Hey y’all, it’s Julie Mattson, and this week on Pushing Up Lilies, we’re diving into a tragic and truly chilling case from right here in Texas. Jake Evans, a 17-year-old, claimed he was inspired by a horror movie - Rob Zombie’s remake of Halloween - to kill his own mother and younger sister. Armed with a .22 revolver and a twisted sense of purpose, Jake lured his 15-year-old sister, Mallory, from her room and shot her multiple times, then turned the gun on his mother, Jamie Evans. In this episode, I’ll take you through Jake’s haunting four-page confession, what led up to the murders, and the eerie way he described watching the film and feeling driven to commit the unthinkable. We’ll also talk about the impact violent media can have on unstable minds, and how we as a society can do more to spot the warning signs before it’s too late. Y’all, this one is heavy… let’s get into it. * Listener discretion is advised.
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00:06
Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies. I'm your host, Julie Mattson. Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly true crime podcast with spine tingling, unusual and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
00:24
Do I have some stories for you? Are you ready? Hey y'all, has this been a crazy week or what? It's been crazy. I know last week we were so busy, and we had so many like young deaths and that's always depressing and sometimes I feel like after a week like that I just need a good long vacation.
00:51
So, I will be going on vacation leaving Friday on a cruise with my high school girlfriends and I'm really looking forward to just getting away. Last week we just had like a four-year-old die of pneumonia and then we had young kids die in a car accident and then a mom dies in a car accident.
01:14
It was just a heavy week. I mean it was so busy, phones rang constantly and it's not always like that. It's not at all like that all the time, thank goodness, because it was heavy. I just I think sometimes we find ourselves kind of maybe not reaching out to people as much as we should when we have a week like that.
01:38
A lot of my friends, they probably don't want to hear that. They don't want to hear those stories. My poor husband has to hear it all the time. But it's not like you can really vent to your everyday friends.
01:50
I mean I have friends who don't even listen to my podcast because they're like dude it's just too much for me. So, I completely get it. That's... One thing about this job is you can't vent to just anybody because not everybody wants to hear all your stories and What you've dealt with throughout the week and you kind of have to be cautious and careful who you talk to about that kind of stuff Because some people are very super sensitive Super excited.
02:20
I know that i've mentioned to y'all before But on eventbrite and also on my website www.pushingapplowlies.com You can now purchase tickets to my first annual murder mystery dinner again This is going to be at prairie house restaurant, which is in crossroads, texas We're going to have chicken and beef fajita buffet and then I did hire actors And they're going to act out a murder mystery It's a three-hour event.
02:51
So, during the first hour They are going to mingle, and they are going to choose people who would be good participants. So again, somebody that is at the event will actually be the murderer and someone will actually be murdered.
03:08
I mean, not really that came out completely wrong, but they are going to choose the actors who are going to participate with them and they're going to base that I'm guessing solely on personality and desire when they talk to people that first hour that we are mingling.
03:27
I think it's going to be so much fun. I could have written out the murder mystery. I didn't really want to do that because I didn't really want to take part in it. And I say that because I really want to be able to mingle with everybody, visit with everybody and just enjoy the evening and not have the stress of whether or not it's successful being on my back.
03:51
I'm sure you all understand that. Also go on my Patreon and join. You can join for free. There are different levels. You can do $5 membership, which is where you just basically buy me a Diet Dr. Pepper or a coffee every month to keep me going.
04:07
Y'all all know how busy I am. Or you can go, I think it's up to $30 where you can get different things. Shout outs on the podcast, phone calls, and special behind the scenes videos. I would love for you to join that.
04:23
The subscription box is about to be mailed. I have them ready to go. I still have some of those available and you can also order those on my website, pushinguplilies.com. So go on there and get you one of those.
04:39
There are a couple people that mentioned that they were having trouble making the purchase. I think that should be fixed. We figured out the problem last week and have gone in and made some adjustments.
04:51
So that should be fixed. So, all your purchases should go through now. So sorry about that. We weren't told that they were changing their point-of-sale system. And so our sales weren't going through.
05:02
So, if you've had any problems with that, shouldn't be an issue anymore. I want to talk this week about Jake Evans. It's not a story that's really been widespread in the news because it was local here in Parker County, Texas.
05:18
And this happened back in 2012. I was actually at the medical examiner's office here at that time. But for some reason, I don't remember this story. Now, Parker and Johnson counties, along with Denton County, are part of the Tarrant County Medical Examiner System.
05:38
Parker County bodies are people who pass in Parker County. If they become a medical examiner case and their case needs to be investigated, they go to the Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office just like Denton County cases.
05:53
So, it's kind of confusing. Whenever we explain that to people here in our area and in a nutshell what it boils down to is our county's not large enough to have our own facility yet and many aren't. I know that in many death investigation conferences I've met other investigators, and their decedents go pretty far away from their county for an exam by a doctor.
