Fight Like a Mother - EPISODE 1 (The Bakersfield Three) | Forensic Files

there's no way two friends just go missing within a month of each other somehow someway I know they're connected
it's a haunting mystery one that seems to grow more complex than dark The Disappearance of Micah holsen bake and
Bailey despot and in between those two disappearances a murder in a Bakersfield neighborhood where crime is rather rare
is it three mysteries or one these three people knew each other and they're all either at this point dead or missing
there's something big about about what's going on there's something something crazy about this case I got to find her
to hold her one last time even if it is just her bones we're just trying to find
out where they are just somebody tell me where they are and we will go get them I
I will go dig I will go dig and I will find [Music] [Applause] them working in Bakersfield as a local
news reporter was a unique time in my life I had a hunger and drive I don't think could ever be replicated I was a
20-some making no money working often obscenely long hours completely by choice eating almost strictly microwave
meals and fast food and spending way too much time making sure my fake eyelashes
and hair were just right I look back on the days where I'd wear heels in a dress
while knocking on doors in a rough neighborhood in over 100° heat desperate to find someone who'd give me a sound
bite describing hearing gunshots which by the way is almost always the same I thought it was fireworks at first and
every time I'd get the sound bite it was an accomplishment for maybe all of 5 minutes until the next breaking news
event happened and I loved every second of it I lived and breathed it and felt a
sometimes maddening need to be first which is kind of the name of the game in local news trying to break the big story
meaning you're the first reporter to uncover the information when I first started I envisioned myself going to a
local bar after work where there'd be a group of deputies having beers they'd welcome me to join them and I'd end up
leaving every night with a big scoop but that never happened not even close I quickly learned that usually if
there's a significant event like a homicide or armed robbery all of us reporters hear about it at the
same time through the police scanners we have blaring in the newsrooms 24/7 we then all race out to the scene
elbowing each other trying to get as close to the Yellow Tape as possible my old news director Mike trye
used to say you make your own luck so we'd persist with a ritual of digging coming up empty and trying again another
day a built-in part of that routine for me at 17 News was to go to the courthouse once a week and look through
search warrants doing this probably hundreds of times I can only think of a few instances when I found a search
warrant that was to put it simply anything good anything we'd put on the news 99% of the time any search warrants
pertaining to a case the media would report on are sealed by law enforcement it's rare that one slips through the
cracks and you're lucky enough to find it despite all this something kept bringing
me back to court to look through them still having that glimmer of hope that one day I would find something
big that day came an early summer of 2018 though just how big no one could have known
[Music] then I'm Olivia Lavo and this is the Bakersfield 3 [Music] going through my stack that day I
started thumbing through a warrant that was for a crime that on the surface seemed pretty dull an investigation into
a felon being in possession of a firearm there's nothing newsworthy about a felon
having a gun when they're not supposed to it happens all the time it's illegal yes but not significant enough to report
on this warrant though was different because of one little sentence that mentioned a missing woman who I'd later
Learned was named Bailey despot it then went on to describe a man named Arturo coming home while his wife was out of
town and finding something odd here's Arturo to explain I see bags in my front door and I was like wow is my wife home
supposed to be home like the next day and I said well maybe she's surprising me that's what I thought but the closer
I got to the door I noticed that that was not her luggage and I was like okay that's weird
and I I looked down and there was a note and it said um tell Bailey that I love her but I cannot be with her our
knew Bailey as a friend of his sons from high school he recalled his son recently
telling him that no one had heard from Bailey for several months it kind of stung me a little bit I was like well
she's missing why has her back's here so I called him and I go son I go is Bailey
here and he was like what and he goes no she's not here I go son her bags are right in the front he
goes what are her bags doing I say I do not know he goes well let me call her mom and find out soon after Bailey's
mother Jane showed up and I I had never met her and uh we're talking she goes yeah this is her stuff so she started
going through her bags and and poor lady she was so emotional like this is what I
gave her for her birthday this is what I gave her last year and I mean she was just crying I was just like overwhelmed
and she's like well who dropped them off and I said I don't know so we went through my cameras and finally I found
the footage of who dropped them off I'm like oh my God that's Matt Queen and he's got a gun Bailey's mother Jane
recognized the man Matt queen as the guy she refuses to call her daughter's boyfriend but it seems for all intents
and purposes he was and here he was about a month after Bailey vanished dropping off her things at a friend's
home that really seemed like a random choice and when he dropped her belongings off as shown in the
surveillance video he was armed the gentleman he pulled up to the door and of course nobody was here we're all
at work so he pushed the bags down then he goes back to the Suburban and then he
comes back he gets the ladder and he sits it on the back but when he bends over to set the letter
down his sweater picks up and he had a gun on his back and me and Jee was like wow like we're just stung like how about
one of us was to be home like like what would the outcome would have been I don't
know Jane called the police immediately after seeing the video for themselves investigators went to Matt Queen's house
to speak with him where they found a loaded gun which legally as a felon he can't have Queen wasn't in jail for long
just a few days before he made bail but this warrant described how after his arrest he called his wife from jail yes
as I'd later find out Queen had his wife and Bailey living with him under the same roof we'll get more into that
later when Queen called his wife after his arrest that day he told her to come get some things from his car before the
cops could behind the driver's seat there's a backpack gray and black is it there yeah okay take that in
the house in that backpack is all the letters and everything all the evidence that [ __ ] she left you mean that
James and lion [ __ ] it's all it's all stuff that she wrote about her mom that's why I left you the phone too the
