Teacher’s Husband Rats Out Wife for Having Sex with Student: Police

"St. John is a very small area, things like this going to get out very quickly." A small Pacific Northwest town making national news when a first-grade teacher allegedly has sex with a 16-year-old student and it's her own husband that reportedly turns her in. At first, police claimed she said it was only a little kiss and blamed the student calling him a very flirtatious boy, but when the cops confronted her with the receipts, she reportedly changed her too. This is Scandal, presented by Juan Cron. I'm Siergelesty. A first-grade teacher, kicked out of school after allegedly having sex with a 16-year-old student in the district. According to court docs, she's admitted to all of it, too, and the details are shocking. Least of all, the fact that it was her own husband, who reportedly turned on her, sharing screenshots with detectives that he says "prove what happened." Today's scandal takes us to St. John Washington. It's a town just about an hour south of Spokane, and that's home to the St. John's School District, where since last September, 25-year-old McKenzie Knot has been employed. She was hired on as a first-grade teacher and worked out of the elementary school. Here's a photo of her with a student that the school itself posted to their Facebook. But now, according to court documents, she's accused of having inappropriate relations with a high school student from that district who was reportedly a 16-year-old family friend. So here's what police say happened. Last Saturday, May 9. McKenzie and her husband had some friends over, and I'm going to withhold their names just for their privacy, but there was another couple over. So McKenzie and the woman hung out for a while at the home, and the husband's left for a time. But later on, when the husband's came back, things allegedly escalated. According to McKenzie, she and her husband have been married for about four years, and during that time, issues have arisen. McKenzie said there was a lot of mutual infidelity within their relationship and anger in their relationship. About eight months ago, McKenzie says that her husband cheated on her. After that, she says the trust was completely lost in their relationship. And all of this came to a head on Saturday night when they got into an argument and even discussed divorce. At some point, McKenzie's female friend went into the spare bedroom to go to sleep, but awoke to the sound of more fighting. And this friend later told detectives that McKenzie came into the spare bedroom and asked to borrow her friend's phone. She then made a call to a 16 year old boy in the court docs he's referred to as John Doe or JD for short. McKenzie's husband decided to call police, and that's when all of these allegations came to light. McKenzie's husband said he was very upset because he found out his wife was cheating on him with a 16 year old and had screenshots to prove it. He told police he just had kind of a weird feeling. McKenzie had been laying down, sleeping with her phone, and that to the husband just didn't seem right. Now in the past, he'd known her password. So he grabbed the phone and used this password. And that's when he says he found the evidence. According to her husband, JD is a family friend. Now the husband is an assistant high school track coach. So he knows the boy that way, by the way, is a 16 year old junior in high school at the same district where McKenzie teaches. When McKenzie's husband confronted her about the allegations, initially she said it was only a little kiss. Later, when police confronted her, McKenzie denied smooching or having sex with JD. Police say she admitted she messaged him, though, explaining that both she and her husband were Snapchatting JD. When her husband went to bed, though, McKenzie kept talking to the boy, but McKenzie's story about the text messages did not make any sense. McKenzie said the night she communicated with JD, she was very intoxicated. McKenzie said she takes medication, which makes things very fuzzy. McKenzie said she does remember texting him, though. McKenzie said they did end up meeting in the middle of the road down the street from her house. McKenzie said they stood in the middle of the street. Now when detective spoke to JD, he told them that McKenzie was being flirty in those Snapchat messages. He said he was feeling weird about meeting up, but she convinced him to do it anyway. And this allegedly happened at about 2am on Sunday May 3rd, according to JD. Now he says he picked up McKenzie, and she asked if there was a place where they could go to be alone, so he drove them to a hill and they just started talking. JD said McKenzie suddenly kissed him. JD said she started to get handsy. And after this, both of their pants allegedly came off. And this next part is literally from the court docs quote, JD said McKenzie climbed on top of him trying to ride him. And the court docs go more in depth, but I personally feel really gross reading about an adult allegedly having sex with a teen. So let me just sum it up by saying there were allegedly some issues with their interaction. JD says they did in fact have sexual intercourse. So after a while, McKenzie says been found out about this and reportedly confronted JD. He messages him quote, "That doesn't matter. You effed my wife and now there's an issue." And JD replies, "Yeah." When investigators first spoke to McKenzie, she admitted to texting JD in meeting up with him, but denied ever having sex. After investigators spoke to JD though, and got his side of the story, McKenzie changed her tune. McKenzie said she was really sorry. McKenzie said she lied the night before when I contacted her. McKenzie said on the previous Sunday May 3, 2026, she was Snapchatting JD. McKenzie said they met up and hung out between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. McKenzie said she kissed JD and they had sex. The McKenzie told investigators she knew that JD was 16 and thus a child, but that he felt like he was one of her friends. According to court docs, she also admitted she told him not to tell