06:18
It has to be two million here for you to have your toxicology labs. There's a lot in having your own medical examiner's office in your county and honestly having worked in offices where there's a morgue and I would rather not deal with the politics and our nighttime investigators love working from home and if we had our own morgue they wouldn't be able to.
06:50
There would have to be somebody there all the time. Yeah so, I kind of like it the way it is and it's not going to change here until well after I retire so I don't have to worry about it but I do like the setup that we have.
07:03
Anyway, Parker County decedents do go to Tarrant County just like ours and this case happened back in October of 2012. Jake Evans was a 17-year-old. He lived in Parker County; Texas and he was watching the presidential debate with his mother Jamie who was 48 and his 15-year-old sister Mallory.
07:25
He started thinking of how he would kill them. He retrieved a knife and then thought maybe a 22 revolver which he had stolen from his grandfather would be a better option. I guess he was thinking according to everything I read was that it would cause them the least amount of pain.
07:44
He could put them out of their misery quickly. They wouldn't lie there and bleed to death had he stabbed them he could shoot them in the head, and they would die a lot faster and it would not be painful.
07:56
Most killers are not sensitive like that. But of course, this was his mom and his sister that he was thinking about murdering a lot that we've seen, like serial killers, they like to see their victims actually suffer.
08:10
But in this case, he thought it through. And he wanted to go the route that caused them the least amount of pain. Now for an hour, he paced the house after the debates, everyone went their own way. And he realized that, you know, hey, if I carry this out, I'm never going to see them again.
08:31
And my life is going to be different because, you know, I'm going to get trouble. I'll probably go to jail. My sister and my mom won't be here anymore. And so, he thought it through. He contemplated what he was going to do, how he was going to do it and was actually thinking about the aftermath, which again, a lot of people don't do.
08:53
So, then he went, and he knocked on Mallory's bedroom door and he told her that her mother needed her. The purpose of that was so that she would come out in the bedroom. Now she came out and she saw Jake pointing the gun at her and she thought he was a joke, which most of us would.
09:12
I mean, apparently, he had never exhibited signs of homicidal tendencies like this before. And so, she was a little bit surprised and probably thought, oh, stop it, you know. Siblings are playing jokes on each other all the time, but he shot her in the back and then again in the head.
09:30
He found his mom in the study, and he shot her three times and then he went to his room. He emptied the shells on his bed and then he heard noises indicating that Mallory was still alive. So, he heard some movement and of course, he didn't want her to suffer.
09:51
So, he loaded the gun again as he shouted that he was sorry. He then ran as fast as he could to kill her. He made sure his mom was dead also and then he shot her again in the head just to make sure. He then called 911.
10:13
Now he wrote a confession and, in that confession, note, he wrote that it was dreadful and terrifying and that he knew he was done with killing people. He got it out of the system. Like, I don't know if he was trying to say like, hey, I did it.
10:30
I'm sorry. I won't do it again, type thing. I mean, of course, we all know that's not going to work. That's not going to cut it. He basically said, I just kind of wanted to know what it was like to kill somebody.
10:42
I've done it. I'm good. It took four months for him to later admit that he murdered his mother and sister in their Alito. although he had openly admitted it on the 911 call to the operator. He said that he wasn't really angry at them, that it just happened.
11:05
He reportedly was inspired by the 2007 remake of the movie Halloween where Michael Myers calmly killed several people at the age of 10. He watched the movie three times, and he was amazed at how at ease Michael was during the murders and he imagined that he would be the same way.
11:27
If he murdered somebody, he figured, hey, I'm going to be the same way. I would be calm, I would carry out the act, follow through with getting them help. So anyway, I mean, he had thought about it for a while.
11:39
I mean, he had watched this movie, thought how he was going to do it. So, it was pretty well planned out in my opinion. Now, Jake was 19 when he pled guilty to two counts of murder. He was sentenced to 45 years on each count to run concurrently.
11:58
A capital murder count was waived as part of the plea deal. Now he had said in the 911 call that he felt that they suffocated him, but that he'd been planning to kill someone for a while. Not necessarily a family member or his parents, but that he had planned to kill someone.
12:22
He probably just wanted to know what it felt like after watching that movie. Over the two and a half year period after his arrest, the court wrestled with concerns over his mental health, obviously. I mean, that's the first thing we all think is, oh my God, he's got mental health problems.
12:39
Two psychologists actually determined he was incompetent to stand trial, and he was ordered into the care of a state mental health hospital. Now, I think I've mentioned to y'all before that when I was in nursing school, I went to the forensic mental hospital in Vernon to do my psychiatric clinical.
12:58
And we actually stayed there for a week in the dorms outside of where the prisoners stayed, and it was so interesting. And I don't know if the classes are getting to do that now, but I tell you what, that was one of the coolest experiences ever in nursing school.
