A villa, Pennsylvania.

December sixth, twenty twenty, Jared Ackron woke to his home completely engulfed in flames.

Nine one one response, what's your emergency?

I need a fire truck, sir.

Where are you located?

If anyone hurt?

Are you hurting?

No, everybody's okay, everybody's okay.

We just I just need somebody to put the fire out.

I need a fire truck over here right.

Now, sir.

I need you to give me all the details that you can.

Calmly, No, nobody's hurt.

Nobody's hurt I except for the I just if you need.

A fire department, okay, we'll have units over to respond to you shortly.

I don't think I'll ever forget that day of my entire life.

There was a huge cloud of black smoke that engulfed me, and as soon as I opened that door, I saw flames go up.

Then I hear the window bust.

On that frigid December morning, Jared was having the worst day of his life.

He'd watched his.

Childhood home burn to the ground along with all his possessions.

To make things worse, he and his wife, Christy were expecting the birth of twins any moment.

As Jared watched the flames destroy his childhood home, he had no idea that this was just the beginning of his nightmare.

If anything, in the coming days, things would get a whole lot worse.

Day were a picture perfect couple.

Jared was a hardworking farmer who loved nothing more than hunting and fishing on the weekends.

Christy was his opposite, lively, always chasing the next adventure, mostly.

Through the lens of her phone.

Her life was a constant stream of Facebook posts and Snapchat stories, each one more elaborate than the last.

But looks can be deceiving.

This seemingly happy newlywed couple soon found themselves at the center of a shocking series of crimes.

I'm Trishia la Foch.

I'm a writer, director, actor, and federal criminal defense attorney.

You might have also seen me on Amazon Prime's Jury Duty, arguing in a fake courtroom.

It's true, isn't it, sir, that you were once arrested for masturbating in a public movie theater.

That's correct, isn't it.

I'm going to.

Tell you a story that's all too real about love, lies and the lengths people will go to for attention.

It's a story that will leave you questioning everything you thought you knew about truth, about reality, and about what happens when the two collide in the most unimaginable way.

From Audio Up and just Sweet Pressed Productions, this is The Unborn.

Coming up this season on The Unborn.

If the fire Marshal didn't tell me there was previous fires in her life, I don't think it would have crossed my mind.

But after that fire, Marshal said, hey, this is not the first fire she's been involved in or been around.

It really makes you think, hey, do I really know who I'm married to?

I don't know if she was trying to kill him or I have no clue what was going on with her.

That type of thing that's something you see a movie on that's don't happen here in this area.

But it did.

Got a fire and beer and a crazy ex white and it's a full blow story.

We kept saying, she's probably not that crazy, There's no way somebody would do that.

Right, Oh yeah, she's certifiable.

She went back.

Sheit crazy, shot and killed all her farm animals, slaughtered them in front of them.

What tried to burn her house down?

I want to start by letting you know that we are not professional journalists or investigators.

Rather, we're true.

Crime fans who love the genre.

This story came to us by chance.

My husband, Frank Rodriguez mal is also a screenwriter, but at one point he worked in the outfitting business, guiding deer hunts in the Midwest.

He also took a turn as an amateur boxer, but that's a story for another day.

Years later, he's still extremely close with his former boss on the ranch, Mitchell.

On December twelfth, twenty twenty, Frank got a call from Mitchell.

He basically called and said, Frank, you are not going to believe this story.

I just heard it camp.

A man will call.

Henry, who is Jared Ackron's closest family friend, was at hunting camp and Henry had a front row seat to a story that was unbelievable and it was playing out in real time.

So Mitchell called and said, he heard the crazy story at hunting camp that he's ever heard.

And if you know anything about hunting camps, the stories can get tall.

Getting stocked by a mountain lion while tracking a deer, the ten foot tall grizzly bear that ripped into your tent while salmon fishing in Alaska, or some other woodmanship heroics fueled by fireside whiskey that usually borders on bullshit.