anyone and that she knew what happened was wrong. McKenzie not was arrested on Sunday May 10. She's since been charged with one count of sexual misconduct with a minor. She was placed unleaved from the school after all of this, and her district released a statement to a local newspaper at the spokesman review it reads in part quote, "At this time, St. John School District is aware of allegations involving a district employee that are currently being reviewed by law enforcement. The employee has been placed unleaved and will not be on campus during this process. The district is cooperating fully with the appropriate authorities and will also be conducting its own investigation into the allegations." McKenzie appeared in court on Monday of this week where prosecutors highlighted the seriousness of the allegations and how they affect JD. "We are in certain years in the safety of John Doe in this case, but this is having very significant impact on him. As you know, St. John is a very small area, things like this and they get out very quickly." From here, McKenzie is set to be arraigned on Friday, so tomorrow, and I'm wondering what can we expect from all of that and what about the evidence against her. So let's bring on today's guest to talk it all through. It's prosecutor and former deputy attorney general Mark Weaver. Mark, great to have you on. Thank you for coming on scandal. And I guess let's start with the latest info, the fact that she's going to be arraigned tomorrow, what can we expect there? "An arraignment is a formal process where the defendant can enter a plea, the judge can review any bond conditions, and then they set dates for future trials. I wouldn't expect her to plead guilty tomorrow, even though she's essentially admitted that this happened. So no one should be looking for a guilty play at an arraignment." Why do you think that she wouldn't have entered any sort of guilty plea this early? Because to your point, she has admitted at least according to court talks. By pleading not guilty, it allows the process to move forward, and then her defense attorney and the prosecutor can discuss possible resolutions. If she just pleads guilty from the get-go, she could be sentenced quickly, and there's, it's not in her interest to do so. As a prosecutor, I wish defendants would do that, but more typically they plead not guilty, and then they start reviewing the evidence. Remember, her lawyer might be looking for some police mistake, or some investigators mistake that could undermine the case. We all know that Alec Baldwin shot and killed a woman on a film set in New Mexico, but there were some alleged police and prosecution mistakes that allowed him to avoid being punished for that killing. And I guess it is the job of the defense attorney to go through and make sure, okay, was she merandized? Did all of this, you know, this text message is that we got. Did we follow the procedure within our state to make sure that all of this is admissible? So I guess that makes sense, but I do want to talk about the evidence because I was going through the court talks, and it does seem like there kind of is a lot. So we'll talk about her alleged confession, at least according to the court talks in a minute, but let's just start with the text messages. I mean, this to me is pretty strong evidence that I guess her husband came forward to detectives and said, here they are. I've got texts with a student. I or snapchats rather with the student. What I mean, is that pretty strong evidence for prosecutors? It is. And nearly every child sex case that I work with now, we have text messages that show this crime occurred, not all of them. People think they can get away with things on their phone. They don't realize that nearly everything is getable, including disappearing messages. more and more of these social media platforms are now introducing or they already have messages that allegedly disappear, they typically don't, it can be found, either in the front end of the sender or the back end of the receiver, law enforcement is really good at getting a hold of these messages. And so most cases now involving child sex offenses have some aspect of digital evidence, including text messages. Yeah, it's so interesting because I remember when Snapchat first came about, I mean like over a decade ago when I was in college. And the whole thing about Snapchat was like you send the photo, you send the message and then it disappears and it's gone. And for some reason I think there's still our people out there who think, oh, if we communicate on Snapchat, unless there's a screenshot, it's completely gone. But to your point, I don't think that's really the case. And that is helpful for a lot of investigators, prosecutors who bring forth, oh, they thought that this was deleted, but now we've got the texts here. However, on top of all of that, the Snapchat's the messages whatever it may be. We have the student who eventually spoke to her husband, Mackenzie Nott's husband, and to investigators. I mean, that's pretty strong evidence, right? Sure, whenever the victim acknowledges that it happened is going to be a powerful case against the defendant. The evidence really is weird. This is a troubled couple with all sorts of allegations of infidelity and drinking and other problems. That's not normally illegal. That's all bad stuff. Infidelity is bad and it's a sin and drinking is bad if it's hurting the relationship. It's when an even adultery is not a crime, it's just a bad to dumb thing to do. But when you bring a child into it, particularly when you are in a position of trust like a teacher, nearly every state treats teachers differently when they have sex with a young person, then a plumber or somebody who didn't hold a job of trust like teacher. Okay, so that's what I really want to talk about because when I was just researching actually one of my producers found this story sent me the headline and it said first grade teacher and I was like, oh my god, my heart literally dropped and I was like, did we, are we really this deplorable? I mean, I do work for long crime. My show is called