Snapchat is still on that phone you don't have to access it you open it in in that Snapchat it is all kinds of like
evidence to show that Jan is a [ __ ] Vol and N this crazy person it appeared Queen was telling his
wife in the backpack there was evidence that quote she left she being Bailey he referenced letters and a phone with a
Snapchat account that would show Bailey's Mom Jane acting crazy it seems at that point Queen sense detectives
were looking at him for Bailey's disappearance and he blamed Jane for that in addition to the letters and
phone Queen also asks his wife to see if his tools are there go to are still here okay have to
take those get the job right away all right I got to go get him he's yeah go get him right now because you
know they listen to everything I say right now careful I love you all right bye Queen told his wife to go get his
brother and have him take the quote Tools in his car to the dump right away it sounded suspicious of course so
according to the search warrant I'd found detectives wanted to search Queen's home vehicles and phone for
evidence that he could be involved in the manufacturing of illegal Firearms seemed pretty obvious to me that sure
maybe if police discovered evidence of that it'd be a bonus but what they were really after was evidence pertaining to
the missing woman he'd been living with Bailey I thought looking at him for illegal guns was just their way in and
having this warrant was my way into the story I remember when I first saw Bailey's photo she's striking tall
slender with long dark hair and big green eyes there was something classic and effortless about her beauty she
stood out but as I looked at photos of her on Matt Queen's Facebook page what stood out even more was Queen's
extensive bizarre and somewhat fascinating social media presence he had numerous posts about looking for Bailey
that included missing Flyers he'd made himself that said he last saw her getting into a black SUV with a heavy
set man but what really caught my eye were screenshot text messages he posted but between himself and Bailey's mother
Jane one screenshot showed Queen sent this text to Jane at first I thought you were simply an overprotective mother and
I respected that but it is now clear that biley was right all along you have a mental disorder yes Jane I'm twice her
age get over it find something else wrong with me you're obsessed with biley and it's not healthy I'm in love with
her and if I'm not mistaken she's in love with me keep trying to drive a wedge between us it's only weakening the
strength in yours naturally I had to hear what Jane had to say about all this you wanted to
interview me and I was very hesitant I remember and you're like well I think the best thing is to get it out there
and I'm like yeah but they're telling me I can't do that it might scare off the bad people or
something Jane was in a tough spot at this time a little over a month after her daughter's disappearance detec IV
had told her to stay away from media which by the way almost never makes sense in missing person's cases how can
someone be found if no one even knows they're missing being told to avoid the news but desperate to get the word out
Jane had taken to Hanging literally thousands of Flyers around town that first phone call she was pretty
disappointed to know that none of the Flyers had caught my attention apparently as I explained I hadn't heard
of her daughter's case until finding the search warrant that day if you haven't heard of Bailey's case
asked Jane have you heard of Micah holsen bake's case I told her I hadn't well he went
missing a month before Bailey did and the two of them were friends Jane said now this sounded a bit more complex
than I initially thought this case was going to be even more so when Jane explained how the connection between
Micah and Bailey was made in the first place I found out that after Micah holsen bake
went missing in late March Micah's brother immediately started his own investigation of sorts someone he spoke
with said he should try to track down a couple of people who might have information including a young woman
Bailey parent that's weird that doesn't sound like anybody we know that's Micah's mom Cheryl the name
Bailey parent didn't mean anything to them then but a few weeks later Cheryl and her husband Lance were out in
Bakerfield looking for Micah sometimes they would drive around aimlessly when they'd ran out of people
to talk to that day Cheryl and Lance spotted a missing flyer for a young woman how horrible her family is going
through what we're going through they thought then they noticed the name Bailey only the last name listed was
different it was despot the Bailey they were told knew Micah was Bailey parent but something in Micah's dad
call it fatherly instinct told him to do a little digging the Flyers had clearly
been made by the missing woman's mother Jane but he looks her up on Facebook and
he's like Jane's last name is parent that's Bailey parent oh my God and there it was the name
Micah's brother had been given shortly after Micah went missing the initial disconnect was Bailey and Jane having
different last names but there was no mistaking it this was the same Bailey she supposedly knew something is what we
had been told you better talk to Bailey parent now knowing she too had gone missing Cheryl says Lance had a horribly
Grim theory he said Mike is dead and she knew too much regardless of if the hunch was
right they knew there was something going on here we had no proof of anything we just knew they were
gone Cheryl and Lance hadn't been getting far with detectives and were determined to get answers themselves so
they reached out to Bailey's Mom Jane I was very leery I didn't trust anybody I didn't know who to trust I didn't trust
them in the beginning they probably didn't trust me but we had two things in common our kids knew each other and they
were missing Jane met with Cheryl and her husband at a restaurant where over pie
and iced tea that sat untouched they discussed the horrifying possibilities of what could have happened to their
children they compared notes and commiserated over the difficulty of getting detectives to take them
seriously after Jane told me all of this on that first phone call the questions were endless so I put together a short
and simple story with the little I knew it focused primarily on Bailey being missing and mentioned the possibility of
a connection between her and Micah's cases after it aage social media immediately lit up with theories the
most popular being that Micah and Bailey were lovers that ran off to Mexico to be
together among the comments I remember seeing one from Lance Micah's dad it said something along the lines of the
connection between the two should definitely be investigated and referred to Micah and Bailey as
acquaintances I noticed someone responded to that comment a girl named Sarah her response read I was a good
friend of Bailey's and Micah was around a lot we knew him more than just as an acquaintance also I believed they are
link LED as well I clicked on Sarah's profile she had a few posts about Bailey's disappearance one read you are