13:16
And psychiatric nursing is considered a branch of forensic nursing. Many I was introduced to it a long time ago and didn't even realize how interested I was in forensics in general. But it was so cool to talk amongst these people.
13:35
They had a common area. They were able to talk to each other, walk around, watch television. There were sofas, there was foosball, and there was a pool table. They just had bedrooms, so it was kind of like a group home setting.
13:50
Of course, there was an area. where the more dangerous people were secluded from others, but it was an amazing experience. We could go look through the charts. We could see why everyone was there, what they had done that landed them there.
14:07
It was an amazing experience. I mean, I can just say I absolutely loved it. On April 20th, 2015, officials actually notified the court that Jake was competent to stand trial. So I guess they had determined based on his behavior at the mental health facility that he could now stand trial.
14:29
So, his dad, Beryl, wrote that he appreciated the plea bargain and that he wanted to put this all behind him and he wanted to heal as a family. And so the family seemed to like to embrace him and quickly forgave him.
14:47
It's a pretty violent crime. I mean, you shot them both several times. Shot them both. in the head and kind of thought it through. Anyway, they forgave him. Evans will be eligible for parole after serving half of his sentence.
15:03
The scary thing is he also planned to kill his grandparents at their home, and they lived across the street, so that was part of the plan. He also wanted to kill his older sister who was visiting from college.
15:17
But for some reason, he had a change of heart and instead of walking over there and killing them too, he chose to call 911. Now, we all know that doesn't make him a good person, but it would be terrifying to me to think that that was in someone's plan, and they just chose last minute not to do it.
15:39
I mean, that'd be horrifying. Now, Jake and his sister both had withdrawn from school earlier that year to be homeschooled. The father, Daryl, was in Washington D.C. on business at the time of the murders.
15:56
Now, Jamie, the mom, had worked as a teacher and assistant principal from 1989 to 2004 at Coder and Stewart Elementary Schools. Mallory was a student at Stewart Elementary and McAnally Intermediate School.
16:15
Now, there are two other daughters, Emily and Audrey, who no longer lived in the home at the time of the murders. Jake also asked during the 911 call, and I heard the call. He was very calm. He said he didn't want to see anyone in his family, and he asked that no one in his family visit him.
16:37
Now, friends of Jake described him as one of the nicest boys they know, and they said he was quiet and shy and that he loved to golf, but they loved that he was quiet and shy. He wasn't extremely outgoing.
16:52
He wasn't obnoxious, he was just super friendly and nice. And so that's how he was known. Now, Daryl and Jamie, the parents, they were high school sweethearts, and they had been married for 26 years. Jake was born on May 22nd, 1995, in Aledo.
17:10
And now while in prison, he is 30 years old. He is at the memorial unit in Texas. His projected release date is October 4th, 2057. But again, he is eligible for parole after serving only half of that sentence.
17:33
Like I said, it's kind of strange because this happened around the time, I guess, that I first came to the medical examiner's office in Denton and I had worked in Dallas for a year and prior to that had worked in Houston.
17:46
We see stories like this all the time. Some of them end up being high profile cases and end up in the news and we see them and, you know, used to, I would hear a story like this and I'd be like, oh my God, people are crazy.
18:00
Now it's like I almost expect it, which is kind of sad because we'd see this kind of thing all the time. You just don't always hear about it. And a lot of the stories and the cases that come through our office never make it to the news.
18:16
I mean, if we only knew all the things that happened, I can remember when I was a kid, there was a hotel in Lewis, what was a little hole in the wall, like not a place your parents would ever take you, not a place you would ever want to stay.
18:31
It looked more like a place that homeless people would go. But I remember hearing a story about someone being, I don't know if they were murdered or just found dead, but of course I was little, so I was probably 12.
18:45
I thought, oh my gosh, you know, people die at a hotel. How crazy is that? And then secretly a part of me wanted to like go into the hotel just to see what it looked like inside. And I mean, it wasn't really a hotel.
19:00
It was more like a, I don't know, a motel, like a drive up thing. But anyway, it just like floored me that something like that, like a death at a hotel, you know, whether it be natural or a homicide or even a suicide would happen.
19:14
It's getting somewhere close to me because I just never even really thought about it. And then it's crazy that years later, here I am going into hotels and pulling people out of bathtubs. And I mean, it's just, I don't know who would have thought.
19:29
And I know that, you know, lately I've talked to a lot of people about my job, and they'll see my tattoo, which is a great conversation starter. And I'll kind of explain to them because I know I always think, oh, they're going to see the dead body on my elbow.
19:44
The chalk outline and they're going to think I'm a weirdo. So, I kind of feel the need to tell them. Well, I'm a death investigator. This is kind of my work arm, but Everybody tells me oh man if I had it all to do over again I would go into forensics or that would be my dream job Everyone thinks that but you don't really know for sure until you get into the field We've hired a lot of people who thought it was their dream job and then when they went out on calls They were like dude.
