Episode 363

Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence, and is not intended for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised. I want to say, I have to thank you guys. Some of you are so nice. You really are. I had mentioned something briefly about an illness that I suffered over the last couple of years, and so many of you reached out and said, you know, you were praying for me that you hoped I got better, that you were curious about what it was. I don't want to put certain parts of my life out there in the public. It's just not a good idea, but I do want to thank all of you for the kind words. You know, I was really thinking about maybe this being the last season of Sword and Scale ever, because we're kind of in a transitional period, and a lot of the audiences dropped off, probably due to some of the politics of some of the themes we cover here. But I took a couple weeks to just clear my mind, and I don't think I'm going to do that. I don't think I can do that. The show is now firmly part of me, and we're just going to keep making it better. Please move through a developing Utah complex and full tactical gear. The rifle's up in place. Shields forward. Boots scraping over dirt and construction dust. Their eyes dart back and forth. Past fresh block walls, unfinished houses, open lots and weeds, tall enough to, perhaps, hide someone. Someone named Mia Bailey. They've been looking for her since the previous evening, through a dry creek bed near River Road, under bridges and around a golf course. They're searching with drones, a helicopter, and a canine dog tracking through the dark. Swat teams are poised. Officers have gone house-to-house asking neighbors what they saw, whether they know Mia, and whether they have any idea where she might have gone. By morning, the search has shifted into this new subdivision, where officers have to clear backyards, check on secure houses, and try to keep residents out of the line of fire. From above, the scene is all angles and movement. Patrol cars, blocking new streets, officers posted at corners, other deputies move alongside yards and unfinished walls, all of them watching, the same rough field behind the homes. Mia is armed, and she's desperate. Police believe she has already killed two people. This is a new neighborhood. In a way, it seems post-apocalyptic or dystopian. The sun is glaring, bullhorns glaring, but the landscape is barren and dry. My name is Courtney Senagra. I'm a deputy Washington County attorney. I'm a prosecutor, and I'm also our office's public information officer, and I was involved in the Mia Bailey case from the night of the incident. Any of the experiences that I share are my own personal experiences, my own personal opinions, and not necessarily reflective of the Washington County attorney's office. This is a nice neighborhood in our county, more affluent. In fact, one of our top attorneys lived just across the street from the scene, and so she came out. She was gardening. She's like trimming her rose bushes, and all these cop cars are there responding. Behind the houses, the land opens into a rough dirt field dotted with dry brush and tumbleweeds. In places, the weeds are high enough to hide a person. Officers move car to car, wall to wall, trying to hold a perimeter around it. Some of the homes have residents, and some are still under construction. Every open door, every backyard, every unfinished garage is another place Mia could be hiding. No one wants to be that officer who accidentally walks past her. They clear what they can. They watch their angles, and they call out warnings. They talk over the radio about crossfire. The helicopter overhead is noisy, making it hard to hear each other. Then finally, someone gets eyes on her. Should I tell her we have the helicopter and we can see her in the comply? That's going to be us out. See if she's 30 yards out. Yeah, on the ground, under the ground. Mia, we can see you on the ground laying down. We need you to put your hands up, stand up, nothing in your hands, and comply with officer command to walk towards the headlights. She's low to the ground, hidden under a patch of dried weeds, about 15 feet from a tall block wall. In one hand, she has a handgun. Most of the time, she keeps it pressed to her temple. From an upstairs window, officers watch the scene below them. Mia, in the dirt, the gun at her head, rifles pointed in her direction. Negotiators trying to reach her from the other side of the wall. Yeah, this is Tyler with the St George PD. Can you hear me? I need some conversation. I can't hear. Mia, this is Tyler with the St George PD. Can you hear me? Okay. Mia, I'm here to talk to you. I'm here to help you through this. I know that you're going through a rough time right now, and that's okay. I'm here to help you out. We want to definitely come to a peaceful resolve. We don't want you to get hurt. We don't want any of us to get hurt. Making contact isn't easy. Mia is hidden behind a wall. Officers are spread out around the field, and a drone overhead is drowning out her voice. Okay, Mia, we want to help you. We don't want you to do anything to yourself. We don't want you to do anything to us. So we want to come up with a plan on how we can help you. Okay, Mia, I heard that you said okay, but I couldn't hear the rest. I need you to put the weapon down and put your hands up in the air, so we can know that we can talk safely, okay? You can't do that. Okay, why can't you do that, Mia? The whole neighborhood is on lockdown. Tensions are high, and this is a volatile situation. Mia shouts something about her last hope, and then makes it clear she doesn't want to talk to the police. She wants someone else. They always want someone else. I need to come back with you. You said that you want to talk to the prosecutor? Okay, Mia, we can help you talk to a prosecutor. We can help you talk to an attorney, but obviously in this situation where you're at right now, they're not going to come out to where we're at because it's not safe. Once the officer has positioned himself and can hear better, he realizes that Mia is shouting about a last chance and a nuclear option. It was clear they were dealing with someone who was desperate. The officers in that field weren't starting from zero. They were negotiating with a killer, trying to keep her alive and make sure no one else in the proximity or broader community would be hurt. But before police ever found Mia in that field, her phone had already called 911, not because she had called for help, but because she'd thrown it from a car and the phone thought it had crashed. Hello, can you hear me? This is 911. The owner of his iPhone was in a severe car crash and is not responding to their phone. Almost at the same time, another call came in from the neighborhood that Mia had just fled. 911, what