a good friend Bailey I know you're just hiding out somewhere I bet you're a smart girl and I miss you and so does
Queen I love you ba I couldn't tell you how or why her and Bailey started hanging out but they
did that's Maddie one of Bailey's closest friends she says Sarah went to high school with them but Bailey and
Sarah didn't connect until after graduation and they seem to get close very fast the wildness about them is very
much the same and that is what drew them so close together Sarah and Bailey both
loved to Thrill both acted like they didn't care much about what other people thought and I noticed they both looked
very similar same body type same Fair complexion with the same long dark hair and green eyes I know that Sarah was
dating a different guy named Matt and she's the one that introduced Bailey to Queen so that's how all that
happened Sarah was dating a guy named Matt vantile who was good friends with Matt Queen so when Bailey coupled up
with Matt Queen it seemed like that dream scenario friends dating another set of friends getting to double date
and hang out all the time both Matts were much older than their girlfriends Matt vanic Castile was 10 years older
than Sarah and Bailey and Matt Queen had lived twice the life they had with their
20year age Gap Queen had a wife and family when Bailey and Sarah were in elementary school now the four of them
were spending a lot of time together and apparently before he went missing Michael holsen bake was spending a lot
of time with them too when I got in touch with Micah's mom Cheryl she told me after Micah went
missing before she found out about Bailey and reached out to Jane something strange happened I get this phone call
out of the blue the gist of her conversation was my son is James kl's dad James and Mah were
friends and James was killed James colestad was murdered about 2 weeks after Micah went missing and
about 2 weeks before Bailey's disappearance here's is Mom Diane or D as we all call
her I'm reading on Facebook that Mike is missing and I knew from conversations that James and I had that he had been
hanging out with Micah when D saw Micah was missing so close to her son's murder
something didn't feel right just something in my gut so she contacted Cheryl who like d had been doing her own
investigating Cheryl and I talked a lot we were talking every day at the phone we were starting to do our research you
know names background checks on different people and just so many of the same names kept coming up it was around
this time that Cheryl and her husband discovered Bailey was missing suddenly they found themselves looking at all
three cases they were connected somehow we had gotten enough information that we
we knew they had shared friends as it was relayed to me that Micah James and Bailey all knew each other and their
mothers were trying to figure out if the three were connected I knew I had to get
the three moms in a room together we agreed to all meet at dy's home James's mother Dy a medical billing specialist
keeps her home and her appearance impeccable Cheryl Micah's mother a college Finance Professor dressed the
part simple she let her hair start to Gray and wore no makeup Bailey's mother Jane a special education
care specialist dresses casual but colorful think Jean overalls with a bright purple top and sunflower scarf
tied in her hair as the three of them sat down at dy's dining room table with me I noticed how fragile they were
trembling voices with what initially felt like a sense of apprehension but the more we all spoke I began to see a
shift from anguish to a feeling of determination I didn't want to stop that day I think we talked for hours didn't
we we talked a long time I I felt relief I felt like somebody's finally listening who wants to hear more
than mik is missing they wanted to hear what we thought was going on yeah the backstory of why this happened to
them and the notebook after notebook after notebook that we had filled with with information
I think we needed someone to give us that confidence that we could take this on and I think you did give us that
together the three of them were emboldened and quickly adopted the motto fight like a
mother we we began leaning on each other early on cuz who else do you call yeah and it was nice not to be walking that
walk alone we could call each other any time day or night each of them brought a
different skill set to the table Jane Bailey's mom was the one hitting the streets well I was the flyer girl I'm
like let me get out and do it cuz if I'm not out there searching or doing something I'm
like it's my sanity keeper she hung up thousands of missing flyers for Bailey and missing flyers for Micah and
eventually a poster for all three of the cases that read the Bakersfield 3 can you connect the dots for three friends
when it comes to connecting the dots Cheryl Micah's mom was taking all the bits of information on the cases and all
the people that Micah James and Bailey had in common and organizing it my career um was in research and data
collection and so I knew how to take uh anecdotal evidence and I knew how to prioritize it and put it in a nice
spreadsheet and make sure we passed it off to the right people and I knew how to look for information and James's mom
die I'm the one that will make the calls and set up the appointments yes very much our schedule keeper they recognized
immediately they were a powerful team if we were by ourselves you can't hold it together long enough to do it in this in
our situations none of us could have held it together and done all of those yeah the detective work we did the
Google everything and the calling and the looking people up and learned how to look and track people down and
interviewing people till 2 in the morning on the phone taking notes with a crayon when you can't find a pen and
convincing the local people to put us on their schedule and and meet with us and
talk to us yeah I remember the first time they showed up to my news station with a
binder of timelines and spreadsheets and even a color coordinated diagram of people who were in The Circle of Friends
with Micah James and Bailey complete with the individual's fot photos I couldn't believe how much information
they'd gathered themselves and how quickly they'd done it frankly it was almost a bit overwhelming as they mapped
out a plethora of different crimes they believed this web of people might be involved in ranging from male theft to
drug dealing to sex trafficking and it was all apparently happening in an area of town I didn't normally report on very
nice schools nice neighborhoods well you know large home homes people they talk about oh well I live in this part of
town so that kind of stuff doesn't happen here oh yes it does and may be two doors down you have no
idea it was a lot to untangle the first most pressing issue was understanding the ties between Micah James and Bailey
yes they knew each other and had many people in common but what was really going on with this group of people and
were the cases really all connected it's one of the few times in my career where
I've kind of almost been warned hey you don't want to dig too deep on this one that's next time on the Bakersfield 3
[Music]

