The Protector: Joey Fischer's Death and The 83-Year-Old Killer's Fight for Freedom

We revisit a disturbing case from South Texas about a mother who took her role as protector to the extreme, resulting in the tragic death of an innocent teenage boy in Brownsville, Texas. The story, which began in 2020, centered on a shocking act of violence fueled by a parent's ultimate act of perceived defense.

This is a follow-up to our original coverage. We bring you the latest details and updates on the case, including the recent motion filed by the now 83-year-old killer to gain compassionate release from her life sentence. We break down the motion, her claim of being "uneducated in the legal field," and the court's definitive decision to deny the request. Listen to the full original story and stay until the end for the final update on the killer's continued life sentence behind bars.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Joey Fishcer

[00:00:00] We shared this story with you guys back in 2020 and since then there have been some updates. We're gonna share those details at the end of the episode, so make sure to stick around.

So something you always hear from parents is that they would do absolutely. Anything for their kids, but what does that really even mean for most people? It simply means that you would put your child's wellbeing and happiness above your own, even if that means you had to suffer so that they would be better off.

In this week's episode, we're talking about a South Texas mom who took her role as protector to the next level, and the end result was the death of an innocent teenage boy. The story takes place in Brownsville, Texas. And before we get into what happened in the case, we're going to tell you a little about Brownsville in this week's segment of we Googled this city.

Brownsville, Texas is located on the Western Gulf Coast in southern Texas. And as of the 2017 census has a population of around [00:01:00] 183,000 residents. The city motto for Brownsville is on the border by the sea, which really sounds more like directions and less like a motto if you ask me. I feel like maybe one day somebody came up to the mayor and was like, Hey, what's the city's motto?

And he thought, they said like, Hey, what's directions to lotto? And said On the border by the sea. And the person said, that's the town's motto. And he just doubled down and was like, yeah, actually it is got a problem. Because it doesn't have a whole lot of personality. It seems like a great town. I think we could do better with the motto.

We should come up with some, some more, uh, ideas for them. Singer songwriter Chris Christofferson was born in Brownsville, as well as actress Ella Walker, who was recently starred in Wonder Woman, 1984. She also starred in the movie Fast and Furious Nine. Cannot believe they were nine movies. Can you believe there's nine of those?

I mean, I can no, like too fast, too furious, fast and furious, or I don't even know what they did. I feel like fast and Furious, like as parents, we kind of screwed this up [00:02:00] because I feel like that would've been a great like Christmas movie where it's just parents like, uh, wrapping gifts the night before.

It's as possible. That's like a total fast and furious moment. Brownsville hosts the Annual Sombrero Festival and offers its residents an opportunity to eat delicious Mexican and Tex-Mex food, as well as join in a jalapeno eating contest. No word on whether or not this is sponsored by Tums or if you're just given a business card for the local GI doctor at the end.

Lastly, Mandy, as Brownsville is located near the Gulf, the city hosts another event called the Gulf Shrimp Fiesta, which begins right before shrimping season is set to start. If you're a shrimp fan, they have all kinds of shrimp for you to partake in. They've got fried shrimp, broiled shrimp, barbecue shrimp and participants this year requested, and it's been rejected for their entries.

For meat pie, shrimp, AKA, the mc, Mandy Jumbo shrimp, AKA, the mcm,

no [00:03:00] word yet on where they stand on shrimp drums. And that is all I have. All right, so as we mentioned, Brownsville is in South Texas, right on the Mexican border. And because of that, this area of the country is heavily influenced by Mexican culture, including mythology and folklore. The people of this region are rather superstitious as a whole and many believe in brew haria, which is witchcraft.

And Carmo, which is a holistic system of Latin American folk medicine. So this can really be a set of beliefs, rituals, and practices that address the physical, spiritual, psychological, and social needs of the people who practice it. The word originates from the Spanish word that means to heal. A ERO or a curandera is a native healer of shaman, and they dedicate their lives to finding remedies to mental, emotional, and spiritual illnesses and others.

While the practice of Brew Haria has more negative connotations, [00:04:00] Caron Arimo is considered a sacred and legitimate practice, and it's something that people of this culture take very seriously and even live their lives by. For those who believe in and participate in this practice, they can develop a lifelong relationship with a specific corra that they will have regular visits with.

