her excuse was always,
"I'm protective of you
because he seems like he's a player."
[night chirping]
[Rachel] So I felt bad
for even being upset with her.
[intense music playing]
I initially thought
that it was an instance
of unrequited love,
or some sort of jilting of someone
who wanted to be
in a romantic relationship
with her best friend.
[Rachel] That kind of began the era
where everyone thought
that she was in love with me.
And she wasn't.
She's not in love with me.
But then she started to get jealous
if I made friends.
She would almost incoherently
start screaming at me.
In front of the person,
she would call me a whore.
When I would ask her,
"Do you just not like me?"
she would say, "You're my family.
I just don't want to lose you."
So
You know, looking back, it's easy to see
some of the controlling nature
that was going on.
And it worked because eventually
I did slim down my social activities
to suit her
because I felt
like I was being a bad person.
Their friendship seemed to be one born
out of a balance of highs and lows
and that glue of opposites attract.
And perhaps somewhere in there,
a codependency developed.
I was a paramedic for six years,
and then I hurt my back.
I herniated a disc,
and I tried to go back to work,
and I just kept hurting it.
The doctor's saying I can't sit
for X amount of time,
I can't lift more than ten pounds.
And so because of, um, the back injury,
I was no longer able
to work as a paramedic.
Prior to that,
Janie took care of the money issues,
but I contributed financially.
And for the first time, I didn't.
And I felt guilty about that.
I was always big into fitness
and being active,
my career, and being social.
All three of those things
were taken away immediately.
And it was a very short period of time
between this happening
and then I found out
I was pregnant at the same time.
It was a situation
where the biological father,
he opted out.
Janie and I, we had at this point
been roommates for many, many years.
And for the first time in our friendship,
Janie had 100% control over me
because I didn't have a job,
I was pregnant,
I had a back injury,
and I was in so much pain,
I needed her.
So it it was tough.
It was really, really tough.
I didn't have anything that I enjoyed
other than Ryder.
-[producer] Can you describe Ryder?
-[Ryder vocalizes]
Ryder, please leave. [laughing]
He will walk around
trying to get everyone to
Ryder [shushes] Ryder, come here.
[gentle music playing]
[Rachel] Ryder is magic.
He's the best thing I've ever done.
Ryder was born in 2010.
Ryder has autism,
and so he's conversationally nonverbal.
When he was young, they told me
that he likely wouldn't speak at all,
because by a certain age,
he didn't have any verbal skills.
[Ryder babbling]
I'm big into music
because I was always in dance, and I
When I run, I lose myself in music.
I put headphones on.
And so for the next 18 months,
I sang everything to him.
Because the neuroplasticity,
it's a different pathway
for speech than in singing,
and so I knew that
if the speech one wasn't working,
I was trying to get that
get the music one.
Sleep in heavenly peace ♪
[Rachel] And it worked.
Ryder's first words were songs.
[gentle music continues]
[Rachel] And he still, to this day,
headphones on, loses himself to music.
He's Like I said, he's magic.
Being a single mom, when he was born,
the first thing I did was get
a large, large life insurance policy.
And whoever had control of Ryder
would get the life insurance policy
for his care.
[piano notes playing]
[Rachel] Janie was listed
as the guardian of Ryder in my will.
I trusted her 100%.
Which I paid for later.
[unsettling music playing]
[Rachel] After I had my son,
I herniated a disc once again
from having the delivery.
I was in a lot of pain,
but I thought, "You'll get better."
People herniate their discs,
and it doesn't always turn into surgery.
So I let it go for a really long time
because I just was convinced
that I could live life
as normally as I could.
Eventually, I had to do an MRI.
The doctor said,
"You need surgery or else
you're gonna have permanent disability."
[somber music playing]
[Rachel] When I had
had the surgery in 2015,
Janie and I, at this point,
had been friends for over 20 years.
When I would first
get home from the surgery,
I had to take pain medication to control
a ridiculous amount of physical pain.
Most of the time, I would just lay in bed.
Janie would watch this happen
and feel bad for me.
And so she started taking care of Ryder.
[Robin] Because of Rachel's back injury,
she wasn't really able
to pick him up and care for him.
That's where Janie came in
as being a second mother, if you will.
She was able to do the lifting.
She was able to put him in carriers
and take him to the car, back and forth.
That's something that Rachel
wasn't able to do at the time,
but felt grateful
that Janie was there to do it.
[Bette] I wasn't around them a lot
because I lived five hours away from her.