Scandal, so I do see the grossest things, but a first grade teacher, thankfully, and this doesn't make it any better, obviously, but the survivor and all of this was not a first grade student. That's one pro. However, he is a child. He is about 16 years old in high school, too. So even though she isn't a high school teacher, even though this wasn't a student who was in her class that this allegedly happened with, I mean, to your point, the fact that she's a teacher does that mean she should have known better. I mean, as far as, you know, the procedures, as far as becoming a teacher following all of the protocol, and I'm sure that they have, you know, some sort of, I guess, mandates in place or trainings for them. I mean, should she have known better? Well, of course she should have, and they do get training on these issues as part of their schooling at undergraduate level. It's part of the curriculum in advance that ongoing training, they have as teachers, and the rest of us all know this, too. Even if you'd not had special training, you know that you shouldn't have sex. First of all, outside of marriage, but secondly, with a child, you mentioned this boy as a child. The law recognizes that people in their teens don't make good decisions because their brain isn't fully formed yet. And actually, the science tells us that for young men, their brain's not fully formed until their late 20s. For young women, it's early 20s, but certainly not in their teens. We all live this. We all observe this, bad and pulse of decisions. That's why we turn to adults to be the people who make good decisions. And teachers, in particular, are held to a higher standard because students are brought up to respect, listen to, and do what a teacher says. And so, I've prosecuted teachers and coaches and others who've abused those relationships that they're in prison now. And I imagine this woman's going to go to prison as well. You said something in that answer that really stuck out to me because we do these stories all the time you mentioned coaches, you know, teachers, people who are in positions of power, who allegedly abused the power and have some sort of, you know, sexual encounter with a child. Everything you said absolutely correct. I mean the fact that their frontal lobes aren't developed, that their kids, that these are people in positions of power. But what you just said is, it doesn't take training for us to know anyone who's an adult should not be having sex with a child. I think that's that's really the basic thing that we have here. But then added onto it the fact that as a teacher, at the very least, should be a mandated reporter. Is she saw something like this at school? She would be legally required to report this because it is an illegal action. So it kind of adds a level to all of this. And let's say this does go to a jury. Let's just speculate for a second. Is that something prosecutors would say to the jury and say, okay, look at her position. We trust her with our children. And yet she went and did something like this. I mean, what are your thoughts about that? See, you should be a prosecutor because that's the start to a good closing argument. I like that. Yeah, no jurors will be furious at this woman. Her defense counsel will not want this case to go in front of a jury. In fact, a little known fact, a lot of people don't know this. Defendant doesn't have to have a jury trial. A defendant can say, I want to waive the jury trial, and I want to try the case to a judge who's much less likely to be inflamed by passion or anger because the judge sees the worst things on a weekly basis. And so I doubt this will go to trial. I think there's going to be a plea bargain where she's going to try to get as few years in prison as possible in return for pleading guilty. But if it did go to trial, you could see a defense counsel maybe saying to her, hmm, a jury will hate you. Let's roll the dice with the judge. Yeah, I mean, that if I was a defense attorney, I tend to agree that probably would be the best route for the client here. But in terms of justice of it all, it would be interesting to see if this was in front of a jury. And I guess this is another point that I wanted to talk about too. When investigators first spoke with her, our defendant here, McKenzie, not she's like, yeah, I met up with this kid, but that's it. Nothing else happened. Okay. And then later she comes back and is like, okay, yes, we did have sex. She confesses to it. She talks about it. She says, I knew it was wrong. I actually reached out to him and asked him not to say anything to anyone. I know that that was wrong, whatever. Is that hard for her then to combat? I mean, she could recant maybe, but I mean, so what do you make of her confession? Her confession comes in now. If you mentioned Miranda earlier, most of your viewers know this, but lay people don't. It's not required that police Miranda is somebody before they question them. That's only required in what's called a custodial interrogation. So it wasn't clear to me from the report whether she was in custody at the time. She said this because if she did, then Miranda's a factor. But if she's just in her house and the police are there asking her questions, she's free to go. Miranda's not required. Either way, I imagine they did it correctly. Her statements can be used against her. We all know that. Yeah. They will be used against her. But she lied early on when you lied to the federal investigators, that's a separate crime. Typically, it's not a crime when you lied to state investigators. It just makes you look bad to the jury. Also, one thing I've noticed both in prosecutions now doing this 25 years and in life is that when you catch somebody and doing something wrong, their first reaction is to completely deny it. Their second reaction is to only admit a part of it. And then as you amass more evidence, maybe they eventually admit more of it. So I wouldn't be surprised if there were more illegal actions with this young, yes, this young man, than what's already been disclosed. It's interesting that you point out that pattern because as I