A person might visit their corra for anything from fortune telling and tarot card reading to spells of protection and for help resolving personal problems such as marital issues. As you can imagine, the idea of using magic to cure ailments and solve problems can quickly turn into the idea to use magic for sinister purposes, which is exactly what happened in the case of Dora Cisneros.

Dora Cisneros was the daughter of a successful Mexican American rancher who grew up in South Texas and was raised around this traditional Mexican superstition and folklore. She attended private school and had a pretty normal childhood. In the mid to late sixties, she met and married a well-respected surgeon named David Cisneros, [00:05:00] and she quickly fell into her role as a doctor's wife.

The couple was well-respected in the community and they were very active in the social happenings around town as well. By the early seventies, the Cisneros couple had grown their family to include five children, all of whom attended a very prestigious private school in Brownsville. The family was active in the Catholic church, and Dora was known for being the type of woman who really cared for her family and always chose to put them first.

Life was amazing for this family and they really seem to have it all until one moment, changed the course of their entire lives. In 1974, officers knocked on the door at the Cisneros residence and informed Dora that her oldest son, who was just 18 years old at the time, had been killed in a car accident.

Dora's life was flipped upside down over the loss of her son. Those that knew her during this time said that she changes a person and never really came out of her extreme grief. In a desperate attempt to heal her mind and her spirit, Doris sought the help of a [00:06:00] und, and before long, she was blessed with another pregnancy, a baby girl that she would name Christina as Christina and the rest of Dora's children grew.

She also grew more and more protective of them, especially Christina who was the baby of the family. Christina was a really quiet girl who mostly kept to herself and focused on her schoolwork. She had grown up being used to her mother's constant overprotective behavior, and she strived to really make her parents happy and proud, and never really got into any trouble.

When she was in the 10th grade, something really exciting happened, she started getting attention from a popular boy named Joey Fisher. Although Dora and her husband had pretty conservative ideas about dating, and they kept really strict rules about it, they did approve of this relationship with Joey.

Dora held the mindset that a woman never knows when she's going to meet her future husband, and she wanted Christina to date with a purpose and to take this relationship seriously. She also happened to really like Joey Fisher, who she said was [00:07:00] a good catch for her daughter. Keep in mind, these are teenagers.

Yeah, every mom wants to see their daughter or son, you know, find somebody that they approve of. Of course, that's what every parent wants, you know? So she was really thinking, this guy is great and he's great for my daughter, and was just over the moon. That a boy like Joey was giving her daughter attention.

That can be really a lot of pressure though. Yeah. That's so much pressure. Dora had really good reasons for liking Joey and for approving of their relationship. As I said, he was really everything that she wanted for her daughter. He was an honor student, and he was the type of kid who didn't even have to really open a book to study, and he just got amazing grades in school.

By the time he was a senior in high school, he actually had a 98.5 grade point average, and he was ranked 11th in his class. He had high aspirations of becoming an engineer, and he was excited to head off to college at the University of Texas at Austin. Not only was Joey smart, he was also a handsome young man, and Dora [00:08:00] liked that.

He came from a family that had what she considered to be great values. In other words, she viewed this boy as marriage material and wanted nothing more than to see her young daughter end up with Joey for the long haul. The budding young couple enjoyed hanging out and doing outdoor activities together.

They liked going to the movies and Christina would often just go to Joey's house to hang out and play video games with him. She really was over the moon to have the attention of Joey, and she genuinely enjoyed their time together. After a few weeks of dating, Christina began to consider the idea of becoming intimate with Joey, but of course, she knew that this was something her parents would absolutely never approve of.

So she hatched a plan to make it possible for her and Joey to be alone together. Over spring break in 1992 without the knowledge of her parents, Christina and Joey headed to South Padre Island, Texas, where Christina's family owned a condo. The couple spent some time together there and eventually slept together, which only made Christina's feelings for Joey even stronger, and [00:09:00] of course, a lot more complicated.