is the idea of emergency? My neighbors just came running down the road. I'm calling 911 for gunshots. And there's a yellow T.S. hole that just jumped away from their house. I don't know what's going on. Go in the house. Go in our house. Run inside. Got the towel. Go in the house. And this is so special. The neighborhood told dispatch what they heard from outside gunshots panic and a yellow key a soul leaving the area. But there was another call coming directly from the survivors and they were able to tell dispatch exactly what they had lived through. It looks like we've got a couple other calls about this and we're getting help on the way right now. Can you see anything that's going on? No, we're just going to the house. We've got help on the way right now, okay? I want you to stay on the line with me and let me know what you hear and what you see, okay? Don't do anything that you feel like lets you endanger. Was something spot at your house? Yes, I think my parents are shot upstairs. Do you think your parents were shot upstairs? Yes. Okay. Have you been upstairs to check? No, we just ran. Did someone come into your house to shoot? Yes. Probably we were downstairs and I started hearing gunshots and screaming upstairs. Okay, were you able to hear anybody upstairs? Just gunshots and screaming, okay? But it wasn't over after the gun was fired upstairs. The caller heard footsteps pounding on each step as the shooter headed towards the basement. Cory and his wife had no choice but to flee out the window, even as shots were being fired through the door. And after making it to the neighbor's house, they had no idea what condition their parents were in. Were they alive? Or were they dead? We do have officers in a loose perimeter in the area. That's their biggest priority before sending medical units in to help your parents, okay? It's just to make sure that the scene is safe, but as soon as they secured the scene, medical will go in to help your parents, okay? That's definitely not what you want to be told after hearing multiple gunshots, screaming, and then silence from upstairs. When you know your parents were up there going about their evening routine. You don't want to hear anything but sirens and emergency personnel, not. We have to clear the scene first. It might take a while. By the time Deputy Attorney Courtney Senagra arrived, the house wasn't just the scene of an emergency. It was a bloody crime scene. Our office has what's called a death phone. And by law in Utah, anytime there's an unattended death in the jurisdiction, a county attorney needs to be notified. And so I was working late at our office actually. It was like 8 p.m. I was a brand new prosecutor. I've been working about six or eight months. And two of our other attorneys were also there. And one of them had the on-call phone and came down and said, hey, there was a double homicide. Do you want to go on scene? So of course, I was like, yes. I mean, I was hesitant. I was like, oh, can I handle this? The sounds grew some. But I did want that experience for my job. And so the three of us went over to be on scene. The chaos had passed by the time Courtney arrived. Mia's brother Corey and his wife were safe at the neighbor's house. Officers were at the scene and were also tracking the killer. But an eerie calmness now filled the Bailey home. The ordinary details were still sitting exactly where Gail and Joseph Bailey had left them. But something that stood out to me where it did feel just very eerie is when you walked in. The first thing I noticed was we walked into the hallway. There was a living room and MSNBC was on on the TV. And there's two dead bodies in the living room area. Joseph was actually down the hallway, but Gail was in the living room and I just thought, wow. These people were just having a normal night. They're watching the news. That's the kind of image you can't shake from your brain. Not just the stark faces of death, but the reminder that they were just alive just a minute ago. The television is still on, still filling the room with disembodied voices. But nobody's listening anymore. The furniture is still in place, seats cooling where a body had just sat. It was an ordinary evening. The kind we all picture because it's the kind we all live every day. You're just sitting at home, half watching the news, thinking, there will be a tomorrow. And suddenly, there isn't. When I did see Joseph, he was laying face up and there was a little, a little bit of blood coming from his head. What I remember most is his glasses were split into. He had worn like spectacles and it was clean shots to his forehead right where his glasses had been. But the mom was just off the sofa. I don't know if she was sitting down, I don't know if she had stood up, but she was found face front near the sofa, shot in the back of the head. But Mia didn't stop with just her parents. She was out for blood and there was more blood to shed in the basement where her brother's family was staying. Then we went downstairs and there were children's toys everywhere in this downstairs living room area, little kids' toys. And that gave me the chills because what if these kids who were Mia's nieces and nephews had been home? By the time investigators finished walking through the house, they know what Mia did. But they just can't imagine why a daughter would come home and turn on her own family like a wounded coyote. And this is a story that can only be told by Mia. [Music] By this point it is the night of June 18th, 2024 in Washington City, Utah. Investigators are on a manhunt for 28-year-old Mia Bailey. On the evening of June 18th, 2024, she stormed into the family home and executed both of her parents. When she heard her brother's voice in the basement, she went for him and his wife, too. Thankfully, they escaped through a bedroom window before the bullets could reach them. And when investigators walked through the house afterwards, the horror wasn't only upstairs. Downstairs where Mia's nieces and nephews might have been, children's toys were still scattered across the room. Police could clearly make out what happened at the scene, and decides casings were left behind. Mia, however, vanished into the dark in a yellow keya, armed and desperate. The question would follow them through the night, from the quiet, blood-stained house in Washington City to the streets of nearby St. George. The chase would come to a head in a half-built neighborhood on the edge of town, where Mia would finally be found in a patch of weeds with a gun to her head. Before the standoff ended, before Mia was brought into the interview room, investigators were already working backwards. While officers in St. George tried to keep her alive, other investigators were calling the people who had seen her, heard from her, or knew it had been happening in the days and hours