But this one wasn't bullshit.

In fact, Mitchell thought it was something out of a movie or TV show, and he decided to call Frank, his Hollywood screenwriter friend, while Henry was still at camp.

So I had the idea that it could be a great true crime podcast and asked Mitchell if Henry and Jerry would be willing to talk to Trisha and I, because I thought it would be the perfect thing for us to do together.

They said yes, and we were on the phone with them the very next day, a mere two days after the whole thing went down.

And from there we decided.

To tell this story about what happened in Avilla, Pennsylvania to Jared Akron.

What we heard wasn't typical campfire fodder, more like something out of a Cohen Brothers film, or even better, a Scooby Doo mystery.

Call it Western Pennsylvania.

Gothic small towns often have secrets that go back generations, and a villa has more than its fair share, and that's what we set out to uncover over the next seven episodes.

So if we fail to introduce a source or present proper evidence, sorry about that.

All I can say is what you're about to hear is when hundred percent true.

The names have all been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty alike.

Were in Novella, a western Pennsylvania farming community.

It's picturesque, peaceful, a slice of Americana, rolling green hills and forests, cobblestone main streets, farms that have been in families for generations.

The current population is about eight hundred people.

As you would guess, this is a tight knit community, the kind of place where people look out for one another.

It's also the kind of place where everyone knows everything about everyone else's business.

And everyone in Avila can tell you the kind of family the Akrons are.

They own a feed mill.

They're honest, hardworking, and their oldest son, Jared, is no different.

How would you describe your son?

Sensitive and thoughtful.

That's Jared's father, David.

I mean, he'll get help anybody out that needs help.

Yeah, he helps me quite a bit.

I would consider him one of my best friends.

Stumper Ad that's Jared's mom, Kathy.

He's a good kid.

I think he's loving and I don't know.

Here's Henry, Jared's boss.

For Henry, Jared isn't employee, he's like family.

In fact, Henry is best friends with Jared's father, David.

He affectionately refers to Jared as tork Chop or big Sexy.

Yeah he's PC or big Sexy.

Yeah he beat Anarexi.

As you'll see, he's a great kid, raised by a good family, best friends with his dad in my whole life, raised around the farm, showing cattle and stuff with them, and he just couldn't be any nicer.

Yeah, Big Sexy is a sweetheart.

My name is Jared Akron.

I'm twenty four years old.

I grew up in Avello, Pennsylvania.

It's a former coal mining town right now.

I sell metal fabricating equipment.

You know, anything that cuts your ben's metal, I'll say, help my folks run their feed meal.

I'm just your basic small town dude trying to make ends meet.

It's a young graduate, just bought a house.

I had a good job.

I've made all my payments and had money left over.

No care in the world.

He was kind of frat boyish where he wanted to drink all the time and loved being around people.

That's my She's Henry's daughter and one of Jared's oldest and closest friends.

Other than the frat boy life style he had.

He was also a farmer who helped his parents at the feedmale so I would say he's very hard working and friendly, and he likes to drink.

Jared was living that small town life where everyone's just working for the weekend, except here you drove your tractor to the bar.

I would say that Jared was rent from Footlooths.

I tell you something, if I got to get up in front of that council, then you are going to.

Learn how to dance more like the Chris pen character.

I told you right, I promised rest of you'll fights tonight.

Okay.

But it was a town just like that, tractors on the highway.

Everyone knows everyone else's family, going back generations.

You can't escape your past here, and if.

You've done something crazy or mean or downright shifty, you might as well pack up and leave because there's no living that down But Jared and his friends were neither mean nor crazy.

They were kids who liked to drink and carry on.

It's a close knit community that we're around.

Everyone cares about each other.

It's always a good time.

It's kind of a hey, we don't really care how we do, but it was a good time.

You get to see all your buddies you don't always see.

And it's a Saturday morning.

We're usually out of there a by one o'clock.