A few weeks later, Joey asked Christina to be his date to the senior prom. Dora was ecstatic that her daughter had been invited to the prom. Prom is a huge social event in this community, and since Christina was just a sophomore, Dora was proud and really overjoyed that she had been asked to go with a boy as wonderful as Joey.

A short time after prom. Joey did what's customary in South Texas and he gave Christina his class ring. Did you have a class ring, Mandy? Um, I didn't, I really wanted one and I pretty, I'm pretty sure my parents were just like, no, we're not paying for that because you're not gonna care about it. Right. In 10 years.

Exactly. And they would be absolutely right, um, for saying that to me, but I think that's exactly what they said. They're like, yeah, that's like not a thing that you're going to care about and. Yeah, I, I don't care about it now. So I guess they were right, right. Same thing. And I was like, fine, I'm just gonna save up for it.

And then I realized they were expensive and I was like, yeah, you know what, this isn't, I don't think so. So for high school couples, this is really an official symbol of the relationship status, and a lot of times this. [00:10:00] Is like the way you're showing that your boyfriend and girlfriend, and it seemed as though things were really getting pretty serious and that this relationship was on the track that Dora was hoping for.

But all of that changed in May of 1992 when Joey attended a wedding for a family member in Austin. Christina couldn't attend the wedding with Joey, so he was flying solo, which made it easy for him to chat up a 17-year-old girl named Courtney, who is attending the wedding as a guest of the brides. Joey was attracted to this girl and pretty much decided right then and there that he no longer wished to be tied down to one girlfriend.

He took Courtney's number that night. A few days later, Joey blew off plans to meet Christina for a date. Christina was clearly very upset about this, and this is someone who she believed was her boyfriend, and she had no idea why he would just stand her up. It wasn't until a few days later that he finally called Christina.

At first, she was really happy to hear from him and expected him to apologize and explain why he didn't make their date. But instead, Joey broke the news to her that he didn't feel like they should continue [00:11:00] their relationship, and he asked that Christina, please return his class ring. Christina was heartbroken and distraught and she refused to give the ring back out of spite.

But this ring was something that was really important to Joey. He had worked hard as an honors student to earn the ring, and it really meant something to him. Upon learning about the breakup, Dora became very upset and refused to accept that Joey did not wanna be with her daughter, so she decided to take matters into her own hands.

Dora had a plan that she believed would solve the problem and keep the teams together, and we're gonna get into the details of her plan after a quick break. Dear your award from this week's sponsors. Before the break, we were talking about how Joey Fisher had just broken up with Christina Cisneros after realizing that he wanted to spend his summer unattached and really just free to have a good time.

Christina was heartbroken and her mom, Dora felt the need to help the situation in some way as mothers do. But of course, her preference was that Joey would just continue to date [00:12:00] her daughter. So she did something a little, well, maybe a lot out of the ordinary, and she contacted Joey and demanded an explanation.

So imagine being Joey and now, like it's already, that stage of your life is already hard enough when you're dealing with like, you know, trying to figure out dating and relationships. And you're both young, you're still teenagers, and now. You have enough to deal with, with just trying to break up with this girl and now her mom is calling you and saying, you know, begging and pleading with you.

It's just a really awkward situation. And I imagine like how uncomfortable that has to be for a, a teenager. Teenager. Yeah. To have to deal with something like that. Ooh. Yeah. Like it's enough to deal with the girl that you're breaking up with. Like you don't need to deal with her mom and her parents, you know, on top of it.

Right. Dora wasn't just interested in pleading with Joey to take Christina back. She was actually offering him money to do so to the tune of $500 a month to be exact. So this offer was obviously shocking to Joey and he found it completely ridiculous and told Dora that there [00:13:00] was absolutely no way she was going to pay him to date her daughter.

Meanwhile, Christina and Joey were still going back and forth with each other about the class ring. Joey really wanted to get that back, and he begged Christina to return it. When she refused Joey, you know, got his parents involved. He didn't really know what else to do. His stepdad suggested that he remain calm.

But to let Dora and Christina know that if they did not return the ring, he would pursue legal action. This is, of course, a piece of jewelry. So, you know, that's like a good point. Like they can't just say they're not giving it back. You know, if he asked for it back, they have to give it back. So his parents were encouraging him to.