before the shooting. They were trying to build a picture of Mia before the field, before the gun, before the house. And one of the first pieces of that picture came from someone Mia had only recently started dating. And even in that short time, he had already seen signs that Mia was not. Okay. "How did you meet Mia?" "I met her at Halley's, the place where I work, but maybe like a week and a half ago?" "Okay." She just seemed nice. I asked her if she had Facebook, she said, "Yes." And then it's kind of how we got to meet each other. So you only? know her for a week and a half. Yeah, I can tell that she wanted to progress things fast. Yeah, are you guys boyfriend and girlfriend or what are you just starting dating? Yeah, just kind of starting. Okay, but nothing was official. No, okay. Well, she put on her Facebook that he was her boyfriend. Yeah, that surprised me. And I said to court, how did you feel about that? You know, because she hasn't even known her. So she made that decision on her own? Okay. Yeah, I just got out of the relationship before and that was hard rock and over so I wasn't looking to jump into anything right away. A week and a half isn't very long, but it was long enough for him to notice two things. Mia wanted the relationship to move faster than he did, and underneath that something was off. Yeah, I just I just started to get to know her like a couple of weeks ago. I don't know very well. Okay. I think I know that she was kind of depressed and I can tell that she so many shoes to cut herself. And as far as where she is, I really don't know. He didn't view her depression or even her fast paces or red flag, though. They were starting out as friends and even had plans that evening. What was the last time you talked to her yesterday? Well, this morning when I texted her, we were going to arrange like, you know, like a game date night. And that's, she said she had to get her, her stuff, I guess, her family's home and that's the fast time for her. She's like, be sure to, I said, be sure to tell me what other games she has. I'm like board games and she said she has to grab it, you know, there and then I said bring her any games to be funny and that's the last I heard from her right there. That was a version of Mia he knew that morning. It was someone making date night plans and talking about board games, someone who was normal. It was true Mia was in the middle of moving out of one place into another and away from the people who had been letting her stay with them. She said she's in the process of moving, but I don't know. Are you aware of her renting like any U-all trucks or anything like that? She said where she was moving to. She said she was applied to a few different places. She says she tried Jill Plaza and then she said it fell through. I don't know why they denied her, but that's all I know. Okay. Do you know of any other friends she has? If you ever hung out with any other friends with her or anything like that? I've seen her with her cousin and that's all I've seen her with. She seems do you know who her cousin is? The cousin was Jay and the house Mia had been staying in belong to Jay's mother. Mia's aunt Jenny. So investigators called Jenny next. She had seen Mia that afternoon just hours before the first 911 calls came in. Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello, is it Jenny? Yeah? Hey, Jenny, this is Detective John that was washing the city police department. Yeah. Hey, so you got a second I can talk with you? Put your belt on. Yeah, go ahead. I'm here at I'm seeing trying to gather some more information. Okay. And so I just wanted to kind of talk with you a quick and see when the last time you talked with Mia was in 547. 547. That was almost exactly one hour before Mia shot her parents. Shirley Aunt Jenny would have some clues. I called her because her mother had called my mom her mom and they have not had a great relationship and after mom talked with my sister. I called Mia because she had been in the house earlier to pick up her things out of the garage. The woman in the last 40 area. How do your house or this house appear? From your house or this house here? No, for my house, she came to our house in the islands because she's been storing her things there. I'm over things. Okay. So she texted me earlier in the day and said, I'm going to come by and get my things. I said, that's fine, but you're welcome to leave her here. And she said, no, I want an air conditioned unit. And I said, okay, whatever. So she's going up and I don't know what time you think it was 430. About 4 o'clock in God or stuff. My husband was in the garage with her. She was fine. Okay. So nothing she wasn't acting super crazy or upset. Anything that would make you concerned that something like this was going to happen. No, Rick said in the garage, she seemed perfectly normal. Jenny said Mia was fine, but fine can actually be a complicated word. Fine for the moment. Fine for the hour. What exactly does fine mean? Are you fine? Am I fine? I don't know. Because only weeks earlier, Mia definitely didn't seem fine. And she came out. But she's always been very docile around us. Aunt Jenny's call gave investigators the only version of Mia she knew. Calm enough to move her things. Familiar enough with the family to sound docile. But unstable enough that she had recently checked herself into a hospital due to hearing voices. Then another witness came forward. This was someone with no family history, no context and no reason to re-danger into what she saw. But danger isn't what grabbed her attention. Something else did. My husband and I were at the old St. George temple. We just finished some ceilings and we were coming down to the first floor. And when you enter that temple before you go to the front desk, to the left there's a. they call it a family room, like a waiting room in there. And so when we were coming out, that girl came out of the family waiting room and was starting to exit the temple. And I was behind her and when I first saw her, I thought, "Oh my gosh, she had this skirt on, it was about like four inches above her knee and it was like shooting out like a ballerina skirt, you know, but she had called cowgirl boots on at the same time. It just got my attention, you know, it's okay. But I thought it's probably a family member that's waiting, you know, maybe some of you got married or something. And so as we exit the temple, this thought came to my mind, she'll hurt the love of the Savior. Right. And because of somebody's daughter, you want them to know, you know, they're different. So I said, "Hey, oh lady, I love those cowgirl boots, I had a ranch for 30 years and I noticed any really cute cowgirl boots, always." Right. And she turned around and she said, "Why thank you." I said, "But I have to admit, I'm older now and I can't wear what we used