So the family was very happy
that Rachel had a friend,
somebody to help her.
And we were glad that Janie
was as dedicated to Ryder as she was.
[Robin] Janie worked at a training center
that was focused
on helping Indigenous people
have opportunities in life.
[Rachel] She had a pretty flexible job,
and at this point,
I was on medical disability.
And so she, uh,
got us enrolled in a program
that paid Janie
to basically help me with Ryder.
What they call respite.
And so Janie started
to do very well financially.
It became
a significant part of her income.
[uneasy music playing]
[Rachel] Eventually, her main focus
became taking care of Ryder.
There were times when
there'd be events at his school
that I was well enough to go to,
and it was like,
we would walk in,
and she's talking to the other parents
that I don't even know.
She's talking to the principal.
She was like the mayor of the school.
She started letting people believe
that she was Ryder's parent.
It's not true.
You know, she's not his mother,
and she's not a parent of his.
It was after that that she started
wanting to take Ryder to work with her.
We kind of started fighting
over who would have Ryder.
You know, it's not who has to have him.
It's who gets him.
I did stand up to her and said,
"Okay, it's my child,
and this is the final answer."
She didn't like me doing that,
but she didn't have a choice.
[unsettling music playing]
[Rachel] Between 2015 and 2018,
I had seven back surgeries.
Around that time,
I started falling all the time.
And I hurt my neck.
So I underwent surgery
to fix the herniations in my neck.
Because I wanted to be responsible,
any time I was on pain medication,
especially after surgery
where I was on the higher dosages,
I made sure that Janie administered it,
and then kept a running log
so that I didn't duplicate on accident.
[unsettling music continues]
[Rachel] Not long after the surgery,
Janie had taken Ryder to her office.
It was a Saturday.
And I went and checked the mail that day.
I had a letter that was addressed to me,
and it was from the court
informing me that Ryder had been
assigned a guardian ad litem
for a custody case.
Janie was worried about Ryder's safety
with me in the home.
So I called her, and she answered,
perky and happy.
"Hello!" You know, "Hey!"
Or, "Oh you're up!" You know?
And I said,
"Are you suing me for custody of Ryder?"
And then just quietly, she said, "Yes."
And then she hung up on me.
-[phone clicks]
-[dial tone]
[Rachel] And so I called 911,
and I said to them,
"My best friend/roomie has my child,
and she won't return my child."
But they called her
And so they called me back and said,
"So you haven't been served yet,
but she's filed
a protective order against you."
And I and I'm looking at, like,
I can barely walk.
I have surgical stitches in me.
I am as weak as a kitten.
I'm like, "Protecting against what?"
And he said, "Well, it's her house,
so you have to leave."
"But she keeps your son."
And I'm like, "What?"
I thought I had lost my child.
And
[melancholy music playing]
[sniffles]
The worst worst day of my life,
and probably will always be
the worst day of my life.
When Janie tried to get custody of Ryder,
that completely destroyed Rachel.
I mean, he is her whole life.
I mean, she's a good mother,
and it was just devastating.
And that was the first time in his life
that she had ever been away from him.
Who does that?
Who tries to take someone's child?
Any mother knows
that's the worst thing
you could do to another woman.
[Rachel] I left the home.
I hadn't driven in years. I was shaky.
And I went to a hotel
that my dad helped, um, me get.
Child Protective Services came out.
They met with her first.
She told them that I was a drug addict,
that I had become addicted
to my pain medicine,
and that I wasn't properly
taking care of my child,
and that Janie had to step in and do it.
And then when they came and talked to me,
it was like, within three minutes,
they knew she'd been lying
about everything.
He was like, "Not only did she not say
you had this surgery,
she didn't say you had any."
"She made it sound like
you were just addicted to opiates."
They ended up giving Ryder
back to me ten days later,
based on there was no standing
for him to not be with me.
At this point, my mom had passed away,
and my dad had moved
across the country to South Carolina.
So Ryder and I
didn't have anywhere to live.
And so we moved into a family shelter.
While I appreciated everything
the shelter did for us,
and they do phenomenal work,
it was a challenging place
for Ryder to be,
um, mainly due to his autism.
He struggled, he regressed,
and he certainly wasn't happy.
I spent six weeks at the shelter.
And then just out of the blue,
Janie called and asked me
if she could see Ryder.
Ryder was still asking
to go home every day, all day.
I thought maybe he just missed her
because she was
an important part of his life.
So I allowed her to see him at a park.
Janie apologized.