Just let them know, you know, like if they wanna do this, then they would pursue legal action to get the ring back. So Joey wrote a letter to them explaining just that, but Dora still saw the ring as a bargaining chip of sorts, and she arranged a meeting with Joey's father at a local Burger King where she tried to convince him to talk Joey into dating.

Christina. Here's the thing, if he already [00:14:00] wanted to break up with her, and now the mom is like a level 11. And right. Like there is no motivation to get together at all. Yeah, there's exactly, so Joey's father thought that Dora requesting a meeting was really, really strange in the first place, but he grew even more impatient with Dora when she continued to insist that he help her get his son back into Christina's life.

He firmly told her that Joey would like his class ring back, but again, Dora refused and said that they would return the ring in good time after they made Joey sweat a little. So a few days later, Christina finally gave back the ring and it seemed like the situation was on the road to improving and being put behind them all by the end of that summer.

The one-time romance was really just a memory for Joey who had moved on to other relationships. However, Christina was taking a little longer to move on from the breakup, and Dora was becoming more and more distressed over the situation. She wanted to make her daughter feel [00:15:00] better, and she still even held on to hope that Joey would come back into her life once again.

Dora once again sought the help of her, her and Maria Martinez. She wanted Maria to give her a tarot reading, specifically as it pertained to whether or not Joey was ever gonna get back together with Christina. Dora didn't get the answer she was hoping for. Maria told her that according to the cards, Joey had no plans to rekindle a relationship with Christina.

Dora was extremely irritated with this news and asked Maria to cast spells to bring these two young lovebirds back together. Months passed and by the spring of 1993, it seemed that things were finally getting back to normal. Christina was dating a new boy and had put Joey far behind her. Joey was also dating someone else at this time, and he was completely focused on his upcoming graduation and admission to the University of Texas at Austin, and then in the blink of an eye, everything changed on the morning of March 3rd, 1993.

Just before 7:00 AM Joey stepped outside of his home in the [00:16:00] affluent community of Rancho Viejo. He was about to head to school for the day, but decided to hose off his car in the driveway before taking off as Joey was fiddling with the hose. A mysterious person appeared out of nowhere and fired two shots at the 18-year-old, hitting him in the head and the chest and fatally wounding him.

Joey's mother heard the gunfire and ran outside to find her son dead on the driveway, but the shooter was nowhere to be seen. Police arrived to a puzzling crime scene. It wasn't unusual to be called for drive-by shootings in some of the local neighborhoods, but Rancho Viejo was a very low crime community and there was no obvious motive for why anyone would want to murder an 18-year-old high school student on the scene.

There was little evidence left behind. There were 2 38 caliber shell casings, a shoe print on the outdoor air conditioning unit, and a yellow business card for a local bail bondsman. The card actually had a handwritten phone number on it, and it was very close to the body. The [00:17:00] only other clue police had to work with was that a witness told them they had seen a white four-door car with Mexico license plates near the scene of the crime, and that the driver was a Hispanic man, possibly in his early to mid twenties with a short beard.

Investigators followed the only real lead they had and contacted the bail bonds company to find out if they had bailed anyone out in the Brownsville area in the recent past, like in the last couple of weeks or a few days. They said that they hadn't bailed anyone out in the area and they had no idea why or how their card was left at a crime scene.

So investigators continued to question everyone close to Joey, including Christina and Doris Cisneros. Christina was visibly upset and really shocked by Joey's murder. She told police that she had been to the doctor's office the morning of the murder, and then her mom dropped her off at school. After speaking with Christina and Dora, Christina was eventually ruled out as a suspect three days [00:18:00] later and without any other solid leads.

The police got a phone call that changed the course of this investigation. It was actually the bail bond company calling back to let them know that they had spotted something interesting on an application they received, and it was that the handwriting on this application seemed to be an exact match to the handwriting that was found on the business card at the crime scene.

The application was filled out by a man named Rudy Quar, a Texas resident who made frequent trips back and forth from Mexico and ran a drug smuggling and auto theft operation from Mexico as far north as Chicago. Once again, police were puzzled at the thought that an 18-year-old from a well-to-do family could have possibly been involved in what appeared to be some kind of gang related shooting.