to call, and I said the letter S, S can't burst because it kills my toes." It was a kind of trivial conversation that people forget five minutes later, a compliment, a quick laugh, nothing that sounded like a warning, nothing that sounded like someone was about to snap, about to flip out and destroy the lives closest to them in a matter of hours. Until she realized that what she was seeing wasn't really what she was seeing. You know, it just had a little tiny square at the end of these white boots and she says, "Well, you just have to learn to get them to fit a certain way." And when she did that, I had, in my mind, I thought, "This is guy." Right then I knew, with hairy legs and guy's legs, and you know, she was taller than me, I'm five foot, she was taller, but and then I just realized, your voice, I mean, it wasn't like a low voice, but it was different. And anyway, I said, I said, "Well, they are really cute boots." And so we started walking and said, "Well, you have enjoyed This beautiful day because it was cooler that day. I said enjoy They both went their separate ways and this lady thought nothing of it. Until she turned on the news that night and saw a man hunt. Or should I say a woman hunt? That's out stupid. He told me to actually call and let you guys know what happened when I talked to that guy, which I thought was a girl, and it was Tuesday around 3pm. Okay. My son also told me you should remain anonymous because you don't ever want that guy to have your name. Okay. Okay. Back in the field, negotiators keep me talking. The conversation goes on for almost an hour. She asks for a prosecutor and talks about wanting the death penalty. She asks what kind of deal can be made. But eventually, the lead detective gets her to agree to a surrender plan. Mia puts the gun down, keeps her hands visible, and walks towards the tactical team. Doctors take her into custody, and no one else is hurt. Mia finally gets the conversation she's been asking for. She has taken to an interview room with detectives and a prosecutor to explain. I'm not so much curious as far as what happened, but I'm kind of curious that they kind of won't let up to it. Mia, born Colin Bailey, was obviously leaving out the kindness of the woman from the Saint George Temple, who complimented her boots and treated Mia like the woman she wanted to be. She said, "Being homeless after my family is at least several times and being 20 grand dead." What does that come from? Well, it comes from our lungs. It was getting expensive, being the woman she wanted to be, that is. As for homelessness, Mia's cousin kicked her out because she was afraid she was crazy. She made an allegation saying a neighbor pointed a gun at her. The motions apparently escalated and Mia said her cousin just didn't understand. That allegation, by the way, wasn't verified. We brought in Dr. Stephen Levine, a psychiatrist in the Cleveland, Ohio area, to talk about gender dysphoria, mental illness, and surgery as a last hope. Dr. Levine is also a professor at Case Western University. He's known for his thesis that gender dysphoria is usually caused by psychological issues that should be treated as such rather than with gender-affirming care. Dr. Levine was among the earliest in his field to recognize the need for research in this area. In 1974, he co-founded a gender identity clinic through Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Dr. Levine, as obviously had a lot of pushback given his research in the field and his unwillingness to bend to the current politics surrounding this ever-changing issue. The social cultural shift has to do with the human need to reinterpret how to live one's life, how to combine the male and female interests that all of us have into a way of being a man and woman. We are redefining the ways of being a man and woman, but the internet has led to a lot of the young people who are having distress in their lives thinking that the problem, the cause of their distress, is not the ordinary psychiatric causes of distress of family dysfunction and personal difficulties, but it's due to the fact that they didn't understand that they were a trans person and some authority figure, some process on the internet seems to have influenced young people dramatically into thinking that maybe they're trans. And so adolescents are now experimenting a great deal with differences in orientation and differences in gender expression. When someone is already depressed, isolated, autistic, suicidal, or desperate, the internet can sometimes hand them a simple answer. This is why you hurt. You are trans. But for Levine, this is not the same as a stable transgender person living an ordinary life. That person, he says, is not a psychiatric patient. The real concern is when the identity is tied to serious suffering. When the person isn't just saying this is who I am, but I can't survive unless my body changes. Nia was a perfect example of someone who not only had pre-existing mental health conditions, but her desperation became dangerous. And the detective wanted to know how she got to that point. What I led up to was my got a call from my social worker from the hospital, and I could apparently kind of broken him up in a way that shared the details of the hospital by the worst world. So it's another to contact him to say no in his surgery. How should mother contact the hospital? I know I could probably peel it with just if that, but she wouldn't just say I was very furious. And I asked her, I don't want to hear her explain excuses. I want to hear my explanation and I'm sorry, and I'll do something about it anyway. Whether Mia meant it this way or not, this was a literal statement. Her resentment was palpable. Her mother was dead by Mia's own hand. Because her mother wouldn't say sorry? Mia felt like she was holding on by a threat. During the standoff, she repeatedly shouted, "This was my last hope," meaning the final surgery to remove her male genitalia. And she placed all the blame on her parents, especially your mother. So you might be thinking, "Oh, those mean parents, that unwoke mom who ruined her child's life." But according to everyone except Mia, the family was as supportive as they could be. The surgery was canceled, but our impression was that it was not canceled because her parents were simply not supportive of her transitioning, or her being transgender, or how she chose to identify, but because they were concerned more broadly about her mental health. From what I understood, her family was very supportive of her and her decision to transition. And she also struggled with other diagnoses, and I'm not a medical expert, so I don't want to get into those, but I believe that they were supportive of her in those as well. There was a prior protective order, where I think the family just at one point just had to act to protect