EPISODE 1/15

Fight Like a Mother When a local young woman goes missing, it initially appears to be an all too familiar tragic tale involving a suspicious boyfriend. But it soon becomes clear the case is anything but typical when three local mothers begin their own investigation.

When two friends go missing back-to-back, and in between their disappearances, a third friend is murdered, their mothers begin their own investigation. As the connections between the three cases are explored, the mothers navigate devastating twists and turns, including one revelation that shakes the community to its core.

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The Bakersfield Three Podcast https://casefilepresents.com/the-bakersfield-three/

----- CREDITS

Writing & Narration – Olivia Lavoice Audio Editing - Anthony Telfer Production and Music – Mike Migas Animation - Mat Rydzik, Paulina Szymanska

Special thanks to the mothers and family of the Bakersfield 3 & KGET News Station

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Brief Summary

The episode investigates the disappearances of Micah Holsenbake and Bailey Despot, revealing connections and community efforts to uncover the truth.

Key points

The Disappearance of Micah and Bailey. Two friends go missing within a month of each other, raising questions about their connection.
A Haunting Mystery. The case grows more complex with a murder in Bakersfield, linking the three individuals.
The Search for Bailey Despot. A local news reporter uncovers a search warrant mentioning a missing woman, Bailey Despot.
Connecting the Cases. Mothers of the missing individuals meet to discuss their children's disappearances and shared connections.
The Mothers Unite. The three mothers adopt a motto and begin working together to find their children.
The Power of Teamwork. The families unite to tackle the investigation, showcasing their determination and resourcefulness.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I will go dig and I will find.

A determined promise to uncover the truth.

0:51WatchMay 20, 2024

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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