Investigators tracked down Rudy, but to their surprise, he had an alibi and an explanation as to why a business card with his handwriting on it was found at the scene of a murder. He had given the card to a friend. After writing a phone number [00:19:00] on it, the man he said he gave the card to was named Daniel Garza, another small time criminal in the Brownsville area.

That's pretty amazing that he would even remember doing that because. I do things all the time and I don't remember, and something that important to be like, oh, I have nothing to do with this, but I gave somebody this specific piece of paper. You know, like, oh yeah, I had that in my card. I put somebody number on it.

Well, I mean, I mean, that sounds terrible, but like how many people are you giving bail bonds cards to? But if you just have a bunch of cards, do you ever pull stuff outta your thing and you're just like me? You know? I write on the back of everything. So I wouldn't think, I mean, granted, I don't have any bail bondsman cards in there, but I can see how, like in the moment if you needed to remember something, that would be terrifying to be like, who did I give this thing to?

But you're probably right. So at this point in the story, you might be getting a little confused with all these different names flying around and wondering how any of these people are connected to each other and what it has to do with Joey Fisher's murder. But we're gonna bring it all full circle right after one last [00:20:00] break for a word from this week's sponsors.

So before the break, we were discussing how investigators working on the murder of Joey Fisher had just been given a tip that a small time criminal named Daniel Garza was potentially involved in the shooting. Daniel was a house painter by trade, but at this time he was actually unemployed and getting his money from more unsavory sources.

It didn't take long for police to find Daniel and to bring him in for questions, and it didn't take him long to start talking either. Almost immediately, he admitted to police that he had hired two Mexican drug runners to kill Joey. But still, this explanation made very little sense to investigators.

There was still one major question why? The more Daniel talked, the more it became clear that Daniel was also just upon in this tragic scheme. As it turned out, Daniel had been going through some hard times in his marriage and he was desperate to sort them out and fix his relationship with his wife. He believed that supernatural forces were at play in his marriage.

So as it is customary in Mexican tradition, Daniel sought the [00:21:00] help of a RA to cast out the evil and restore his relationship. And if you guessed that as RA was Maria Martinez, you would be correct. So Daniel's talking to the police and he is telling this story about how he was desperate for help and he was willing to do anything to get it, and that Maria Martinez promised to help him with his wife if he would just do one favor for her as well.

Find a hitman for one of her clients. And that's exactly what Daniel did, acting as a middleman. He hired two men named Israel Oliveres and Harto Pisana. These two men also worked for Rudy Queller as Hitman and Car Thieves. The three men first met to discuss the murder on February 14th, 1993, and EZ and Pisana agreed to commit the murder the next time they were in the area.

Daniel Garza provided them with the directions to Joey Fisher's home, as well as a photo of him. And from there, a Murder for Hire plot was officially in motion. Armed with this new information, police Devi a plan to take down the three new [00:22:00] suspects who were Maria Martinez, Israel Aez and Herto Pisana.

Daniel was cooperative with the investigation and agreed to set up a meeting with Maria, in which he would tell her that the hitman required more money. So each time Maria gave him the money, which only confirmed to the police that Daniel's story was true and that Maria did have some role in this murder, or at least knowledge of it.

On April 5th, police raided Maria's shop, but she was not there. She was later arrested at her home, but she was really obstinate and just refused to speak to the investigators at all. That was until they came up with a ruse. They showed Maria a photo of Joey Fisher and said that they got it from her client, Daniel Garza.

So this wasn't actually true. This was the police going out on a limb and just hoping that this would trigger something in, in Maria and get her scared and enough to. Give them more information, right? So that actually worked. She felt backed into a corner and she admitted [00:23:00] that she had given the photo of Joey to Daniel, and from there she became a fountain of information.

She immediately implicated Doris Cisneros in the murder by telling police how Dora had come to her for help in getting Joey Fisher back together with her daughter. As it turned out, Dora hadn't just stopped at asking Maria to cast a spell on Joey. She continued to meet with Maria for months after the teen couple had split up each time asking Maria for something different.