themselves because they felt that she was a danger and a threat to them, but I think that was a last resort I do think they'd try to support her as much as they could. Mia didn't just suffer from gender dysphoria. She had a host of other mental health disorders and diagnoses, ranging from ADHD to autism, to potential schizophrenia. So her parents didn't feel like it was wise to go ahead with such a serious and life-altering surgery, because the fact was this was not going to cure her mental illness, and it may just make it worse. Dr. Levine says this is often the danger. When somebody is already carrying serious depression, anxiety, instability, or other psychiatric issues, surgery might change the body without touching the deeper source of suffering. His evidence comes from a recent Finnish study, if you want to look that up. So we have some evidence that even the curve into care for the vast majority of people. to urge, in this case, to uninstall their unhappiness. You see, the unhappiness is usually presented as suicidality, depression, anxiety, sometimes drug addiction, sometimes suicidal thoughts. So we realized that among the majority of people who are seeking the tree's solution to their unhappiness, the majority of those people may still be unhappy after they make all these changes to their body. And so people like me are saying to people before they have these kind of medical interventions, let's pay attention to what is crippling you, what is the source of your depression, anxiety, you're eating disorders, whatever, whatever the situation is. And let's pay attention to that. You're in charge of your gender, not me, I'm not trying to change your gender, but I'm trying to do is improve your mental health. And that's, doesn't have to do with gender, live has to do with ease over one's symptoms of self-param, suicidality, repression, anxiety, eating disorders, and sometimes the drug demands. For me, every aspect of her mental suffering was blamed on being in the wrong body. But you know that old chicken and egg analogy, which came first, Mia thought that everyone was against her. Her parents didn't support her and she was bullied by the community at large. I would say that Mia probably subjectively felt bullied and harassed. But I couldn't, I don't have all the facts, I don't know her life story. From what I observed, I don't know that the objective harassment was to the degree that maybe she believed. - Dr. Levine says there's another layer to all of this. Beyond diagnosis, beyond treatment, there is the social question. How do the people around someone respond when that person's identity changes? We gave him an analogy. Is it like an agitated schizophrenic, for example, who might try to convince you that you're under immediate attack based on his own delusion? Do you go along with it, just to be safe? And is it kindness to use the name and pronoun someone wants you to use, or is it an obligation? And what happens when people feel pushed to accept something they don't believe is true? - That's a political question and that's a matter's question. If I think I am some other gender, some atypical gender, and I prefer to be called they, rather than he or she. But do I have the right to impose upon you, in my sense of reality that I'm a they, even though you who don't have gender, the story of poor trans identity, you have learned all the days in your life that they is a plural, and this is a see you're the person, and that's the wrong language. So the question is, if I consider myself to be something that offends your sense of reality, do I have a right to demand that you contort to my sense of reality? And so that's the social debate that's going on. The only thing I could say about that is that when one transitions, either in a binary or non-binary fashion, your sense of reality is different in a common person. And so this is the price that we pay for the trans or a gender diverse person, we can use that for this. The cost that these people have to pay is that their sense of reality is different than the majority of human beings that they interact with. Mia was upset because her surgery had been scheduled for September 9th, and she managed to move it up to July 9th. That would have been two weeks from the time of the murders. But remember, Mia had just checked herself into a psychiatric hospital. She knew she wasn't stable. But in the interview, Mia was vague about the hospitalization. She claimed it was more or less a prerequisite that her mom had made for them to feel okay about her getting the surgery. Mia reluctantly agreed to that, and to some therapy. If and only if her parents would help her go through with the sex change, but something went wrong. The hospital only kept her for three days. Beyond admitting ADHD and autism, she was vague about her other issues, like psychosis. Did you know you've been diagnosed with schizophrenia? - No, that's what I was going to ask for, I'm not sure. So it's one of the things in your pregnancy, and the other is that you never have anything that would like for diagnosed with. - One was like, they were diagnosed, but I knew what it saw that day. The guy was right in there, I knew what he said. But nobody believed me. It's not a camera bird. It's something to deal with, like, the same auditory illusion. - Oh gosh, I'm sorry, like hallucinations or something. - Yeah, it's not like that, it's not quite, I think that's reason for any of that. - So, some form of psychosis, regardless, one topic the detective wanted to clear up was premeditation. You could tell in the interview that Mia was pretty lucid. That has to do with being oriented to person, place, and time. Do they know who they are? Do they know where they are? And do they know what time it is? Mia seemed very oriented and grounded. She knew exactly what she did and why. - If you could go back to yesterday, would you change the outcome of your mom's death? - I don't think there's any way to change their mind to them. If they changed their mind, which I know they're wrong, 'cause they're so narcissistic, but I mean, it would be played out completely differently. - So, their answer was on them. They had their chance. - They changed their answer to know that was pretty much solidified their outcome. - Yeah, at least in your mind. - Yeah, and basically is no, we won't do anything about it. No, we won't apologize and all this stuff. So, I mean, this was like my one last attempt. I tried so many times, but I tried and I'm gonna use so many chances all my family, my friends, and I can't be count, but I just did it to myself. I just, you know, strung myself by giving them too many chances and that wasn't enough. - Did you say anything to your mom when you won't come? - No. - I was wondering, that was actually a question I had. 