It was one of those Saturday nights when Jared reconnected with Christy for the first time since high school, when they did four h together showing animals at the County Fair and sneaking kisses behind.

The bar bigs, cows, sheep, and goats.

It was Molly's twenty first birthday and Jared was texting with Christy already.

The two had found one another on Facebook.

I actually ended up sliding her DMS.

I will say it was me that pushed her to come to the bar.

That's Molly again.

They were texting and I told him to call her, and then I took the phone, went outside and was like, hey, you should come down.

Much to Jared's shock, Christy showed up alone and they were pretty much insuperable.

After that.

Christy told Jared she was an executive managing a warehouse.

She had champagne tastes, even though Jared had a beer wallet.

I really enjoyed bar food and chicken wings.

She wanted to go to these hoity toity places.

She is a very.

Nice She would do anything for anyone.

You know.

She would go to the mint and back.

This is Jenny, Christy's former best friend.

Many people from Jared's circle were drawn to Christy too.

This is Molly again.

I think she seemed fun.

I try not to judge people too fast.

My first impression was that she was cool.

I tried to always reach out to her and be like, hey, like, what are you guys doing?

Do you want to hang out?

It's not surprising, given the nature of this tight knit community, that Jared's father knew Christy far before she started dating his son.

Well see, I've known her and her family for a long time.

Within months, they were pregnant and married.

This was a shotgun wedding and a half.

It was beautiful, it was a dream, it was a dream winning.

It was everything anyone could ask were I mean.

It was pretty big.

I bet you.

We had every bit of two people there.

They were ready to embark on their life together.

But what Jared didn't know was that this perfect life was not what it appeared to be.

Her dad is.

The same age as me, so we grew up showing at four age and you know, everything, the shows and all that kind of stuff.

We were actually pretty decent friends growing up.

She never said much when she was growing up.

When Jared met her, you know, I had not seen her for a couple of years, so I didn't know good or bad or indifferent.

She's pretty bubbly, you know, she was a farm girl, so I like that.

You know, the things that we do are you know, she's growing up with her life too, so it's not foreign to her.

We thought she was wonderful.

You know, we did game nights.

This is Sarah.

She's married to one of Jared's best friends, Wade.

Sarah was already a few months pregnant when Christy first discovered that she was.

Not only were they pregnant at the same time, but they were due to deliver at the exact same hospital.

We you know, tried to hang out with them often, and obviously she was there, so everything seemed really normal to me.

But Sarah's positive opinion on Christy didn't last long.

I wasn't questioning her sanity or anything.

And then he came over just one random day, Hey, I want to come over.

Sarah couldn't exactly say why, but she immediately felt something was off when Jared called and asked to come over, and he.

Just stopped by and he said, yeah, was in the emergency room last night at three in the morning.

We took her there because she was vomiting and super sick, and they tore her she's pregnant.

And I said, wow, that's crazy, and wow, it was all he says, she say, because he wasn't allowed in the emergency room.

First of all, that was a red flag to.

Me because I had been going through the same thing because I just found out I was pregnant myself, and so I knew that you could have one significant other with you.

So anyways, that was one red flag to me.

And he said they tested her urine for the pregnancy because she was so sick, and they told.

Her she was four weeks pregnant.

So that was my second red flag is one I've never heard of anybody being nauseous before.

Like eight weeks at the very early list.

I've never heard of anybody having sickness like that that are.

I kind of validated that because I don't know a lot of people who have had twins, so I thought, you know, maybe it's just different.

I don't know, you know, I I don't know I have twins.

So I just let it play out.

So I was a little suspicious at that point.

But Sarah's suspicions continued to grow.

But then and the next I don't know, maybe a week later or so, he came over and said, uh, they did a blood test and found out it was twins.

At that point, they didn't know it was twins.

They did a blood test to find out it was twins.

And that's whenever he brought a ring over and said, I think I'm want to propose.

You know.

We tried to tell him, if you feel that that's something you want to do, then that's great, we'll support you.

But the blood test got me because I've.