At first, Dora asked if Maria knew of anyone or could find anyone to beat Joey up, but by October of 1992, she was asking for something much, much worse. She wanted the boy to be killed. She told Maria that she would pay up to $3,500 in US money for the job to be done. It was at this point that Maria evidently agreed to help find someone to pull off the hit, and that's when she involved her other client, Daniel Garza.

By January of 1993, [00:24:00] a few months before the killing, Daniel and his wife had already divorced and he was absolutely distraught over it. So Maria essentially took advantage of Daniel's situation and his desperation for help with his wife, and told him that she would fix everything if he helped her find a hitman for do.

All that was left to do at this point was to find Dora and bring her in. But first, they would need more solid proof that Dora was, in fact, the mastermind behind this murder. Maria agreed to set up a meeting with Dora while wearing a wire and being under the close surveillance of nearby officers. When Dora showed up for the meeting, she picked Maria up at her shop, and almost instantly she started asking questions about the murder, asking if anyone possibly knew anything.

She then handed Maria an envelope with $500 in it as partial payment for the hit. The police have to be so excited at this point. They are like, wow, this, yeah, there's no prodding. She's like, oh, I've got the cash that you needed. And what does everyone know? How many other things could I say? Would you like my name and my date of birth?

Would that help? [00:25:00] You know, this entire investigation, right? So at this point, they have everything they need and they move in and take Dora into custody. She was arrested and booked on capital murder charges to the absolute disbelief of her family and friends, as well as really everyone in the community.

As we mentioned in the beginning of the story, the Cisneros family was pretty well known and respected around town, and no one wanted to believe that this dotting mother of five and the wife of a prominent doctor could be capable of doing something so horrific. Dora Cisneros and Daniel Garza went on trial for Joey's murder in February of 19 94, 11 months after the murder.

Although much of the evidence in this case was circumstantial, it was clear to the jury that Dora had definitely been the one to set this in motion, and that her apparent motive for the murder was her anger and distress over her teenage daughter's relationship status. Each of them was convicted of murder and sentenced to serve life in prison.

But that wasn't the end of the story for Dora. After spending two years behind bars, [00:26:00] Dora came up for an appeal and to the shock of many. The Texas Court of Appeals actually overturned her conviction. She won her appeal because of a rookie mistake by prosecutors who drafted the original indictment. So legal stuff gets a little confusing to us laypeople, as in me and Melissa.

But basically what happened was that the jury had been instructed to consider the charges incorrectly. The way the instructions were written. The jury wasn't able to actually convict Dora unless they also found that Oliveres and Pisana had murdered Joey under Dora's instruction. And since there was no evidence presented in the trial that Dora actually employed these men, it was ruled that her conviction was invalid.

Whoa. It all came down to the wording. S on the jury instructions. And so if they would've just included the words Doris Cisneros acting as a party, then her conviction would've stood. In January of 1996, Dora walked free and resumed her life as a wife and mother. [00:27:00] The people of Brownsville were extremely up in arms over this news, especially the family of Joey Fisher, who just simply could not believe that Dora's conviction was overturned on such a small technicality.

To make matters worse, the Texas Court of Appeals also ruled that double jeopardy was in play in this case, and Dora could not be retried for this murder. Wow. Without Dora, there's nothing, I mean, you know how, how would these other. Convictions even stand, you know what I mean? Right. She's the one that's put this whole thing into motion.

That's an, that's just so crazy. Prosecutors in this case refuse to accept this outcome, and they decided to contact the FBI to find out if this case was able to be tried under federal law. It was determined that a federal trial was appropriate in this case, and so Dora was once again arrested in 1998 and put back in front of a new jury.

The case was laid out much the same way that it was the first time. Only this time they made sure they had all their i's dotted and their T's crossed. After a week of testimony, Dora was convicted of using a telephone to arrange Joey's murder, [00:28:00] and she was again sentenced to life in a federal prison here in Florida where she remains today.

What a wild story. There's just so much going on with it. Just, I can't imagine like everyone's been in high school, everyone's experienced puppy love. Not saying that it's not like an amazing thing and all that, but like as an adult, you know, like. It'll happen again for my daughter. Like this isn't the end of the world.