20:12
I can't, I can't handle this, can't handle the smells, I don't like bugs, just things. Speaking of bugs, we had a scene of a homeless man in a tent last week. I think I told y'all about it. But apparently, all the police that were standing around as I was looking at the body, they were standing in kind of tall grass, because it was about, probably a quarter of a mile off the roadway. So, we had to walk through mud and tall grass, but they were standing out there watching me, and they all got covered and chiggers. And it's funny because my husband's from North Dakota,
20:48
and apparently, they don't have Chiggers there because it's cold. And so, he's like, what's a Chigger like? And so, I had to like pull up a picture and Google it and explain what it was and how bad they itch.
20:59
I mean, oh my gosh, they'll drive you crazy. But they were all covered in Tiggers. And that's another thing that we have to think about when we go out on calls is bugs. I mean, Mosquitoes got me a couple of times on that call.
21:12
I was saved from the Tiggers because I was standing in dirt instead of grass. But I did walk through some tall grass. I had a couple of bites on my thigh and that's probably what it was. But man, those suckers itch.
21:23
I don't know if y'all have ever had those, but I don't wish that on anybody. It's miserable. They itch. And remember as a kid, we used to like smother them. You would paint clear nail polish over where they bit you to smother them because they burrow into your skin and they just, oh, they itch like crazy.
21:41
I don't miss those days at all. So those are things that we're exposed to. And a lot of people don't think about that when they say, oh, I really want to do that job because they see just the glamorous part on television.
21:54
I don't spend any part of my day in a lab like they do on TV a lot of times. So just picture a day of being out in the hot sun in the middle of summer or being out when it's freezing. And I still don't know how investigators up north where it's always cold can be outside in that weather and survive.
22:19
I mean, I know people probably say that about us and the heat here, but oh gosh. And you know, it is so hot already and it's only June. I can only imagine what August is going to be like. I've already decided I'm going to start keeping a cooler in my car with ice water for me and whoever works a scene with me just because I need to be a little more prepared because man, you start feeling bad, especially if like you get an early call and you haven't had a cold
22:46
hot breakfast or it's around lunchtime and you're starving, and you go out on a call and you're sweating, and you could just get dehydrated and you're not drinking enough fluid and you know we all know I like my diet Dr. Pepper.
22:57
I don't drink water when I should, and so that's something I'm trying to get better at, but I've said that for years. Honestly between you and me, kind of like going to the gym. I've said for years, I'm going to do it, but I don't. I am headed to work this morning, I hope the county is good to me. Yesterday they were very good to me, and so I always appreciate that, but you never know. It's the luck of the draw. So, you don't know if the day shift is going to be busy, you don't know if the night shift is going to be busy. We've already had a lot of drownings this month, not only in our county but in surrounding counties. We had a local firefighter actually kayaking whose body was found yesterday, and his case went to a different county. And we had a father and daughter who drowned in the lake.
23:51
Lake Lewisville is a lake close to us here. It's just well known for a lot of drownings. It's very heavily populated in the summer. It's a very popular lake to go to. A lot of boats, lots of jet skis, but super busy.
24:07
So, Lake Lewisville is kind of the lake here that I try to stay away from. And we were talking at work yesterday. It's like, I am not getting in lake water. Again, I don't like murky water. I don't like stuff swimming past my leg, brushing against me.
24:23
I don't know what it is. I can't see it. And in my mind, it's the biggest, ugliest, most dangerous fish in the lake. And I just don't want to be in the lake. I mean, I know that people go swimming with their life jackets on who can swim.
24:39
And they still end up drowning. I don't have time for that. So, in the ocean as well, I'm kind of out. I mean, I had some friends pulled out in the undertow when I was in seventh grade in Hawaii on an educational trip.
24:53
And I'm not a strong enough swimmer to get myself out of that situation. And I know that. And so, I'm just not going to put myself in that situation. To me, drowning would be a terrible way to die. I don't want to do it.
25:07
So, I'm not, I don't know. It's weird. Anyway, I am going to head to work this morning. I hope that y'all have an amazing day. Don't forget to go online and order your tickets for the murder mystery dinner.
25:20
They are going fast. We are only selling 60 because we have to have a four by eight area for our actor to die. We only have a certain amount of space for seating. Tickets are going fast already. I encourage y'all if you live in the area and want to come to log on to pushinguplilies.com and your tickets while they're still available.
25:44
Again, have an amazing week and I will talk to y'all soon. Bye. Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies. If you like this podcast and would like to share with others, please do me a quick favor and leave a review on Apple Podcast.
26:01
This helps to make the podcast more visible to the public. Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at PushingUpLilies.com for merchandise and past episodes.