She started talking about
how she was in a dark place.
And she again thought
that I was going to leave her.
And
it it felt like
the Janie that I had known.
She didn't seem dark and twisty anymore.
You know, she was just jovial and happy,
and and he was happy to see her.
She said everything was gonna be okay.
And she asked me to come back.
And I said,
"Yes."
Ryder wanted to go home.
I wanted to go home.
I knew that I was gonna need
another surgery,
and I didn't have anyone
to help me with Ryder.
So I didn't really have an option.
I needed her.
[Bette] I was concerned
about her moving back in with Janie,
just because I thought if she could do
If she could be that cruel
and do that to her,
you know, what else is she capable of?
But, you know,
I just I just stayed out of it.
It wasn't my call to make, you know?
[intriguing music playing]
[Rachel] When I initially moved back home
[lock clicks]
Ryder was doing phenomenally.
He immediately began to improve,
making strides.
And she was taking
really good care of him.
I waited as long as I could
after getting back home to have surgery
because I wanted to make sure
that things were gonna be stable
before I put myself in a position where I
couldn't help myself at all.
When I had the surgery in April of 2019,
everything went fairly, um, routine.
Janie graciously would offer to help me.
Any of the surgical incisions that I had
that were located in a part of my body
that was either on the back of my body
or I couldn't reach,
Janie would have the task
of cleaning them,
putting any ointments on them,
and bandaging them back up.
A few weeks after surgery,
I started getting like pain
in the incision.
And
a couple of times, there were just
things where she would rub it,
and I would say, "Why are you rubbing it?"
And she was like, "I'm just seeing, like"
"Trying to just see if"
Weird stuff that kinda didn't make sense.
But it never occurred to me to think
that there was something
malicious or nefarious about it.
And then it started to hurt really badly.
I would go to her and say,
"Can you look at it and tell me
if I need to go have it looked at?"
And she would say,
"Looks normal. Looks fine."
[suspenseful music playing]
[Rachel] I started
not being able to breathe
because the swelling in my neck
was pushing against my trachea.
I insisted that I was gonna go
to the InstaCare.
I went, and I was sitting there,
and the doctor was standing behind me.
He took the bandage off,
and I felt him almost jump back.
And I said to him, "What's wrong?"
He said, "Massive infection."
The way he described it
was blue cheese coming out of my wounds.
He said, "I'm gonna call an ambulance
because you have to go
to the ER right now."
They had to go in and basically
reopen everything and get the infection.
They cultured it,
and it came back as MRSA.
[Bette] I was an ER nurse,
and MRSA is a bacteria
that is resistant to antibiotics.
So, a bacteria like that,
it can definitely kill you.
Uh, you know, it's almost flesh-eating.
[Rachel] MRSA is
a very serious staph infection
that, um, oftentimes
is contracted in hospitals.
So the assumption
is that I got it in the hospital,
because where else would I have gotten it?
And so they started me on the vancomycin.
Vancomycin's an antibiotic
that can treat it.
But the vancomycin started
to attack my white blood cells,
and I got very ill.
I could feel the life,
like, draining out of me.
It was during this time that I,
to the core of me,
knew I was going to die.
[Robin] The issue
with bacterial infections
when people
are in a compromised health state
is if they progress
and get into your blood,
that's when someone can become
septic and end up in the ICU.
And that becomes dire.
And that was the path
that Rachel was headed down.
[Rachel] But then I started to seem
like I was getting a little bit better.
And so I let Janie know that,
"Probably gonna live!"
[dramatic music playing]
[wind chimes tinkling]
[Rachel] After that,
when I was recovering,
Janie and I would watch TV.
I liked true crime,
and she liked it as well.
And we were watching
one of the true crimes,
and it was a nurse
that murdered her husband
with succinylcholine.
And I said, "Wow, she's a nurse."
"That is really stupid
for her to do something
that's gonna show up in an autopsy."
And Janie kind of did the,
"What do you mean?"
And I said, "Knowing that it could be
considered a suspicious death."
I said, "You'd do something like insulin
because that's naturally occurring
in the body."
And she's like, "Oh, interesting."
It was such a conversation
that we'd had so many times
with different discussions
about true crime
that it didn't stick out in my mind.
But now I can see
that it was me planning my own murder.
[unsettling music rising]
[Rachel] June 9th, 2019.
I remember Janie had put me into my bed
and given me my medication.
And the next thing I know,
I wake up in the hospital.
And I was told that my blood sugar
had dropped to 13.