was going through the court docs, it does seem like that where she said, at first, we only met up. That was it. Then according to the court docs, it was just a little kiss, I think she said, okay, a little bit maybe admitted to. And then later was like, yes, we did have sex. Yes, here's what happened. Explained all of it. So it's interesting that you picked up on that pattern because according to the court documents at the very least, that's what happened here too. And I guess I have to ask, in your opinion, have you seen something like this where it's the husband who was allegedly scorned here and you pointed out to, according to the court docs, this is a troubled marriage. There's been infidelity on both sides. There's alcoholism. There's a lot of factors going into all of this. But the way that investigators, police, first responders found out about this is because the husband called them and said, hey, my wife was having sex with a 16 year old, a junior in high school. I mean, have you seen anything like that before? I've not prosecuted cases with that exact fact pattern. I'm not surprised by it. Certainly, a spouse would be very upset about this. Often, we see spouses reconciling after this. That's kind of an unusual thing. It's counterintuitive, if you think about it, right? That the spouse has sex with a teenager or somebody illegal. And then the other spouse is mad about it at first, but then you often will see that other spouse showing up and defending the person who broke the law. I don't think that's going to happen here just from what I read. But more typically, it's someone close to the student who contacts law enforcement, a parent of the student, a friend of the student. Studentover is overheard saying something by a teacher. Rarely is it the spouse of the person who committed the criminal act. Yeah, that's something that's very kind of shocking in all of this, that he's the one who called police, corroborated the information. The student and his mom did speak to investigators, and of course they came forward with all of this. So we've talked through all of the evidence, it does seem like there's a lot. We talked about the possibility of maybe this going to a jury trial, probably not, but I'm wondering about her future. I mean, let's say that she does take some sort of plea deal. What could we expect in all of this? How much time do you think she would actually spend behind bars? Well, first of all, she'll lose her teacher's license for the rest of her life. I suppose there's some appeals process that she could come back several years from now, but then a school district would really look bad, even if they were to hire her. So she's unlikely to ever teach again, which is a good thing, I suppose. If there's only one count, this particular level of crime has a maximum of five years in prison. I don't know the judges there. Some judges are tougher than others. I didn't see someone charging. I didn't see the prosecutor charging sending naked photos. That's a separate crime, right? When an adult sends naked photos of herself to a child, that's a misdemeanor crime in Washington State, punishable by up to, I think, 364 days just under a year. So if that happened here, and if it happened more than once, that could be charged multiple times, which gives the prosecutor more leverage to fashion a sense. I do wonder, too, because the defendant here likely will serve some sort of time based on what we're saying. I mean, obviously she has not been convicted yet. We're just speculating, but that's likely the road that this would lead down if she ends up in a plea deal. What happens, though? You mentioned that she doesn't have her teaching license anymore after this, but she is a mom. So she does have a child right now. What happens there? Because this is a crime involving a child. However, she has her own child that's actually hers biological. How does all of that work? Yeah, this happens on most of my cases involving sex offenses. The children's services agency, which is different from the criminal prosecution process, that children's services agency will do its own investigation about whether that children in the house are safe. If they're not, then the defendant can be removed from the house or, in a worst case, the child can be removed from the house. I can't remember the gender of the child, but for example, this woman is accused of having sex with a 16-year-old young man. If she had a three-year-old daughter in the house, given the pattern, that's unlikely to have a future problem. You could say, well, you're a terrible mom. You shouldn't have any children in the house. I don't think that's the full standard. Typically, you'll see some sort of removal when you know, I've had prosecuted men who targeted young girls, you know, teenage girls. And if they have a teenage girl in the home, then your first fear is, okay, he's now going to target his daughter. So that's going to happen. We also did mention that she'll have to register as a sex offender. I don't know how long it'll be under Washington State. Each state has a different construct for their sexual offender registration, but this is certainly eligible for sex offender registration. And in most states, that means not only registering, but not being able to live near schools or daycares. Oh, wow. So going from working in a school, being a first grade teacher to, if she is convicted, not even being able to live near a school. I mean, that's the gravity of the situation that we have. And again, she has not been convicted. She is innocent until proven guilty, but she does have some evidence against her that we kind of walked through today, which by the way, Mark Weaver, thank you for coming on Scandal and kind of taking us through this case. Going to be back with you. Thank you. And that's where today's episode of Scandal leaves us for now. If you like what you saw and you want to see more, connect with me on social media. You can find me on places like Instagram @SierraGillespie. Thanks for watching today's episode of Scandal. As always, I'm your host Sierra Gillespie, and I'll see you next time.