'Cause if you, if that was, so if you walk through the door, so you're more, there was no option for her to be able to say, okay, yeah, I'll change my mind. - No, 'cause I knew, if I knew, if I hesitated, it was me wanting to sleep, I would have done it. And then I just regret my life more and more and more, I get more angry, and then it would be just my mom and dad. - So that decision was made to not have any conversation when you walked into the door? - No, the decision made to kill. Yeah, my decision was done. And like, this is, I'm done with this crap. - Yeah, that makes sense. - Are you seeing a pattern yet? Mia's parents were the narcissist, it's not her. She gave them every chance, except the one that mattered most, of course. The one that might have kept her from pulling the trigger on them. The detective asked, "Did your mom have any last words?" The answer was no, because Mia didn't give her a chance. And the next thing she remembered was her dad walking down the hall towards the living room, asking what was going on. So, she took him out, too. It was all about Mia, and all about what Mia wanted. And she had absolutely no remorse. - And so I just wanna, I just wanna just clarify, as far as any remorse that you have. - Well, I think the remorse was, I didn't want to become the monster that they made me to be. I really wanted to be good, I really didn't. - Yeah. - But, like I said, that was the last reason I was a monster. - She says, I didn't wanna become the monster they made me to be. It goes without saying, but I'm gonna say it anyway, 'cause I'm Mike. Hi, nice to meet you. No one can make you a monster. You see, there's this thing called choices. It's part of a greater thing called personal responsibility. Should I send that out for you, lib towards out there? Yeah, yeah, yeah, leave it in the comments, try to get me banned, whatever, fuck off. But if you're honest with yourself about the very obvious pattern we keep seeing over and over again, a pattern of always looking outwards, blaming others. others, whenever anything goes wrong, me as only remorseful feelings were still about what others had done to her. They made her into a monster, and she regretted that. Which by the way, I'd hate to be one of those trans surgeons who now has a perpetual target on their back because they made non-reversible changes to multiple human beings, many of which are unsure, unstable, and have a perspective of blaming outwards. Some of them might change their mind in a few years, and fuck around and find out, I guess. At another point when Mia was questioned again about whether there was anything else they should know, she turned the whole conversation on its head. Not to state the obvious or anything, but she's laughing. I mean, he's laughing, sorry Mia, you don't deserve my respect. It's taking off the main route, you're taking a bunch of different routes, off-road all the time, sometimes main road, just a fun route, and then off-road again, and hopping through. I am so sorry to all the people, I'm glad it's probably a story not an accident or a problem, but I'm sorry, I don't want to be here for a moment more, I don't want anything to happen. Nothing like having a chuckle with police about hiding from helicopters after you've murdered your parents. What a cunt. Mia said the surgery was her last hope, and that was taken from her. She said she was trying to get one more bullet to use on herself, but in the standoff, she already had options. She was the one holding the gun. She had armed officers around her. She had already talked about the death penalty and specified wanting a firing squad. But according to the police summary about the negotiation, Mia also said she could have killed herself and didn't, because then they would have won. Instead, she wanted to take everyone down with her. And when detectives asked if there was anything else they should know, Mia didn't talk about mom or dad. She talked about how much better she could have done it. Horse shows up in the interview, but it never seems to land on her parents. She shows more concern for strangers who passed by, for damage that she may have caused to shrubbery, for the mechanics of the chase, anything other than her own family. In her interview, when she started to talk about how she was able to evade the police for so long, so she was not remorseful. She was bragging about how well her plan worked, and that was very telling. And something we definitely considered when we discussed whether or not we should seek the death penalty. Before prosecutors could decide whether to seek death, there were other voices they had to hear. Gail and Joseph Bailey were gone. One son, Bailey, escaped, and the rest of the Bailey's sons still had to decide what they wanted the state to do with their youngest brother, Colin, the one who had murdered their parents because he wanted to be a woman. 28-year-old Colin Bailey, the youngest of four boys, believed he was special. Not special, like artistically gifted or mathematically brilliant. I was born with a dick, and I think I should have a vagina, and that's my whole personality. Colin legally changed his name to Mia to match what he thought his gender should be. Mia was newly homeless, living in storage units, relatives' houses, and hotel rooms in Washington County, Utah. On June 18th, 2024, she intruded into her parents' home in Washington City, despite a restraining order against her. She gave no opportunity for discussion. She pulled out her nine-millimeter, and opened fire. When she heard noises in the basement, she shot at her brother and sister-in-law through a locked door. She then went back upstairs to finish off her dying mother. Her father was already dead. The mother and sister-in-law were going to go back upstairs and do one more round and die just in case. Mom gets shot. A bunch. A bunch. I do remember actually coming out just in case, because you're hurt, like, working quite that, like, choking. Okay. I went to. Shoot her again. Do you remember standing up close to her? You remember? I was about 16 away. So, never any closer than six feet? No. Go. Okay. And then dad comes around. What's up? What's going on? Yeah. And then where is dad? It was this. He just fell backwards. Okay. So, he shot him. And then, so, just one round with that? Yeah. And then I. And then you went downstairs? Chop one round down there. Do you remember where you shot that round downstairs? And they don't let him talk to her. They don't let him talk to her? Yeah. It was a lot. Could you hear him inside? Yeah. He barged the door. The stuff. And I just like, fuck him. I need stuff. I need target. So, what was the road for? The message. Just a message. Or so. Yeah. What would it be like if you were to hit him? Well, it's an asshole. That's just a little glimpse though. What the world would be like if we all just decided to shoot everyone who we