Um, since I'm not diabetic
nor have any diabetic issues,
um, this was shocking to everyone,
including myself.
[dark music playing]
[Bette] For the average person,
a blood sugar would be 80 to 110.
I've worked in medicine for 25 years,
and I never saw anybody
with a blood sugar like that.
All of a sudden,
Janie calls me up and says,
"You better come to the hospital."
"Something's wrong with Rachel,
and she might not make it."
So I raced down there,
and Janie met me in the lobby.
And I'm a nurse, so, you know,
I was "Twenty Questioning" her.
"When had she eaten?"
You know, "What medicines is she on?"
"Is there any insulin anywhere?"
"Is there any needles anywhere?"
I started crying,
and, you know, I was just upset,
and Janie just sat there
with no expression on her face.
Just staring at me
kind of like not even blinking.
She didn't ask me anything.
She didn't try to comfort me.
You know, she just sat there
with no emotion,
uh, heartless.
I started to suspect
that something was going on with Janie.
[Rachel] My sister said to me
a little bit later,
"Janie seemed almost mad
that you survived."
"That's just grief, you know,
she's socially awkward."
"It's strange. That's just grief."
I think there were
a lot of red flags that I missed.
They watched me for 48 hours.
My blood sugar was fine. I was fine.
So they thought a fluke had happened.
I'd gotten sick or something,
and something had caused it.
I went home on a Sunday, and Tuesday, I
woke up in the hospital.
It happened again.
This time, they kept me for eight days.
They were calling endocrinologists
all over the state
because there was no reason
other than given insulin
that this should happen naturally.
There was just none.
[Richard] I was afraid of losing a child.
I was afraid that Rachel
was not going to pull through.
It it scared the daylights out of me.
[Rachel] In September of 2019,
I had another insulin event.
I awoke being told that once again,
my insulin had fallen to be 13.
Honestly, as this progressed,
the repeated hospitalizations,
the drama,
and getting all of the attention
At one point,
she even mentioned on Facebook
that she was afraid that she would die.
Quite frankly,
it was at this point that I asked her,
"Are you doing this to yourself?"
And she swore up and down
that was not the case.
The physicians did all of the scans,
all of the labs that would be necessary.
And really the go-to there is that
she must have received some insulin.
This is surreptitious insulin
until proven otherwise.
I went home, and I would literally scoop
spoonfuls of sugar into my mouth
before I went to bed every night,
just so my blood sugar wouldn't plummet
so that I could wake up.
[foreboding music playing]
[Robin] Rachel would have
repeated admissions to the hospital.
Repeated calls for paramedics
to come and collect her.
She would get well in the hospital,
be released, go back home,
start thriving again,
and then fall right back off
that health cliff.
And it was just bizarre.
Nothing was adding up.
And she felt she would die.
She felt that she would not be there
to raise Ryder.
And that concerned her
more than anything else.
My name is Steve Cadiz.
I'm a special agent with the FBI.
I am a coordinator for the weapons
of mass destruction program
here in Salt Lake City.
The WMD program in the FBI
covers chemical, biological,
radiological, nuclear, and explosive
weapons of mass destruction.
It was a normal day in the office,
and a phone call came in
asking us to conduct
an investigation on a person
attempting to purchase VRSA
on the dark web.
VRSA is a bacteria.
It's a staph infection.
It's very resistant to commonly-used
powerful antibiotics.
[Michael] When you go
to a dark net marketplace,
you're just a couple clicks away
from buying hard drugs, like fentanyl.
You can buy weapons.
You can buy human beings on the dark web.
Child pornography.
You're a click away from watching that,
just like you're a click away
from watching videos
of people being murdered.
It's an evil place.
The FBI hosts a Joint Terrorism Task Force
here in Salt Lake City,
and they told me that they had received
a tip from an undercover FBI agent
who was working on the dark web
that a person had made an order
for vancomycin-resistant
staphylococcus aureus,
commonly known as VRSA.
[eerie music playing]
[Steve] The state criminal statutes
in Utah
specifically say biological agents
that are entering its borders
through the mail
are considered
weapons of mass destruction.
[Michael] Biological weapons
are a whole different animal
because they can grow
and multiply and propagate.
Many of us realized for the first time
during the pandemic
just how dangerous
a disease can be as a weapon.
[Steve] During the course
of the investigation,
we were able to find out that the person
attempting to buy that VRSA
was Janie Lynn Ridd.
The immediate danger was,
how will this person use this VRSA?
