Worst Roommate Ever
Season 2 – Episode 1
Episode title: My BFF Tried to Kill Me
Original release date: June 26, 2024
Plot: After twenty years of living together, Rachel discovers that her best friend and room mate Janie has made several attempts on her life.
* * *
[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.
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]