thought was an asshole. A lot of people would be dead. That's why we have morals. That's why we have self-restraint and laws. Mia was arrested the next morning after an hour's long manhunt and taken to an interview room where she told detectives that the sex-changed surgery had been her last hope and losing it was the final straw. But Utah is one of 27 states that employs the death penalty. And the prosecutors still had to decide whether Mia Bailey should live or die. During the interview with detectives, Mia was calm and oriented. She never shed a tear and never showed remorse for ending the lives of her parents. Her brother Corey was there and lived to tell about it. Corey, I know this is fucking hardest thing you've ever done, right? I need you to tell me what happened today. So me and my wife were downstairs watching the show. My mom was upstairs arguing with my grandma about some family drama or whatever. But apparently it pissed off my brother. He's a schizophrenic. He's been going through a lot of issues lately and transitioning. But he's been having a lot more issues lately. But you know what they were talking about? It's in pieces arguing about money and getting help taking care of her. Okay. Okay. Apparently he was supposed to do some surgery or something. I haven't been. Keep an eye on what's going on with him too much, but he got cancelled and he thinks it was their fault And This is the first time he's been to the house of a minute or yeah, we have a protective order against him I mean my life. Okay, is that and through that house? Yes. Okay Because the house me my life like this. Okay All in all as I heard shooting upstairs, and then my my mother yelling and screaming and Then I locked the door to our room and I started opening the window when I tried Got her out and got myself out By the time we were climbing out the window, he was pounding on my door trying to open it then I heard gunshots at my door Take a minute to just ask yourself honestly Would your brain work that fast? Because some people run towards action some people panic and then some people panic so hard that they can't make a decision at all Corey had seconds to figure out what was happening move and make the right choice before Mia reached the door At this point Mia isn't in custody yet and the shooting has just occurred less than 30 minutes before The Bailey family still doesn't even have the worst answer yet Corey knows what he heard He knows his parents were upstairs. He knows he and Amanda barely got out But he doesn't know if his parents are still alive and neither do his brothers You know where When I have a seat man, when have a seat, right? Here hold on Hi, I'm sorry to be going to tell you They're deceased both Okay, this is my brother. I don't know that's the reason I put him on I'm gonna let you deal with that, okay? Do you need something right now? I mean we have the victim's advocate. We can call out for you I don't even know where we've been with this, I know I know until he's found I don't know where to go that will be safe at this point Like 20 minutes ago For Corey the shock is still immediate the fear has barely worn off and the adrenaline is still in his body The grief is only beginning to catch up But the legal process moves a hell of a lot slower Mia confessed that night. In fact, she detailed exactly what she did and why But she didn't immediately plead For more than a year prosecutors weighed what kind of case this was Not just whether Mia was guilty Was this straight forward or or mitigating factors strong enough to take the death penalty off the table In Utah, we as prosecutors Have a small time frame to decide whether or not to seek the death penalty We have to declare it at the outset Some of the factors that we have to consider are past cases where we sought the death penalty and The facts of the cases need to be similar. So we looked at the two recent two most recent cases which again We don't have very many murders. So We don't have a lot to compare it to but the cases that we did seek the death penalty on They involved like a torture aspect We felt this case was different in that these were quick clean shots, especially with Joseph who was shot in the head That there wasn't that that torturous aspect On the flip side we did consider this to be premeditated It was planned out. She had been practicing And that that's an aggravating factor that would incline us to seek the death penalty A lot of our discussion focused on mental health issues and Ultimately we decided not to seek the death penalty because of one the mental health issues and two The fact that in her interview she said she wanted the death penalty and we felt like giving her that What she wanted was the wrong thing to do. We shouldn't we didn't want to reward her decision to murder her parents In fact, she made a motion later on in court asking the judge to impose the death penalty against the advice of her defense attorney But that's not her decision to make that's a prosecuting decision and a judge's decision It was still all about Mia She wanted to skip the part of due process that says the judge and jury of your peers got to decide your fate Mia already got to decide who lived and died because She didn't get her way and now she wanted the easy way out and she wanted it now But that's just not how it works and this is the part Mia never seemed to be able to understand A diagnosis might explain suffering and instability But it doesn't turn murder into self-defense Mia had grievances and a whole list of people she thought had failed her In Mia's version of the story, she was still the victim Not her mom, not her dad, not her brothers or her nephews or nieces Just Mia That's the ugly logic of narcissistic violence The pain always points inwards The blame Outwards And the people who get hurt are treated just like obstacles Not human beings Mia Bailey was not just someone with gender dysphoria She was a person who made narcissistic and violent choices that ended lives And none of her explanations changed what prosecutors were looking at Two dead parents, a brother and a sister-in-law who barely escaped Target practice, a gun, a confession and a defendant who talked about death like it was one more thing she could control Not going for the death penalty was of course controversial But I do believe based on the factors that we have to abide by it was the right decision and the mental health issues One of the challenges as a prosecutor is Working with victims and working with victims families, especially in a situation where One family member has victimized the rest of their family So the defendant is a family member of the victim, which is what we have here and Mia had three brothers and all of them Wanted different things out of this so some were seeking more of like punitive measures and others were