Is it on a person?
Is it just a single person?
Is it a group of people?
Is it going to be something
that will be cultured and grown,
to then be introduced to the community?
[unsettling music playing]
[Michael] The worry, of course,
is that it's going to be used widespread.
So we had a suspect,
and we needed to find out
as much as we could about her.
[Jen] I've been with the State Bureau
of Investigation for eight years,
but I'm also assigned full-time to the FBI
as part of the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
And especially with this case,
it was one where
with this type of bacteria,
and not knowing
this person's intent in purchasing it,
we really had to act fast.
During the investigation,
we learned that back in 2018,
there were some court records there
that showed that there was some type
of custody dispute,
where Janie was attempting
to gain custody of Rachel's child.
And that she also
was the main caregiver for Rachel
because Rachel wasn't able to take care
of herself because of her health issues.
[Steve] And now I start to think
as an investigator,
"Let's start working on the assumption
that she is now going to try
and hurt Rachel."
And we found that in a healthy person,
you can use antibiotics
to get rid of VRSA.
But in a person that was already sick
or immunocompromised,
it could, uh, prove fatal.
So Janie had motive and opportunity
to use the VRSA against Rachel
so that she could get custody of the son.
I think that Rachel was in grave danger.
[Rachel] In December of 2019,
Janie had started to seem darker to me.
[uneasy music playing]
[Rachel] There was just
something about her
that was different than I'd ever seen.
She just seemed detached.
And I had noticed
that she was leaving Ryder alone
in situations that could have
become dangerous.
Janie was still listed
as the guardian of Ryder in my will.
I let Janie know
that I was gonna change my will,
and make my father the beneficiary.
[Richard] Rachel asked me
if something happened to her,
would I take custody of Ryder?
And of course, I said, "I would,
but at my age, I'm not able to do a lot."
"And so I would have to find somebody
that could take care of him."
And she says,
"I know you would find somebody
that would be like Mom."
[Rachel] A short time
after that conversation,
I mentioned to Janie
that maybe it would be time
for me to move out, even short-term,
get my own place for a little while,
and that we could work on our friendship.
But I just thought we needed
some space between us.
And she asked me
to stay till December 25th.
[dark music sting]
We made plans to deliver
fake VRSA to the post office box,
and then send a tracking receipt to Janie
so she would know her package had arrived.
We knew we needed to move quickly
because Janie asked if she could pay extra
to have it expedited
and shipped to her overnight.
[Steve] Once the package
had been delivered to the UPS Store,
the investigative team
was sitting in the car
waiting on this package to be picked up.
And we were watching that door like hawks.
On our second day of surveillance,
someone matching Janie Ridd's description
arrives at the UPS Store
and walks into the store.
After a few minutes,
Janie Ridd walks out with the package
that we had put the faux VRSA inside,
and immediately walks to her vehicle.
-[car door closes]
-[engine turns over]
[Steve] And we followed her
to her workplace in Salt Lake City Valley.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Steve] We go up to her office,
and we told her
we'd like a few moments of her time
to speak with her.
In the beginning, I asked her,
"Did you pick up a package
from the UPS Store earlier today?"
I wanted to see if she would lie to me.
And she took that opportunity to lie.
[audio recording playing]
I stop her and I say,
"I don't believe that this is coffee."
"I'm gonna give you another opportunity
to tell me the truth."
Miss Ridd takes a breath,
looks me straight in the eyes,
and tells me another lie.
[Janie speaking]
[Steve speaking]
-[Janie speaking]
-[Steve speaking]
[Janie speaking]
[Steve speaking]
I said, "Let's just start fresh."
"I believe it's a biological,
but I don't believe it's for beer."
[Steve speaking]
[Janie speaking]
[Steve speaking]
[tense music playing]
[Janie speaking]
[Steve speaking]
She finally said that she was attempting
to purchase this bacteria,
this form of staph,
because she wanted to do some
research on it to help her friend Rachel.
[Steve speaking]
[Janie speaking]
[Steve speaking]
Ding!
She finally admitted
to trying to purchase this bacteria.
And we had enough probable cause
to arrest her for the attempt to possess
a weapon of mass destruction.
[Janie speaking]
[Steve speaking]
[Janie speaking]
[Steve speaking]
[Janie speaking]
[laughs nervously]
[tense music continues]
[Janie speaking]
And from there, that is when
I took over the interview,
and then told Janie
that she was now under arrest.
[Janie speaking]
[Rachel] It was a fairly normal Tuesday.