Never I'd never heard of anybody finding out you're having twins by a blood test.

I know you can find out the gender by a blood test, but I didn't think you could find out if you're having multiples with a blood test.

So I did a little research and asked some people that I knew, and because at that point I was very suspicious, and it turns out you cannot find out you're having multiples with a blood test.

Sarah struggled with the information she knew to be true and what the acrons were telling her.

She repeated her concerns to her Husban, but he was steadfast.

He did not want them to get.

Involved, wanted stepping on any toes.

I don't want to ruin my relationship with my best friend.

I think you need to keep that to yourself because she's probably not that crazy.

I mean, and that's what we kept saying, is there's no way somebody would do that, right.

So yeah, it was just at that point out internally, I was like, this is something's not right, but it's not my best friend.

She did give Jared one piece of advice.

Whenever he brought a ring over that week after she would have been what five weeks pregnant or something like that, I told him, I said, you know, there's like one in four women, like twenty five percent of women have miscarriages really early, so maybe think about that.

Is it too early to be asking a big question like that?

But obviously now I'm like, I really wish I would have said more, but there's no way I could have known, And I kept telling myself, there's no way somebody would be that crazy.

Sarah's decision to keep quiet was one of the biggest regrets of her life.

But even with all.

Of her suspicions, she could have never fathomed what was to come.

It's Thursday, December tenth, twenty twenty, about one thirty am on this cold, rainy winter morning.

Christie tells Jared her water broke.

This news is slightly alarming since they had been preparing for a scheduled c section on that Monday, But such as the miracle of life.

This is Jared my wife, Christy.

She had woken me up at probably one thirty in the morning.

She goes, hey, my water has broken.

We need to go to the hospital.

So I'm go and get the bags and everything like that that we're packed in the house, throw them in the car and help her to the car.

Take off.

We drive the forty five minutes to an hour or two the da hospital.

There was a closer hospital, but because her had a what they consider a high risk pregnancy, and the reason they considered it high risk was because she had twins and that she had already lost a child before this.

I'm not a mother, I've never given birth, but I asked around and apparently there's many reasons for a sea section to be scheduled.

And if your water breaks prior.

To a scheduled sea section, it's not necessarily bad, but it is important to get to a hospital as soon as possible because the water breaking means that the body has started the process on its own.

If the baby is not positioned right or if there are blood pressure conditions, it can become a complicated birth.

Add to that, as Jared mentioned, Christy was carrying twins and she had suffered a miscarriage before.

So there are many reasons why.

This could be bad, but only if you don't make it to a hospital.

Remember that we're at the height of COVID Hospitals were working overtime.

Even heading to the hospital was not business as usual.

Entering was a process.

Drop her off at the emergency room.

Then they have to do a COVID rapid test too, because this is right and part of the whole entire COVID pandemic mask everywhere, and so we get there, drop her off.

Christy needed to be tested for COVID, and if she tested positive, Jared would be effectively locked out of the birth of his twins.

She called me and told me her COVID tests to come back positive.

Jared will not be able to enter the hospital to witness his children being born.

Information about the virus was evolving slowly.

It was scary.

No one really knew what it.

Meant for a pregnant mother that contracted COVID, and Jared had a lot of questions about what her positive test meant.

It was kind of a gut wrenching feeling, Hey, what happens.

There's not a lot of info out there about the can COVID be contracted by small children?

And just at birth had adverse effects of being in with the mother in the womb?

Who are they going to be COVID positive?

Am I gonna be able to see him touch them?

Jared was left completely in the dark.

All firsthand knowledge of what was going on with their children's birth would have to come from.

His wife, Christy.

At two seventeen am, Jared got this text from Christy.

They're taking me straight back, no check in, okay, call me giving my phone.

They're putting a screen across my way so I can't see I love you.

Jared did call Christy.

She told them she was getting into her gown and they were going to do an ultrasound to make sure everything's okay.

Everything was not okay.