They're in high school. You know what I mean? Like to become so obsessed and fixated on this one person. There are really a lot of fish in the sea. There truly are. And as an adult, you know that as a teenager you might not. But for the mom to be the one to set this in motion is just so crazy to me. Yeah, absolutely.

And really this, they were only together dating for just a few months, maybe three months. So it's not like, and I understand that when you are in high school, like. That seems like a really long time to be like a boyfriend and girlfriend. Like that's like a milestone time, like three months together. Right, right, right.

Woo-hoo. And it really does feel like a serious relationship to you, like at that stage when you're that age. But [00:29:00] it's like in, in the big picture and like Dora should have known, you know? Right. Should have been able to see that. Like, okay. It was a very short, like fling and you know, it ended and now it's about to be summer and everyone, everyone's gonna be fine by the time school starts again.

And you know, it's just. Very strange that she took this like approach or that this bothered her on that level. Um, right to the point of doing something like this. And something else that I thought was really shocking and really interesting to me about this is that Dora had lost her son when he was 18 in a car accident and knows what that was like.

Yeah. You know, she knows that pain that a mother feels when they lose a child. And so for her to, you know. Have had that experience, it makes it even more mind blowing to me that she would put another family through that. Yeah. Like knowing what that's like and how, how that feels and yeah, there was just, just, there's really no telling what was actually going through her mind at this time.

I mean, but she planned this for months and months and months, you know, before it [00:30:00] actually took place. So it's just really shocking for sure. Mandy, that story was so fascinating when we did it at the time, and it's one I still think about. I don't know how much you've thought about it, but having psychics and then just like your grandma master plan is, some dude broke up with your daughter and you're like, well, he has to die.

Just crazy. The idea of being that, um. Upset or that involved in your child's life, that involved is a good word for it. Right? That level of involvement is, uh, too much for me. Very much so. It reminds me a little of those stories from that time where it was like a cheerleader that you didn't make the cheer team and so then the mom killed the right or wanted to kill and all this stuff.

Like that was just a weird time. But like, moms being jealous on behalf or you know Yes. On behalf of their children. It is very, it is strange for sure. It is. Um, unfortunately it does happen, but back in 2021 there was a new update in this case. We shared this story back in [00:31:00] 2020, so the next year there was one.

Um, Dora, who is the mother in the story, she requested an early release from prison. She filed a motion, meaning that her health had significantly declined, which I assume it would if you've been in prison for like decades and you're 80 something, right? She's 83 at the time, and she said she suffers from a range of health issues, including dementia and neurocognitive disorders.

She said in her handwritten motion. I'm writing the courts to ask that you please accept this as a motion under 18 USC 35 82. I have filed all the remedies. I suffer from neurocognitive disorder, thyroid, arthritis, high cholesterol, also being treated for dementia. I am unable to care for myself. She then decided to irritate the court a little more by saying quote, I do believe that I should not have gotten more than 20 years from my crime.

I have been locked up for almost 30 years. [00:32:00] End quote, Boohoo. Boohoo is. From me, um, her motion further states quote, I asked the court that this time to appoint me counsel as I am uneducated in the legal field. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So she's like, still, you, you guys messed up. You sent me too long and now that I've been here so long, you need to give me somebody to represent me.

But she went on to say that she's receiving help from another inmate to make this motion. Oh, okay. Mm-hmm. Well, the court wasn't buying it. Uh, judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. Responded. Back with, uh, with this, he said that Dora's request for compassionate release under this statute that she, uh, noted was denied without prejudice and ordered that Dora's request for appointment of counsel be denied.

So Dora will now continue to serve her life sentence behind bars and I guess compassionate release just is not on the table for her. It's sad to be 83 years old and sitting in prison, but what's really sad is that Joey's family lost their [00:33:00] son and you think that you're somehow too good to not be in prison for it.

Right. I don't understand. Yeah. Right. And when it's like, yeah, it's uncomfortable because you're aging and you're not gonna be comfortable in prison as you're aging, but that is part of what happens when you murder someone or conspire to murder someone. You know, you get a life sentence in prison, you're gonna age in prison.

It's gonna be unpleasant. Absolutely. So that's the update for now, and we will have another episode for you next week. Bye bye.