I was laying in bed kind of half asleep
and dizzy and nauseous,
and a knock came at the door.
[knocking on door]
And I saw three official-looking people
standing at my door.
[Rachel on FBI audio] Hi.
[Steve] Hi.
[Steve speaking]
[Steve speaking]
They started to ask me odd questions,
like where I had packages delivered to.
And questions that really made zero sense.
Janie doesn't do science experiments.
She doesn't teach science.
She doesn't make beer.
And I had no idea
what they were talking about.
[Rachel speaking]
[Steve speaking]
[Rachel speaking]
[agents speaking]
-[Rachel speaking]
-[Steve speaking]
-[Jen speaking]
-[Rachel speaking]
[agents speaking]
[Rachel speaking]
[Rachel stammers and speaks nervously]
[Steve] Yeah, yeah.
I could tell that they were trying
not to tell me why they were there yet.
[Rachel speaking]
[Steve speaking]
[Rachel speaking]
[Steve] We're trying to take
the soft-hand approach,
because we're gonna be telling her
that we believe that your roommate
purchased this VRSA online
for the intent purpose of killing you.
[Steve speaking]
[Rachel speaking]
[Steve speaking]
-[Rachel speaking]
-[Steve speaking]
[Rachel speaking]
[Steve speaking]
[Rachel speaking]
[Steve speaking]
[Rachel speaking]
-[Steve speaking]
-[Rachel speaking]
[Rachel speaking]
[Rachel crying]
[Rachel sniffles]
[Steve speaking]
[Rachel speaking]
[disturbing music playing]
[Rachel] They looked at each other,
and then they looked at me,
and all the questions stopped.
And they kind of perked up.
[Steve] Rachel explained
that she had episodes
where her glucose levels
had dropped so significantly,
to the point
they thought she was gonna die.
And what was running through my mind
were the dark web purchases by Janie.
Sedatives such as ketamine, Xanax,
and insulin injector pens.
Because in a healthy individual,
if you are stabbed
with an insulin injector pen,
your glucose levels will drop
almost to single digits.
Eventually, we found
an expended insulin injector pen,
and Rachel Booth's DNA
was inside of the injector pen,
and it had been used on her.
So you put those things together,
and it painted a pretty clear picture
that Janie would use
an added sedative such as ketamine
to incapacitate Rachel
and put her in a state
where she wouldn't feel Janie
injecting her with MRSA
or with the insulin injector pen.
From reading the medical records,
I think that Janie
tried to kill Rachel at least five times
in the course of a year.
[Rachel] When I was told by the FBI agents
that she had purchased the insulin,
it almost added insult to injury.
Not only did she try to murder me,
but I I felt like she was taking joy
in having me plan my own murder,
or at least give her instructions
on how to murder me.
[unsettling music playing]
My reaction
when it was all spelled out, frankly,
was, "Holy shit."
There are no words
for how out there this is.
All of this was due to the disgusting
and surreptitious actions
of another who is holding her captive,
experimenting with her friend's body
in an effort to kill her
and take her child.
[Michael] What would've happened
if Janie could have
carried out her threat?
Rachel would have died in the hospital.
It would have been considered
an attended death.
No autopsy. No investigation.
And Janie makes off with Rachel's child
and a half million dollars
in life insurance payout.
[unsettling music continues]
[Bette] I was shocked.
We had no idea that she could be
so violent or twisted like that.
We knew she loved Ryder,
and we knew she wanted him,
but never in a million years
would we have guessed
that she had that in her
to try to get rid of Rachel.
When I saw Janie in court,
she didn't seem, like, familiar to me.
It wasn't that she looked
dramatically different.
She just Something felt broken.
And I just wonder, did I miss it?
If I was a better friend,
if I could have helped her
would she have not gotten to this point?
[Michael] The judge ordered her to serve
between one and twenty years.
And that's what
she was sent to prison to serve.
-[birds chirping]
-[hopeful music playing]
[Rachel and Ryder chatting indistinctly]
-[Ryder] You think that's funny?
-[Rachel] Yes.
The unexplained illnesses have stopped
since the day she was arrested.
Still have the spinal issues, of course,
and I still live in chronic pain,
but I'm able to do activities.
I feel good.
And Ryder is doing phenomenally.
-Car.
-Car.
She didn't ruin my life.
She ruined hers.
And that's sad.
That's very sad.
[introspective music playing]
[dark music playing]
[birds chirping]
[dark music building, fades out]
[intriguing music playing]