Seeking more mercy and saying that their parents wouldn't want Mia to be punished So harshly For these crimes. So as a prosecutor we have to take into account the victims and what they want But we also have a responsibility to the community And we have to take in to account the community as well so Trying to find where to land on the Justice versus mercy scale was difficult for our team Aggravated murder carries a minimum of 25 years per count. So we had two aggravated murders one for Joseph one for gal each with a sentence of 25 to life One of the decisions that we had to make was whether to pursue those sentences concurrently So that they would run at the same time and Mia could potentially be Out of prison in 25 years Or to ask them to be ran consecutively so that means stacked on top of each other So Mia would serve 25 years for the murder of Joseph and then 25 years minimum for the murder of gal potentially longer up to life Meaning that that would be a minimum of 50 years We chose and it wasn't necessarily an easy decision but Because we did want to be respectful of the family and of the mental health circumstances But we chose to pursue consecutive sentences I do think at the end of the day we did get the family to See where we were coming from and agree with the consecutive sentencing, but it was a challenge to get there And the reason we went just consecutive is because we as an office viewed that as Two separate lives two separate people that needed justice And so we wanted each victim to be represented Mia confessed in the interview room, but it wasn't until a year later after she passed a competency evaluation That prosecutors offered a plea On November 6th Mia Bailey changed her plea from not guilty to guilty but mentally ill And on December 19th she returned to court for sentencing It's mainly in case two four one five zero one one nine three to the charge of aggravated But her a first degree felony or hereby sentenced to serve 25 years to live Count to aggravate And at sensing, the focus finally moved away from Mia and her selfishness, her surgery, Sarah Blame, back to the people she left behind, her brothers. The majority of the remaining family that hasn't spoken today of Joseph Blue Bailey and Gayle Bailey, two real people whose lives were defined not by how they died but how they lived. We also stand here as a family to Mia but dual reality is not something we choose but is something that we must carry honestly. Our father, Joseph Blue Bailey, is the most of his working life as a maritime engineer on tugboats. He was gone for months at a time, doing physical demanding and often dangerous work so his family would be stable and secure, he believed in responsibility not excuses. Her mother, Gayle, was a homemaker but advocacy was her life's work. She spent years navigating schools, doctors and systems that resisted accommodation, particularly when it came to mental illness. She did that work without a title, without pay and without recognition because her children mattered more than anything else. One day for most people understood what autism or schizophrenia meant, she was fighting school systems, attending IEP meetings, research and coloring, publishing, and insisting that her child not be written off because she was difficult or complicated. The consequences we were asking for are not rooted in hatred or revenge, they were rooted in responsibility, safety and the reality that you required structure and treatment to survive. What happened cannot be undone but pretending you were somewhere you were never capable or being does not serve justice and it does not honor our parents. I cannot imagine what this family has gone through and to be honest I can't imagine what someone who legitimately thinks they were born in the wrong body feels like either, must be awful, always needing external validation to feel normal, it's gotta be hell. And unfortunately I have to say this because there's a lot of really ignorant people out there, but just because you consider yourself trans doesn't mean you're a homicidal maniac. I've interacted with plenty of trans people, some even in this industry that are perfectly normal, nice and a pleasure to be around, shout out Annie Orion from who are these podcasts. But let's stop pretending. Like wanting to cut your dick off doesn't mean you're not fucked up. Guess what, we're all fucked up, we all have issues, we all have trauma, we're all doing the best we can. You're free to make whatever decisions you want to make yourself okay enough to carry on. And unless you're a complete bag of shit you'll address people by how they want to be addressed, with the same politeness you would use if you had mispronounced their name. I don't have a problem with any of that, I don't think anyone I know has a problem with that. The problem comes when you start amplifying your so-called solution, start normalizing it. Get every media talking head to perpetuate your dick removal miracle cure, in movies, TV, social media, you get dumb celebrities to chant your mantras, and create a social contagion that envelops the most vulnerable. Those with severe psychological issues and literal confused children who already feel out of place, not due to sex, but to that magical awkward age where we all feel like social rejects, and are doing just about anything to feel special to feel normal. Then you start attacking anyone who gets in your way. That's where the problem is. When you stop asking if they'll address you by your pronouns and you start demanding that they do, you start demanding that the collective pool of government money funded by all of our tax dollars pays for it, for you to have your little cure, and then you demonize threatened and cancel anyone that says otherwise. That is where the problem is. Mia Bailey wanted the world to validate her identity, her pain, and her version of reality. But the law doesn't exist to affirm delusion, excuse narcissism, or turn grievance and to permission to kill. No name change, no diagnosis, no surgery, and no amount of suffering could change what this was. Two parents executed in cold blood. A brother nearly killed and a family torn apart and forced to carry the cost of Mia's self-obsession. Mia Bailey doesn't deserve my or anyone else's politeness, so I will not address it by its pronouns. And if you're listening and you have a problem with that, you can suck my dick because I still have one. It is not a woman. It is not a man. It is a monster. And it will be about 88 years old when it finally gets out of prison. Well, I can't wait to see what my red neck buddies think of this one. Awesome being all ignorant and cis and what not here in Texas. I'm really looking forward to the comments over at swordenscale.com, so head on over there and leave one. Would you mind? Would you? Stay safe guys. Bye. [MUSIC]