The Three Mums Who Teamed Up To Solve Their Children’s Crimes
6/10/20261 hr 5 min
When three adult children vanish or turn up murdered back-to-back in Bakersfield, California, their heartbroken mothers refuse to wait for answers.
Banding together to form a fierce, unstoppable sisterhood, they launch their own rogue investigation, uncovering a dark underworld of ghost guns, addiction, and fraud. But just as their amateur detective work forces a breakthrough, a devastating plot twist blindsides the community: one of the missing victims is suddenly charged with her own friend's brutal murder.
Journalist Olivia LaVoice joins the podcast to unpack the emotional, chaotic, and utterly baffling reality of the Bakersfield Three.
LINKS
Listen to The Bakersfield Three podcast here.
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CREDITS
Guest: Olivia LaVoice
Host: Gemma Bath
Senior Producer: Tahli Blackman
Group Executive Producer: Ilaria Brophy
Video Editor: Julian Rosario
Audio Designer: Tegan Salder
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsGemma Bath· Host0:00
[suspenseful music] It's May 2018, and Jane Parent is desperately trying to find her daughter. Baylee Despot has been missing since late April in their hometown of Bakersfield, California. The 21-year-old had been living at her boyfriend, Matthew Queen's, house. It's believed the last time she was seen was outside his property. Jane has been plastering the city with flyers of her daughter's face, but no one has seen the beautiful young woman with the piercing green eyes and long brown hair. Across town, another mother is desperately searching. Her son, Micah Holsonbake, went missing one month before Baylee. As their parents will soon discover, the pair knew each other. But that's not all. There's a third victim, and this man has been murdered right in between Micah and Baylee's disappearances. It's not long before James' mother joins the other two moms, and together they start to investigate. What happened, they ask, to the Bakersfield Three? [gentle music] I'm Gemma Bath, and you're listening to True Crime Conversations, a podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them. No one wants to be the mother of a murdered child. No one wants to be the mother of a missing child. But in 2018, Jane Parent, Di Byrne, and Cheryl