So she goes, well, I'm going back into the room to get the gown.

That they do an ultrasound is what she tells me.

They can't find a heart meat.

Imagine being stuck in your truck, a storm raging outside, and being told by your wife that the doctors cannot find the heartbeat to your babies, and because of the nature of the world at the time, as well as your wife's positive COVID test, you can do nothing about it except sit and wait.

I will send you pictures and stuff when I'm done.

I called her real quick thought her I loved her, and that was all I heard for probably forty five minutes.

After forty five minutes, Christy texted Jared a picture of one baby and what did it look like.

It's a healthy looking baby.

They did have some drainage tubes in it.

Twelve minutes later, baby number two was born.

Their second child also needed drainage tubes.

She told me they had some fluid in their long sizes they were in there too long, but not to worry about it anything like that.

It's normal for twins to have to have some help with birth.

She told me, hey put them online, and I thought that was a good time, the easier way than to send to all these people, in which I did text the two my mom and my dad, but she did want on Facebook right then and there.

For context throughout their relationship, Jared felt Christy had an extremely unhealthy relationship to Facebook, Snapchat and social media in general, but more about that later.

Here's the caption that Christy sent to Jared to post alongside the pictures of the babies.

After what felt like the longest pregnancy in all the land and the biggest marathon of our lives, we are so unbelievably excited and proud to finally introduce our beautiful, healthy twins, Hannah and Lyle.

Lyle born at three fifty six am five pounds two ounces, nineteen and a half inches Hannah born at four oh eight am five pounds fourteen ounces, twenty and one fourth inches.

Well.

Jared would eventually post the phonetos of the children with the caption, as sent verbatim by Christy.

At that point he held off on the post and then what else did you do?

Did you call your parents?

Called my mom and dad.

They were all having my grandma and I actually even she asked me, I'll call her grandmother and stuff like that.

I was excited.

I was because I mean that hour and a half that I sat there was cruelly.

I didn't know what was going on.

I knew I wasn't gonna be allowed it into the hospital.

So I take a little nap that I wake up and then I kind of don't hear anything from her four or maybe three hours.

So then I actually received a picture from Christy, the picture of both of the kids, with which it was nice because I got to see the placard that I had spent countless, countless hours trying to make it perfect for her.

I'm looking at the photo of the placard.

It really shows the level of care Jared put into it.

A handmade wooden frame, painted white, intricate wooden letters that detail their joyous news.

They had their names.

A big part was seeing them without all the tubes and things like that, and because at that point they had taken those tubes out and given her a nice picture to put on there, and of course I sent that all to my friends and family.

Even though he could not see his kids and was stuck in a hospital parking lot, Jared finally felt relief and joy he had the news he had been praying for.

His twins were healthy.

I actually think that was the picture I posted.

Yeah, that was definitely it.

Because I didn't want to put the tubes and things online.

So my wife had told me, hey, once you go home, get the house ready and clean it because we weren't ready for me yet.

So I called my parents on the way home and just kind of talk about the picture, and they're like, all good tubes and all that all out.

They look healthy, happy, They actually get to be together, and they put them in the same little assinate and they said the physical touch between them would help them get better soon.

Still disappointed he couldn't witness their birth, but ultimately just happy they were out of the woods, Jared began his forty five minute drive.

Homes to get the house ready for his newborns.

He was a proud father, but Jared's moment of newfound fatherhood wouldn't last long.

While Jared is getting the house in order.

His best friend Wade and his pregnant wife Sarah come over to help out.

Jared recounts that night.

I guess after that, I didn't really get any updates.

But I'm having dinner with my best friend and his wife when you're get in the house ready, and they helped Clane and things like that.

I get a phone call you need to come pick me up.

And at that point my heart had kind of dropped.

But because I mean, no one wants to get that text, Hey, you need to come get me in the hospital.

Jared admittedly did not know a ton about childbirth and probably did not ask enough questions, but he felt in his bones that if his wife Christy was ready to leave the hospital approximately fifteen hours after giving birth, something was very, very wrong.

I didn't know what to think.

Why did you need picked up?

You need to call me.

I'm getting texts like, hey, did I pay this parking ticket or speeding ticket in a town that she got?

I mean, I'm that's the last thing on my mind.

So I fly in there, of course hit traffic, the.

Pit of dread growing in Jared's stomach as he navigates traffic the winter roads.

Updates from Christi are sparse at best, and it takes him more than an hour to get to the hospital.

He finally arrives Christie instructing him where to go.

She tells me to come to the main entrance, which and of course I had dropped her off the emergency room.

I didn't know where in the hospital the they called the army renew war was.

So I'm like, okay, I'll just pull up to the front.

When she stole me.

I pull up, There's probably three or four cars in front of me.

So once I get to the front, I see her walking out being escorted by two police officers.

She was also in handcuffs.

They bring her to the car, help her get in, and then they come and ask for my picture of my license and my license blate.

So they took your license physically, and they took a picture of it correct.

They took a picture of the license blake of the making model of the car.

He didn't say very many words.

This is as close to verbatim as I could remember.

Was what your I asked, what was going on?

He goes, you have to ask your wife that yourself.

It's nothing good that's for sure.

But you look like you're strong enough to handle it.

So it's good luck to you, sir.

And that, and then he kind of walked away, and I turned to my wife and asked, well, what happened?

Jared continued to ask Christy what was going on?

Where were the children?

Were they okay?

But Christy was beside herself, screaming and crying, too emotional to answer, why are.

You arresting me?

I didn't do anything of my baby, Please my baby.

I'm confused.

I don't know what's going on.

I'm gonna throw myself out of the fucking car.

I don't want to live anymore.

She won't tell me, Well, there's cars piling up behind me, because it's probably six point thirty now.

It's people are coming to visit and things like that, so I pull over into one of the parking office bots.

I don't want to live anymore.

I want to die.

Let me die.

I'm like, well, what's going on?

She refuses to tell me.

He's just crying and bawling and just making it like a huge show.

I guess I've thought about.

Just running away and never ever calling you.

Just She was hysterical, and I couldn't get any words out of her.

I'm just questioning her back and forth, and she's just.

Saying, I don't want to live anymore.

I'm gonna throw myself off this car.

I thought about just running away and never calling you.

And then finally she said, the.

Kids are dead.

She basically she just flat out told me and that the kids are dead.

This season on The Unborn, she seemed fun.

I don't really like I try not to judge people too fashion.

And then all the shit hit the fan and all the wheels fell off.

I don't know, but she's a very sick girl in my opinion.

I remember looking at the sonograms and seeing her name, and I was like, oh, well, her name's on it.

Obviously they're real sonograms.

Because her name's on it, she had to know that this was not a lie.

They could go on forever.

That's almost more of this psychotic kind of delusional disorder.

She was planning on just ending it for the both of them, just trying to be done with life.

Literally, that morning we went to the bank.

She wanted to take all this money out.

She's a professional liar, because evidently everything must be a.

Line with her.

They tried to work things out, and then she went fast shit crazy and run off the reservation and shot and killed all their farm animals and like slaughtered them in front of the kids.

Pitch your perfect family, which furthest thing from the truth.

They had her as one of the suspects, but they could never prove it.

You're going to go to jail if you don't come with us.

Right now.

Everybody's telling her to run to North Carolina because the authorities are going to after her.

Throughout this whole thing, I kept telling myself, nobody's that crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy crazy crazy.

The Unborn is a production of iHeart Podcasts, Audio Up and jess We Press Productions.

Created by Trisila Fotch and Frank Rodriguez Mall, produced by Alvin Cohen and Rachel Foley.

Executive produced by Jimmy Jellinek, David Dwaits and Jared gustav Edited by Gerrard Bauer and Preston Dawson.

Sound design and mixing by Jeremiah Zimmerman.